Meetup in Spokane — Janet Szabo

I dashed over to Spokane on Thursday morning for a day of shopping and dinner with friends. Nicole Sauce, who does the Living Free in Tennessee podcast, was in Montana this week. She was a presenter at Paul Wheaton’s Permcaulture Jamboree in Missoula. Flying in and out of Montana is exorbitantly expensive, so she chose to fly into Spokane, instead, and she met with a group of us for dinner Thursday night ahead of her early flight out on Friday morning.

Nicole hosted the LFTN Spring Workshop in April that I attended with my friends Bob and Deana. She also runs the Self-Reliance Festival in Camden, Tennessee. I’ll be at that event in October teaching spinning, knitting, and sewing. Other podcasts have come and gone over the past seven years, but Nicole’s podcast holds the top slot in my podcast queue. She has created an amazing community around the world, and this was an opportunity for some of us who have gotten to know each other online to meet in person. We had a wonderful dinner at the Rusty Moose—I had the most amazing elk salisbury steak—and visited for a couple of hours. Of course, I forgot to get a group photo. I did take a picture of the Campfire S’mores dessert, because it was so darn clever:

That little black cauldron has Sterno in it, over which one roasts the marshmallows.

My shopping excursion in Spokane was a bit disappointing. None of the Joann Fabrics there has yet received (or put out for sale) their fall fabric lines. I was hoping to pick up additional colors of that Eddie Bauer microfleece. I hit up the remnant racks at the various Walmart stores but came home with only one length of a navy blue brushed sweater knit, destined to become either a Harper Cardigan or a Patterns for Pirates Cocoon Cardigan. It’s the perfect color to throw on with jeans.

I touched base with the owner of the small quilt store on South Hill. I’ll be teaching the Lark Tee there at the end of August.

I spent the night in Spokane and headed home early yesterday morning. I know I complain a lot about tourist season, but the traffic coming up here from St. Regis, where I exit I-90, was the worst I’ve ever seen. Montana roads are not meant for this kind of traffic. They were full of lumbering behemoth RVs going about 30 mph slower than the cars want to travel. That leads to impatient drivers taking stupid chances to try to pass them. And the tailgaters!—I don’t understand why, if you’re the 23rd vehicle in a line of 40 behind an RV, that you think riding the bumper of the car in front of you is going to help you get to your destination more quickly. Relax and enjoy the scenery.

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I started a tray of lettuce in the greenhouse. When I left Thursday morning, only one or two little seedings were starting to pop up. When I got back a mere 28 hours later, I found this:

I am hoping this will keep us in lettuce until the fall. And these plants are safe from marauding ground squirrels.

We’ve had “rain showers” the past two days, but it’s so dry out there that most of the moisture is evaporating before it gets to the surface. I’m watering every day now.

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Speaking of the Lark Tee, I decided to hack that pattern into a T-shirt dress. I pulled out a two-yard piece of Walmart remnant rack knit jersey and cut the pieces yesterday afternoon. I’ll put it together this weekend. (Temps are supposed to be near 90 for the next several days, so I won’t be outside if I can help it.) I have a few other clothing patterns I’d like to cut out and get into the queue. too.

My friend Susan and her two grandsons were here for a few hours Wednesday afternoon. The older one just turned four and the younger one will be two next month. They played with the set of wooden trucks while Susan and I sat and visited. I promised to make the older one a couple of tops, one with trains and one with construction equipment. Those are his two current obsessions.