How to Drive People Away

Story time…

When we were getting ready to move to Montana, the husband and his dad came out here to look around and find a place for us to rent. When he came back—we were living in Pennsylvania at the time—he brought with him a copy of the local activities guide put out by the newspaper. “Look,” he said, pointing to an article, “Kalispell has a spinning and weaving guild.” At the time, I belonged to a very active guild in our area and I think he wanted to help smooth the transition for me by finding me a group I could join in the Flathead.

And as it turns out, the spinning and weaving guild was how I met Susan. I went to one of the meetings, on a Wednesday afternoon in the local Lutheran church basement, and a woman came up to me with a young girl in tow. I had DD#1 with me, who would have been about 1-1/2 at the time. Susan introduced herself, we got to chatting, and we discovered the the property the husband and I had just purchased was right down the road from where she lived.

And that is how Susan became my first and best Montana friend and my children’s other mother. Our daughters did not escape our activities:

We had a great guild here. It met every week—the first Wednesday was for spinners, the second for weavers, the third was the guild meeting, and the fourth was for fun. I participated in all the activities. I also became involved with the state organization known as MAWS (Montana Association of Weavers and Spinners). I took over producing the quarterly newsletter. I was a member of the board. I taught at the MAWS gatherings every other year. I was involved because I loved it and it was fun.

MAWS had an award called the Living Treasure Award. It was given at each MAWS state gathering. To be considered, a member had to be nominated by their guild with a form that indicated why that person met the criteria for being considered, which included service to the guild, teaching and sharing of information, and depth of knowledge. The nominations were evaluated by a committee. We nominated one of the members of our guild and I had the honor of introducing her at the meeting where the award was given. (It was in Missoula that year.) Some years, only one person was nominated. Some years, several people were nominated and it was not uncommon for each of them to be named a Living Treasure.

Unbeknownst to me until the last minute, our guild decided to nominate me for the award the year that the meeting was held here. By that point, I was teaching nationally as well as within the state. I would have been the youngest person to receive the award, although no age limit was specified in the nomination criteria. Three people were nominated that year. Two of them were awarded the Living Treasure award. I was not. I sat through the awards ceremony—our guild was the hosting guild that year—with a smile pasted on my face, but inside, I was crushed.

The explanation we were given later was that, “She’s young—she’ll be eligible for the award another time.” Perhaps that may have been true, but I didn’t stick around to find out as that was the end of my involvement with MAWS.

I think this is one area where organizations can really fall short. While I don’t require an award or big ceremony when I help out—a simple acknowledgement and thank-you will suffice—it’s critical that organizations avoid treating their supporters with disdain, taking them for granted, or behaving as though they are expendable. Being singled out NOT to receive that award felt like a slap in the face to me (and still stings a bit even years later). Organizations that operate in that manner may find their supporters quietly picking up their marbles and taking them somewhere else.

This post is not aimed at any of the groups I am volunteering with currently. I simply wanted to share this story as a cautionary tale about treating people with kindness and appreciation.

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On my way out of town yesterday, I stopped at Joann Fabrics and was delighted to find that their knit fabrics were on sale. And it was a big sale, like 60% off. I took advantage of the opportunity to stock up on fabric for making myself some more tops:

I bought three yards of the black with yellow flowers in case I decide to make myself a dress. I adore yellow but look like a corpse wearing it. I think I can get away with this print, though, as it’s mostly black.

It’s supposed to rain for at least the next couple of days. I will forego weeding in favor of sewing.

Should I Make a Backpack?

Klum House launched a new sewing pattern this week, the Slabtown Rolltop Backpack, and I am thinking this may be my next big project.

The kits include a lot of great color combos, including this green one (love love love). Not all of the the kit colors are available as yardage. This may be one of those instances where buying the complete kit makes more sense than trying to source everything separately.

Klum House has had a series of blog posts recently with a behind-the-scenes peek into the development of the pattern. I love those kinds of posts because I love to see and read about other makers’ design processes. They also had to contend with supply disruptions this spring, which pushed back the launch of the pattern.

