Needs Must When the Devil Drives

I am a mass of conflicted thoughts and feelings these days. This situation is unprecedented and requires more than the usual amount of mental effort to maintain rational thinking. Social media is a double-edge sword—for those of us in rural areas, it has often been the best way to stay on top of what’s happening, but I wade through it cautiously now, buffeted on one side by people yelling “Stop overreacting, the flu is worse!” and by people on the other side yelling “Everyone needs to stay home!”

[I have first-hand experience with exactly how bad the flu can be, having spent a week in the ICU on a ventilator two years ago because of post-flu pneumonia. And I was a healthy 52-year-old with no risk factors, which is a sobering reminder that pathogens don’t always discriminate between young and healthy and old and infirm. Discussions of hospital ventilator capacity are a bit more than academic once you have been in that situation.]

I have a much better appreciation now for how people must feel in times of war. It is an ongoing struggle to maintain an even keel while adapting to constantly-changing circumstances. I seek the middle ground.

And this is what happened yesterday:

The morning started with a Twitter notification from my sister that the Deaconess Hospital system was soliciting homemade masks for their staff. I knew that call had gone out, but I was waiting for verification from my friend, Cathy, that there was a need. I didn’t want to be part of a wave of sewists making cozies for koalas that were never going to be used.

I did, however, get out the plastic bin full of elastic to assess how much 1/4” elastic I had. It was not an insignificant amount:

A few hours later, I got a text from Cathy. Her daughter works at a hospital in New York City and they are desperate for masks. She said they’ve been using ones made from woven cotton on one side and T-shirt knit on the other. I printed out the pattern from the Deaconess website, set DD#2 up with a pair of scissors and the pile of elastic, and got out the husband’s old Carhartt T-shirts. We keep them around for shop rags, but a couple of them were intact enough to be organ donors. I got sixteen 6” x 9” pieces out of the first shirt and cut up an equal number of cotton pieces to go with them.

I ran up a prototype mask on the big Janome machine. In the midst of stitching, I got another text from Cathy asking if she could stop over. By the time she got here, I had the first mask completed. She tried it on and pronounced it serviceable (she would know). We chatted for a bit about the state of things. I know we are all supposed to be practicing social distancing, but oh, my, it was so good to see her in person for a few minutes.

I went back to making masks. DD#2, having finished cutting up elastic, turned them inside out for me. I took a short break to eat dinner and visit with the husband before finishing up the mask pleating/topstitching on the Necchi industrial. (The pleats are thick enough that the Janome was balking a bit. The Necchi goes right through them.) These are some of the ones I am sending to Cathy’s daughter today:

I have enough elastic for about 50 more. (And that, people, is why I have the equivalent of a small Joann Fabrics store in my house.) Cathy stopped at Joanns on the way home to pick up elastic—she sews, too—but they were out. That didn’t surprise me. I thought they would sell out quickly. She found a few packages at Hobby Lobby. I ordered more from the Hobby Lobby website. I’ll keep making these because it sounds like we might run short locally, too.

We also got a call from DD#1. She and her fiancé were on their way to his parents’ house. I am relieved about that. Right after the 9/11 attacks, my MIL made the comment that she felt very much like a mother hen who wanted to gather all her chicks under her wing to make sure that everyone was safe. I know exactly what she meant. We have DD#2 with us and I know that DD#1 will be well taken care of by her future in-laws.

Would I like this situation to be different? Yes. I’d like all of 2020 to be different, actually, but we play the hand we are dealt. After dinner, the husband responded to a medical call down the road for a very sick, very small child with what sounded like the flu. The husband is an EMT. He is going to respond to dangerous situations, be they structure fires, car wrecks, or medical calls. I accept that risk; I’ve accepted it for 25 years and that isn’t going to change now. Just before he got back, our neighbor—who is a flight medic on the helicopter service and works in the ER at the hospital—texted me to tell me that we now have two confirmed cases of COVID-19 here in Flathead County.

I look forward to the day when we are on the other side of this and people are writing stories about it for future generations. In the meantime, we do what we can. And what we have to.

Hooped Up

Adjusting to this new normal looks very different in some ways and very similar in others. I still get up and go to work every morning. Call it coincidence or divine providence or whatever you want, but how odd that I got my job back just before this happened. While everyone is scrambling to figure out how to telecommute, I continue doing what I’ve done for 10 years. (Pro tip: Get up, shower, and get dressed just like you’re going out. Working in your PJs won’t help you to feel like a professional.)

I have been wondering how cancer care may change in the face of this epidemic. I transcribe for an oncology clinic in the mid-south. This article popped up this morning in one of my medical transcriptionist e-mails:

Current Best Practices to Facilitate the Management of COVID-19 at Cancer Care Institutions

This was put together by experts at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) (part of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network [NCCN]), the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the University of Washington. Your useless factoid for today: I had bone marrow harvested 25 years ago at Fred Hutchinson and kept in storage at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance until my oncologist said I didn’t need it anymore (it was an insurance policy in case the leukemia relapsed), at which point I donated my cells to science.

I also see that some medical institutions are asking people to make masks to combat shortages. I need to check with my physician friend, Cathy, but if that is something I can do, I will.

In the meantime, garden preps continue. DD#2 finished beans, tidied up the greenhouse, and got trays and pots ready. I’ve been collecting cardboard all winter, and that’s getting spread out where I plan to put the squash. And I got the hoop put up over the perpetual lettuce bed:

The husband provided me with a supply of rebar scraps. The PVC piping was already out in the storage shed. It took about half an hour to pound the rebar into the ground (thankfully thawing out), put the pipe over it, then spread out the spun-bonded poly. It isn’t wide enough to go over the whole setup, so we had to spread out two lengths that I attached together at the top with clothespins. I did briefly consider bringing the whole works inside and seaming the two pieces together on the machine, but I think this will hold just fine. This isn’t meant to be permanent. It is meant to give the lettuce a head start.

[After dinner, the husband and I went out so I could show him my handiwork. We have this joke—started by my mother-in-law many years ago—that when the bull does some hard and difficult job, the cow’s response is to moo in admiration. I can’t even remember where that came from anymore but we use it a lot. At our house, either gender is allowed to moo in admiration at something the other one does.]

Today’s task will be to get some aged manure mixed in with the potting soil and start planting seeds.

I also went down to the root cellar yesterday afternoon to check on the status of the potatoes. They have a built-in timer and tend to start sprouting about now. We need to wait for the rest of that snow to melt—and move some of the black plastic to other parts of the garden—but it’s going to be time to plant those soon. When the raspberry canes start leafing out, I’ll have to go through and prune them.

I worked a bit more on the Candy Coated quilt last night. One side of the quilt is done and I’ve started moving up the other side. The only downside to that Candy Coated pattern is the number of seams. I have to change my needle more frequently than I do with other patterns, but quilting loops is very soothing and this is going quickly.

Unexpected Blessings

DD#2 has been here since last Thursday. She had been planning to come home for a visit anyway, but given that our lives lately seem to involve nonstop contingency planning, she arrived ready for the possibility that she would have to stay longer than a few days. Her original plan was to drive home today, but last evening, she got an e-mail from her boss letting her know that Nordstrom was closing its stores for two weeks.

You have never seen a more relieved mother (and father) in your life.

We are happy to have her here with us as long as she needs to be. DD#1 is still in Seattle with her fiancé. She is working from home starting tomorrow. They know that they can come here, too, if necessary, but for now they seem to be coping well where they are.

DD#2 has been helping with last-minute preps, and now that we have sufficient supplies for us and the chickens, she is helping out with homesteading tasks. This afternoon, we went out to the (very toasty) greenhouse and finished shelling the last of the dry beans. We need to clean off the benches so we can get the seed trays set up.

