Weekly Chat: February 26, 2021

Grab a coffee with me…

In as much as I first thought I’d weekly chat maybe once a week… or possibly every other week… well that didn’t happen as my first and only chat this year was on January 21st. But who wants to read what I do every week anyway, so maybe around once a month works better, but with me, who knows… my plans change with the wind. Hubby will ask me at night if I want to go or do something for the next day… and I’ll say, “well, let’s wait until the morning”… my mind changes too frequently, as one minute I want to go, but the next minute I’m staying home… crafting in my pj’s! Especially during the times today… it’s nice to not get dressed… as I can craft in whatever I choose to wear!

Well the one thing I haven’t tackled again since January… was the cleaning of more kitchen cabinets. In my January chat I showed all the “stuff” I had pulled out… and at the moment had plans to continue on, but that never materialized as crafting took first priority… much more fun. I am so easily distracted when it comes to crafting, as I really want to make everything I see… and all at the same time, but that never works out. Since I landed on my new favorite You-Tuber, Kate Jackson, on The Homely House I’ve discovered many new crafts. If you are a crafter like me you will enjoy… and along with her menagerie of animals, from the four cats inside… to the outside animals of Eileen the goose, her hens and the rooster that she threatens to find a home for. As I haven’t heard him crow lately, I suspect he is crowing elsewhere… but I do miss him as I enjoy hearing a roosters’ cockadoodle… and why do they crow during the day… when I always thought they were suppose to wake you early in the morning. Hmmm…. if you happen to know the answer to that, please let me know.

I’ve still been very involved in my English Paper Piecing (EPP) that I mentioned in January’s chat, and if all goes well I will have 5 “patchy” dogs for my granddaughters for Easter… but as of today, I’m not sure that is happening… more like maybe 3! Last night after dumping all my little fabric squares in a basket, I thought…. You better begin sewing… and so I did! I don’t know about you, but whenever I make something for the first time, I’m such a procrastinator… until I know exactly what I’m doing and feeling confident. Are you like that?

Snow finally fell in Connecticut on February 1st… leaving us with almost two feet… and once it began, it seemed to make a weekly appearance. This snow came with such wind gusts that our windows were all covered in blown snow. I could hardly even see out, and can’t even remember when that last happened before. It was definitely not a night for neither man or beast to be out. Hubby didn’t attempt the tackling of the cleanup until the next day, but a couple of our “younger” neighbors ventured out that night and even cleared our sidewalk and part of our driveway with their snowblower. Nice to be young and have the energy… and it was well appreciated by him when he went out the next morning. I was going to bake them cookies or a cake and send over but then thought maybe with Covid, that I shouldn’t send food, so I bought pizza certificates from our local pizzeria for a night of no-cooking.

Hubby enjoys lining up the solar bobbles on the windowell along with his extra solar tops… which make great nightlights!

As the granddaughters often do virtual school from home, now there’s no more “snow” days. That isn’t a big hit as they look out the windows and want to go out and play… rather than sit in front of a computer… and who can blame them! On the last snow day I treated them to making bread in my bread machine. They enjoy hearing the dough rumble as it mixes together, but the best part is smelling it as it bakes… as you know a treat is coming soon!

What else do you do on a snow day? You make soup and bake bread! Nothing better than smelling the two on snow days… and if the granddaughters are here… they never forget in reminding me to make bread!

I went back to my Facebook Marketplace selling… in trying to clear out our collection of cast iron pans that we amassed over the years. How we became hooked on that was all my fault… as I wanted something to collect myself and I began buying a few pans, but in as I didn’t know how to clean them… feeling overwhelmed… hubby took to cleaning them and it soon became our hobby. I know you’re probably saying… “how many pans can you cook with?” Well, we are not alone, as there are many people who collect cast iron; those cooking skillets date back to the early 1800’s and earlier when it was forged by local foundries and even area blacksmiths. Many people only associate cast iron today with the very heavy Lodge cast iron, but the older pieces of iron are much lighter and make much better cookers. I don’t regret beginning our collection that spooned out of hand with hundreds of items, but it was fun! It’s great to have a hobby you can share with your spouse, and as we do so much together it made the hunt even more fun. We were driving yearly to Georgia so it was my job to find the antique malls to stop in… and on some trips, it took us forever to get home as we kept stopping in. If you travel on I-81, do stop in The Yellow Antique Factory in Verona, Virginia… but be warned, you will spend all day there on your first stop, but there is a nice hotel just next door. On those collecting years, we often arrived home with more cast iron than needed, but it was often a pan we didn’t have or a new foundry name we discovered or something I thought I just must have! So what do you collect? In another chat I’ll tell you of hubby’s new hobby!