I’ve wanted to make a backpack for a while now, but hadn’t found a pattern I liked. This one comes pretty close. I am not crazy about the rolltop style, but perhaps I will be if I make one and start using it. I listened to the Sewing with Threads podcast yesterday and the guest was designer Becky Fulgoni. She talked about how she is experimenting with backpack patterns and has made every pattern she can get her hands on. It sounded like her goal was to come up with one pattern that incorporates all the features she likes from other patterns.

And I still need to make some T-shirts. I watched a Mimi G YouTube video about making a T-shirt from an existing pattern and I might try some of her techniques.

[One of the best podcast interviews I ever listened to was with Mimi G on the Craft Industry Alliance podcast. The story of how she built her business is fascinating. She has several YouTube channels in addition to the Mimi G Style channel and all of them are excellent.]

My sewing this week has consisted of sewing together strips from the scrap bag, which is what I do when I can’t focus on anything else. These will probably end up in another Candy Coated Quilt (I’m up to the sixth or seventh one now). It occurred to me yesterday that the Ritzville Mennonite Relief Sale scheduled for October might be yet another casualty of this coronavirus pandemic. The sale could, theoretically, be done online, but either way, I would like to be able to donate some quilts.

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I maintain my stance that social media is one of the biggest ills of modern life. I think it takes a fair bit of skill to give it a place in one’s life without allowing it to take over or skew one’s perspective. (I worry about some of my Facebook friends who seem so obsessed with social media that it appears to be affecting their mental health.) I am on social media to get information that I wouldn’t get anywhere else. Still, it is useful to unplug every so often. And I have to do that even though I work really hard to curate my feeds so they don’t become echo chambers. A good example of that is a woman I follow on Twitter. I started following her because she’s a knitter, something we have in common. She’s also an African-American woman with differing political views who lives in a major metropolitan area on the other side of the country. We don’t have any of that in common. I appreciate having her in my Twitter feed, though, because she speaks with brutal honesty about what she is seeing where she lives. Sometimes it’s hard to hear what she has to say. But she’s a knitter and a human being. Common ground.

I need to call the pig supplier today and make arrangements to pick up piglets tomorrow. I have three rows of beans left to plant and will knock those out this morning. After that, the to-do list will consist only of weeding and moving compost. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Black Gold

This is a time of year when I get wound up and unable to focus, because I see everything that needs to be done and worry that I won’t have enough time—or energy—to tackle it all. The energy thing has been a big frustration to me lately. Much of it is hormone related and not worth going into here. I also know that even when I’m not firing on all cylinders, I am probably getting more done than a lot of people. Still, I know what I am capable of doing and it irritates me when I fall short.

[It is also tough to be married to someone who could kick most 20-year-olds to the curb. I am far more competitive than I realized, apparently.]

I’ve been planting beans. I am planting a lot of beans. I may regret, in the fall, just how many beans I planted, but we’ll see how it goes. Thus far, I have put in one row of Calypso beans (black and white), one row of Steuben Yellow Eye bean, three rows of Jacob’s Cattle beans, and three rows of pinto beans. These are 40’ rows, for those keeping score.

Still left to do are three rows of Vermont Cranberry, three rows of Kerbarika beans, three rows of mayacoba beans and the packet of Calima beans. The Calima are for eating as green beans. The rest are for dry beans. I have a lot of white beans in storage and won’t do any of those. I also have a packet of Swiss chard and a packet of collards. I likely will plant the collards as I like to blanch them and freeze them for soup. It is going to rain on Saturday so I want to have all of this in before then.

I think I have to give up on the dream of growing cowpeas in Montana unless something miraculous happens. They aren’t doing anything. They are farther along than they were at this time last year, so I won’t write them off just yet, but I am bracing myself for potential crop failure.

The grapes are leafing out. The apple trees don’t have a lot of blossoms on them, but they produced heavily last year so I wouldn’t be surprised if they took a year off. If that happens, I will receive it as a blessing.

After planting beans (I’m pacing myself), I moved some compost. The husband moved the pile of aged chicken manure over next to the greenhouse. Then he cleaned out the compost bins and piled the contents on top of the chicken manure:

This is a lovely pile of black gold. I shoveled it into the wheelbarrow and moved it over to the rows of corn:

We’ll keep spreading it around the garden until it’s gone.