She is the most stylish homesteader I know (the Montucky hat is a nice touch):

We aren’t going to run out of beans. I have plenty to use as seed for this season’s crop as well as to can up for future eating. The pods are so dry now that just touching them makes them pop open. It didn’t take long to finish cleaning up what was left. We’ll get the trays set up and the seeds planted some time this week.

I finally got to begin pruning my fruit trees, too. I have to keep reminding myself to be ruthless. Apparently, I pruned just enough last year to encourage the trees to put out even more branches. Duh. This year, I am cutting way back. The goal is fewer apples and pears, but larger fruit. While I was pruning, DD#2 helped by raking up branches and debris. We were serenaded by the sound of chainsaws to the left and right because all of our neighbors are still busy cleaning up from the storm.

I am waiting for the last little bit of snow to melt in the garden and then I am going to put up a hoop over the perpetual lettuce bed in hopes of goosing the lettuce into growing a bit faster. The weather is supposed to be nice this week and cold and rainy next week. I’d rather get the outside tasks done while the sun is shining.

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While we do have a lot of food put by—plenty of beans, for sure—I wanted to stock up on the perishables that I get weekly. We shopped yesterday and got a couple of cases of beer and a case of apples for the husband. I bought dog food last week. Lila will not starve. The chickens have a two-week supply of feed. And I stocked up on whiskey:

I go through about a bottle a month making my daily whiskey sour. Dry Fly is a distillery in Spokane, but this particular batch is whiskey finished in Cold Smoke beer barrels from Kettlehouse Brewing in Missoula. It’s available locally. I love all the Dry Fly whiskeys, but this one is a special favorite.

We should not have to go to town for supplies for at least a couple of weeks.

I may not do any sewing this week while the weather is nice, but we’ll see. I have all the supplies to put together another couple of quilts. Even in quarantine, I won’t be lacking for things to keep me busy.

Calming Loops

Yesterday was beautifully bright and sunny. The high only reached 18 degrees, but that didn’t keep everyone from getting out and assessing the damage from the storm. Of course, the local bottom feeders wasted no time trying to turn this situation to their advantage. The fact that they do it under the guise of “helping” makes their behavior even more egregious.

The husband spent much of the day building slash piles. I’ll be out there later this week—after it warms up and the snow melts—raking up the debris in the yard and pruning my fruit trees. In an attempt to right the ship, I got out the quilt I basted together last week and started working on it. I thought I might try a new quilting pattern, like the leaf pattern we learned in the Angela Walters class I took last February. I was only a few inches into the pattern when I realized that I needed something easy and familiar. Machine quilting is supposed to be a calming activity, and practicing a new quilting motif was anything but.

I undid all the stitching and started over with loops:

I like loops (obviously). I’ve done them enough that the muscle memory is right there and I don’t have to think about what I am doing. I divided the quilt in half vertically, started at the bottom of one side, and worked my way back and forth from the side to the middle of the quilt and toward the top. I made it about two-thirds of the way to the top on that side before closing up shop for the night.

The top thread is Signature cotton 40wt and the bottom thread is Aurifil cotton 50wt. That’s my favorite thread combo, although I also like Aurifil 40wt thread for the top.

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Our church’s leadership team met after the service yesterday and decided to cancel worship services for the next two Sundays. I think that is the appropriate response given the current situation. (It helps that the head of our leadership team is a medical professional.) The schools—which were going to be on spring break next week anyway—are also shut down for two weeks.

When this is all over, no doubt there will be people who will say, “See, everyone overreacted and nothing happened!” without realizing that it is precisely because everyone overreacted that nothing happened. (Read that again, slowly.) The husband and I have been ridiculed and laughed at for the past 20 years because we’ve structured our lifestyle to be prepared for exactly this kind of situation. And while I have no doubt that we’re going to feel an impact, that impact will be far less than what other people may feel.

These are interesting times, that’s for sure.

March, Like a Lion

The wind started blowing around 10 a.m. Friday morning and picked up steadily throughout the day. I went into town to get a few last-minute items but made sure I was home by 3 p.m. when the High Wind Warning went into effect. I noticed that Friday’s warning was specific as to location, and that location included us. Our road runs north to south along the base of the mountains, and when we get these wind warnings, it is usually because a pressure gradient sets up over the Continental Divide and the winds come roaring down the backside of the mountains from east to west.

We’ve lived here for almost 27 years. We used to get maybe one or two of these windstorms a year. They would take out a couple of trees. Friday night’s storm was the fifth one since August and definitely the strongest one. We have lost so many trees that our neighborhood is starting to look like a meadow instead of a forest.

We lost power shortly after the local news ended at 5:30 p.m. The husband went out and fired up the generator, then went out to a call for some downed trees. I wasn’t crazy about going upstairs to sleep, so when he got back from the call, I stayed in the living room until 10:00 p.m. when we turned in for the night.

The builder of this house—who sleeps next to me every night—assured me that we were safe in bed. Just as I started to drift off, though, I heard things coming down outside. I got up and went to look out the bathroom window to make sure nothing had hit the chicken coop. We did not put any windows in the second floor gable end of our house, so I was limited to what I could see from the bathroom. The chicken coop looked intact. Just as I walked back into the bedroom, though, there came a crashing noise from the front yard. I put on my robe, went downstairs and stuffed my feet into my muck boots, and headed outside to see what had happened:

There is a concrete slab behind the old garage, between that garage and the house. Two 1000-gallon propane tanks sit on the slab, as well as a porta-potty. My kids hate that porta-potty. They were mortified when the husband bought it. It’s been there since they were in elementary school, although a year or two after we got it, the husband moved it to the concrete slab and built a nice wooden fence around the whole slab to hide it and the tanks.

The porta-potty is no more. The top of a very tall larch near the road had blown down and taken out the porta-potty, destroyed part of the fence, and shifted one of the propane tanks about 6”. The husband checked to make sure the fittings on the tanks were okay, got a bar and moved the one back into place, and pulled what debris he could out of the way. Keep in mind that the wind was still howling and we didn’t know what else was going to come down.

We came inside and I went back to bed. He went to sleep—briefly—in his recliner before the fire department got paged out for more downed trees. They were out most of the rest of the night.

It was almost 8:00 a.m. before we could assess all the damage, although he had walked the property with a flashlight to see what needed immediate attention. Interestingly, we did not have power but our rental house next door did, because of the location where the line had come down.

This is a view from our front yard looking into the woods on the south side of our property:

That woodpile is wood the husband cut up from the last batch of trees that fell.

We had trees down on the north side of our property:

And one that had fallen onto the corner of the new shop:

That tree was removed with the aid of the forklift.

I went out yesterday afternoon to survey the damage in the woods on the south side of the property. I estimate we lost 8-10 more trees out there, and all large ones, in addition to the ones that fell in earlier storms and haven’t yet been cut up:

Most came up by the roots:

But some sheared off about 20 feet up:

Elysian lost three large pines in her front yard and another several in the backyard. The front yard of her neighbor across the road took the worst of the damage—they had 30-40 pines in their yard and I would estimate that maybe a dozen thin ones are still standing.

The good news?

• Nothing fell on the house, the greenhouse, the chicken coop, or the old garage, and the one tree that clipped the new shop did very minor damage.

• We were able to keep the generator running and had power and heat.

• We have enough firewood to last us a few decades, although not all of this burns well.

• No one got hurt.

• It’s open burning until the end of March, and that will speed up cleaning up the debris.

I am sad to lose so many trees. I like living in the woods. One of the other trees that came down in the front yard damaged a couple of my pear trees. Hopefully they will recover. The rest of the fruit trees were not damaged. The one bright spot yesterday was having the two little boys here in the afternoon so their mothers could get some work done. The two of them spread their collections of Matchbox cars out on the carpet and we watched construction videos on YouTube. The electric company had the power restored by late afternoon.

At some point, I’ll have to get some larch seedlings (the Forest Service used to sell them and may still do that) and repopulate our woods with trees.

