A Short Organ Recital

This is a recap of my visit to the cardiologist yesterday morning, so if you’re not interested, you won’t hurt my feelings if you move on. Some of you won’t like what I have to say anyway, and that’s fine.

Short report: I am well.

Full report: Back on Memorial Day, I ended up in the ER with a heart arrhythmia that turned out to be atrial flutter. Atrial flutter is the less dramatic version of atrial fibrillation. but it’s still darned unpleasant. Ultimately, after a series of unsuccessful interventions, I had to be knocked out briefly while my heart was shocked back into a normal rhythm. I was put on a temporary course of an anti-platelet medication and on a very low dose of a beta blocker (metoprolol) to help regulate my heart rate. I was scheduled for a visit with a cardiologist in July.

I do not do well with doctors, at least in professional settings. I have had a myriad of unpleasant, invasive medical procedures in my lifetime. I gave birth to a baby born without a brain after a 12-hour induced labor. I was diagnosed with leukemia and had six months of chemo, multiple bone marrow biopsies, and, finally, four holes drilled into my pelvis to harvest bone marrow for storage. I ended up on a ventilator for a week in the ICU. It matters not how calm I may be before a doctor’s visit—as soon as I walk into the office, some instinctive fight or flight mechanism kicks in and my blood pressure shoots through the roof. It is virtually impossible to get an accurate BP reading on me. Unfortunately, as soon as the nurse sees the numbers, I get a lecture about my high BP and how dangerous that is and how it needs to be treated. If I say, “It is normal at home. I have white coat hypertension,” then I am told that that is a myth. Naturally, that kind of condescending response has only served to strengthen the negative feedback loop as I anticipate the unpleasant lecture I am going to get when someone takes my blood pressure.

I went to see the cardiologist in July. The nurse looked askance at my ridiculously high BP reading but said only, “We’ll let the doctor talk to you about that.” I was all ready to recite my extensive medical history to him as the reason my BP is high at doctor visits, but he had already looked at my chart. “Well,” he said, “you have ample reason to dislike hospitals and doctors, and white coat hypertension certainly is a possibility.” He went on to say that he wanted to see an echocardiogram in any case, and that if I did have high blood pressure outside of medical settings, it would show up on the echo as a thickening of the walls of my heart. “The echo doesn’t lie,” he said. I also had to wear a heart monitor for a week. We talked about a possible ablation.

I had the echocardiogram about three weeks ago, and met with the cardiologist yesterday morning to review the results. The nurse said, as she was taking my BP, “The doctor put a note in your chart about possible white coat hypertension.” It was elevated again, but not nearly as much as it had been in July. I waited a few minutes and the doctor came in.

“I believe you when you say you don’t have high blood pressure,” he said. “There is no thickening of the heart muscle on your echo. There was nothing worrying on your Holter monitor readout, either.” I asked about an ablation, and he said that he was not inclined to rush to one right now. He said that if I end up in the ER again or have any other problems, I am to contact him immediately and we’ll reconsider. Otherwise, he’ll see me in a year. A year after that, if I still have no issues, he’ll discharge me from care.

And then I asked the 65-million-dollar question. I had the first Pfizer vaccine on May 11. Three weeks later, I ended up in the ER needing to be cardioverted. I was told by the doc there to hold off getting the second dose. I have not had it yet because I wanted the cardiologist’s opinion and because I have seen so many reports of heart problems after the vaccine. I went into the appointment yesterday already having decided against the second dose, but I asked my cardiologist for his opinion. He did not argue with my reasoning, nor could he assure me that the dose I got in May didn’t precipitate the arrhythmia I experienced. He is fine with me foregoing the second dose. I do have some protection from the first dose.

That MTHFR mutation that I carry has caused no end of problems for me. (It was directly responsible for our first baby’s birth defect.) I’ve belonged to some MTHFR support groups where vaccine injuries have been overrepresented compared to the rest of the population. You can call that anecdotal, but a cluster of anecdotes points to a need for further research. Classically-trained physicians have been no help in figuring out how to deal with that mutation. My naturopath has done some research, but most of what I know about that mutation has been ferreted out by me through lots of effort. I am a clinical trial of one, and the only results—THE ONLY RESULTS—I am concerned about are the ones that impact me. I don’t care if the covid vaccines are “safe” for the majority of people if they aren’t “safe” for me. And if you think that calling someone selfish for not wanting to put themselves at risk to protect you makes you the more virtuous person, then perhaps you need a good dictionary. The selfish person in that equation might not be the person you think it is.

You cannot imagine how angry it makes me to hear people demanding that everyone be vaccinated, no exceptions. I had reservations about the first dose given my medical history. However, I was between a rock and a hard place because I know what it’s like to end up on a ventilator in the ICU. I know people who have had covid. I was about to travel to a location with a documented outbreak. I was also getting pressure from other people.

I am putting this here for full disclosure. I am not “fully vaccinated.” I do not intend to become so. I have run the numbers through my personal risk matrix and the risk of getting sick from covid is not as big as the risk of heart damage from an experimental vaccine. If this means that you don’t want to be around me, then so be it. I will understand your decision just as I hope you can understand mine. And I hope that if you’re currently one of the hardliners who wants 100% compliance with the vaccine, perhaps you can develop some sorely-needed compassion for people who have legitimate reasons to hesitate. Then again, if you’re someone who can only view the world in terms of black and white, yes or no, good and evil, and who believes that only the people who agree with you have a sound moral compass, you’re not someone who is likely to remain in my circle of friends.

I am not anti-vaxx. I get a tetanus booster every ten years. I’ll be getting a flu shot sometime in the next couple of weeks. This is no different from me reacting badly to morphine (I am allergic to it). Morphine may be safe for the majority of people, but it’s not safe FOR ME.

Here endeth my sermon. Be civil in your comments.

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One by one, I am getting these big events out of the way. The Ritzville sale is this weekend. The pigs go to the processor on October 11, and we’re working on getting a chicken butchering day scheduled.

I am having a fair bit of fun making hexies. I can do a couple every evening, and they’re beginning to stack up:

I am not yet sure what I want to do with them but they make great handwork.

The tomatoes have to come out today. I didn’t get to them Monday because I had Ali’s little guy here. He helped me pick all the Honeycrisp apples off the tree, which was great fun. I let him climb the ladder. I’ll see how much garden cleanup I can get done today.

Art Appreciation

We have acquired two pieces of art recently, both of which are very meaningful to us. A few weeks ago, during the garden tour, artist Gini Ogle painted in my garden. (Each garden featured one or two painters.) Gini’s first painting was a small one of a tomato. Her second painting was this one:

Anyone who has visited our garden may recognize this as our greenhouse, with the raspberry bushes and the lavender hedge in the foreground. I couldn’t let Gini leave without purchasing this one from her. She took it home after the garden tour to put some finishing touches on it, and dropped it off here last week. I need to get it framed, and then it will go on the wall where I can look at it every day.

And dear Sunnie, who is heading south to warmer climes next week—we will miss her!—painted this one, which I purchased from her at the co-op sale this weekend:

The entrance to Sunnie’s property is from a wooded road. As one walks further back, however, the woods open up onto this pasture looking northeast along the Swan Range. I’ve visited this spot in person. It is quintessential Mountain Brook.

I love the changing light in Montana, everything from the alpenglow on the mountains, to the first blush of dawn coming up over the Swan Range, to the watery sunshine of a January afternoon. Sunnie has a gift for committing all of it to canvas. In this painting, she caught the moment just before the storm moved in that broke the back of this summer’s oppressive heat wave.

