Sew Flow

The author of the book Uptime, Laura Mae Martin, talks about the concept of “deep work,” or those large blocks of time where a person can sink into a project with no distractions. That can also be referred to as “flow” or “the zone.” I crave those periods of time. I can get things done in little bits of time here and there, but I have to fight the temptation to use those bits of time to sit down at the computer and doom scroll.

[Joel Salatin, of Polyface Farm, keeps a list of jobs that can be done in 20 minutes or less so that if he or one of his workers finds themselves with 20 minutes before lunch, for example, they can knock a task off the list.]

I did not work on homestead foundation stuff yesterday. I made breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen, and made sure we had no escapees in the chicken yard. The husband helped me stake some of the tomato cages with 4' pieces of rebar, because the tomato plants are so big and loaded with tomatoes that the cages are falling over. The peppers, though—the ones that were labeled “Purple Beauty” bell peppers—are all a yellow variety. For all I know, they might be hot peppers. I’ll have to taste one. That is just weird. I could understand one plant being mislabeled, but “Purple Beauty” was the only pepper I started in the spring, so the seed packet must have been wrong.

The husband had his own to-do list to tackle. The fan motor in the furnace went bad back in January or February, so every time the furnace kicked on, it made a horrible noise. He replaced the motor yesterday. The furnace will be quiet this winter.

Speaking of winter, our rabbit was in the yard yesterday morning and we both noticed that it is already starting to turn white. I have been watching the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) reports and we are heading into a La Niña period. Interestingly, our biggest winters have occurred not when we have a strong La Niña, but when we have a neutral one. During the winter of 1996-97, it began snowing here on October 15 and never stopped. The last of the snow didn’t melt until the end of May. We had so much snow at our house that the dogs were able to scale the piles of snow and walk around on top of the garage. My in-laws came to visit at Christmas and my MIL said it was like being inside a snow globe. And that spring, there was not a U-Haul to be found because so many people were moving out of the Flathead Valley.

Click on the chart if you want more information.

This winter is supposed to be another neutral La Niña. If we get a repeat of 1996-97, a lot of transplants may be re-evaluating their plan to live here. Is that a bad thing? I think not. There is a reason Montana has never had a huge population of people.

Back to sewing . . . I finished the armchair caddy for my recliner:

It’s a weird mix of prints but I liked the color combination. And now all my English paper piecing supplies are close at hand.

I also started a baby quilt and an “I Spy” quilt—both destined to be gifts. I need to get them made soon. I cut out the last zipper pouch from the large quilted piece of fabric, and I cut all the pieces for the Haralson bag, now that I have correctly-printed pattern pieces. (My Brother laser printer does not scale and print patterns properly.) I would have started sewing the Haralson bag but it was late in the afternoon and I was running out of juice.

I wish for more days like yesterday. I’ll have more this winter (especially if it’s a long, snowy winter), but I have to get through canning season, first. All those tomatoes will end up as sauce and salsa.