Wednesday Weather Reports #177 & 178 - 10/14/20

 Clearly job#2 is getting in the way of my stitching and social media time. I just have to remember it will finish soon and I can get back to "normal".

The storm (much more ominous in person) I wanted to share with last week's report. I just love the contrast of a dark sky with bright fall leaf colors.

Report #177
September 30, 2020 :: 56 F
October 1-6, 2020 :: 56 - 56 - 55 - 55 - 56 - 60 F

Report #178
October 7 - 13, 2020
60 - 53 - 64 - 73 - 55 - 62 - 55 F

Wednesday Weather Report #176 - 9/30/20

 I work in the Town of Perry which used to have several water powered mills and factories. In fact, my Grandmother worked at one of them when they moved here from Chicago. Quite a bit of the local Polish population came to town for mill jobs.

This boulder mounted sign sits next to my office building to commemorate the Richmond-Andrus Mill, constructed in 1872 as a sawmill just off Main Street.  I'm hoping you can enlarge the photo to read the info - if not I can type it out for y'all. 

September 23 - 29, 2020
73 - 75 -75 - 76 - 79 - 76 - 60 F

This is how the area looks today:

According to the sign, the sawmill was converted to the first local frozen food locker in 1949 and later was owned by Rich Plan. Sadly the building has been empty for many years. The parking lot behind and to the right of the building was once the millpond and the "creek" (overgrown on the left) is actually the outlet for our local lake and drinking water source.

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Wednesday Weather Report #174 - 9/16/20

I hope today's photo doesn't end up being as political as some of what I've been ignoring online...

The news has been showing truckloads of mail boxes being removed but it's pretty much a non-issue in the small communities where I live and work. This mail box is one of 2 in the town where I work and it's outside the post office. The other box is at the bank drive through. There used to be a third just two blocks from the post office but it was removed a good 5 years ago as people just weren't using it enough to warrant staff checking it twice a day. There are only 4,600 people in this town so it was more about changing habits than an inconvenience. I mean, who can't walk the extra 2 blocks in a 3 block business district?

The smaller town where I live has one box in front of the post office.

September 9 - 15, 2020
83 - 73 - 56 - 70 - 66 - 61 - 61 F

In reality, anyone with rural delivery just has to put the flag up on the mailbox at the end of their driveway and the mail(wo)man will pick up what ever needs to be mailed when he delivers your daily mail.

How is the mailbox situation where you live?

Chalk Fest Bags

Kim cuts thru piles of donated jeans

This July is the 5th Annual Perry Chalk Art Festival in downtown Perry. For the three years that I have been involved with the planning committee, I have been working with Kim and Felisa to make denim bags out of discarded blue jeans. Their daughters help with the bag painting but they were at college this year so Kim also lent her painting skills to the mix.

For the last 2 Saturdays the girls have met at my house to work on the bags. Remember that I said these are discarded jeans - some have stains and others have holes in various places but then there are also the frayed seams that lend a "rustic" touch.

wouldn't they also make neat catchalls?

We cut strips from the legs, make a box seam at the bottom, add a cuff or use the frayed seam and had a ribbon or cord for a handle. Our chalk dude logo and "Chalk Perry" is added with fabric paint. Later we will stuff these with chalk and other supplies for our artists to use during the festival. Leftover denim parts are being saved this year so we can create some other items for sale.

I have no idea what my giggles were about here...

It's hard to be serious when you're having fun: we broke out a bottle of dry Riesling and there were frosted brownies and rhubarb upside down cake for later!

phooey - Felisa smeared it