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Despite my good intentions to get apples off the Honeycrisp trees, yesterday ended up being a day of rest. I was still wiped out from the sale. (Apples are on the list for today.) I am very happy with how I did at the sale given that it was my first one. I learned a lot, and that was my goal. This sounds strange, but now I feel like I have permission to sew things that I want to sew, even if I have no use for them. The sale gives me an outlet for getting them to good homes. And I seem to have acquired a reputation as the co-op’s apron expert, which reminds me that I also have an apron pattern to get laid out and published.

Also—despite my good intentions not to noodle around with quilt designs until I finish the ones in progress—I’ve managed to come up with two new ones in EQ8. Ooops. I won’t let myself cut them out yet, however.

I am not lacking for things to do. I have my paper piecing and embroidery projects organized next to my chair and can now work on them in the evenings or while watching football. (Go Browns!)

The husband also had a productive weekend. He was out in the woods building slash piles to be burned in a few weeks. Slowly but surely, that area is getting cleaned up. That was a big job.

They Came, They Saw, They Bought

We had sizeable crowd as soon as the doors opened yesterday at 10 am:

Sales were brisk, in all areas, for several hours. We took several large quilts down off the walls when they sold and replaced them with other ones. People visited with the crafters and each other. Some asked questions. I heard lots and lots of positive comments about the quality of the items for sale. We offer handmade products, not homemade ones, and the difference is noticeable.

I took notes—so many notes. I expect to take even more today. I was happy with what I sold and am getting a much better idea of what I should concentrate on for next year’s sale. One obvious strength of this group is that each member has different interests and different styles, which makes for a very diverse collection of goods.

One of the bright spots of an already wonderful day was getting to meet blog reader Sarah Anderson in person. She recently moved to Montana and lives just a few miles from the Mennonite Church. She popped in to the sale to introduce herself and say hello. Sarah is a fiber artist and author of this book:

I am so happy that she has moved into the neighborhood! I might have to get out my spinning wheel again.

A couple of shoppers came in and recognized me as “their pianist” at the Lutheran church where I play for Advent and Lent. They are gathering in person again, so perhaps I’ll play for them this year—it’s been almost two years now since I played there.

Tera stopped by and said hello, too. I was hoping she could go to Spokane with me next week because she has a sock knitting machine and the sock knitting machine group is having a big meeting there, but she’s already committed to another event.

I did a lot of visiting, so much that I had to find a quiet corner late in the afternoon to regroup. If you tried to have a conversation with me then, I apologize if I was less than scintillating. I was almost as worn out as I used to get when I taught knitting classes.

The sale opens again today at 10 am, so if you weren’t able to get there yesterday, come out today. I promise you that there are still many wonderful items available.

The last couple of weekends have been balm to my soul. If you had asked me 25 years ago where I thought I would be right now, I am not sure this is what I would have described, but this is exactly where I am supposed to be right now. And for a little while, at least, it feels like the universe has righted itself.

Preparing for the Sale

The Mountain Brook Crafters Co-Op sale is quite an event. This year is even bigger because last year’s sale was cancelled. We started setting up yesterday morning in the fellowship hall at Mountain View Mennonite Church:

Props were put in place:

Crafters brought in piles of items to sell:

Quilts were hung on all the walls:

Sales areas are arranged according to themes: Halloween, Christmas, Baby/Childrens, Kitchen, Quilts, Table Runners, etc.

Teams of busy bees arrange items in a pleasing display:

My friend Sunnie—who has her paintings for sale—provided some comic relief:

And guess who I found hanging out on the door jamb?

I relocated this one to the bushes in front of the church so it was out of the way.

I can safely say that I have never seen a craft sale with this much high-quality product. The co-op members are a talented group. There really is something for everyone here, so if you are anywhere in the vicinity, please stop in. The hours are 10-6 on Friday and 10-4 on Saturday. You will not be disappointed.

Simple Sewn Solutions

The itch I needed to scratch yesterday was ridiculously simple, and I am happy with the way it turned out.

I made a casserole for dinner last week, and as I scooted two hot pads together to make one large enough to put the 9 x 13 pan on the table, it occurred to me (for the 413th time) that it would be great to have one hot pad large enough to fit under it. I’ve made potholders—it wouldn’t be hard to make an oversized one.

I forgot about that idea after dinner. A few days ago, while cruising YouTube, this video popped up in my feed:

(Let’s ignore, for the moment, the creepy idea that YouTube is reading my mind and just accept this as a gift from the universe.)

Do I need a pattern or a tutorial to make an oversized potholder? No, not really, but this maker’s video was well done, so I watched it. Yesterday morning, I pulled out two fabric remnants, a yard of Insul-Bright, and a scrap of cotton quilt batting. The instructions call for two layers of cotton batting, but I like to have the Insul-Bright as one of the layers to reflect heat back into the pan. I cut everything to size, layered it, quilted it, and bound it. On a quilt, I hand sew my bindings. For potholders, I machine stitch the binding, although I join my binding ends the same way I do on my quilts. (In the video, she has you tuck one end of the binding into the other end, but I didn’t like the way that looked. Truly, if we want people to pay for handmade items, it’s worth the extra five minutes to make it look better than what’s coming out of China and being sold at Walmart.)

I got four of these oversized hot pads out of the remnants and the piece of Insul-Bright. I am keeping one, and I’ll put the other three in the sale. I would have churned out a few more, but I used all my Insul-Bright and didn’t want to make a trip to Joanns to get more. I’ll wait until it they have a big sale and stock up.

[Joann Fabrics has ratcheted back their sales, noticeably so. I am not sure if that’s because they are short on stock or because the bean counters pointed out that they were losing money. Batting routinely used to go on sale for 50% off every couple of weeks. The most I’ve seen it discounted lately is 30%. Every so often, there would be a huge sale on knits at 60% off, and that hasn’t happened in a long time. They also have pushed some of their bigger deals to online only purchases. I still find plenty of deals, but I’ve been shopping there long enough to notice the change in marketing.]

I love the idea of making these hot pads in bright prints with fun bindings—heaven knows I have plenty of bright prints, and I’ve been collecting gingham for binding when I see it—but this more subdued fabric worked for the trial run. And who knows? One of the other members of the craft-co-op may be light years ahead of me and will have some in the sale. If not, we can all make some for next year.

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I sorted potatoes into burlap bags yesterday afternoon. They’ll go into storage in the root cellar. We didn’t get many Yukon Golds, but the ones we did get are huge, so I set those aside to use as seed stock next spring.

I should have been out working on garden cleanup yesterday because the weather was so nice, but instead, I was inside sewing. I’ve come to the realization that there really isn’t as much time for cleanup in the fall as I think I have (or wish I did). I’ll still get plants pulled and hoses put away, but I am not sure I’ll be able to complete my grandiose soil amendment plans. (Who am I kidding?—all of my plans are grandiose.)

DD#2 told me the other day that Nordstrom is so short of staff at their retail stores in Seattle that they’re asking corporate people to step in and work some shifts. She is going to work at one of the Nordstrom Rack stores on Friday. Nordstrom can do this because they have a policy of requiring corporate staff to have worked for a year or two in retail. Still, if they are having problems now, I wonder what they are going to do during the holiday season.