The weather is supposed to be warm and sunny again by the middle of the week. Mother Nature is a fickle creature.

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Our big fire department auction that is always held the first weekend of April has been canceled because of the coronavirus epidemic. I know what a difficult decision that was to make—this would have been the 54th (!) consecutive auction—but public safety is paramount. I only wish that churches would be more proactive about canceling services and activities, especially because churches like ours are weighted heavily toward the elderly end of the population. We’ll see who comes to church this morning. I know some people are planning not to. The other church I play for very reluctantly canceled the rest of their mid-week Lenten services and has asked people to sit apart from each other in the pews.

So . . . we continue to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. The husband picked up six bags of potting soil for me last week. I’m going to mix in some aged manure and get seeds started this week. We’ve got some hens that are acting broody, so we’re letting them sit on eggs. Even as some activities come to a standstill, others are going full steam ahead.

Quilts, Not Clothes

One of my neighbors read my blog Tuesday morning and stopped by on her way to work to give me a whole bolt of fabric that she picked up at the thrift store. She thought I could use it for quilt backings. It’s a lovely Debbie Mumm print and it will make great backings for at least 2-3 quilts! Thank you, Rebecca!

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I’m struggling with what to write these days. I started blogging as a way to keep my MIL and my mother updated about what was happening with us and the girls. Along the way, the blog took on a life of its own and now I have readers all over the planet. I hadn’t realized until this week, though, how much of my blog post planning is driven by me saying to myself, “Oh, the husband’s mother will want to see pictures of the new hydraulic lift,” or “She’ll want to know what we’re planting in the garden this year.” It has always been easiest for me to write when I have an audience in mind, whether that’s my family or a group of knitters or sewists. Missing one of my main audience members is going to take some getting used to.

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Back when I was designing knitwear, I had to be disciplined and work on the projects I needed for the newsletter and books, even if I didn’t feel like it. Part of my resistance to monetizing my sewing (and I need to revisit that whole idea again) is because I like giving into my sewing whims. I was going to make some knit tops, but here I am working on quilts, because I’ve had a stack of fabric sitting on the cutting table:

This started as a fat quarter bundle of Pepper and Flax by Corey Yoder. I added extra prints from my stash. It’s an odd color combo of gray, yellow, and green, but somehow it works. (Most of the fabric in that pile is stash fabric; I don’t want to cut into all of the Pepper and Flax fat quarters until I’ve made a couple of blocks and confirmed that this idea works.) A quilt idea has been percolating in the back of my mind for a couple of weeks now, ever since I saw the Half and Half Quilt from Missouri Star Quilt Company. That quilt design is comprised of one block, but the block is done as a positive and a negative and the two alternate. If you watch the video, you’ll see that Jenny Doan makes the blocks using half-square triangles. That is fast and effective, but it results in a lot of extra seams, especially through the center of the block. I want to make the block using flying geese units and squares, instead. I’m going to use a combination of the print fabrics and Kona White. I have some Kona White remnants, but white is tricky enough to match that  I want it all to come from the same cut of fabric. I picked up a couple of yards of Kona White at Joanns.

I’m cutting the squares needed to make the flying geese using Eleanor Burns’ method and her specialty ruler. I used this method to make a quilt composed entirely of flying geese units a few years ago and it worked out very well. I find it easier to cut and sew larger pieces of fabric and then cut them down to size, rather than sewing smaller pieces of fabric into bigger units. And this method makes four flying geese units at once, so I feel very efficient using it, even though I have long suspected that the various methods take the same amount of time.

This may end up being this year’s Ritzville quilt. I thought I might take a year off—and I’m getting down to the wire for making something before the summer rush starts—but if it works out, I could donate it to the sale. It might have to be machine quilted, though. And it will be smaller than a king size.

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The special hydraulic fluid for the lift arrived yesterday. I am curious to see this machine in action. It looks fairly unassuming right now (and I am not sure he’s done assembling it yet):

I’ll get a picture with a vehicle on it at some point.

Basting a Quilt

We are supposed to get a winter storm this weekend, although I don’t think it’s going to be snow as much as plummeting temperatures and wind. In preparation for being stuck inside on Saturday (so much for my plan to prune fruit trees), I got a top ready for machine quilting:

Our bedroom is big enough that if I move Vittorio’s cabinet out of the way, I can lay out a full-sized quilt for basting. I had to stand on the bed to take this picture. This is a Candy Coated scrap quilt, my go-to pattern for using up excess fabric. The backing came from Joanns during one of their big clearance sales.

Some people like to tape down the backing to stretch it out and avoid wrinkles, but I’ve found that our carpeting is “sticky” enough that I don’t need it. Once I got all the layers situated, I crawled over the quilt and put in basting pins every 4” or so, then rolled the whole thing up like a burrito for safekeeping until this weekend. I think this will be a good quilt on which to practice some new quilting designs. It’s so busy that no one will be able to see if I screw up.

I’ve got a couple more quilt tops to prep, but I need some more backing fabric. I’ll stop at Joanns this week and hit up the clearance rack.

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I sewed the handles on the Kit Supply Tote and it has been put into service. I think I’m going to work on some knit tops next. I’ve gotten hooked on The Last Stitch YouTube channel—Johanna Lundstrom lives in Sweden and is the author of the book Master the Coverstitch Machine. I have learned so much about working with knits from her book and her videos. It’s time to put theory into practice.

The husband got most of the lift assembled on Sunday—I’ll get pictures soon—but had to order some hydraulic fluid for it.

And I am still wondering where all the other transcriptionists went . . . when I logged in yesterday morning, we had over 700 minutes in the queue, with reports from the beginning of last week waiting to be done. I did 100 minutes again yesterday. We’ll see if they brought in reinforcements overnight. The husband noted that work-at-home jobs ought to be in high demand now because of the coronavirus situation, but we were all told that medical transcription was a dying industry and I think there are a lot fewer of us out there now.

I Made a Thing

Some people procrastinate by crafting instead of cleaning. I’ve been procrastinating by cleaning* instead of crafting. The reason for that is complicated and can be blamed on the time of year, sadness, a lack of focus, the influx of my MIL’s sewing supplies, and an avalanche of scraps needing to be dealt with, but the upshot was that I have been moving a lot of things around and not actually making anything. That needed to change, so yesterday morning, I pulled out the Kit Supply Tote pattern from Aneela Hoey. She just released this a few weeks ago. It looked like a quick, easy make. I went stash shopping and came up with this combination:

The exterior is an old Cotton + Steel print; I was waffling between that and some Robert Kaufman Essex Linen, but in the end, I decided I wanted a print, not a solid. The black and white print is from Joann Fabrics. Honestly, I ought to buy a bolt of that in every color they sell because it’s such a useful print. I think that was my last remnant of it. I wanted the pink polka dot for a pop of color on the inside slip pockets. I also thought I was being clever because I had that pink 12” zipper in my supply, but it is not a separating zipper. Arrgggh.

[Zippers are my nemesis. Finding the correct zipper for a project is like hunting unicorns. If it’s the right length, it’s the wrong color. If it’s the right color, it doesn’t separate. If it separates, it’s plastic, not metal, or vice-versa. I have three—count ‘em, three—plastic bins full of zippers because I am so tired of projects coming to a screaming halt because I have to stop and order a specialty zipper. I really appreciate the designers who either carry the zippers for their projects in their online stores or, at the very least, give supplier information in the body of the pattern.]

This is a quick make for a bag, although I found myself scratching my head a couple of times. Hoey uses the abbreviations RSO and WSO for “right side out” and “wrong side out.” I am far more used to the abbreviations RST and WST for “right sides together” and “wrong sides together,” so when I saw RSO and WSO, I had to stop and think hard about what I was doing. I’m not sure if that’s a British convention with which I am unfamiliar or if it’s something unique to her pattern writing.