Our “wall” of cast iron

…. back to writing about Marketplace…. As I’ve given my children the few pieces of iron they wanted, I decided it was time to start selling off this “heavy” collection of ours… rather than leave it to them to sift through. They have no idea of the value of the pieces, so it’s better I sell… and I’m doing pretty well in this endeavour I took upon myself. The only part I’m not a fan of is the packing, as my pieces aren’t light in weight and require much packing material to ensure a safe arrival in their new homes. I’ve been shipping to many states, especially the mid-west… which surprises me as I would think there would be many pieces out there left over from the cowboys… not sure why I think that, but it doesn’t seem to be. We live in more the area I guess where the more well-known “Griswold” pieces were more prominent. Anyway…. my house is becoming lighter now. Do you cook in cast iron?

I think I’ve probably been saving my cleaning out cabinets phase for when I return from cleaning out mom’s house… a final cleaning before it’s sold. On our last trips we slowly cleaned through things, but a complete clean is beginning to now sound over-whelming to me, but it has to be done! Thankfully I have pretty much cleaned out 2/3rd’s of her clothes… she was such a clothes hound! Mama loved her clothes and jewelry. I left there on our last trip with over two bigs shopping bag of her jewelry… mostly all costume. I’ve sat and looked through many of her pieces and will be sorting it to what I’ll save and what pieces I’ll use in my crafts. I’ve seen many awesome photos on Pinterest of what you can make with collections of jewelry… it’s always on the back burner to make a framed piece… another procrastination for me. I’ll pull it out oneday for one of my chats… for a show and tell!

Going through mama’s clothes is a must for me… as if it has a pocket, she was well known for stuffing money in those pockets… so I’m obsessed that I must stick my hand in every pocket I see… so time consuming! So far I haven’t found much money, but out of the most ugly pair of pants I picked up… I came out with a ten-dollar bill… and I almost didn’t even look in the pockets on that pair, thinking… surely she’d never have worn those pants. I guess it was more in the days when she was less frugal in her shopping trips at the local thrift shop. Later on, she often only carried a dollar or two… she was very frugal! Free was always the best find for her, and she was well known for stopping by the roadside if something caught her eye… something for her garden. That’s another thing I have to clean…. clean out her gardens of all her little treasures she’s placed around during the past years… and it’s now time for them to go as they’re mostly faded and broken. One summer trip we arrived thinking she had gotten a dog… as by the barn there was a Dalmation sitting there… but the closer I walked, I laughed as I saw that she had repaired his broken head… even tying a bandanna around his neck. She thought he was too pretty to have been thrown away, so she rescued him, patching him up for a few more years of life. I think he still may even be guarding the old barn under all the bushes that are now so overgrown.

Do you make lists of what you need or want to do… but do they ever get finished? I do make some lists… and lose or forget, but I finally crossed one off this week. I was contacted late last year to write a story on the Fun Houses of Savin Rock in West Haven, CT. For the most part, I had already written them as separate stories, so I only needed to pull them both together, tweek, and add a little more personal history I’d gathered from one of the owners granddaughters. I did feel honored in the contact after they discovered my writing on Savin Rock… liking my style and the history I had written on the area… especially the personal first-hand information I somewhat badgered my husband for… the constant asking of what was his memories from there. I have also added that story on my page over Here.

Guess I can now cross off another somewhat weekly chat off my list… but I’ve been a little lax in working on my A to Z for April… which is closing in quickly! If’ you’ve never read any of my previous years… take a peak… can you guess which one was my favorite to write?

• 2016: A to Z Southern Foods and Memories… they said write what you know… and being a girl born in the South… well this was what I knew.
• 2017: A to Z Conversations with Mama… it was a somewhat easy one for me to write as I’d journaled our conversations for years… I researched favorite topics to write.
• 2018: A to Z All About Nancy Drew… this one has been my favorite topic so far, and I don’t know if I’ll ever come up with another one to equal it
• 2019: A to Z Italian Famiglia Foods and Memories… I felt it was time to finally write the favorites of my husbands family foods.
• 2020: A to Z Family Stories… writing the stories of my husband’s family.

If you’d like to read my other Weekly Chats… click over HERE.

© 2021, copyright Jeanne Bryan Insalaco; all rights reserved