Done With Christmas Stockings

The grass has been cut and trimmed and now we wait for the next break in the rain to do it all again. At least I can walk through the garden. I am hoping to get peas in tomorrow. The strawberry bed also needs weeding, and I have a bit more pruning to do in the raspberry patch.

My friend Anna, who lives across the road, texted me yesterday afternoon and asked if I wanted to come over for tea and a chat. She and her husband go to California for several months during the winter and we haven’t had a chance to catch up since they got back. I toodled over in the golf cart, which made me feel like an old fart, but I am glad we have it for running around the neighborhood. The husband put a new battery in it a few weeks ago.

I may add “new golf cart seat cover” to the to-do list for this summer. It’s not exactly falling apart, but it could stand to be replaced. Thanks to help from some of the members of the Facebook vintage industrial sewing machine group, I was able to adjust the servo motor on the Juki 1541 so that the machine isn’t sewing at 200 mph. Owners of industrial machines are always touting the superiority of servo motors over clutch motors because servo motors can be adjusted for slower sewing. I don’t know—I have a clutch motor on my industrial serger and I have no trouble sewing on that machine, but I’m also used to driving a stick shift. The feeling is not dissimilar.

[One very un-helpful guy in that group told me that the machine was intended to go fast and I should suck it up and learn to control it through the foot pedal. Trolls are everywhere.]

I finished the fourth Christmas stocking yesterday afternoon:

I’ll take this and the serger version with me next week when I teach in Missoula. On this one, I used a single layer of fabric for the ruffle and edged it with a three-thread rolled hem in wooly polyester thread. I like this ruffle best of all.

I am glad to have these done. Now I can get back to working on some summer blouses.

The husband started putting my raised beds together yesterday afternoon. I ordered them from Vego Garden. We can’t set or fill them until the weed barrier gets here, but I envisioned the herb garden renovation being mostly a June project. There is no rush to get it done. We were hoping to have the Homestead Foundation garden tour again this summer, but personal schedules got in the way and we had to cancel it. Our Homestead Foundation has a fundraising committee chaired by yours truly. I am proud of the fact that our committee raises several tens of thousands of dollars each year for the Foundation, but the committee is not large—there are only four of us. I continue to warn the board that if we have to do all the work, the committee members are going to burn out and quit. Everyone nods and agrees that we need more volunteers. However, I do not see volunteer recruitment and training as the responsibility of the fundraising committee. Our committee’s job is to plan fundraisers and bring in income. I have no doubt that we could raise upwards of $50,000 to $75,000 a year if we had the manpower. I have lots of experience running businesses and I know how to make money.

We are getting more interest in the Foundation from community members. We are in dire need of someone who can spearhead a volunteer recruitment committee, though, and I keep hoping someone will step up.