And after months of not being able to land a full-time job as an occupational therapist in Ketchikan, DD#1 set herself up as an independent contractor. She’s not going to have trouble finding work this way, and it gives her more flexibility with her schedule. This does mean some traveling—she has been taking the ferry to nearby islands to see pediatric clients—but she’s working and she’s happy.

Mountain Brook Craft Co-Op Sale

Okay, Kalispell peeps—here is the information about the craft co-op sale. Stop in and find me and say hello!

The Mountain Brook Craft Cooperative will hold their 11th Quilt & Craft Market in the Mountain View Mennonite Church on Friday and Saturday, September 24 and 25.  The market will be open from 10 am to 6 pm on Friday and 10 am to 4 pm on Saturday.  

 There was no market in 2020 because of the pandemic, but that does not mean the Mountain Brook crafters took a year off. Instead, members have created a larger-than-usual inventory for the 2021 market that will include hand-and machine-quilted quilts and wall hangings, fine art, book fold art, jewelry, crafts for the kitchen, knitted and quilted accessories, bags and totes, holiday and home décor, classic needlework, children’s quilts and accessories, and gifts. The Pantry area will feature crafts for the kitchen as well as baked goods and sweet treats.

Mountain View Mennonite Church is located at 795 Mennonite Church Road, off Highway 35 in Creston. 

Signs are up at the intersection of Lake Blaine Road and Creston Hatchery Road, at the intersection of Hwy 35 and Creston Hatchery Road, at the intersection of Hwy 35 and Mennonite Church Road, and at the church itself. We are easy to find!

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I sometimes think that too many ideas are worse than too few. Too many ideas requires sifting and sorting and focus, or at least an excellent organizational system to keep track of what’s going on. Right now, I am making lists of ideas in a notebook. I may put a whiteboard up in one of my sewing rooms for tracking bigger quilt projects. The rule at the moment is that I have to finish the quilts I started last spring before cutting any new quilt projects. The one exception to that rule is an itch I want to scratch today that might give me a few more items for the co-op sale. We’ll see how that goes. I might have to start paying my friend Robin to be my publicist, as she’s all over Facebook telling people I’ll have aprons at the sale. LOL. I had an inquiry for a custom apron in my e-mail inbox this morning.

EQ8 and BlockBase+ are both open on my computer desktop again. I bought some block modules to add to the EQ8 block library and have been noodling around here and there as I have a few minutes.

The owner of the quilt store called yesterday. We had a good chat about serger classes. We’re going to wait until January for the next one, simply because the store’s class schedule is full through the end of the year. She’s willing to have patterns and some knit fabric in stock for the students to buy at the store, which I appreciate. I would rather tell people to get their materials from her and have everyone have what they need. I think we’re going to start with a class on making a kid’s T-shirt before moving on to a pattern drafting and T-shirt class for adults. And I am going to insist that students know how to thread and use their sergers before showing up for class, so I don’t get students who have never taken the machine out of the box.

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The house seemed chilly to me yesterday; I chalked it up to the crummy weather and possibly the fact that I am not acclimated to cold weather yet, but then I happened to glance at the thermostat. It shows the temperature in the house, which was at 66 degrees. When the furnace is running—as it was—the temperature in the house should be 68 degrees. (We do tend to keep it cool in here, although when it’s damp outside, I’ll sometimes bump it up to 70 degrees so my fingers and toes don’t get numb—a longstanding leftover side effect from chemo.) Even that two-degree difference was noticeable. And indicative of a problem.

I alerted the husband when he came home. He checked the furnace and discovered the igniter was bad. He ordered a replacement, but it won’t be here until Friday. I can light the furnace manually if I have to. The weather is supposed to be better today, though.

We have a few fall tasks that need to be done soon, like cleaning the chimney. That’s a two-person job, because I have to hoist him up on the platform on the forklift. We’ll have a window from October 1 to November 30 for open burning and can finish getting the woods cleaned up. The pigs go to the processor on October 11. (We still have a few left for sale if anyone wants a whole or half.) I’ve still got some garden cleanup to do. The insulated shades need to come out of storage and get hung up.

Garden of Quilts, Day 2

The 50 acres of Ashton Gardens, at Thanksgiving Point, was the site of the quilt show. Tera and I headed over there on Friday morning, along with Tera’s daughter and two of her grandkids (they are so cute!). After checking in, I took off—with Tera’s blessing—to explore by myself for a bit.

The quilts are hung on lines or displayed on frames. Some are outside and some are under tents.

I followed the paths around the gardens, stopping to admire everything along the way. I liked looking at the quilts hung on lines, because I could see the quilting on the back. Sometimes that is just as interesting as the front of the quilt.

This is not a juried show. The gardens were full of all kinds of quilts from many different quilters with varying tastes and styles. I gave up taking pictures almost immediately, preferring instead to enjoy looking at the quilts. I did snap a picture of this block, because I found it so intriguing:

There were two vendor areas and a large tent where the Riley Blake designers gave lectures and trunk shows throughout the day.

I met up with Tera and the kids again just before noon. Her daughter was heading home, so Tera and I went and got some lunch and came back to walk around by ourselves before leaving in late afternoon for the airport. (Tera was flying to Michigan to meet her husband for his class reunion there and I planned to stay in a hotel that night before my flight home on Saturday morning.) We looked at the quilts and talked about what we liked and what we would have done differently. I really liked the quilts that were scrappy or that weren’t based on a single fabric line. As nice as it is to have coordinating fabrics pulled for you in a line, I still think that quilts made that way tend to look flat. I prefer the visual tension in a design that includes one or two rogue fabrics to spice things up.

I enjoyed the gardens as much as I enjoyed the quilts. I wandered into a small fragrance garden with a Shakespeare theme and was treated to a personal tour by one of the garden staff. She was from the botany department at the university and very eager to show me the unique plants they had growing there. Did you know there is a dandelion with pink flowers? It wasn’t blooming or I would have taken pictures. And I have to see if I can find some chocolate cosmos to put in next year. It really does smell like chocolate.

I contented myself with just a few purchases, mostly wool felt for some embroidery projects and a pincushion pattern. Our goody bags included spools of thread—I got a spool of Superior Threads Charlotte’s Fusible Web and a spool of Fantastico.

This was such a fun weekend. It felt like the perfect transition between the end of gardening season and the beginning of sewing season. I came home inspired and full of ideas. I got all my merchandise for the sale tagged yesterday. I also took out the unfinished quilt projects from last spring and put them back up on the design wall. They got put away in June because 1) the breeze from the fan kept blowing them off the wall and 2) I didn’t want the distraction.

It’s been raining since I got back. The husband dug up the rest of the potatoes on Saturday. I need to sort them into their respective burlap bags for storage. We didn’t get as many potatoes as expected, even though the plants looked phenomenal. Oh, well. I think I need to get new seed stock next spring. Tera said she would take whatever tomatoes are left. I’ll be involved with the co-op sale on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and next weekend is the MCC relief sale in Ritzville. The schedule should settle down considerably after that. We’ve transitioned into our winter habit of sitting and watching YouTube videos after dinner. I am unable to sit and not do something, so I’ve been working on some EPP hexies. I’ll get out the embroidery projects soon.

Garden of Quilts

Earlier this year, Tera asked me if I wanted to go with her to the Garden of Quilts weekend in Lehi, Utah. I love traveling with Tera. She is easygoing and has a great sense of adventure. I was also more than ready to get out from under the tomatoes. We made our arrangements, and on Thursday morning, I picked her up a little after 4 am for our 6 am flight to Salt Lake City.