And that spawned a lively discussion over dinner. The husband wanted to know why fabric had a “right” and a “wrong” side instead of a “front” side and a “back” side. We spent 15 minutes going back and forth and I couldn’t come up with a better reason than “It’s always been called that,” which is a lousy explanation but the only one I have. I did sometimes use “public” and “private” side when discussing knitting.

Back to the bag . . . I loved the fact that Hoey included specific, smaller cutting measurements for the interfacing and fusible fleece that accounted for keeping them out of the seams to reduce bulk. The majority of designers specify to cut the interfacing/fleece the same size as the fabric and it’s up to the sewist to remember to remove the excess before fusing. Do I remember? No.

The whole project came together fairly quickly:

However, as I was doing the topstitching on my industrial Necchi, which is in my office with the overhead LED lighting, I discovered that the 12” separating zipper I ended up using was actually navy blue, not black, but then I realized that the dark accent on the exterior fabric was also navy blue, not black. (Note to self: You need better lighting upstairs.) The inside print should have been navy blue as well, not black and white, but finished is better than perfect:

I cut a piece of heavy template plastic to size and inserted it into the base for some extra reinforcement before hand-sewing the opening closed.

I still need to sew on the handles. I think this is a very useful tote design, though, and will be great for hauling around my embroidery projects. I made the small size; the larger size uses a 14” zipper and Hoey notes that with longer webbing handles, the larger size makes a nice over-the-shoulder bag.

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About that cleaning thing . . . I went to the east coast and visited houses that looked like models out of a magazine—not festooned with dirt, dog hair, and straw—and felt like a failure of a housekeeper when I came home. Yesterday morning, as he was getting ready to leave to go work on a job, the husband asked me to wash his fluorescent yellow hoodie (one of two that he rotates) while he was gone. He took the gloves out of the pocket and turned it upside down to zip it up before putting it in the washer, and a whole bunch of dirt, concrete, and rocks rained down onto the laundry room floor. I am not a bad housekeeper. I just have three times the amount of dirt to contend with as people who have office jobs and don’t raise livestock.

It is what it is and I am not complaining; I simply need to be a bit kinder to myself about the state of my house. I refuse to expend the amount of time and energy it would require to make it look like something out of a magazine and that is okay, although it does need a good spring cleaning every year.

Cancelling March

My sister-in-law announced that she was cancelling March and I wholeheartedly endorse that idea. I am beginning to think we should cancel all of 2020, except that we have a wedding this year and we certainly don’t want to cancel that. The husband’s father, who lives in Colorado, ended up in the hospital this week and while it seems to have been a relatively mild event, that was not news we were anticipating.

Montana has largely been untouched by the coronavirus panic, although both my girls are in Seattle and their dispatches from what have become the front lines of this situation have been unsettling. DD#2 tells me that several stores have run out of basic supplies like beans, chicken stock, and—of course—toilet paper. The mall where she works as an assistant manager at Nordstrom is deserted and some employees have been furloughed. I have discovered, strangely enough, that my kids were listening to my sermons when they were growing up, because apparently DD#1 told her co-workers that I always used to say, “‘Panic will kill you when nothing else wants to.” (I lifted that line from the book Rhapsody, by Elizabeth Haydon.) And the husband always says that it’s the stuff you don’t see coming that ultimately gets you.

No kidding.

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The lift arrived Thurday morning and the husband unloaded it (that forklift was the best money we have ever spent on a piece of equipment, hands down):

At first, I didn’t think it was very impressive, but then I realized that there are several boxes tucked in underneath the plastic that are holding other components:

The lift is now in the new shop waiting for the husband to find time to put it together. It’s too bad he didn’t have it two weeks ago when I was in Maryland, because he had to replace the front brakes on the BMW while I was gone.

I did several long days at work this week as I think I was the only transcriptionist for part of that time. I can see how many jobs are in the queue and how quickly they get done and the count wasn’t going down as fast as it does when several of us are working. I don’t mind the extra work (or money), but I don’t like sitting for long periods of time. I want to be up and moving around, especially now that the weather is getting nice again.

Today, though, is supposed to be rainy and cold. I was disciplined and dealt with the tax stuff this week and started my spring cleaning, so I am going to treat myself with a day of sewing. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to work on; it will be something from my priority list or maybe several somethings, depending on how productive I am.

Legacies

While I was in Maryland last week, I spent several hours collecting and packing up family keepsakes to send back here to Montana. My father-in-law, who is actually the husband’s stepfather, will move to assisted living eventually and won’t have room for everything.

I already have the quilts made by the husband’s grandmother; his mother sent them to me many years ago. One of the Very Important Items, though—important enough that my MIL had left written directions as to its whereabouts and disposition—was the bunad, or traditional Norwegian dress, that belonged to the husband’s grandmother. Here is Grandma Milly in 1983 wearing it:

The bunad has always been earmarked to go to DD#1. That seems especially appropriate now because DD#1’s fiancé’s family is of Norwegian descent and his sister is actually in Norway now studying for her master’s degree. One of the husband’s uncles helpfully provided the information that this bunad was made (sewn and embroidered) by Milly's cousin in Norway.

One closet in my MIL’s office was filled with sewing and craft supplies. That all got sent here. I now have enough thread and buttons to last me at least 30 years. I also found a huge box full of these:

For the last dozen years or so, my MIL had been knitting “Guidepost sweaters”—simple sweaters to send to children around the world. This was a program started by Guidepost Magazine in 1996. It has since been taken over and administered by World Vision and is now called Knits for Kids. I knew she had been making these sweaters because we had had several discussions about how much she disliked sewing them together (even though there is only one seam underneath each sleeve). I found a dozen finished sweaters and another three or four that need to be sewn; I’ll complete everything and send them on.

And this made me laugh:

When we got married, I received a recipe card box with all of the husband’s family’s recipes in it. The recipe for Mrs. Tidings Curried Chicken Broccoli was three cards long, stapled together, and included the entire history of the evolution of that dish into something that no longer resembles the original. Apparently some family members disliked broccoli, so the broccoli morphed into French-style green beans, the American cheese was changed to cheddar, the bread crumbs became crushed Ritz crackers, etc. The whole thing became something of a family joke. I ran across this—which is the original, unadulterated recipe—in my MIL’s office. I am going to put it with the copy I have.

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I pushed through and got all the tax stuff for the construction company sorted and organized yesterday. (I really want it out of my fabric room.) I keep all the financials in Quickbooks but there are hard copies of invoices and material lists in case we ever need to refer back to a particular job. Now all that’s left is for me to go through and organize our personal records for itemized deductions. The job does seem a bit simpler this year now that we no longer have dependents and those associated expenses.

And the dentist said my tooth still has enough integrity that I can avoid getting a crown for a while. That was welcome news.

The big excitement is that the hydraulic lift is being delivered today! I plan to take lots of pictures. Stay tuned.

And We Go On

My mother-in-law passed away Monday night. She was an amazing woman. One of her superpowers was her ability to manage a crisis. She would step in, do what needed to be done, and deal with the fallout later. I hear her voice in my head telling me that we need to keep moving, and so we shall.

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We have reached that time of the year that I refer to—even in times of relative calm, which this certainly has not been—as the point at which all hell breaks loose. Besides March being the month of building seawalls on Flathead Lake, it is also the time when general contractors begin jockeying to get on the husband’s pouring schedule. This has been an exceptionally mild winter, so building season is ramping up even earlier than usual. And he needs more help, so I re-posted the Craigslist ad yesterday.

I picked up a chick schedule from the farm store the other day. We need to get our flock under control. I said to the husband that I am kicking around the idea of skipping chicks this year and seeing how many babies our hens will raise on their own. The new rooster seems to be doing a good job of getting on the hens. We had hens go broody (repeatedly) last year, but I think that the old rooster wasn’t doing his part.

I am still thinking on this. Having the hens raise chicks is infinitely easier than getting babies and keeping them in the brooder for two months. And at some point, we need to order piglets.