I did not see my snake friends yesterday despite looking for them.

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I’ve cut way back on my social media usage this week. I’ve been seeing the absolute worst of humanity on Facebook and Twitter and I am tired of it. Bonnie Hunter, a well-known quilt designer who is incredibly generous with her time and talents—she hosted the Unity quiltalong (for free) during the quarantine—shared a blog post yesterday that made my blood boil. She was taken to task for not participating in the #blackouttuesday movement.

[TL;DR She didn’t participate because she didn’t have reliable internet access where she was, was not on social media except briefly in the morning to put up a blog post and thus was unaware that anything was happening (I didn’t find out until about 2 p.m.), and Tuesday was her deceased daughter’s birthday, so she spent the day in remembrance and mourning. As a result, she got some very nasty comments on her Instagram-linked blog post.]

I am sick unto death of all this virtue signaling, public shaming, and policing of other people’s morality. Some days I think we’re living in puritan New England. I saw plenty of this nonsense during the coronavirus crisis, and now it has shifted into overdrive. Go ahead, announce that you are a better human being because you did X and that person didn’t, or you didn’t do Y and that person did, you’re educated and those morons over there aren’t, you believe in science—go ahead and post whatever meme or comment you think will demonstrate that you’re a better human being than people who think or behave differently from you. I won’t argue with you, but I’m probably going to tune you out.

[By the way, there are serious questions being raised about that recent Lancet study debunking the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine. You can read about it here (please note that I am linking to an MSM outlet, not some conspiracy theory website). So go ahead and “believe in science” with the understanding that it isn’t infallible—or, more accurately, that human beings engaging in scientific research muddies the objective waters somewhat.]

I raised my kids with the admonition to watch what people do instead of listening to what they say. Actions will always speak louder than words. I could tell you anything I want to on this blog, but it’s what I do when I walk out of the house and into the world that really matters. Those actions—not the sanctimonious crap I might post on Facebook or Twitter—are how I am going to be judged. And that is how it should be.

Friends (and Enemies) in the Garden

I want my garden to be a healthy ecosystem, and that means that I do not intervene with any kind of pest control measures unless it is an absolute necessity. Thus far, the only pest control measures I have had to institute are the ones that involve my .22 (more on that in a moment). I have never had issues with potato beetles, tomato hornworms, squash vine borers, or worms in my broccoli. That is not to say that I don’t see the occasional pest, just that the pest pressure is very mild. By far, weeds are my biggest issue.

I also think that if I make the garden hospitable to animals, it will attract the very ones I need to help me keep pests under control. I am particularly fond of snakes and it is always a happy day for me when I see the first one of the season. Yesterday, I saw two. The first one—obviously a garter snake by its telltale yellow striping—was underneath a piece of landscape fabric I pulled up in anticipation of moving it to a different part of the garden. I apologized to the snake for disturbing it and put the fabric back.

A few minutes later, I went over to check on the cantaloupes and heard a slithering noise. I looked down and sure enough, this little guy was sunning himself on the black plastic:

He let me take his picture and we had a short conversation before he ducked under the plastic and went in the opposite direction.

I don’t think this one is a garter snake. I think this one is a North American Racer—same family (Colubridae) but different species than the common garter snake, Thamnophis sirtalis. These, apparently, can get to be as long as 65 inches!

It seems early in the season to be seeing snakes, and they’ve all been larger than normal. I wonder if the mild winter and warmer spring means that they were out and active sooner and have had a chance to bulk up? Regardless, I am delighted that some have chosen to hang out in the garden. Now that I know they are there, I’ll just keep an eye out where I am walking.

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I worked very hard to eliminate cover for the ground squirrels in the hopes that they wouldn’t run rampant through the seedlings. The tunnels are still there, but I haven’t seen—or heard—any yet this season. Also, I think we have more foxes, coyotes, and wolves in the neighborhood than we’ve had in recent years, although our neighbor has picked off half a dozen in his yard. Maybe word got out that the crazy gardening lady shoots trespassers.