Tera went to college in SLC and knows the area well. As a bonus, her daughter lives only about 20 minutes from Thanksgiving Point, where the event was held, so we didn’t have to get a hotel room. Our flight put us into SLC at 7:30 am. The first order of business was to get the rental car and find some breakfast. Tera belongs to an LDS congregation here in Kalispell, so after breakfast, I asked her if we could drive over to see Temple Square. I listen to the weekly pipe organ concerts on the Tabernacle Choir’s YouTube channel every Wednesday. We couldn’t see the organ because the Conference Center didn’t open until 11 am, but I got to see the Conference Center and the temple from the street. We also went into the Family History Center—Tera was hoping to show me a quilt there but it was no longer on display—and to the Church History Museum, where we saw a few quilts, dresses, and textile pieces from the 1800s and early 1900s.

We headed south toward Tera’s daughter’s house with a stop at Pine Needle Quilts and The Fabric Center. I had brought carry-on luggage with me, so space was at a premium, but I picked up a kit at Pine Needle Quilts and three lengths of knit fabric at The Fabric Center.

After dropping our stuff at the house, we went to Thanksgiving Point for our English Paper Piecing class. EPP is the technique used to make Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilts, but can also be used for other shapes, too. The instructor was Andy Knowlton. When we signed up for the class, we also purchased the kit for the class. As a teacher, I think that’s a great option because it helps to ensure that every student has the necessary supples. As a student, I thought it was a great option because I didn’t have to worry about bringing supplies with me. The kit contained a charm pack, hexie papers, a glue stick, needles, and thread. (We did have to bring a mat and rotary cutter or scissors.)

Andy—she’s a female with a male-sounding name—instructed us to take out our charm packs and pair up coordinating colors, such as two reds, two teals, etc. I started to do that, but then I heard her tell another student that we could also do scrappy if we preferred, so I put all my charm squares back in a pile. I am all about the scrappy. Besides, charm packs frustrate me because they always have too many of one color and not enough of another color.

[The other reason I love to take classes with Tera is because we sometimes have different approaches to quilting. She decided to do coordinating colors.]

In English Paper Piecing, pieces of fabric are wrapped around cardstock shapes, like hexies, half-hexies, triangles, etc. Traditionally, the fabric was secured with thread basting, but a lot of the newer designers prefer glue basting because it’s much faster. When I do EPP at home, I often use my Accuquilt cutter to cut both the cardstock and the fabric. My only quibble with the Accuquilt dies is that they have a 1/4” seam allowance—barely—and it’s not really big enough to glue baste the fabric securely, so I thread baste mine. Andy recommended a 3/8” seam allowance when we were cutting our shapes from the charm squares, and that worked much better. I’d love it if Accuquilt would re-make their dies with bigger seam allowances.

Once each shape is wrapped, it can be sewn to a neighboring piece. usually with a whip stitch:

Mine are scrappy, but Tera did coordinating colors around the white center hexie:. She was getting ready to sew the second piece on:

I like both.

Lots of visiting happens in classes. One of the women sitting behind in class us saw Tera’s little notions pouch and said, “That’s my fabric!”

She turned out to be Rachel Erickson, one of the Riley Blake designers. Tera had used Rachel’s fabric for a quilt for one of her granddaughters and made the pouch out of the leftovers (the navy blue). We had a fun chat with Rachel about what it’s like to be a fabric designer.

[Riley Blake is a relatively new fabric company—only 12 years old—and headquartered in Utah. They were the main sponsor of the Garden of Quilts event.]

Most of us were able to complete one unit during class. And yes, these units do get pressed when completed, so I can get rid of that annoying crease in the white fabric.

I’ll add this kit to my EPP supplies and it will be part of my take-along sewing.

We popped out for quick dinner of soup and salad and then came back to get in line for the Thursday evening presentation featuring The Doan Girls of the Missouri Star Quilt Company:

The story of how Missouri Star Quilt Company came to be is pretty amazing—Jenny and Ron Doan lost their life savings in the crash of 2009. Their kids got together and bought Jenny a longarm quilting machine and set up a small quilting business in their town of Hamilton, Missouri. The business grew and grew until it became a small empire within the quilting industry, employing 450 people and occupying most of the town of Hamilton. The year after YouTube launched, Jenny’s son suggested that she start making quilting videos. Last year, her daughter Natalie and her daughter-in-law Misty joined Jenny in the videos. They do a monthly video called Triple Play, where they choose a quilt block and each of them designs a quilt based on that block.

The three of them came to Garden of Quilts to do a talk and trunk show based on the Triple Play videos. It was amazing. Jenny is funny, sweet, and one of the most humble people on the planet. Tera and I are now scheming to take a trip to Hamilton to visit Missouri Star in person.

The Maker Meet-and-Greet was in the same show barn as the presentation, but the logistics were such that it was really hard to do more than walk through the line and say hi to each maker. Charisma Horton was there, so I waited until after the show to pop over to her table and talk to her. She is the designer who had the embroidery retreat near Moses Lake, WA, that I went to a few years ago. When I told her how much I had enjoyed that retreat, she said that she’s trying to plan another one. I told her that I’d be the first person to sign up.

We headed back to Tera’s daughter’s house and I fell into bed, exhausted. You’ll get to hear about the actual Garden of Quilts in the next post.

Two Weeks Early

We usually let the garden go until the end of September, covering the tomatoes as necessary, but everything was about two weeks early this year because of the heat. We have all we need and it’s time to start cleaning up. I went out yesterday morning and pulled up cucumber vines and rolled up hoses, then turned my attention to the tomatoes.

They are looking weary:

I cleaned off whatever Dirty Girl tomatoes were ripe or close to ripe, then pulled those plants and stacked the cages. I didn’t take a picture, but the ripe Dirty Girl tomatoes pretty much filled the Little Tykes wagon, so I went and got the John Deere tractor with its wagon. Getting it into the garden took some maneuvering. The tractor itself isn’t hard to manage, but it has an attachment on the side for collecting grass clippings, and that makes it much wider and bulkier. I am going to have to change a few things in the garden layout next year to better accommodate it.

I left the paste tomatoes so Marcie could get what she wanted from them. I had basil planted at the far end of this tomato patch, so I went and pulled up all of those plants. There was a lot of basil. Back around the beginning of July, I stopped in at one of the nurseries to see what they had on sale. They had basil—tables and tables of basil plants for a dollar apiece. I bought five and stuck them in by the tomatoes. Every time I was out in the garden, I pinched off the tops so they would bush out, and bush out they did. I had so much basil that I had to fill the bathtub with cool water and put the plants in there so they wouldn’t wilt until I could get to them. I used about half to make pesto for the freezer, Marcie took some, and I texted Ali, Elysian and Mike to let them know the rest was up for grabs. Ali stopped by on her way home from work to get basil, saw the wagon full of tomatoes and asked if she could have some (yes!), then came back with her son and their wagon to get paste tomatoes out of the patch. She is planning to make sauce this weekend.

The pigs and chickens will get whatever is left, although I will wait to see if we get a frost tomorrow morning. If not, anyone else who wants tomatoes can come and get them. I am not going to wait too long, though, on garden cleanup. The husband is getting me a load of rotted straw bales from a farmer friend. Those will be used as compost along with the chicken manure, and I want that down before too much longer.

Putting the garden to bed takes almost as long as getting it ready for planting.

My first batch of tomato seeds is done fermenting. I rinsed them yesterday and put them out on paper plates to dry.

