A little randomness....

It is that time of the week...time for the Willy Nilly Friday 5....so  here goes.  And please bare with me...some are long.

1.  A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet by Sophie Hudson.  This was free for the kindle a week or two ago...at the time I am writing this it is $9.57.  With a 5 star rating/287 reviewers.  When I was checking it out and went to read the excerpt...I read the first line of the literary disclaimer where it said 'These stories are true.  For the most part' I was hooked...I looked no farther.  Other than I had noticed she was southern.  I tell you I have laughed till I cried...and other times been brought to tears...oh, I cannot even explain the reason.  I don't know if you have to be southern to appreciate it, but I do know I have really enjoyed it.  I have not finished it...but I will.  My SIL read it before I did, and she was laughing about them going to 'the J.C. Penney store'--and 'the Belks'..I remember putting the 'the' in front of the name of the store...just had not thought about it in years.

2.  I have spent literally hours this afternoon and night looking for a spool of thread.  I kid you not.  I will be making a quilt for one of my daughters in the future...she bought a lot of the fabric for it when she was here at Christmas, and she bought a spool of thread to quilt it with....I knew I would need at least two, but didn't say anything.  So, this afternoon, I had to order a second spool of thread for Lorelei's quilt.  I thought while I was at it I would order the second one for my daughter's quilt but I need to know the identification number...I ran downstairs to get it...it was not where I thought it would be.  Needless to say I have went through everything at least three times and still no thread.  King Tut thread has a number, plus they give it a name, and I cannot remember neither one!

3.  I just cooked our Christmas ham last Sunday....we still have ham left.  I have frozen some to have for ham and beans later.  I had wanted to wait and cook it when we could be with Sarah and Jeremy, but with first one being sick and then another being sick, it has not happened.  So I cooked it for us.  It has been good.

4. I have not been getting to do much blog commenting till night time part of the time.  Some days are just like that.

5.  I finally have one of my sewing machines sitting directly in front of a window.  I am happy!  Mom always had her sewing machine sitting in front of a window, so I guess that is partly why it is important to me--it is what I was used to when from childhood.

If you want to join with your 5 random thoughts, please go to Tanya's Willy Nilly Friday 5 at Around Roanoke, VA blog.  It usually opens at 12:00 a.m. on Friday....or midnight tonight in other words.


Edited at 11:49 pm to add:   I found the thread I was looking for....it was where I thought it was.  I had just overlooked it.  And though I had 'felt' for it, I was not feeling in the right place.  

Old habits die hard...

Every time we are out and pass walnuts laying in the road, I want to stop and gather them.  At the least, I would like to stop and crack a few to see if they are good  We never do...at least not out on a public road.  There are a couple places where I will if we happen to go there.  One is a farmer who lets Roger hunt on his land, and the other is a place not too far from us.

When we were kids, we always gathered walnuts in the fall.  We would hull them, by hand or by putting them in the drive for the car to run over when parking.  Personally, I did not mind my hands being all stained.  Don't even really care much now if I am messing with them and end up with walnut stained hands.

I know we spread them out to dry, but for the life of me I cannot think of where all we spread them.  Maybe on the top of the doghouse?  (Here is a story about the doghouse to get an idea of its size.)  Even though it was big doghouse, I am sure we had to spread them somewhere else.  After they were dried, we put them in the basement.  Again, I don't remember what we put them in.

As a kid, I liked to every now and then go in and get a few, and get the hammer, and I would sit on the steps and crack them.  To eat as a snack.  In the winter when it got too cold, sometimes someone at night would go crack open a bunch of them in to a pan...just crack them enough till hopefully we could get the actual nut out.  Sometimes we sat and picked them out to eat, or sometimes it was at mom's request for us to crack enough to pick out a cup or so of the nuts to go in a cake or something she was making. 

I know one of my brothers still gathers walnuts, and the old guy we met out near the strip pits gathers them, but other than those two...I don't know a soul that will take the time to gather nuts.