I called our accountant before I left and asked him to file extensions for us this year. I don’t like to do that as I pride myself on being organized enough that we file our returns on or before the due date, but I needed the breathing room. The only other time we’ve done that was two years ago when I was sick. I am about halfway through getting everything compiled and ready to take in to him. My workspace for that project is in my fabric room, so I’m motivated to get it done and out of the way.

I have a dentist appointment today and at some point in the near future, I’m going to need to get a crown on one of my molars. The dentist has been watching that tooth for years. It has a crack in it and is basically being held together by the filling. I’ve noticed some sensitivity in that area lately, which she said would be the trigger for doing the crown. Yay.

This weekend is the Free the Seeds event at the community college. This is the fifth year and it continues to grow. My friend Susan is doing a workshop this year on “Getting Started with Fruit Trees.”

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One of my tasks for this week is to prioritize my sewing projects. I’ve got clothing, quilting, and miscellaneous sewing projects stacked up.

Clothing:

• A couple of basic T-shirts using the Rhapso-T pattern from SewHere.com.

• A few more tops using the Nancy Raglan pattern from 5 Out of 4 Patterns; the first ones I made are getting a lot of use.

• At least a prototype of the pattern I copied from that Gap knit dress.

Quilting:

• I think I have three tops that need to be basted and machine quilted. That number might be higher. I’ll have to check.

• A few sessions with the Studio cutter to get pieces for future MCC comforters cut out and ready to go.

• Finish up the scrap quilts I have in progress and add them to the “to be quilted” pile.

Miscellaneous:

• I need a bag for spring and summer. I see that AL Frances Textiles has been adding new colors of waxed canvas to their Etsy shop. I’ll either make the new Hillside Tote from Noodlehead or an upsized Metro Hipster from Betz White.

• Aneela Hoey has two new patterns out that I want to make, because I need some totes and organizers to hold my embroidery projects. I’ve got the patterns for both the Flip Pocket Folio and the Kit Supply Tote.

• Those embroidery projects . . . the days are getting longer and I will have less time to sit in the evening and work on them.

• A prayer shawl or two; our supply at church is running low.

• The blanket strip project I signed up for that has a deadline coming up—that is currently at the top of my work pile as I need to get it finished and sent off this week.

• My Maryland apron. I got the appliqué put together Monday afternoon. Now it needs to be stitched and the apron assembled.

I have no shortage of jobs to keep me busy. And the house needs a good, thorough spring cleaning.

Just for fun (because I have nothing else at the moment), here is a picture of our original Buff Orpington rooster from several years ago. Baby, the current Buff Orpington rooster, looks very similar:

Such personalities.

I Don't Even Know Where to Begin

The last time I posted was Friday, February 21st. I picked the husband up from the airport that night and then headed back at 4 a.m. the following morning to catch a flight from here to Salt Lake City and then to Maryland. I arrived in Baltimore at 4 p.m., picked up the rental car, and drove over to the eastern shore to see my mother-in-law at the hospice facility. Despite the heavy pain meds, she was still lucid enough to recognize me and call me by name.

I stayed with my father-in-law at their house. He and I took turns sitting with her at hospice. When I wasn’t with her, I was running errands, cooking, and helping to get things sorted. My mother-in-law’s best friend and writing partner, Laura, was a huge help. The two of us were able to get a handle on what the most pressing needs were. I told my father-in-law that I would stay as long as I was needed, but after some discussion, we decided that I should head home at the end of the week. I’m needed here, too, and there was only so much more I could do in Maryland.

I dropped the rental car off on Saturday morning and my college roommate, Marcia—who lives about 20 minutes from the airport—came and picked me up so I could spend the night at her house. We had a great visit Saturday afternoon. She took me to the airport yesterday morning so I could fly home. I got back to Montana around 2 p.m. My mother-in-law is still holding on, although I know it won’t be much longer.

Meanwhile, back in Montana . . . early in the week, the husband responded to a medical call for one of our neighbors. A lovely woman who lived a few doors down the road from us had a massive hemorrhagic stroke and died. I will miss her—she used to buy eggs from us and I always gave her my extra zucchini so she could make zucchini bread.

Toward the end of the week, the husband woke up one morning to find that Rusty, our 15 year-old dog, could no longer stand up or walk. Rusty had been declining over the past year and I knew this would probably be his last winter with us. The husband took him to the vet and had him put to sleep. Lila seems to be doing okay, although she is a bit more subdued than usual.

And that same night, the husband went out to the chicken coop and discovered the the big rooster had keeled over dead. That rooster was old—7 or 8 years old by now, which in rooster years is ancient—and I’d been expecting this for a while. Baby, my Buff Orpington rooster, is now a year old and clearly ready to take his place as king of the coop. (I know, “Baby” is a horrible name for such a handsome rooster, but that’s how I think of him and he is stuck with the name.)

I have to say, the circle of life is starting to feel more like a centrifuge. I’d really like it to stop so I could regain some footing. I’m done with 2020 and it’s only the beginning of March.

The week had some bright spots. I think I mentioned that my in-laws live about an hour from Washington College, our alma mater. I’ve stayed in touch with my favorite college biology professor, Dr. Donald Munson, since graduation, and he came down to Easton to have lunch with me:

I so enjoyed seeing him. Even after 30 years, he still calls me “kiddo,” like he did when I was a student. And he was wearing an Old Bay tie, which made me giggle.

[The husband, having been a sociology major, remembers that Dr. Munson did not like it that the general biology survey course for non-majors—which the husband took—was lovingly referred to as “Baby Bio.” I was a biology major, so I took just about every class offered, including one spectacular semester of Parasitology, which is the reason I will not eat sushi.]

I also found an hour to visit Quilt Vine, a small quilting store south of Easton. I’d been there before when house-sitting for my in-laws. They have a whole room devoted to nothing but crabs—this is the eastern shore, after all—and I bought the kit for this appliqué:

The appliqué can be used in various ways, but they had used it on an apron. I thought that was cute idea. I can always use more aprons, and this will be a nice memento of the time I spent in Maryland, which is where I met the husband, after all. And I’ll get to try out some of the appliqué stitches on my big Janome sewing machine.

So I am back in Montana, it’s March, and I have got to regain some equilibrium. We will go to the shelter soon and adopt another dog that needs a good home. The husband is busy building concrete sea walls down on Flathead Lake, as they all have to be done before the lake level comes up at the beginning of April when the dam opens. The hydraulic lift for the garage has been built and shipped from New York and will probably arrive some time this week. I’ll have to start seeds soon. I brought my mother-in-law’s gardening hat home with me to wear this summer when I am digging in the dirt. We will get through this.

Poking My Head Up

It has been a long roller coaster of a week. My MIL was admitted to the hospital last Friday and placed on the Palliative Care floor. They had a difficult time getting her pain under control but finally found a more successful combination of pain meds toward the end of the weekend. The plan was to move her to the nearby hospice facility at the beginning of the week but they encouraged the family to start visiting ASAP. The husband’s stepsisters arrived there last Sunday. The husband, his brother, our girls, and my MIL’s two brothers all flew in on Tuesday. My MIL was moved to the hospice house on Wednesday and seems to have stabilized. The husband said she had a steady stream of visitors yesterday. She is still sedated from the pain meds, but knows when people are there. 

The husband gets home today. I leave this weekend. We had many generous offers of help from friends who volunteered to come take care of the animals so I could go earlier, but it made more sense for the husband and me to tag-team our visits. The rest of the family will have returned home by the end of this weekend and we did not want to leave my FIL without some help. My in-laws live about an hour from where the husband and I went to college. I’ve house-sat for them several times and am familiar with the area and some of my MIL’s friends. 

I took the husband to the airport on Tuesday morning and then went to the hospital to sit with my friend, Susan (my kids’ other mother) while her husband was in surgery. The surgery went well and her husband is recovering, although I think they will keep him for a few more days yet. 

