Pincushions and Pillowcases

The temperature was -1 when we got up yesterday morning. By the time I headed to town, the sun was up and shining, but it was brisk out there. The electrician came out yesterday to work on hooking service up to the new shop. We’re still waiting on the overhead doors. The man doors were delivered last week. Once the husband gets the heater installed, he should be ready to work in there (crossing fingers).

Kalispell got far less snow than we did—only about an inch. Our road was a sheet of ice and I said to the husband that we must be experiencing a gravel shortage here on the side of the mountain (that was sarcasm) because the plow trucks deposited a scant cup of gravel per corner. The issues with the county road department are starting early this year. They came down our road Monday afternoon and destroyed our neighbor’s mailbox. Calling to complain is an exercise in frustration. There is zero accountability and they know it. If you call them, they will gleefully inform you that any damage is not their responsibility.

When we first moved here, the old guy in charge of the road department did a fantastic job. Plows were out before the school buses. Roads got cleared after storms whether it was a weekend or not. He retired and everything went downhill. Now, if we get a snowstorm at 6 p.m. on Friday, we are out of luck until Monday morning. The husband routinely clears out the bus turnaround on our corner because the plows don’t get up here until mid-morning. I’ve even seen people with plows clearing short stretches of our road themselves.

It’s maddening.

I whipped up the pumpkin pincushion kit when I got home yesterday. Making it didn’t take long and it’s already found a home next to a machine.

I spent the rest of the afternoon making custom pillowcases on Vittorio, my beloved 72-year-old Italian Necchi BF sewing machine. Pillowcases are a side hustle that is starting to pick up with the holiday season approaching. I’ve been helped along by someone on Twitter for whom I made a math-themed pillowcase. She tweets pictures of hers every so often and it has generated some interest. I love working with these novelty prints:

Riley Blake has a NASA Apollo 11 fabric line with some cute math prints, too.

If this keeps up, though, I’ll need to think more about setting up an Etsy store. I’ve got about 20 patterns left to add to the Big Sky Knitting Designs store and then I should be able to make that site live.

And can I just say how stupid I think Amazon is? They shipped back half a dozen of my Aran and cable knitting books the same week that they put in an order for more Aran and cable knitting books. I don’t know who handles inventory there, but that’s just insane.

Elysian’s little guy is staying here with the husband tonight while she and I are at gardening club. We have been having issues with the YouTube channel on the Roku, and it took me four attempts last night to delete and re-add the channel before I could get it to work properly (I am the resident IT department). I am sure the two of them will want to watch heavy equipment failure videos or something exciting like that.