Just my grandmother's quilt

My grandmother (Grammy Cann), my dad's mom, was a neat lady. Her full name was Gladys Augusta (Durkee) Cann and she married a very taciturn man, somewhere around 1920 or so. When I was about 14 she told me that when she was young, her friends called her Happy Bottom. It took me a minute to figure that out!! LOL

When I met her (considerably later) she was a tiny little lady. She lived to be 78 or so, and she and her husband of 50+ years lived in a house with no hot water, no bathroom and no furnace.

After she died, I discovered from her obituary that she had been the organist in the little church that she went to for 68 years (or something like that). I had no idea - although I did know that she was very musical - many of the Durkees were.

She had beautiful gardens, her houseworking skills were fair to middlin' and she NEVER ever had a cross word for anyone. I never saw her wear slacks - when we went to the beach she was always in a skirt. She had two children, my dad who probably weighed in the neighbourhood of 10 pounds and his sister, my aunt Evelyn. Aunt Evelyn was born 16 years after my dad. Grammy Cann MIGHT have been 5 feet tall and she might have weighed 100 pounds - maybe 105 - and having a HUGE baby as her first must have been a tad (slight understatement) difficult. I can understand the delay before Aunt Evelyn came along!

Grandma taught me to knit (more than once) and refined my crochetting skills. She let my sister and I put her hair in curlers. At the time, that seemed entirely reasonable to Mary Ellen and I, however, when I got older and realized that washing her hair with no running water and only a well pump in the kitchen, must have been much more difficult than we would would have thought at the time. When we went to visit them (for two weeks every summer), I often got to stay at Grammy Cann's overnight for a night or two by myself.

She was interested in genealogy, as was I and she had endless patience for my questions.

She quilted as well - and I have one of her last few quilts. It is coming apart now and I'm trying to decide what to do with it. I believe I saw her working on this in the mid 70s, so it isn't very old, but it is in quite poor shape. It is also a rather ugly colour - I suspect that she used fabric she had on hand and bought muslin and some mustard yellow fabric to tie it all together and finish it off. (Yellow is not my favourite colour, probably because I can't wear it at all!)

Here is the whole quilt. I'm not sure what this pattern is called - and I have to say that it looks rather better through the camera than it does when you are standing and looking at it!

 This is one of my favourite blocks. I sort of think that she turned two of the half square triangles on their sides, now that I'm looking at this in the photo! I don't think that you can tell from the photo - but the stitching on one of the seams has come apart (I can fix that in this block).

 I'm pretty sure that there are open seams in these blocks too.

 See the frayed bit of fabric? I suppose that it wasn't cotton and so it isn't hanging together too well.

It is impossible to put a quilt on the floor here without having at least one of the three cats come to inspect it. This is Sarah. She, Molly and Ellie were all out on the deck in the sun - but she had to come in to walk around the quilt and smell the blue ink splotch that is in the centre of the block right in front of her. Funny about cats and quilts, isn't it!?

 More disintegration.

I think this is my favourite block - I love the paisleys and the blues and pinks - and it is on the edge so it isn't complete. Sigh.

Anyway. My next part of this project is to decide what I will do with it. The batting appears to be cotton batting - not put together in a sheet, but clumped together into hunks. The backing is plain muslin too.

Any ideas?

Just coffee mugs, again...

Coffee mugs, one of my favourite things in life, come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colours and designs.

They are tall and short. Narrow and wide. They have big handles that you can get many fingers in, or small handles that you can't.

They are made of a variety of materials and they keep your coffee (or other hot beverage) hot for varying amounts of time.

They are thick walled or thin walled. They are dainty or not. They are pretty or they aren't.

I have discovered that I have an ideal coffee mug.

Firstly, I don't care whether I drink COLD coffee or not. I know this is a turn off for lots of people... but I would rather drink a cold coffee than not have one. I'm willing to admit that other people have other opinions on this, and I'm cool with that. (Only a slight pun is intended!) However, the shape of a coffee mug has some bearing on how long your beverage stays hot - that's why I mention this.

I HATE coffee mugs that I can't hold onto 'properly'. I need to be able to get my index, middle AND ring finder INTO the handle of the mug. If I can't, I feel like the whole thing is going to dump into my lap (and I don't need any help to be klutzy - I'm perfectly capable on my own, thankyouverymuch!)

So. Big Handle.

I want a BIG mug. I don't want to have to go back to the coffee maker (more on that appliance in another post!) and refill and refill and REFILL! I want a MUGFUL! So a good size is important.

I like the mug to have a 'nice' shape. I haven't exactly figured out what that is yet... but I can tell you, I have two Tim Horton coffee mugs that I bought at Christmas time. And I have two or three old white Tim Horton mugs. The old white mugs are shorter and wider at the top. The two new ones are taller and narrower at the top. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that they hold the same amount of coffee. (Although I haven't tested that!) I don't like the two new red ones - the top is too narrow.

When my real estate agent gave me coffee mugs as a gift, they were shaped like a straight up and down cylinder that had been squeezed in the middle (clear glass with a flower shape impressed in them.) And I loved them. (I think I must have sold them all in a yard sale - it must have been snowing at the time. What was I thinking!?)

Those mugs that Shell gave away with gas in the 80s? Exactly up and down cylinders - don't like them at all.