For the most part—except for a quick trip to town yesterday to run a few errands—I’ve been hunkered down here alone since then. My extroverted friends will probably find that horrifying, but it was the most comforting thing I could do for myself. I’ve spent the last three days transcribing, sewing, and talking to chickens. The husband and the girls provided regular updates by text and phone and a couple of our friends have also checked in from time to time. I don’t need a lot of social interaction, and when I do, I know how to find it. I just didn’t feel like being around people much this week. 

What sewing projects did I work on? 

I bought a simple jersey knit dress at the Gap last year and it has become one of my favorite pieces. I have wanted to try tracing that dress to make a pattern off of it. I pinned it out and made a tracing Wednesday afternoon, and now it’s a matter of making a test dress from my pattern. I even have the fabric for the test garment—some not-terribly-awful $3 a yard jersey bought at Joann’s during one of their massive clearance sales. If my pattern fits on the first iteration, I’ll have another dress. If I have to make some refinements, I won’t be out a lot of money for expensive fabric. 

I pulled out my 2-1/2” strip Accuquilt die and attacked my scrap bag. The scrap bag has a lot of strips approximately 3-4” wide. I tend to use up the skinnier strips and the wider ones hang around. I systematically worked my way through all those strips, layering them onto to the die and running it through the cutter. I was surprised at how much fun I had doing that. (Obviously, I am easily entertained.) I ended up with two bags of 2-1/2” strips:

No doubt these will find their way into some kind of jelly roll scrap quilts. I have a few ideas already. 

And I finished another quilt top:

This was the second Framed quilt, and to this one, I did add a border. This started out as a fat quarter bundle from the Quilting Bee in Spokane. That bundle didn’t contain enough fabric for an entire quilt, so I added some. The burnt orange, dark brown, the gold, and one of the turquoise fabrics all came from the stash. 

Without a border, the quilt measures 54” x 63”. I added a 6” border on each side to make it 66” x 75” and I like that size much better. I also feel like the border helps to finish it off. I’m going to add a similar border to the first Framed quilt before I quilt it. 

My machine quilting projects are piling up. 

I’ve got some knitting and embroidery projects to take with me to work on while I am sitting with my MIL. Don’t look for much blogging from me. My energies need to be directed elsewhere right now. And thank you all again for the notes, comments, and prayers. 

Blogging, Not So Much

Just a quick note to say that blogging may be a hit and miss proposition for the next couple of weeks. Lots of stuff is happening behind the scenes that I don’t really feel like talking about. I do appreciate all the comments and notes and good thoughts being sent to our family, though. Thank you.

I finished another quilt top yesterday. At some point, I am going to need to schedule a day or two of machine quilting with my big Janome machine. And I am hoping to get a couple of knit tops/tunics cut out in the next day or two. Don’t worry—I’ll be sure to share pictures. Just don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me for a while.

Melons, Corn, and Flowers

The rest of my seed order has arrived:

It includes Minnesota Midget melons, which the husband loves. They grow successfully here. I ordered Montana Lavender Clay corn seed. There are a couple of guys here in Montana who are bringing back some native American strains of corn and I want to see how they do in our garden. I also ordered the Painted Hill variety of corn again from Victory Seeds. We have grown that before and it has always done well for us. It’s very pretty as the kernels are multicolored.

The rest of the order included Green Twister echinacea (coneflower), Lemon bee balm, Nigra hollyhock, and Mellow Yellows coneflower. Echinacea paradoxa is a yellow variety of coneflower that I’ve grown before but it died out after a year or two. Some of these Echinacea strains seem to be too tender for Montana winters. I’ll see how these do.

Baker Creek always sends a free packet of seeds with each order. Last year, it was Purple Russian paste tomatoes which were surprisingly good. We got a giggle out of the fact that this year, they sent us a packet of dill seeds. I planted dill once in my garden and now it has achieved noxious weed status. It comes up everywhere, year after year. I’ll give these seeds to someone who doesn’t have any.

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The commission quilt top is done. I attached the last border yesterday afternoon and then put it aside. I need to lay it out and give it a good look over and one final pressing today before I pack it up. It’s huge. I am not sure I can get a picture of the entire top, but I will try. I am glad to have that off the list as I want to move on to some other projects. Here and there, as I have needed a break, I’ve been working on the second Framed quilt and also adding more scrap strips to the Candy Coated 3.0 (or maybe 4.0?) quilt. Sewing (and transcribing, as odd as that sounds) are the only thing keeping me sane at the moment.

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My mother-in-law had her first round of chemo last week, but unfortunately, the cancer seems to be progressing quickly. She made the decision to discontinue treatment and opt for palliative care only. That is very much in keeping with her pragmatic personality, and although this situation is not what any of us wants—who would ever want a loved one to get cancer?—we support her decision. This is just a difficult situation all around.

A Hint of Spring

This truly has been the mildest winter I can remember in the 26 years that we have lived in Montana. We may have had one or two nights below zero, but not many. And while the snowpack in the mountains is at or above normal, what is down here in the valleys is anything but. Hopefully we will have a rainy May and June or we may dry out and be in trouble this summer.

Yesterday was bright and sunny. I took some cardboard out to the greenhouse for storage until planting time. Some sections of the garden have an awful weed problem. Other sections—most notably, where we have put down plastic—don’t. I would like to try cardboard this year to keep the weeds down. It’s easy to come by and it degrades. I could have spent a few hours basking in the warmth of the greenhouse. I think it must have been in the 70s inside.

And this is the garden—part of it, anyway. This is a fraction of the snow that is usually out there this time of year:

The raspberry canes are to the left and the piggy pasture is to the right. I am looking forward to having pigs out there again this year.

Some of the podcasts I’ve been listening to this week have really stretched my thinking. Amy Dingmann, host of the A Farmish Kind of Life podcast, did an episode entitled Winter Is Hard: Mental Health on the Homestead. To be honest, this is not a problem I have. I like winter and I welcome it as a respite from the endless busy-ness of the spring, summer, and fall. But I recognize that winter can be difficult (the suicide rate spikes in February in Montana), and I applaud her for having the courage to speak up about her struggles. Even when someone is committed to a particular lifestyle, like homesteading, there will be challenges. I love living where we do and don’t mind the relative isolation, but I still need to take a road trip every so often or my head implodes (in contrast to the husband, who went for a stretch of about 10 years without ever leaving the county). There are no “one size fits all” solutions—we all have to figure out what works for each of us.

I also listened to a Living Free in Tennessee podcast about tiny house living. Again, not something I want to rush out and try, but it was fascinating (and educational) to hear why someone might choose that lifestyle. Nicole, the podcast host, is such a good interviewer. She could interview a stuffed animal and make it interesting.

My order from Victory Seeds arrived yesterday:

This company is in Molalla, Oregon, and they are my go-to source for seeds. Everything I get from them does well. I do have to supplement with some seeds from Baker Creek because Victory doesn’t carry everything I want to grow, but the bulk of my supply comes from Victory. This year, I added some flowers and herbs to the seed order. I want to interplant the veggies with things like borage and calendula for the pollinators. And I am going to try starting cowpeas in the greenhouse this year. I am determined to get a good crop for Cathy, who grew up in the south and misses them.

I had Elysian’s little guy over here last night. She is taking a land management class once a week and I told her he was welcome to come hang out with me. The husband left for fire training, I built a fire in the fireplace, and he chose videos to watch on YouTube. (The little boys don’t get a lot of screen time—which is great—so watching TV here is something of a treat.) By the time she got back a couple of hours later, he was asleep on the carpet and I was crashed on the couch under a quilt. For some reason, everyone falls asleep when they come to Auntie Janet’s house, including Auntie Janet.

