A Linty Mess — Janet Szabo

I finished sewing down the binding on the neutrals quilt and did something I haven’t done before: I immediately threw the quilt in the machine and washed it. I do love the way cotton batting crinkles up when it’s washed, but I don’t wash my quilts right after finishing them because they aren’t dirty and I think it’s unnecessary. This quilt, though, was covered with lint from that awful batting and I was hoping that a trip through the washer and dryer would remove most of what was left.

The quilt felt wonderful after coming out of the dryer, but most of the lint was still on it. The worst of the lint was in the border, where I had quilted loops and the lint had gotten trapped in the stitches. I had to pull the bits of lint out—what a tedious job—and then roll a lint roller over that area to clean it up. Thank goodness I had picked up a nice lint roller and four refills at Ikea last week. I went through five layers of adhesive on the first lint roller on this quilt alone.

It’s done.

Hopefully the rest of the batting will stay trapped inside where it is supposed to be.

Fairfield Organic Cotton Batting—don’t use it. I see it’s on clearance now at Joanns. Ugh. I am sticking with Warm and Natural from now on.

I still don’t know what I want to work on next. I unearthed a Laura Heine collage quilt pattern (the Featherweight) the other day and thought I might start that, but I’m just not sure. Maybe this lack of enthusiasm for sewing is a nudge to go work on sewing machines. I stopped after church yesterday and picked up my friend Ginger’s serger and brought it home for some TLC. A few years ago, she happened to mention that she was looking for a serger. Not long after, I found a White Speedylock for $40 at Goodwill. Her office is right next to the Goodwill store, so I told her about it and she popped over on her lunch hour and picked it up. She says she loves that machine and uses it often, but it stopped working recently and she didn’t know how to fix it.

I cleaned and oiled it, rethreaded it, and got it serging again. It’s a good, solid, no-nonsense machine and I am glad she’s getting a lot of use out of it. The threading is a bit tricky, though; the upper looper kept wanting to unthread and I think that was what was causing her headaches. I’ll sit down with her and show her how to thread it in case it happens again.

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The husband spent the weekend putting trim and siding on the new shop. I’ll wait until it’s done to show you a picture. I think it’s going to look really nice. (And that is why it is important to have an Architectural Review Committee for these projects.)

The herb garden again looks like a jungle this year, despite the extensive rodent damage from last winter and me giving plants away to anyone who wanted to stop by and pick them up:

We haven’t yet extended the chicken yard, and at this point, that’s going to have to be a late fall project. If we let chickens in there now, we might never see them again. (I suspect there are more than a few snakes living in there, too.) Really, I think the plants take my clearing attempts as a challenge. The salvias are nowhere near the place they were planted originally. One of them is growing right in the middle of the lavenders.

An item on my to-do list for Thursday, after it stops raining, is to get in there and cut some oregano, lemon balm, and comfrey. I want to try making a batch of comfrey salve and I’d like to dry some oregano and lemon balm to use this winter.

My friend Anna stopped over last night with scraps for the chickens and asked if she could have some mint. I’ve got a big patch of spearmint out in the big garden and I told her she was welcome to whatever she needed. Anna used to have a catering business, but when the pandemic started, she saw an opportunity to transition her business from catering—which is exhausting—to making and selling to-go and take-and-bake plant-based meals using as many local ingredients as possible. Vegan cooking is her passion and the demand here is quite strong, surprisingly.

I tend to eat more vegetarian than the husband; he typically has four eggs for breakfast, salami and cheese for lunch, and likes to have some red meat meal for dinner every night (and a salad). It’s the only reliable way for him to get the caloric intake he needs. (And yes, he has perfect bloodwork and a blood pressure of 90/60.) I like chicken, fish, and pork more than beef, and I might only have animal protein 3-4 times a week. If we lived in a place where seafood was readily available and affordable, we’d eat more of it. I doubt I could go full vegan, however. As much as I love vegetables, after three or four days on a totally plant-based diet, I am just dragging. I do get to try a lot of Anna’s recipes, though, and that’s great fun.

I get nervous when people proclaim that everyone needs to follow a certain kind of diet. I think human bodies are too varied in their nutritional needs and preferences for a one-size-fits-all approach. And as with many things, moderation is key.