 I have a short, BIG, straight up and down cylinder, made of clear glass, with a Guiding logo on it (White Oaks Area, I think). I LOVE it! I usually like clear glass mugs. I have two mugs with white holly leaves on them (also clear glass). I got them at Sobeys at Christmas and talked myself out of buying 6 of them (I didn't really NEED 6 more coffee mugs) but they are PERFECT. I bought two. When I went back to get two more, they were all gone. :-P

I have four mugs - BIG, nice wide open mouths, perfect handles, made out of some sort of pottery - they are white and have a little pale blue coffee pot on them. I bought them at Loblaws, and they are nice BUT one of them chipped, and now I don't 'trust' them. :-(

In short; I have definite tastes in coffee mugs. I'm not entirely certain what they are, but I can tell you that I like a clear glass mug, with a wide mouth, a big handle, and I want it to hold LOTS of coffee!

Enjoy!

Just Coffee Mugs

I have always LOVED coffee mugs!

I do have two coffee mug anecdotes that I'm going to relate, but I liked coffee mugs BEFORE the earlier one of these took place.

My husband used to be in Canada's Armed Forces. (Before I met him he was in the Navy.) He joined the Army when we finished high school (yes, we were high school sweethearts!) and we moved around a bit.

When we lived on Prince Edward Island, I joined a Newcomers Club (which is a great organization, I might add, and I belong to the Truro and Area one here!) The Newcomers Club in Summerside had quite a nice mix of ladies. We got together for all kinds of things; crafts, Moms and Tots, cards or board games, and we did alot of social things in the evenings and on weekends with our husbands AND we had a coffee group.

Shortly before Barry and I were posted to Germany, I went to morning coffee. All the other ladies had the MOST beautiful coffee mugs. I was so impressed and Elaine gave me a nice mug from her cupboard to drink my coffee out of. I was admiring all her nice mugs, when the coffee group was finished. All the ladies turned their mugs upside down, wrote their names on the bottoms and presented them to me! They were my going away gift! I was SO impressed!!

Two postings later, Barry and I were posted back to Canada and, while he was in the former Yugoslavia, the two kids and I moved to Calgary. Assuming my furniture would arrive from Summerside, where it had been in storage, within 5 days, I invited my mom and dad to come out to Calgary and visit with us for a couple of weeks - to keep us company until Barry got there. WELL. The furniture from Summerside did NOT arrive within 5 days and Mom and Dad, Nathan, Kimberly and I spent a week and a half in a VERY empty house. (How does this relate to coffee mugs? I'm getting there!) Our furniture came from Summerside and within a day we had everything organized, all the dishes washed and everything looked good. EXCEPT we had no dining room furniture... 4 days after that all our furniture came from Germany where we had been living for 5 years. We now had two of everything except for the piano, the masterbedroom set, and the dining room furniture. The house was suddenly VERY full. One might even say TOO FULL.

Mom and Dad thought I should have a yard sale. This was early September, by the way. We advertised, we marked prices on things and we filled the two car garage with stuff. The day came. It SNOWED! The yard sale happened. I SOLD 87 coffee mugs. I still had more than 30 in the house. Did I mention that I like coffee mugs?

When I bought the house in Calgary, the Real Estate agent gave me a house warming gift. She gave me 4 coffee mugs!

:-)
P.S. I had had a yard sale in Summerside when I moved there and it snowed. I had a yard sale in May in Calgary when we were getting ready to move away and it snowed AGAIN. I now longer have yard sales. At all. I just take the stuff to the Salvation Army or Rotary House. Bad weather can be their fault - but not mine any more!
J

Just Coffee

I like my coffee first thing in the morning. In fact, I HAVE to have it. Yes, I'm addicted to it. There, now that we have gotten that out of the way, please let me continue.

I have strong feelings about my coffee. I have discovered that I don't like DARK roasts - they make me shake. My girl friend tells me (and I have no reason to doubt her!) that dark roasts don't actually have more caffeine than medium roasts. But I do doubt a bit. (Why would my heart beat so fast after one if they aren't extra loaded with caffeine?) (Perhaps it's all in me head!)

I know that lots of people have done the rant about the stores that sell coffee in sizes that aren't in English. Well, if I wanted windy coffee I'd ask for it. All those barristoes (or whatever they are called) speak English - they know what I mean when I say a large coffee, medium roast. And because I don't take sugar or anything sweetened with sugar, I have to take EVEN more time. I might like to have an iced cappachino mocha - but I have to know what's in them - and that takes even longer than them explaining the sizes to me.

Okay, I got off track. Back to my own little slice of heaven in the morning! I get up, and I usually feed the cats before I make the coffee. However, if they are too lazy to come over and stand by their dishes and look up at me... if they just sit on the back of my couch, or worse, if they just lie there all curled up... Well, heck, if they aren't in any hurry, than the coffee comes first.

I hate to talk about the water here in any disparaging way. It is clean and safe and they have spent a lot of money here in this town on deepening the reservoir, and on a water treatment plant. (And our property taxes reflect that!) However, it has the faintest smell of chlorine - and I find that a filter takes that away ipsquitch (I think that is a BFG word - use the context!) The only issue that I have with the filter is that you have to remember to fill the darned thing when you use the water in it all up! And if it is half full, you are supposed to wait until it is empty before you fill it again... So, some mornings, the coffee is delayed by the water being filtered.

I used to make 8 cups on my coffee maker. Which makes four mugfuls (Are the coffee maker people drinking their coffee from ventis??) But I have discovered that I drink the coffees closer together now that I am retired. When I was working, I'd fill my thermos and I'd finish the last coffee early in the afternoon - but four mugs of coffee before 10 is too much now!

So I fill the thing to the 6 cup line. And I have a moment of heaven! :-) Enjoy yours!

Next topic - mugs!