I’ve got another batch going in today. The Dirty Girl tomatoes turned out to be fairly popular and I want to make sure we all have enough seed. All of this year’s plants and all of the seed for next’s year’s plants came from the ONE SEED Susan gave me in March 2020. Gardening really is a succession of little miracles.

I am about ready to get back to quilting, too, although I have a stack of knit fabrics that needs to be turned into some winter tops. That will be first on the to-do list once the co-op sale is over. The schedule should ease up considerably in October.

Krause Basin Farm and Farm to Fork MT

My friend, Anna, who lives nearby, had a traditional catering business for many years. She was much sought after for weddings and other big events here in the valley. A few years ago, she decided to change her business model to focus on plant-based foods. (DD#1’s wedding last October was the last traditional wedding she catered.) The pandemic, ironically, gave her the perfect opportunity to implement her plan. The transition wasn’t fast or easy, of course, and it took some time to get the word out and build up a new client base, but I’ve enjoyed watching her success. Her company, Farm to Fork MT, provides plant-based food options in the form of take-and-bake meals, sold weekly by order and through the Bigfork Farmer’s Market and Max’s Market organic grocery store. She also prepares meals for clients who come for a week or two during the summer and want to have plant-based meals delivered to their homes.

Anna is also committed to using locally-sourced ingredients whenever possible. She has connections with all the large organic farms here, but she’ll buy produce wherever she can find quality ingredients. Last summer, I provided her with bunches and bunches of cilantro for her Mexican-inspired meals. Last month, because we were swimming in cucumbers, she bought some of mine for her summer vegetable rolls.

Anna posts a menu each week on social media that details that week’s offerings, as well as the names of the farms providing the ingredients. The menu items vary depending upon what kind of produce is available. I was reading the menu the week that the summer rolls were on it, and I noticed that she said the cucumbers came from Krause Basin Farm. And then I realized that she had just christened us with the perfect name.

She stopped by yesterday morning to get some Cherokee Purple and Dirty Girl tomatoes for this week’s menu, and I finally remembered to ask her if she came up with the name Krause Basin Farm for us. “Yes,” she said. “I had to call you something. I hope that was okay.” I told her I thought it was perfect, so Krause Basin Farm (or Krause Basin Farmette if you are DD#2), is now the name of our farm.

I am sure you’re now wondering “Why Krause Basin?”—that is the name of the area across the road from from our house. “Basin” is a geological term for “a bounded area where the rock within the boundaries dips inward toward the center.” If you’ve ever gone up to the Strawberry Lake trailhead, you’ve driven up Krause Basin Road and through Krause Basin. The Krauses were a family who lived in this area.

I hope you locals will try some of Anna’s offerings. She posts a weekly menu like this on Facebook and Instagram under her Farm To Fork MT page.

You can order by calling 406-261-9440 or e-mailing Anna at FarmToForkMT at gmail dot com. She offers menu items as single meals or bulk meals for multiple people. Usually at least one menu item every week is gluten free. She does take a break in the middle of winter to rest—and because produce is obviously harder to find then—but she’ll continue to come up with delicious meals through the fall for as long as she can get the ingredients. And because the husband and I have been lucky enough to be Anna’s test kitchen for many of her menu items, we can vouch for how delicious her cooking is!

Does this not look yummy? Her enchiladas are one of my favorite menu items. Some of my tomatoes are in there.

And part of my garden planning for next year will be to grow more produce for Anna to choose from.

A Year's Worth of Salsa

The grand total came to 51 quarts of salsa, which, at a quart per week, should be a year’s supply. (I have a few bottles of Costco salsa in the pantry, too.) The tomatoes haven’t slowed down, though, so I am still putting them in the freezer to deal with later. I might do a batch of salsa in pint jars for DD#2. And I may throw some tomatoes in the dehydrator. We’ll see how things prioritize themselves this week. I can’t abandon the garden for sewing just yet.

We cleaned off the Wealthy apple tree yesterday morning. That wasn’t my plan, especially as it was raining, but the husband saw the turkeys in the orchard rolling apples around on the ground and got mad. “They are like ground squirrels with feathers,” he grumbled. (I think they were flying up into the tree and knocking the apples down.) He got the orchard ladder set up for me. I went up on the ladder with the harvesting apron and got the apples near the top of the tree and he picked up the fallen ones and the ones on all the lower branches. We were done within 15 minutes. I put the apples out on a sheet on the living room floor to dry off:

They are lovely apples with very little insect damage. I may make a batch of applesauce or the husband may just add these to his lunchbox for a couple of weeks. The Honeycrisp trees still have apples on them, but they aren’t quite ripe yet. No doubt the turkeys will let us know when they need to come off.

With the wildlife successfully thwarted, I was free to spend the rest of the day sewing and organizing. Part of me wants to keep making stuff for the co-op sale, but the rational half of my brain knows that time is running out. I pulled out everything I’ve made and put it in a pile for tagging, then finished the items I had already cut out. I have no idea what is going to sell well, so there is no point indulging in a mad frenzy of last-minute making. I would rather see how this sale goes and plan my production for this winter accordingly. The sale isn’t limited to sewing and quilting; there will be knitted and crocheted items, too, as well as baked goods.

I also e-mailed the woman in charge of the Ritzville relief sale (Mennonite Central Committee) to see if they were accepting quilts for the sale in October. She said that yes, they were, so my plan right now is to try to get my pile of quilts over there the day before the sale for sorting and pricing. Mine are all machine quilted, not hand quilted, so I told Debbie that I would leave it to her to decide which ones, if any, went into the quilt auction and which ones went to the craft sale. The auction usually features hand-quilted quilts, but those are becoming scarce. I just want the quilts to go some place where they will do some good, because they aren’t helping anyone by being piled up in my spare bedroom (and I could use the space).

[Yes, I could sell my quilts at the co-op sale, but I am committed to helping MCC, too, and one way to do that is to donate quilts to the Ritzville sale.]

The shorter days mean that we have transitioned back to sitting and watching YouTube videos after dinner, and I am itching to get the embroidery supplies out and start working on some projects. I have a couple of prayer shawls to fringe, too. We’ve had a run on them lately and could use a few more at the church.

Remembering C-Band

When I got home from church on Sunday, the husband said, “Did you see that I took down the satellite dish?”

No, not dish as in DISH Network dish—the satellite dish. We’ve had one standing in the front yard since we bought the place in 1994. I used it as a landmark when directing people to our house. We were probably the last people in Flathead County to have one still standing.

I had never seen or used a satellite dish system until we moved to Montana. The antenna on our 14 x 70 trailer picked up only two stations: the local NBC affiliate and the PBS station from Spokane. The satellite dish allowed for slightly more expanded viewing offerings. Thankfully, our neighbor, Mike—who lived in what is now our rental house—was friends with another guy named Norm, who serviced satellite dishes and sold all the cards, etc., for the receivers. Norm brought me up to speed on how the dish worked and let us know whenever we needed an upgrade.

We used that dish until it could not be used anymore, even moving the wiring over to this house when we built it in 1996. That satellite dish brought me FX, HGTV, football, HBO for the husband, and hours of kids’ shows for the girls. What did it matter that finding and locking in on the satellites took several precious minutes of TV viewing time? What if only one person (me) knew what stations were on which satellite? Who cares that I had to slog out there in boots and my bathrobe the morning after a snowstorm to brush the snow off the dish to get a signal? LOL.

The old satellite dish is in the dump trailer, ready to be hauled away:

And we have space in the front yard for another fruit tree or two:

That is the end of an era.