I got one pieced section (of four) of the last border for the commission quilt made yesterday afternoon. The goal is another one this afternoon, the last two tomorrow, and then I can cross that project off the list. I am going to cut out and make a few more knit tops and I really need a new bag for this spring. AL Frances Textiles, where I get my waxed canvas, has been adding to their inventory recently. I think I am going to do an upsized version of the Metro Hipster (but without the recessed zipper top) because I really like the one I made last year.

Fussy Cutting is Not my Jam

I do this thing—and I know I do it, which doesn’t make it any less likely to happen—where I grossly underestimate how long it will take me to make something. I can read through a quilt pattern and assemble it in my head at the same time. My brain therefore estimates that the amount of time it will take to actually make the quilt is equal to the amount of time it took me to read the pattern and assemble it in my head.

I seem to be the only transcriptionist working this week, which is fine, but it meant that I did about twice as much work yesterday as I normally do. The only other task I had on the schedule was putting the next border onto the commission quilt. I thought that would take an hour. It took three.

This entire quilt design is built around a batik fabric featuring dogsleds in a line:

That’s appropriate given that this kit was purchased at a quilt store in Alaska. But parts of the pattern—including the border I was working on—indicate for the dogsled fabric to be “fussy cut,” where only a specific portion of the fabric is used. I don’t like fussy cutting, as a rule. It wastes a tremendous amount of fabric.

The pattern instructions called for 5-1/2” wide strips of the dogsled fabric to be cut so that a single line of dogsleds was centered in the strip. The dogsleds run from selvedge to selvedge across the width of the fabric. HOWEVER, the vertical distance between one motif and the next was approximately 4” or so. There was no way to cut a strip in such a way that it wasn’t chopping off part of the motif above or below it (or both). The kit included extra fabric to account for this issue. The most obvious solution would have been to cut a 5-1/2” strip out of every other motif. I needed eight 5-1/2” strips.

There were 14 dogsled motifs on the piece of fabric included in the kit.

Sigh.

To complicate matters even further, the dogsled motif doesn’t run in a straight line across the width of the fabric. No, that would be too easy. The motif weaves back and forth a bit, which makes placing it in the center of the strip even trickier.

I managed to get eight strips cut from the fabric I had. I even managed to get the motifs mostly centered. Each border, though, had to be pieced from two of the strips placed end to end. I drove myself batty for half an hour trying to butt the edges of the strips together in such a way that there wasn’t a jarring disconnect between the motifs over the seams.

That border is done. I had a splitting headache when I was done, but now I can move on to the next border. I related all of this to the husband at dinner and I said that were I not such a perfectionist, this would have taken the one hour of time I had allotted originally.

I’m not sorry I agreed to do this—I have learned several new skills and also confirmed that I don’t like either batiks or fussy cutting—but I am ready for this quilt top to be done. It is also getting to the size where I have to wrangle it through the machine to attach each border.

I need to make something small next.

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Seed orders have been placed and should be arriving soon. I asked the husband to get me a pallet of bags of seed starting soil the next time he is at the hardware or farm store. We won’t be starting seeds for another month yet, but I’ll need to get out to the greenhouse and organize some things. Our local weatherman noted last night that Spokane and the Idaho panhandle are supposed to get hammered with a huge winter storm this weekend. Some of that—we won’t know how much until it happens—may bleed over into Kalispell. This has been an extraordinarily mild winter so far. We’re due for a few feet of snow.

Don't Be a Luddite

My desire to Fix Everything And Keep It Running In Perpetuity has run straight up against the reality that Sometimes Things Really Do Become Obsolete. As an illustration, we have several case studies:

Case study #1—I gave the husband my old Mac tower when I bought my iMac a year ago. That Mac tower is still a fine, robust machine and more than enough for what he needs. It was old enough (circa 2009) that it didn’t have built-in WiFi (I had it hooked up to the router via an Ethernet cable.) My computer guru, Greg, installed a WiFi card in it. Lately, though, the computer has been dropping the WiFi connection. I didn’t think it was the card, but the husband was annoyed because in order to reconnect to the network, he had to go through a series of keystrokes that took a few minutes. The husband will spend hours patiently hand-finishing a concrete slab to perfection, but he has no tolerance for technology that doesn’t work.

Our router is an Airport base station of the same vintage as that Mac tower. I thought it was probably time to upgrade it, but Apple no longer makes Airport base stations. Instead, they recommend the Netgear Orbi, which is a router/satellite combination that creates a WiFi “mesh” around your house.

I asked myself, “Where in Kalispell do I have the best odds for finding an Orbi in stock so I don’t have to drive to five different stores?” I went to Best Buy (or Best Try, as the husband refers to them). They had the Orbi, but only in the router/one satellite configuration. I was hoping to find the two satellite configuration. I bought it anyway, thinking it was my best chance at finding what I needed.

And then I went to Costco. Lo and behold—they had the Orbi router/two satellite configuration for $30 less than what I had paid at Best Buy. I went back to Best Buy and explained the situation. As I wasn’t in a huge hurry, I was willing to wait for them to order the bigger system if they would match Costco’s price.

“We’ll just refund your money and you can go back to Costco and buy it there,” the woman at the customer service counter told me. “That’s easier.”

I wondered how Best Buy corporate would feel about that advice, but oh well. I went back to Costco and bought it there.

The network is far more robust now, and as far as I know—because the IT department has not received any complaints—the husband’s computer is staying connected to the network. I also cancelled YouTube TV after the trial because we weren’t watching it. Instead, I signed us up for YouTube Premium. He’s very happy not to have to watch ads, and each of us has a customized YouTube feed.

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Case study #2—The husband very helpfully took apart my 24 year-old LaserJet 1200 printer a few weeks ago and oiled the squeaky bearing. Unfortunately, the bearing has started to squeak again. I think it may be worn out past fixing.

I also have a Xerox Phaser 8560 bought when I was still printing hard copies of my knitting patterns for stores. It works well, but the “crayon” ink it requires is getting harder to find and more expensive and the printer wastes a great deal of it trying to keep the print heads clean. If I leave it turned on, it will spit out a test page of paper completely covered in four colors of ink once a day. You can imagine how long the ink lasts at that rate. I’ve only been using the printer as I need it.

I did the math. For one year’s cost of ink for that printer, I literally could buy four new B&W laser printers.

In addition, we have a fax machine (another HP product that has to be about 20 years old) for which I can no longer get ink cartridges. (Yes, we still use our fax machine quite a bit.) I now have three large paperweights on my desk—a B&W laser printer, a color laser printer, and a fax machine—none of which is reliably functional. While I am loathe to add to the landfill problem, I can no longer justify keeping these machines around if they don’t work or the cost of ownership is prohibitive. (We must have electronics recycling somewhere in town.)

I ordered a Brother B&W all-in-one from Costco yesterday and got the shipping notification this morning. We bought a similar machine for our church a few months ago and it is working well. If I need to print in color, I can hook up a one of the color inkjet printers that the girls left here. I will be glad of the extra desk space, too, now that one machine is replacing three.

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Case study #3—The husband also replaced the timer on the 24 year-old Amana dryer. Although the timer works now, the dryer doesn’t provide heat on the regular setting. I have to dry clothes on the “delicate” setting, and as you can imagine, it takes longer. I will be shopping for a new dryer in the next couple of months.

Am I happy about the outlay of cash for new stuff? Not really. I try to make myself feel better by amortizing the cost over time, although I know that the replacement items are unlikely to last as long as their predecessors did.

I noted to the husband that the BMW dealer in Spokane is now pushing a program to help owners take care of their “vintage” —2012 and older—BMWs. And the service guy told me not to get rid of my diesel any sooner than I absolutely have to. It makes me wonder if people really would prefer less complicated vehicles. At what point have we gone past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to technology?

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I did the last section of pieced border on the commission quilt yesterday afternoon. (Thank heaven for low-tech hobbies.) I’ll put the next border on today. It’s comprised of 5-1/2” wide strips of fabric so it shouldn’t take long. And if I can stick to the schedule, I’ll get the final border made and attached on Saturday. Yay.