At least one squirrel is still hanging around, though. I had to dig up the old lettuce bed because it was taken over by weeds. There were some arugula seedlings scattered here and there, so as I dug up that bed, I carefully removed them and planted them in the new lettuce bed. I love arugula in my salads. Apparently, so does the ground squirrel. All of the lettuce seedlings remain unmolested, but yesterday morning, I discovered that the arugula seedlings had been chewed down to stems.

Arrggghh. I started a tray of arugula in the greenhouse, and I am going to keep a careful eye out for the ground squirrel.

The potatoes are all mulched, either with straw, landscape fabric, or a combination of the two (I had to get creative in a couple of places). I need to plant beans today. They have to get in soon to have enough time to ripen. The corn and rhubarb need a top dressing of compost/chicken manure. Everything else looks phenomenal.

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I did sew a bit yesterday; the brown twill I ordered from Joanns arrived last week, so I finished the other half of the custom apron order. I’m not sure what’s up next in the queue. I still need to make some knit tops and I have to finish a birthday present for later this month. If the weather is nice, though, most of my time will be spent out in the garden.

Cue the Next Storm

I had one eye on the weather when I got up yesterday morning. I knew a large line of thunderstorms had moved through Spokane overnight and was headed in our direction. The husband and I were sitting on the porch around 8 a.m. drinking coffee. I was watching it get darker and darker to the southwest of us, although the clouds appeared to be moving mostly to the north. All of a sudden, the wind came up and it started pouring. I ran inside to close some windows and the husband went out to make sure things were secure in the yard. As I came back down the stairs, I saw that a tree had come down in the front yard, and when I looked out the screen door in the kitchen, I could see large branches down in the back yard.

I also saw a little kid standing on the porch talking to the husband. Elysian’s son had started over to our house with a bag of egg cartons and got caught in the downpour. He was going to try to run back home across the road. I heard the husband say to him, “You’re not going anywhere; come in the house.” I got him a towel—he was drenched—and then the power went out.

Thankfully, we caught just the edge of the storm that went up through the valley. The damage in Kalispell was considerable. Our power came back on mid-afternoon, but some parts of the area are still out.

The top of this tree sheared off about 20 feet up. It missed the mailbox by about 3” when it landed:

(You would never know I cut the grass a few days ago, “grass” being a loose description of what grows in our yard.)

The top of another tree sheared off and fell behind the woodshed. And then there was this one:

It started to blow over but got hung up in another tree. Had it fallen, it would have landed in the middle of the old herb garden and possibly clipped the edge of the chicken yard.

The husband brought the forklift over and carefully lifted the tree up, moved it over, and dropped it in the woods where it wouldn’t do any damage.

More work to be added to the list of things to do. I should note that there used to be a large pile of chicken manure just to the left of where the forklift is sitting, but the husband used the backhoe to move all of it over to the garden for me on Saturday.

The husband fired up the generator so we could have power until the lines were fixed. He went out to work out in the new shop. I had trouble focusing on anything; even though we had power, the internet was out, so I couldn’t access the tutorial for the one project I really needed to work on. I basted a quilt together and then decided that it would be a good day for scrap management.

When I attended that online Accuquilt seminar a few weeks ago, I received a 20% discount coupon at the local quilt store. I picked up this strip die, which has turned out to be surprisingly useful:

I already have a die that cuts multiple 2-1/2” wide stripes. This die, however, cuts three strips in widths of 2”, 1-1/2”, and 1”. Sometimes I end up with a strip of fabric that is wider than 2-1/2” but narrower than 5”. I can’t cut that piece into 5” squares, and I may want strips narrower than 2-1/2” for some of my scrap quilts. This die is the perfect solution. I went through and cut all my large scraps, then emptied the scrap bag and went through that, too, cleaning up strips that had ragged edges. Now my strips are neat and tidy and ready for sewing:

I’ll have to start another scrap quilt soon.

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I am not unaware of what is happening around the country. My mother’s metal stamping plant is just to the east of downtown Cleveland, and there was rioting and damage in Cleveland Saturday night. DD#2 and her housemates—all Gonzaga grads—had gone to Spokane for the weekend and were headed back to Seattle. They had to detour to get back to their house because I-5 was closed in and out of downtown Seattle. (They live about half an hour north of downtown.) DD#2 was supposed to work yesterday, but because of the damage done to Nordstrom’s downtown Seattle store, the stores in the outlying suburbs were all closed.