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I had an echocardiogram at 7:30 yesterday morning. The tech let me watch the screen while he worked, so I got to see the inner workings of my heart. I am no expert on echos, but I didn’t see anything grossly abnormal. I meet with the cardiologist again at the end of the month.

The craft co-op that I joined meets on Thursday, so I stopped in on my way home from town to pay my membership fee and pick up tags for the sale. The other members brought me up to speed on what to expect. The sale will be held at our church, in the fellowship hall. I have a minuscule amount of product compared to some of these women—they’ve had two years to amass inventory since the last sale—but I’ll take what I have and see what happens. If nothing else, this will give me a better idea of what to expect if I do this again. I’ve got four days blocked out of my calendar in two weeks to help with set-up, selling, and take-down. In between now and then, I need to get my stuff tagged.

I said to the husband last night that I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. This happens every year around this time. When the girls were in school, I was fairly adept at being in three places simultaneously, but I no longer have that ability. The months of May and September are always crunch times just from a gardening standpoint, and this year I’ve added a trip with Tera and a co-op sale to the calendar. Things will ease up by October; in the meantime, I just need to pay close attention to my calendar and to-do list.

The first task this morning is to go out and harvest all the Cherokee Purple tomatoes. I did Dirty Girls and paste tomatoes on Wednesday, but left the Cherokee Purples to ripen a bit more. Rain is in the forecast for this afternoon, though. They need to come in. I think this will be it for tomatoes. We have what we need. I’ll leave the vines for a bit yet in case any of my local peeps want to come and get some (coughMarciecough). I’ve got batch #3 of salsa underway, to be canned this afternoon.

It might rain tomorrow, too, in which case I plan to treat myself to a sewing day. I haven’t had one of those in a while.

More of Some Things, Less of Others

I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner when the husband came to the house with another one of these:

He’s found both of them out by the new shop. I might take a walk over there today and see what’s up. The husband opined that perhaps the UPS driver felt bad for me and decided to deliver some. This one also went to live in the garden.

I made another batch of salsa yesterday:

I ran 12 quarts of this through the canner last evening—for a total of 24 quarts so far—and I’ll probably have enough for another 12-14 quarts today. And there is no end in sight for the tomatoes. Oh, well. There are worse problems to have. I’ll just keep going until I run out of something. This is money we don’t have to spend buying salsa at Costco.

I am mentally cataloging shortages when I shop; at the moment, our stores have most things but the items that are missing are weird, like yogurt. I am comfortable with the level of our personal supplies, though. I’ve been musing on what might happen when the backlog of container ships finally gets unloaded at some of these ports, especially with regard to fabric. Fabric manufacturers ramped up to releasing many more lines each year—some of them seasonal—but then those lines got held up in production, delivery, or both. A store that ordered Fourth of July fabric for March 2021 delivery and didn’t get it until August is going to have to pay for and hold that fabric until next spring. They’ll probably cut back on ordering any additional fabric until they clear that inventory. I will be curious to see in what ways and how extensively these delays ripple through the industry.

I noticed yesterday that new Christmas fabric has started to arrive at Joanns. I saw a bolt of that cat Christmas fabric that I was hunting for last year to finish some Christmas stockings. I ended up buying a yard on Etsy to finish the stockings, but it’s now back in stock in the store. My sense from previous years is that Joanns had new Christmas fabric available by mid-summer, at least—crafters would need enough lead time to make items for fall gift bazaars—but I am only now starting to see new stock on the shelves.

I am the one who said that I thought things were getting out of hand—a new fabric line for each season still seems a bit excessive to me—so I may be getting what I wished for. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Shortages often spur greater creativity in using what is available.

I am off to chop onions, pepper, and tomatoes.

An Insect Resident

Our UPS driver is a friendly young guy who always had a treat for Lila and likes to talk about what’s happening in the neighborhood. A few weeks ago, while he was unloading six big boxes of tools into the husband’s shop, he said to me, “You have a big garden—have you ever seen a praying mantis in it?” I said that no, I had lots of ladybugs but no mantises. He proceeded to tell me about several customers on his route who had seen them recently. I offered up the story of how, as a child, I had kidnapped one and put it in my bedroom closet, where—to my mother’s dismay—it gave birth. I then promised to be on the lookout for any here.

The husband came to the kitchen door yesterday afternoon and called me over. “Look,” he said:

The husband knows me well. He knows that I will stop the car to move a turtle out of the road. He knows that I shepherd baby robins from their nests when they are ready to fledge. He knows that I talk to the snakes in the garden. He knows that I sneak scratch grains to the turkeys. And he brought me a praying mantis.

We carefully transferred the mantis from his arm to mine, and I walked it over to the garden and left it on a head of lettuce. Hopefully it will make itself at home over there and perhaps have some babies of its own. And now I can report to the UPS driver that I have a praying mantis in my garden.

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We have a memorial service today at our church for one of our members who died rather unexpectedly last week. I am not playing, however, because this man’s daughter is a pianist and will be providing the music. Instead, I will go and join my voice with others in singing in celebration of his life. I have to say that despite the sadness of the occasions, these services at our church are generally uplifting. I’ve always said that our pastor does a stellar job with weddings and funerals. The man who is being remembered today loved music and frequently expressed appreciation for my playing. I would often hear him humming along from the pew as I played prelude or offertory pieces. He was also a strong bass and we will miss having him in the choir.

I need to bake a cake this morning to take for the meal after the service.

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The husband and I did some landscape planning yesterday afternoon while having drinks on the veranda. There are a couple of trees in the yard that need to come down before a windstorm puts them somewhere they aren’t wanted, like on top of the house. We have room to add another 6-10 fruit trees—I am sticking to apples—so I will be shopping on the Fedco website as soon as they release their new catalog in October. I learned last year that if you don’t get orders in by January or February, they sell out of a lot of stock. The husband bought a grapple for the track loader, which will make it much easier to finish cleaning up the woods, and we’ll burn slash piles as soon as it is safe to do so.

Abundance

After breakfast yesterday morning, the husband and I went out to check on the apple trees. The Lodi only produced enough apples for about one pie. Susan said I could have some of her Duchess of Oldenburg apples, but I think we’re good on pie filling for now. The State Fair tree had some lovely apples, enough for the husband to snack on this week. I cross my fingers every year and thus far have not had to spray. The insects do not seem to have found my trees, even though the orchard has been in for almost 10 years.

The Red Wealthy is loaded and the Honeycrisps have a respectable crop, but the Wealthy needs another week yet. Susan taught me to check by cutting the apple open to see if the seeds are brown. We follow that with a taste test. The husband likes tart apples, but there is a difference between tart and sour and these apples aren’t quite ready. The Honeycrisps need a couple of weeks yet.

After I brought in the apples, I turned my attention to tomatoes. We are awash:

The husband said that next time, I should hook the wagon up to the John Deere tractor and take it over to harvest tomatoes. I was pushing the limits of this Little Tykes wagon. I am bringing in anything that has a bit of pink on it and letting it ripen inside. September is a race with Mother Nature, and already the tomato plants are looking a bit done in. At some point, I will collect whatever is left out there and bring it in, pink or not.

Everyone I know seems to be making salsa with this year’s crop of tomatoes.

Some of the Cherokee Purple tomatoes are well over a pound each. The husband is holding this one in his (not small) hand:

I’ve been researching other tomato varieties and I found one called Cherokee Chocolate, a relation of Cherokee Purple with darker skin. I am thinking ahead to next year’s plant sale. If we offer some really interesting and unusual varieties, we can build up a reputation and charge a premium for those plants.