I”m still plugging along on the embroidered needle case project. I have almost one and a half birds (of three) done:

I really do need some kind of pouch to hold my embroidery supplies when I am traveling. I’ve got several patterns and just need to make the time to put one together.

What Makes It Broken Dishes?

I was called for jury duty this week. I am not sure if I will have to go; I need to call the night before to find out if the case has been settled. I also need to find out if it is okay for me to take knitting with me to work on while I (presumably) have to wait. I have been put in the pool before and never called in, so this will be a new experience for me if it turns out I become a juror.

I also need to give you an update on our family situation. It was never my intent to leave you all hanging, but we needed to let things ride for a couple of weeks until we had a handle on the details. My mother-in-law was diagnosed—completely unexpectedly after what we all thought was a routine operation—with cancer. It has taken several weeks to complete testing, meet with the oncologist, and make a plan for moving forward. We gratefully accept all positive thoughts and prayers as she begins her treatment.

The new year has gone sideways for several people we know. The husband reminds me that this is all part of life, but I find it terribly unfair that good people have to suffer while people out there who represent the worst of humanity somehow seem to get away with it.

Speaking of that . . . someone has been parking out in front of our house in the early morning. This started just after Christmas—I noticed one morning when I came downstairs that a car had stopped on the road near the south end of our property and was sitting there with its lights on. As soon as I went into my office and flipped the lights on, it slowly drove north past our house. The same thing has happened several other times since then. I can’t come up with a pattern other than it happens randomly and it’s always between 4:15 and 5:00 a.m. when I come downstairs. We know the person who delivers the paper out here. He drives in the other direction and says he hasn’t seen anything odd. Our house is back far enough from the road that I can’t see the make or model of the vehicle. We have alerted the neighbors about this. Thankfully, several of us are home during the day to keep an eye on what’s going on. The rate of theft in the Flathead Valley has escalated dramatically in the past couple of years, especially in the outlying areas where thieves depend on homes being vacant during the day.

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I have quilt blocks on the brain at the moment. This is not what I want to be working on—I’d like to work on pattern drafting—but when the brain is being a cranky toddler, sometimes it’s best not to argue. My current obsession is with the Broken Dishes quilt block. Please tell me if I am being pedantic about this. I get really annoyed when people call things by names that don’t apply. A Google search for “broken dishes quilt” or “broken dishes quilt block” brings up a whole bunch of images for quilts, not all of whose units (in my humble opinion) fit the definition of “broken dishes” block.

This is a line drawing of a broken dishes block:

It is made up of half-square triangles. If you imagine it made in two starkly contrasting fabrics—one dark and one light—it’s possible to see how the darker fabric rotates its position as you move from left to right and top to bottom around the block.

Depending on how you set those blocks within a quilt, you can get some really interesting effects. The Grandma’s Broken Dishes pattern by Diane Tomlinson is a great example:

I think this would be a terrific quilt for showcasing my vast supply of Kona.

[I am trying very hard to provide proper attribution and links to these graphics I am borrowing, but some of them, like this one, were victims of the Great Craftsy Debacle and not all of the links work.]

Now image the block using three different fabrics—two dark and one light. The dark triangles in the middle of the square are done in one dark fabric and the dark triangles at the upper right and bottom left positions are done in another dark fabric. The owner of this site wants written requests for permission to use her photos and graphics, so I am just going to give you the link and let you go look at her Broken Dishes block as an example.

[My feeling is that if someone wants to use the photos from my blog and provides proper attribution and links to drive traffic back here, they are welcome to do so. That’s how my blog has gotten many new readers over the years. I realize that not everyone shares that philosophy, however.]

The reason that quilter’s block works with two different dark fabrics is because the two dark fabrics are of similar value. It is still possible to pick out the Broken Dishes unit within the overall design.

What annoys me, though, are the designs labelled “Broken Dishes Something Or Another” which are really just a mish-mash of half-square triangles laid out any old way. In other words, all Broken Dishes blocks are made up of half-square triangles but not all half-square triangle blocks are Broken Dishes blocks.

Believe me, I know that quilt block names can be very fluid. The same block may have several different names just because it comes from different parts of the country. Names and conventions evolve over decades of use. This one seems pretty straightforward to me, though, and I’d like to see a bit more discipline in using the correct terminology.

Feel free to weigh in with your opinion.

Delectable Borders

I cleaned and organized my sewing area before I left on my travels. That’s a habit I need to maintain. Being able to walk in and either pick up where I left off on something or start something new without getting distracted is huge.

One of my fabric purchases last week was a fat quarter bundle of some fabric I hadn’t seen before. It is the Wild Spirit collection from Daphne Brissonet for Camelot Fabrics. The Quilting Bee had made up only one fat quarter bundle for sale, but bolts of the yardage were on the shelf. Unfortunately, this line only has half a dozen fabrics in it. That’s not really enough variety for the kind of quilts I like to make. I bought the fat quarter bundle anyway and decided I would supplement from my stash when I got home (reason #351 for having a large fabric stash), so yesterday morning, I pulled a half dozen coordinating prints and started cutting. I am making another Framed quilt. So far, I have four blocks done and I love the way it looks.

And I spent a couple of hours working on that commission quilt top. The center is done, as are the first two borders. Three borders remain, two of which are pieced from Delectable Mountains blocks. I made all the half-rectangle triangles—88 of them—before I left.

Piecing this border was slow going even though I’ve made these blocks before. I have no room for error (read: no extra fabric to fix mistakes), so I set up a system. I cut one rectangle into four strips, turned them around into the proper arrangement, and took those strips to the sewing machine. I sewed one pair of strips together followed by the second pair. Then I got up, went back to the cutting table, and cut a second rectangle. I took those four strips back to the machine, sewed the first pair together, clipped the first two pairs from the chain and sewed them together to make a completed block, then sewed the second pair of the second rectangle together. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s not very efficient because I have to keep getting up and down, but that’s not a bad thing. I needed five of each block orientation, and once all 10 blocks were done, I sewed them together in pairs to make the border.

Here is where it gets tricky. The temptation is great to sew the border to the edge of the quilt and whack off any excess length to even up the two pieces. If you do that repeatedly over several borders, though, you may very well end up with 1) wavy edges; 2) an out-of-square quilt top; or 3) both. The correct method is to measure through the center of the quilt top and use that measurement for the length of the borders. The pattern accounts for this by noting that some fudging of the pieced Delectable Mountains block border may be necessary.

The center of my quilt measured 70”. The sides where I needed to attach the border actually measured about 72” due to the stretching that tends to happen during quilt construction. The first pieced border measured 69”.

[It’s a good habit to cut solid fabric borders from the lengthwise grain of the fabric to minimize stretching. Fabric stretches more across than it does up and down. The pattern indicated to cut those borders across the width of the fabric, though, and because I didn’t have any wiggle room in the form of extra fabric, I followed the pattern instructions.]

It is possible to ease together two strips of uneven length by taking advantage of the way the feed dogs move on the sewing machine. The fabric on the bottom actually feeds a bit faster than the fabric on top. Obviously, the longer the strips, the more distance you have over which to ease in the difference, but I thought easing in 3” over about five feet was asking a bit much. I let out a few of the seams on the pieced border—a fix suggested in the pattern—to make the pieced border measure 70”. By sewing with the slightly longer quilt border on the bottom and the pieced border on top, the two fabrics went together perfectly.

The second border went on the same way.

I’ve now got to make the top and bottom pieces and attach them. Two borders will remain after that. The next border is much simpler. It consists of 5-1/2” wide pieces of focus fabric (the sled dogs) and no piecing. The final border is another Delectable Mountains block border. Slow and steady wins the race. Hopefully, I can have this top done in another week or so. I’ve enjoyed working on it but I’d like to get it back to Jan so it can be quilted and bound.