I don’t feel the need to add my voice or opinion to the cacophony—indeed, I think that social media is, in many ways, contributing to the problem, not helping it. However, that doesn’t mean that I am not concerned about what is happening. I like to think of myself as fairly resilient when it comes to upheaval, but 2020 continues to stun me with the series of sucker punches it has delivered.

Itchy and Sneezy

These allergies are starting to wear on me a bit. I’ve concluded that the itchy skin is due to pollen overload. I’ve been wiping pollen off of every horizontal surface in the house. And when I finished cutting the grass the other day, I had to give in and take a Benadryl and go to sleep. Also, a bug bit me under my right ear and I have a large welt there.

[I realize that begs the question of why I am cutting the grass if the pollen is such a problem, and that is because I am here all day and it needs to be done and I do not think it is right to ask the man who has been schlepping forms and pouring mud for 14 hours to come home and do it. Hopefully, pollen season will be over soon. I am a big girl and I can take one for the team. In the meantime, I pop a Claritin in the morning and use Benadryl cream (and children’s Benadryl) as needed.]

My patience has worn a bit thin(ner) this week as a result. I am annoyed with the US Postal Service because I put a Priority Mail envelope in the mail to someone in California on May 19, and as of today, she still has not received it. Do you know why she has not received it? Because it is traveling from Montana to California via Memphis, Tennessee and Oxford, Mississippi. By the time she receives it, it will be a two-WEEK delivery, not a two-day delivery. And no, this isn’t due to the virus. This kind of stuff happens all the time, pandemic or no pandemic.

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We got a letter from BMW in the mail this week. Remember when that part failed in the transfer case of my station wagon a year ago? And how it would have cost $3000 for a new transfer case (not including labor), except that my genius mechanic of a husband figured out exactly which part had failed so it “only” cost us $600 and several evenings of his time to replace it?

It’s now part of a recall. Apparently, enough people complained about the problem over the past seven years that BMW was forced to act. (I would like to think that my tersely-worded e-mail to them expressing my displeasure at my car failing so spectacularly at 70,000 miles had something to do with it.)

The letter indicated only that the recall process has been initiated. There is not yet a fix for the part for those lucky people whose cars haven’t already self-destructed, although it sounds like BMW plans to replace the transfer case. For those whose cars have already been repaired, BMW says they will reimburse the owners. I told the husband that I think they owe us a new transfer case. He says he fixed the problem and the car doesn’t need a new transfer case, but it’s a matter of principle. They owe us a new transfer case and the cost of his labor to replace it.

I’m not holding my breath.

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I decided to go ahead and bind that neutral diamonds quilt even though I haven’t yet added more quilting to the center. I was getting tired of picking cotton lint off everything. Before I sewed on the binding, I laid the quilt out on our bedroom floor and went over it with a lint roller. It got some of the lint, but I will have to go over the quilting in the borders and pick lint out of the stitching:

I am so disappointed in this quilt. I think it could have been so much better with a different batting. Even my free motion quilting looks awful. Yes, it’s almost done and yes, it will keep someone warm, but the finished product isn’t up to my standards. I won’t use that batting again. Fortunately, I only had the one package.

I am about to start a fun project with this:

What will it be?

All of the tomatoes, cantaloupe, watermelons, and zucchini are planted. Only the beans are left to do, and then it’s just a matter of keeping after the weeds. I cut some of the lettuce from the crop growing in the tray and that will be the base of our salad tonight. I might start another tray in the greenhouse just so we have a steady supply. The peeps spend most of their time running around and around inside their section of the coop; I am getting a better idea of who the baby roosters are because there is a lot of posturing and mock fighting going on. Those chicks got a lecture yesterday about their behavior. (The husband has started referring to it as “Janet’s Finishing School for Baby Roosters.”) The robins who nested in the corner porch rafter have four noisy babies. And the piglets arrive next weekend.