While I was in the kitchen getting tomatoes sorted, I made a pork stew for dinner. I cut pork steaks up into cubes, browned them, and put them in the crockpot with tomatoes, beans, onions, green chilis, stock, and spices. That simmered all day. The husband had some for dinner (over rice) and pronounced it “exceptional.” I have no idea how to re-create it, LOL.

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After lunch, I pulled out and organized all the inventory for the co-op sale. I’ll pick up tags this week—the co-op has special tags printed to use at the sale—and work on pricing things. I also sewed up another T-shirt for myself from the pile that is already cut out, and traced the T-shirt pattern to make a couple of shirts for WS.

At some point, I need to get back to quilting.

I also have to visit with the quilt store owner about future serger classes. I checked the store’s class calendar and there are very few dates available for me to shoehorn in a class. I’ll see if she wants something before Christmas or if a T-shirt drafting class can wait until after the holidays.

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The husband forwarded me an e-mail Friday afternoon and said, “Read this and I’ll tell you the rest of the story.” The e-mail was from someone currently building a home, but the contractor he hired to do the foundation formed it nine inches out of square. I don’t know a lot about building, but I do know that you can’t frame a house on that kind of foundation. The homeowner is desperate to find someone to fix the foundation so work can continue. The husband wasn’t going to take the job. He knows the contractor who did that foundation and he would prefer not to get caught up in any drama, but at the last minute, he decided to talk to the homeowner. The husband is going to fix the foundation. There is an added benefit for me—the homeowner has a business importing seafood from Alaska. The husband knows that I love seafood, but good seafood is hard to get here in the land of cows, and I won’t buy farmed seafood. Halibut and crab legs won’t be a regular item on the menu, but once in a while, they will be a welcome treat. The homeowner sent a lovely filet of halibut home with the husband as a thank-you for coming to look at the job. I have to discuss preparation methods with DD#1—who not only cooks it, but has been out fishing for it now that she’s in Ketchikan—and will make that this week.

Planning for Next Season

I am very pleased with the pantry stores this year. I think I am done with green beans:

Marcie is going to let me know what variety of beans these were as I would like to do them next year. They are a flat kind of pole bean and they grow very well here. Being flat, they went through the bean frencher perfectly. She and Tom brought some corn cobs over for the pigs yesterday. I told them they couldn’t leave with an empty bucket, so they took more tomatoes. I’ve got my jars labelled for fermenting and saving seed from each of my tomato varieties and plan to get those started today.

I pulled up the zucchini plants—always such a satisfying task at the end of the season—and some of the cantaloupe vines that were done. I’m putting everything in a pile to dry out, and I’ll burn it either some time this fall or next spring. Or start another compost pile.

Some time in the next week or so, I have to render down the lard that is still in one of the freezers. I need that space so I can move pork from another freezer and defrost that freezer. I play this game of musical freezers every fall.

I’ve started researching and buying supplies for next year. I don’t want to wait. I need new soaker hoses for a better watering system, and I am sketching out ideas for where I want to put different crops. I’ve also got to figure out a better way to stake the tomatoes. I have cages, but this year, the plants got so big and heavy with fruit that the cages were mostly useless. Heavy-duty tomato towers would work, but they are not cheap. I’ll see what the farm store has in the way of cattle panels and maybe I can rig up a system.

In terms of crops, I don’t experiment much. I tend to find varieties I like and stick with them. I’ve decided to switch to Black Beauty zucchinis, though. I have been growing a variety called Grey, but I’ve been disappointed with them the last couple of years. I ended up with six Black Beauty plants and two Grey when the rodent came through the greenhouse and ate the newly-planted Grey seeds. I had the Black Beauty seeds and planted them as replacements. (No, nobody needs eight zucchini plants, but I seem to forget that every year.) The Black Beauty plants produced heavily and consistently all season and I like them better.

My shelling peas are a variety called Alaska. The tomatoes were Dirty Girl, Amish Paste, Purple Russian paste, Oregon Star paste, and Cherokee Purple. I am more impressed than ever with the Dirty Girl tomatoes after two seasons. I want to start more of those next year for the plant sale, which we plan to do again along with the garden tour.

The cucumbers are a variety called Muncher, the cantaloupes are Minnesota Midgets, and the watermelons are Sugar Baby. Those won’t change.

I put in new Cortland, Winesap, Seek-No-Further, and Northern Lights apple trees last spring. We still have room for half a dozen more trees. I’d like to keep the strawberry variety we already have (Triumph) if I can move enough of the plants from their existing location. I’ll fill in with new plants otherwise. The only thing missing that I’d like to have is asparagus.

The end-of-season garden work is vastly different than what I do in the spring, but it’s necessary and enjoyable in its own way.

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Our homesteading chat group had such a good discussion yesterday. That group is an oasis of sanity for me, because it’s populated with people who know how to have a respectful discussion that doesn’t devolve into ridicule and name-calling. I think it helps that it’s got the underpinnings of a liberty-minded groups of individuals. Homesteaders are just as susceptible as everyone else to adopting a “my way or the highway” mentality—I’ve seen contentious discussions break out over something as simple as what kind of watering system is best for chickens—but this group has a fundamental understanding that two people can look at the same situation and come to two entirely different but equally valid conclusions about how to proceed. I wish more people were able to engage like that. I suspect that it’s just part of human nature to want validation for one’s choices, and to want that validation in the form of everyone else making the same choices.

This morning over coffee, that group debated the merits of pineapple on pizza or not. For the record, pineapple-and-ham is one of my favorite kinds of pizza.

Beans and Fabric

Back to our regularly scheduled blog posts . . .

One of our local grocery stores has a twice-yearly case lot sale, in March and September. The sale started yesterday, so I popped in to pick up a few things. Many of the items are processed foods, which I don’t use, but I take advantage of the opportunity to get things like evaporated milk, apple cider vinegar, canned tuna, rice, and other foods I can’t/don’t grow or make here. I also picked up a few items to send to the girls. DD#2 asked for salsa. She is another one who needs to have it delivered in 55-gallon drums. I think I am going to can some in pint jars to take over the next time I go to Seattle.

I followed the case lot sale with a trip to Costco, and by the time I left town, the car was loaded down with supplies. Marcie had asked me to pick up some ground beef for her, and when I dropped it off on my way home, she gifted me with a 12-quart bucket of green beans she and Tom had just brought in from the garden.

I rigged up a slightly better system for my green bean cutter and got about half of them done yesterday afternoon. (Yes, the floor needs a good sweeping and mopping.)

I’ll do the rest this morning and run them through the canner. We are set for green beans for the winter, yay!

We had our garden tour debriefing meeting last night. It was a lot of fun to hear about everyone’s experiences and we all agreed that it is something we want to continue doing. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that we had attendees from all over the valley—not just from our immediate area—thanks to information that appeared in the newspaper. We brainstormed lots of ideas for next year’s event.

