The Voice of Lu

... well, not here on the blog, but saved for perpetuity. Cheryl has just finished proofreading the transcript of her interview for the Alliance for American Quilts Quilters Save Our Stories project. These interviews with contemporary quilters are being compiled and stored on the Alliance's website, and with the Libary of Congress. The interview starts with a look at a quilt that is special to the person being interviewed. Cheryl chose her friend Dorry's quilt, Where in the World is Ethyl M. Quilter, because it is special, and because it won the Best Quilting ribbon from the Carolina Longarm Association at the local guild show in 2007.

It happens to be in our house instead of Dorry's temporarily, so it was on the table during the interview.

Little Lu couldn't stand not being the center of attention for long, so while the interview was going on, he hopped up on the quilt with a loud "meow." This vocalization made it into the transcript and on the recording that will be stored for history. The interviewer hopes he may provide a smile to some future quilt researcher.

But, it's a good thing Dorry's family seem to have a soft spot in their hearts for this particular wise-guy kitty - shown here occupying a box he decided was just the right size. The box was placed out for him, unlike the quilt.



Not to neglect our other special cat who is not as outgoing or loud as Lu, here's Moki, who has claimed the quilt just off the quilting machine, waiting for the binding hand finishing --



Norris' sister will particularly appreciate the backing fabric her brother will be sleeping under, assuming Moki gets off the quilt and allows Cheryl to complete it.

And here's Moki exploring the snow on the deck last Saturday. The snow didn't last but it did get Norris out of Fire Academy training early for a pleasant change.

An Art Quilt

Cheryl quilted this for a customer last spring. This was a challenge to quilt in many ways - the background was pieced on a stiff stabilizer, the photos were printed on fabric and enhanced with paint, but the closeups of faces were too large to leave unquilted - and just quilting the eyes and cheekbones wouldn't be enough either. Quilting on faces is very challenging and probably not often successful. (Hollis Chatelain's work being a notable exception.) The client had some specific requests that don't show in this photo - for example, there is very dense quilting to make up the warp threads of the weaving and to portray the straw material of the big black hat. Cheryl thought she would have pictures of it completed - the client added lots of beads after the quilting was completed, to enhance the clothing and as jewelry for the women. But lacking that photo, here's the quilt as it looked after quilting -


The borders were a relief - a place to show off some quilting texture, drawn from the inner border fabric print.

TV appearance

Here he is - the guy on the right. He had seen the camera but didn't know he was being filmed.



He was only on screen about one second, but knew we were able to recognize him because the raw footage was on the TV station website earlier in the evening.

more photos from the Fire Academy...Week 6

First, some cool photos of big water streams. This first one is called a master stream and it has too much back-pressure for humans to handle, so its staked down to the ground so it can't get loose and wreak havoc. It's probably flowing around 400 gallons a minute.

This is a Water Curtain, a device that puts out a thin but broadly spread sheet of water to keep fire from jumping from one building to another.

These pictures were from the class on using foam to put out fuel fires. In the first picture, we are waiting for the fuel oil in the training pit to really get going. It was a damp cold day, so the fire helped warm the students up.
The students start spreading the foam on the fire...

and you can see the foam blanket is knocking down the fire pretty well.

Here a large fuel tank gets a good foam bath.

glorious fall day

Norris and Cheryl hiked up the ridge along the logging road to do a little trail maintenance with the chainsaw today. This tree blocked the path so completely we hadn't even realized the logging road doubled back and stayed on our property at that point until Cheryl and her brother Roger were doing some trail clearing last fall.


The tree stretched across both the trail we knew about, and the switch back that had been hidden to us on all our prior hikes. Here Norris is making the final cuts.

Cheryl took this next picture specifically to show the large stand of rhododendron growing on the mountainside. The main feature of the photo seems to be the spectacular vines shapes. They must have grown this way after the tree they were climbing fell.



Back to the rhododendron - the patch of deeper green to the right and behind Norris, just behind the yellow tree inside one of the wild vine loops is the rhododendron, with dozens of plants growing behind what is visible, all probably 10-15 feet in height.

Photos from Week 4

Week 4 is done for Norris. Here are some pictures from this week's classes. In the Water Supply class, each 4-person team had to run a number of drills for time. In this drill, the crew has to drive up to a portable pond, set up the hard suction hose to draft from the pond...

while the other part of the crew drags off 200 ft of hose and has to be squirting water within 2 minutes of the start of the drill.

The next drill involved a pumper and a tanker and required each team driving 200 yds to the scene, then ...
setup a portable pond, dump the water from the tanker into the pond, have the pumper drafting water from the tanker, pull off 200 ft of hose and be squirting water within 5 mins.

The other timed drill required hooking up to a hydrant and flowing water to a handline in less than 2 minutes. Click here to see a 2 minute video of that drill.

Fire Extinguisher class involved trying different kinds of extinguishers on different kinds of fires. Here one of the students finds out that hitting a small mineral oil fire with a dry chemical extinguisher actually causes a large fireball to flare up. Maybe not the best way to put out this fire.

In Salvage and Overhaul, the class went on a field trip and tore apart an old house to learn how to get at hidden fires. Here one of the students is pulling a ceiling and getting doused with large clumps of old, nasty insulation. Good thing we had air packs.
The class also had to raise a heavy 35 ft extension ladder...
then roll tarps around it to create a long water chute. It's only elevated a little bit in this picture, but would typically be used to create a path to remove water from a second or third floor fire.
Norris is glad he only has to go to class two days next week because all this is hard work.

The Dreaded Friday Firefighter's Fitness Challenge

Every Friday each firefighter in the academy is required to run the Fitness Challenge. It is a multi-station agility and strength test performed while wearing full gear and breathing from an air pack (total weight 50-60 lbs). It has to be run in less than 5 minutes. So far, Norris' best time is 3:30 and the class record is a little over 2 minutes (held by someone 40 yrs younger than Norris). The test starts when you have to pick up a high rise hose pack, throw it over your shoulder, and run up two flights of stairs in the smoke tower.

When you get to the third floor window, you throw the shoulder load to the floor, then grab a rope and hoist up a hose roll from the ground up and over the railing. Then you put the high rise pack of hose back on your shoulder and run back down to the ground level and drop the shoulder load on the ground.
Then you run up this flight of outside stairs and grab a sledge hammer and chop 25 times on a block of wood.
Then you run back down the stairs, pick up a hose line full of water and drag it 80 ft.
Then you open the nozzle and have to knock over the orange cone with the water.
Then you drop the hose and run up another set of outside stairs, pick up a "victim" (sometimes a dummy, sometimes one of your class mates) and drag them 80 ft.
When you've finished that, you're done except for the part where you either throw up, pass out, or lay helpless on the ground until your lungs stop screaming. Norris usually does the latter.