Greening Up

My friend Susan—my kids’ other mother—has a master’s degree in botany. I’ve always said that if Susan can’t grow something, it can’t be grown in Montana. She has an orchard full of apple trees and generously shares the apples from her Duchess of Oldenburg tree with me every year so I can make apple pie filling. She has also been doing a lot of grafting and experimenting with cuttings taken from old trees here in our little community. A few months ago, she offered to graft me a cutting from her Duchess tree so I would have my own. She also grafted me a cutting from a Westfield Seek No Further that she ordered for me from Fedco, and yesterday she sent me a picture:

This is very exciting! She said the Duchess and the Northern Lights grafts are testing her patience and taking a bit longer, but no doubt they will green up, too.

Apple trees are a rabbit hole I don’t want to fall into as it is easy to become obsessed. The reason I wanted a Seek No Further was because it is featured in a series of books—the Wilderness series—by one of my favorite authors, Sara Donati. It’s an old, old, New England variety and I just think it would be cool to have one in my own orchard.

Our apple trees are doing very well, but the other fruit trees are struggling. Two of our pear trees were crushed under a tree that fell during that March windstorm. They are still alive, amazingly, although looking a bit battered. We have two peach and two cherry trees in another area that haven’t produced anything since we put them in. I was planning to take them out this year, but the cherry trees woke up suddenly and are covered with blossoms. If they produce this year, I guess they will get to stay.

I put in an elderberry bush this year, too, and it’s doing really well.

My tiny chocolate mint plant survived the Great Vole Infestation of the herb garden last winter. I’ll move it to a spot over by the big garden where it can sprawl. There is already a spearmint plant over there that I plan to harvest this year and dry for tea.

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I talked to the girls this week and it sounds like things are starting to open back up in Washington state. I am planning a trip to see them some time next month. The husband noted the other day that this is the first time in several years that I have been home for our anniversary (or to plant the garden). Last year, I was in London, and the year before that, I had gone to meet DD#1’s future in-laws. I have a bad habit of traveling on our anniversary because it falls on a long holiday weekend.

Getting away from a farm(ette) is tricky. The peeps are big enough now that I only have to check on them once during the day, and even that isn’t absolutely necessary as they have plenty of food and water. But piglets are supposed to show up next week—I have to call and verify today—and I’ll need to be here to make sure they are settling in.

The husband is happy that he didn’t have to do the planting this year. He has a tendency to dig holes and stick plants in them without a lot of consideration of what goes where. I don’t blame him for wanting to get the job done, but there was one year that I found bean plants growing among the cucumbers and had no idea if they were green beans for eating or dry beans for shelling. I tend to be a bit more meticulous in my garden organization. And it’s amazing how quickly the weeds will grow in a week if I am not here to stay on top of things.

Planting Day

Memorial Day weekend has always been the traditional planting weekend here in Montana, although the cooler-weather crops like lettuce, broccoli, and peas have been in for a few weeks already. I headed out to the garden early yesterday morning to get the tomatoes planted.

We had put several pieces of plastic down in that area last fall, but they’ve been driving me batty ever since the snow melted. My desire to have smooth, unwrinkled fabric apparently extends to the large pieces of plastic in the garden, too. I took up several of the pieces, trimmed them, turned them around, and fitted them back together in a smooth patchwork layout. I also did away with a small raspberry patch; it’s a thorny variety that was spreading aggressively into parts of the garden where I didn’t want it. I went through and cut off all the canes at their bases, then extended the black plastic over that area. We won’t plant there until next year, but hopefully having the black plastic over that spot will kill off the plants. If not, we can always take the backhoe out there and dig them up.

Getting the black plastic straightened out took up the first few hours, but I am very pleased with the results:

The raspberry patch used to be located in the top center of the picture (that’s our neighbor’s property and horse trailer). Getting rid of it opened up quite a bit of extra space.

I put in 46 tomato plants—15 each of Oregon Star paste tomato, Cherokee Purple, and Indian Stripe, as well as the one Dirty Girl grown from seed that my friend Susan gave me. She had given me two seeds but only one germinated. Dirty Girl is an open-pollinated variety of Early Girl, one of the most popular tomatoes in this area. Susan ordered the Dirty Girl seeds from a producer in California and shared them with several of us in the neighborhood. Even though I’ve only got the one plant, it is large and vigorous and I am looking forward to tasting the fruit it produces.