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I did not buy much in Spokane; I was searching for things that I can’t get here and the stores in Spokane are having supply chain issues, too, not surprisingly. I found a length of teal rayon/spandex at one of the Joann stores. I bought two different chunks of Moda Grunge in light pink and dark pink at The Quilting Bee. At Regal Fabric and Gifts, which is the smaller of the two quilt stores—the owner would like to expand but she’s paying a small fortune in rent as it is—I picked up some Kaufman Mammoth Flannel that is destined to become a winter scarf:

I made myself an infinity scarf a few years ago that consisted of one layer of flannel and one layer of knit fabric. I wore that thing to death. In really cold weather, I wrapped it twice around my neck, but if I didn’t need that much warmth, I crossed it over my chest underneath my coat. Being an infinity scarf, I didn’t have to worry about it slipping off. I need a new one to match the coat I am wearing now. I’ve got some cotton knit in that pink color that should coordinate nicely.

I’ve also seen some cool flatlock serging projects for scarves and blankets using this flannel, so I bought enough extra to play around with that technique.

Walking around quilt stores makes me realize that I am a Robert Kaufman Fabrics fangirl, for sure. I love everything they put out, from Kona to Essex Linen to Mammoth Flannel to Laguna Cotton.

I also picked up another piece of Tula Pink fabric:

I know there are lots of Tula PInk fangirls out there. I salute you. I like some of her stuff, but most of it just makes me say, “Eh.” This sewing-themed fabric will become some kind of bag—maybe one of the large Poppins bags.

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Tomato harvesting continues. I need to keep a close eye on the weather forecast just in case it dips below 40 at night again. We typically get tomatoes until the end of September, even if we have to cover them every so often, so the tomato tsunami could go on for another month yet.

The co-op sale is in three weeks. I’ve got to get stuff out and start tagging it. I’d like to make a few more items, but that might not happen with all the canning that needs to get done yet. And it’s time to start cleaning up the garden. Lots to do in the next couple of weeks.

Spending Time Inside My Head

I spent the past two days driving around by myself in my car, listening to podcasts, thinking, and trying to find some perspective. I have, for the most part, avoided talking about the pandemic here on the blog. That has been intentional. One reason is that we’re all tired of it. I prefer to focus on the positive things going on in my life, of which there are many. Another is that there are enough people blathering on incessantly about it that I don’t feel the need to add my voice to the din. Mostly, though, it’s because I can’t make enough sense of what is happening in any meaningful scientific, social, or rational way.

I have a scanner in my office. The disembodied voices of the county dispatchers are my constant companions throughout the day. I keep a running mental tally of who is getting called and to what kind of incidents. I don’t do that intentionally—it’s more that after 25 years, the scanner traffic is just part of the information that my brain takes in every day, much as it unconsciously logs a thousand other things. I am aware enough of that running mental tally, though, that I can tell you there has been an uptick in calls for difficulty breathing and other covid-related calls in recent weeks. (I can also tell you there has been an uptick in calls for suicides and domestic violence.) I have talked to EMTs about what they are seeing on these calls, and some of their observations are unexpected. I have heard from medical personnel about what they are experiencing at the hospital. I know people who have lost loved ones to covid recently. I am trying to sift through data—and by data, I don’t mean what the mainstream media tells me the numbers say, because journalists are notoriously lousy statisticians, but what the source papers and scientists themselves are saying. I am trying to put a picture together of what’s going on, a picture that makes sense to my brain, even if I don’t like the way the picture looks. I can’t, and that’s making my brain hurt.

Here is a perfect example of why mainstream media is useless to me: Everything I have heard on the news indicates that the delta variant is the dominant variant in the US at the moment. Curious, I googled the question “How is the delta variant tested for?” I came up with news article after news article like this one that states, “The delta variant accounts for more than 80% of the nation's COVID-19 cases, the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.” However, that same article notes, a few paragraphs later, that “There is not a specific test for the delta variant.” (Actually, there is a genomic test, but most labs don’t run it as a matter of course.) So the CDC is telling us it’s the dominant variant, but if no one is actually testing for it, how do they know that it is the dominant variant? I’m not saying that covid is a hoax—please go read the first part of this blog post again—but this is the kind of stuff I am having trouble reconciling in my head.

I thought that going to Spokane might give me some perspective. It did and it didn’t. Washington state reinstated its mask mandate for indoor spaces about a week ago, so I washed all my masks and put them into my little zip pouch and put it back on the front seat of my car. If I want to shop at a business and that business requests that I wear a mask to enter their establishment, I will. I expected that when I got to Spokane, the mask mandate would be in full force. I was surprised to discover that it wasn’t. Almost every single store had a sign on the door reminding customers that masks were mandatory in Washington state, but very few stores were policing the mandate. I saw plenty of customers in masks and a good handful not. I even went into a few stores where no one was wearing a mask. My sense was that a lot of people were just tired of the whole situation. Some of the small businesses are hanging on by their fingernails. One of the quilt store owners told me that the Fourth of July fabric that was supposed to arrive in March finally came—last week. I kept thinking of that saying, “Beatings will continue until morale improves.”

I stopped at the BMW dealer because the check engine light went on in The Diva about halfway across Idaho. The husband suggested I see if they could run a diagnostic panel and find out if it was kicking out a code. I walked into the service office, which was completely empty. That was odd. I waited for a few minutes and eventually Kevin came in. We chatted briefly and he said that he couldn’t even run the diagnostic panel for me because four of their service techs were out with covid. I don’t know what BMW’s vaccine policy is, but I would be surprised if their techs were unvaccinated.

[FWIW, the check engine light issue has happened before, and when I explained to Kevin the conditions under which the check engine light was coming on, he nodded and said the husband had done exactly what he was supposed to to try to fix this, and that it was a known—but minor—problem. Eventually, the light went out.]

On the way home, I listened to a couple of podcasts heavy on data analysis in an attempt to get a handle on the actual numbers. One of the podcasters posited the theory—a disconcerting one, certainly—that vaccinated people are driving the current surges. “How can that be?” you ask. If the vaccine lessens the severity of the disease but doesn’t limit transmission, then a vaccinated person with a mild case could be spreading the virus without realizing it. Is that what is happening? I don’t know, but I am entertaining all possibilities. And here’s a thought: If we woke up tomorrow morning and there was scientific evidence that the vaccinated are driving the surge of cases, would the vaccinated people be comfortable being treated the way many of them have been treating the unvaccinated? Would they accept being labelled as “selfish” and made to be social pariahs? That is a good reminder to extend the same grace to others that we ourselves would like to receive if the tables were turned.

Life is complex. Beware of those who say, “If only you do X, then Y will happen.” That is a reductionist approach that fails miserably in the face of reality. I am reminded of Thomas Sowell’s observation that “There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs.” And the more I think about all of this, the more I realize how vastly complex the whole situation really is.

I had a good trip. I’ll show some of the goodies I got later this week.

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The county is repaving our road. In Montana, “repaving” often means taking the existing road down to the roadbed and rebuilding it, rather than just slapping a layer of asphalt on top of what’s already there. In anticipation of that, the road department has cut down the road every half-mile or so, creating speed bumps. We have one such speed bump right in front of our house:

As far as I am concerned, the county can forget about repaving and just leave this speed bump here forever. It has had the wonderful side effect of stopping drivers from coming around the curve and hitting the straightaway at 90 miles an hour. I’ve seen a few people try, and it isn’t pretty.

It’s time to get the apples off the trees. I’ve got a few canning projects on the schedule and I also need to make some shaving cream for the husband. I bought some from a vendor at the Food and Farm Expo in Spokane two years ago and it’s almost gone. Unfortunately, that vendor no longer makes it and the one she does sell now has a honey and banana scent. I am kind of particular about the shaving cream he uses because I am so sensitive to scents, and I loathe bananas. I’ll mix up a batch here—probably lavender- or peppermint-scented—and see how that works.