Finished Before the End of 2023

The apron post is coming, I promise. I had a meeting yesterday morning, after which I went into town to get chicken feed, then came home and baked cookies. I told the husband to write down the date because I don’t like to cook and I like baking even less than I like cooking. He requested a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies. I also made oatmeal scotchies and chocolate ones with peanut butter chips. I’ve got molasses cookie dough in the fridge.

I finished binding the cream-and-white quilt Friday night. I put it on our bed to take a picture. We have a queen-sized bed and it’s a king-sized quilt, because I like my quilts to hang down on the sides.

It looks very nice—and would look even better with some pretty pillow shams—but I hesitate to keep it on the bed. White anything in Montana is a bad idea. White is for people who live in homes where there is no dirt or wildfire ash or husbands who pour concrete. (Just for the record, I would rather have the husband than a sterile, clean house.) I will put it away until next fall. I could put it in the co-op sale or donate it to the Ritzville sale. It is finished and that was the goal.

I am close to the saturation point with clothing manufacturing. I need to switch gears and do something else or I run the risk of losing my sew-jo. I did make a dress on Friday:

This is a mashup of Simplicity 9018 (turtleneck dress) with Simplicity 8557 (the red stretch velvet one with the faced neckline). I lengthened it by 3" so it doesn’t hit me right above my knees. The slightly longer length is much better. I kept the 3/4 sleeve length from Simplicity 8557 because it’s perfect for when I’m playing piano at church. Basically, this is the Kohls snowflake dress in a longer length. The fabric is Joanns stretch velvet. I wanted to do a version in a less expensive fabric to make sure that a) I could get the dress out of three yards and b) make absolutely sure I was happy with it before I cut into the Minerva crushed velvet.

This is simple but elegant and may end up being my Christmas dress. If I get the Minerva one run up, great, but if I don’t, this one will be fine. The husband questioned my need to make a specific dress for a one-hour church service, but this would get worn at other times, too.

I sometimes think that because I am sewing clothing for myself, I should be making fancier tops and dresses, but a) fancy is not necessarily my style and b) the goal is to make clothing that fits. Making something that fits properly and is flattering is more important than producing a tour de force of sewing techniques.

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I am knee-deep in organizing social media stuff for the podcast for 2024. It would have been better to do all of this at the beginning, yes, but it involves a fair bit of effort and some extra expense. I wanted to wait and see if the podcast was worth continuing. This is almost like a home renovation project where you put an addition onto your house and attempt to incorporate it into the original structure. I changed domain names, which caused a whole bunch of downstream issues with e-mail addresses and MX records. (Thankfully, I ditched Network Solutions and can now change everything through my Squarespace dashboard.) Instagram has been a nightmare—name changes didn’t take, accounts are managed under Facebook/Meta, and in order to have a business account, you have to create a personal account and then convert it to a business account. I prefer to work on my desktop, not my phone, but some changes can only be made through the phone app. (Really, Meta?) I can’t manage all of this from Metricool until everything is set up properly, and getting everything set up properly means chasing down a thousand tiny details.

Social media is a funny thing. I said to the husband that I am about to give up on YouTube until January. The sewing vlogging community—like blogging, but with video—has been participating in this thing called Vlogmas, where each of them is posting every single day until Christmas. Some of them started in November. I’m over it. I don’t need to see yet another vlogger open her sewing Advent calendar and take out some little notion. I want the longer-form videos that include end-of-the-year reviews and sewing plans for next year.

You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch . . .

I wonder if any of them look at their analytics to see if something like Vlogmas actually makes their views decrease instead of increase. There is such a thing as oversaturation.

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We got an update on the truck Friday. Installation of the toolboxes and racks should be completed by next Friday, December 22. The fleet manager from Tacoma Dodge—who has been absolutely amazing throughout this whole process—will go to Seattle to inspect the truck personally to make sure everything is as it should be. If it isn’t, he will wait until they make it right. He will drive the truck back to Tacoma for us. We should be able to pick it up the week after Christmas. My only concern is the weather, because the longer-range forecasts are showing some storms that week. Of course, that could change, but I am keeping an eye on the forecasts.