Cool Weather and Class Handouts

We had 90+ degree temps on Monday. I don’t think we broke 60 degrees yesterday. It was cool and overcast most of the day and felt wonderful. The heat comes back this weekend, though. I spent yesterday morning dealing with paperwork. Class handouts for Friday’s class are done.

One of the patterns recommended recently by Tea—of the Crumpets, Tea, and Sewing channel on YouTube—is the Simplicity 9469 top:

She calls this one of her essential patterns. I just happened to have it in my pattern stash. Sunnie gave me some drapey purple fabric a few weeks ago when I stopped in at Thursday sewing and I’d like to make a top from it. I thought this pattern might work. I cut a “muslin”—the front and back pattern pieces for View A, at the top—from some leftover fabric from another project and seamed them together to evaluate the fit. I didn’t want to go to the trouble of making even a wearable muslin if the whole thing was going to crash and burn from the outset.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the top fits well despite the absence of bust darts. It is long enough and I like the way it looks. I went ahead and cut one from a rayon woven from the stash. (I may not have enough of the purple fabric, so I wanted to make a complete top from something else, first.) I have to figure out an alternate sleeve style, however, because I know that those big, gathered, elasticated sleeves would drive me batty. My preference would be for a simple, hemmed short sleeve or 3/4-length sleeve.

This fabric arrived in the mail yesterday:

It is destined to become a top for Susan’s older grandson. He loves construction equipment.

[I found this fabric on Etsy after sifting through a dozen or so listings for similar fabric on WHITE backgrounds. Why on earth would anyone design fabric, intended to be worn by little kids, with white or light backgrounds? Maybe the kids wearing those fabrics never go outside. I am making workwear for little boys who live in Montana. Dirt comes with the territory.]

One of our friends stopped over yesterday with a backpack that needs some repairs. She is going on a week-long hike soon and asked if I could fix it for her. The repairs are not complicated. The Juki 1541 is all set up and ready to go and I’ll work on that today.

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I listened to Nicole Sauce’s livestream on YouTube yesterday while I was working. She has a roundtable discussion every Tuesday. Yesterday’s guests were Jack Spirko of the Survival Podcast and John Willis, who owns Special Operations Equipment in Camden, Tennessee. John Willis’ company makes tactical gear—it’s a sewing factory—and the property is host to the Self-Reliance Festival, where I will be teaching in October. John also came and spoke at Nicole’s Spring Workshop. One of the topics of yesterday’s discussion was the fact that we’re already in the midst of an economic collapse, despite what the government and the pundits would have you believe. I went grocery shopping Monday and was surprised to see that many of the shelves in our store were bare again, much like they were during the pandemic. The price of rice has shot through the roof. (I knew that was coming.) John Willis has the same problem that many business owners are facing, which is that no one wants to work.

I ran across an interesting article two weeks ago on ZeroHedge. The husband watches the housing market like a hawk and I pay attention to stories about Airbnb trends, and both of us had seen this piece. If you go to the article and scroll down a bit, you’ll see a chart listing Airbnb revenue declines by county from May 2022 to May 2023. Number 3 on that list is Kalispell, which is down by 49%. We’ll see if that decline translates into a longer-term easing of the rental home market here.