No Black Kona — Janet Szabo

I have an idea for a quilt. I need a plain black cotton fabric for the background. I noticed a few months ago that my supply of black Kona was running low—I used a lot of it for binding—but I did not think to get more. And now there is no black Kona to be had anywhere, not at any of the quilt stores in town, not at Joanns or Hobby Lobby, and not online. Even the 108” wideback Kona is sold out. I should have driven down to the Amish store in St. Ignatius on Thursday because they probably still have stock.

In the interest of putting my money where my mouth is, though, I am going to try some American Made Brand cotton. This is 100% cotton fabric made from fibers grown in the US, spun in the US, and woven into fabric in the US. I’ve known of this brand, but honestly, finding a retailer has been something of a hassle. I wish “Made in America” products were more prominently displayed in stores. We have a Made in Montana program/sticker here that makes it easy to find and buy locally-made items.

I had to order the amount of fabric I needed, so I can’t start this project yet. We’ll see how it turns out.

I am having fun with EQ8, although some things about the program frustrate me to no end. Why can I only have one project open at a time? Why do I have to name the project at the beginning in order to start it? Why are both blocks and quilts considered “projects?” I ordered the “Lessons for Beginners” book and hopefully that will help me navigate some of these issues, because the people who engineered this software clearly think differently about workflow than I do.

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I spent much of yesterday morning in the garden. I cut the grass around the perimeter, weeded the last of the potatoes and dumped the grass clippings on them for mulch, then weeded other spots needing attention. As I acquire more cardboard boxes, I am putting cardboard down on the spots where I’d like to plant next year.

I have lots of gooseberries and a respectable amount of blueberries this year, but I didn’t heed Cathy’s advice to prune my currants. They are not producing quite as much as they have in the past. Lesson learned.

I found the first pod full of peas.

I opened it and ate the peas. Oh, my. Looking at the number of pods about to fill out, I suspect I’ll be shelling peas every afternoon for the next couple of weeks. I shell them, blanch them, and freeze them and they go into soups over the winter. I should make some pea salad, too. Yum. The variety is Alaska and I grow it every year.

I thought I might be out in the garden most of today, too, but we were blasted out of a sound sleep at 1 a.m. by crashing booms of thunder followed by 20 minutes of heavy rain. I grabbed my iPad and looked at the weather radar and there was only one small blob of precipitation—right over our house. It’s raining again now. I’ll have to see how soggy it is out there later this morning. I am glad I got the grass cut.

Our neighbor, Mike, is putting a new porch on his house. The husband was there yesterday helping him get it ready for a concrete pour in the next week or so. Mike’s property backs up to ours along one edge of the pig pasture. Sometimes, he will stand on the fence line and talk to the pigs. We really do have well-socialized pigs because they get visits (and leftovers) from lots of people in the neighborhood. We’ve got a path through the woods from our property to Mike’s so I ducked through there a couple of times yesterday to see how the porch framing was progressing:

Mike is a flight medic with the helicopter service and also on the fire department with the husband. Lila adores Mike and no doubt would prefer to live with him, but he visits her regularly with puppy treats and tummy rubs.

The husband asked Mike if he was still planning on black concrete for the porch; the husband doesn’t do a lot of decorative concrete, but apparently, they are going to add the color at the batch plant. I’ll try to get pictures when it happens because I’ve never seen a colored concrete pour. It will coordinate nicely with the rest of the house:

Mike consulted with his own Architectural Review Committee and black concrete was the suggestion. I concur. I think it will actually be more of a charcoal color, but we’re calling it black.

With one exception, we have a group of truly excellent people in our little neighborhood. Everyone helps out when needed and enough of us are home during the day that we can keep an eye on things. Anything out of the ordinary would be noticed immediately. We have kids running around. People drop in to visit. We share food from our gardens. This is a wonderful little community.