"On the plains of Oklahoma, with a windshield sunset in your eyes like a watercolor painted sky, you'd think heavens doors have opened."
Fly Over States



Saturday, January 23, 2010

Nest Building - part 2



Yesterday, I concentrated on getting the longarm room usable.  It started out a mess.
The first picture is looking to the west.  The following picture is looking to the east.  I need to fix the ceiling. 

It was a gorgeous day and the girls got to run around the yard when they weren't in the barn with me "helping."

Pearl:

Evelyn:

It was a typical gusty day in Oklahoma.  I kept tossing the empty boxes out the front door of the barn and they'd fly.  See the main house off in the distance?  I found some of them on the opposite side of it.  The boxes traveled all the way around the front and back around the far side where they lodged in the Cedars. 

See? 

But even though it was gusty, it was warm and wonderful.  
East Wall - More longarm room before I started making progress:

West Wall - Making room to set up the longarm:

South Wall - Setting up cabinets and shelves:

West Wall - I put a lot of fabric on the shelves but need to go back and sort and fold so it looks better:

The barn and the Oklahoma sky - and flying boxes:

NE Corner - Getting ready to assemble the longarm:

The biggest problem with a longarm is not the cost - which is high - but the need for room.  This is a twelve foot table and needs a minimum of 15 feet from end to end.  It is three feet wide and needs a minimum of 5 feet from back to front.  Fortunately, I have plenty of room from front to back because I took nearly everything out of the room so it wouldn't be so cluttered.  I loved my old sewing room but the clutter made me nuts. 

Here she is in the middle of reassembling her:

There is my darling!

Don't look at the shelves to the right - I have straightened that up.  I'm just showing you how much room I have between the west end of the longarm and the wall.

I will get around to making sure she is running right, next week.  It looks like there was some minor damage to the head during the move but I don't know if I will have to get a new part before I can use her.  She fired up just fine and I cleaned her up and oiled her.
  
Since I took these pictures, I've gone back in and put down rugs, put up some decorations and straightened up the shelves.  I'll go take pictures, tomorrow.

Switching to my birdcam - here is a neat picture at dawn - we've had a lot of fog:

Dastardly Squirrel didn't show up for several days and we saw a dead squirrel on the road near the house so I was afraid it was him.  But, no, he's back:

I just liked this shot of the crows because of the flared wings:

I was having some problems with exposure with the way the camera was sitting so I rigged up a new location and like it, very much.   The following are a series of pictures of the crows - I like the way the sun hits their shiny wings, the wicked things:

Dastardly Squirrel:

The daddy cardinal always comes at dusk so getting a picture of him has been tricky:

My poison ivy is getting better since I began taking prednisone.  I've got a very severe allergy to it but thought everyone got it this bad - but the doctor said, no.  I think I will start going to the doctor in the future instead of just suffering and making everyone else suffer for a month or more. 

Happy Quilting,

Penny, Evelyn and Pearl

5 comments:

swooze said...

My dd has a terrible reaction to poison ivy. She can touch it on her arm and it goes to all her limbs and her trunk. Terrible stuff. Please dont suffer.

Love seeing the progress on the LA room. You will be setup in no time at all. How is the rest of the unpacking going?

Shogun said...

Is that a goldfinch next to the cardinal? I never liked crows before, but now I noticed they always hang out in families and seem to have a great communications system with each other. Oh - and I post a very recent photo of my daughter on my blog.

Stephanie D said...

Ouch! Sorry you're still having so much trouble with the poison ivy. My brother reacts like that, too. I haven't had it since I was a child, and it wasn't that bad.

Somehow I pictured your place much farther from other houses--more isolated. It was a surprise to see neighbors' houses in your photos.

Nancy said...

Penny, both my daughter and I are severly allergic to poison ivy. Try a series of allergy shots for it. It has worked wonders for both of us. We still get it, but it doesn't spread as much or last as long. I had the series when I was a kid and have built up some tolerance, as a result. My daughter went thru the series twice as a teenager, and i't has helped, but not as much as it helped me.

Anonymous said...

Keep posting stuff like this i really like it