I also put in seven zucchini plants. I’ve been trying to find homes for the rest of them and still have three left if anyone is interested. I have half a dozen of each variety of tomato left, too. I only plant heirloom/open-pollinated varieties in my garden. The zucchini is a variety called “Grey” that I grow every year.

Mother Nature blessed my efforts with a gentle overnight rain. Next to go in will be the cucumbers, watermelons, and cantaloupes. I decided to have the husband go ahead and rototill the one section where the beans will be planted, just because it has all that lovely rotted straw from last year on it.

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While I was out in the garden, the husband was moving more of his stuff from the old garage to the new shop, and now I have a space to work on sewing machines!

I thanked him for leaving me that gallon jug of wood glue, LOL. The lighting here is much better than over the kitchen table, and I can leave my repair projects set up. As soon as the shelving arrives, I plan to move all the machines out here so I have them in one location.

And the peeps got moved out of the brooder box and into their own section of the coop:

We know it’s time to move them when they start trying to escape the brooder box. It was getting crowded in there, too. They have plenty of room to run around now. The rooster came into the coop from the chicken yard as soon as we moved them. He stood there with his head cocked to one side and watched them for a couple of minutes. I am not sure his brain is big enough to grasp the idea that he fathered all of these babies, but he knew something was different.

Happy Anniversary to Us

Our 30th wedding anniversary is Tuesday. I asked the husband, “Where did the time go?” and he said, “We were busy with projects.” I suppose that is true. This anniversary seems even a bit more momentous than the 25th anniversary, for some reason. Perhaps it is because of everything else that has happened this year.

We bought ourselves a present. The husband wants you all to know that this is not what he intended as an anniversary present, but the timing was right and I thought it would make an entertaining blog post. Pearls are the traditional 30th wedding anniversary present. We did not buy pearls.

Our daily porch debriefing sessions often include long-term planning and wish lists. The husband will mention that he’d like to buy or build something, and then one day, that thing appears. (I can always tell when he’s going to start building something when the can of orange spray paint—for marking lines—comes out.) As long as I am comfortable with the financial end of the project, I just go along for the ride.

The husband recently did a commercial job for a client he’s had for many years. We were eating dinner one night last week when he pulled out his cell phone and showed me a picture. “They have this for sale,” he said. “Let me know what you think.” The price was right and he thought it was a good deal, even though the item in question needed some work. I printed the check for him and on Friday morning, this arrived at our house:

We bought a backhoe! Cosmetically, it looks like it has been rode hard and put away wet, but the machine itself is sound. It’s about 3o years old—how appropriate.

The husband pressure washed the mud and rocks off it yesterday and started working on it. New tires are in order, for sure, along with a few other things. The resident seamstress thought she might have another project:

However, I had a hunch and checked the internet this morning. We can get a replacement seat for $139, which is probably less than it would cost me to make one.

Two little boys in the neighborhood are very excited about the backhoe. Both of them came over to see it yesterday. (I am convinced there is a gene on the Y chromosome for this fascination with heavy equipment.) I am excited about the backhoe too, but only because it means I won’t have to haul chicken manure to the garden in a wheelbarrow.

And just for giggles, we’re also the proud owners of a roller:

The client threw this in because it doesn’t run and he wanted it gone. I asked the husband if we were going into the road-building business. He said he’ll get it operational again and then maybe we’ll sell it. Or maybe we’ll build roads. (There is a libertarian joke in there for those of you paying attention.)

Lastly, the seller also has a bunch of industrial shelving that came out of K-Mart when it closed last year. The husband is getting some of that for me to store my sewing machines on in the old garage.

All in all, I think this is an excellent anniversary present and far more useful than a pearl necklace.

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In between watching two little boys check out the backhoe, I worked on the garden all day yesterday. I put cardboard down around all my berry bushes, which I hope will be far better at controlling weeds than me getting in there and pulling them. I took down the hoops that were over the corn. I transplanted more lettuce. The section for the tomatoes is all ready for planting.

Today—which is supposed to be even warmer and sunnier—I plan to mulch the potatoes, put chicken manure around the corn, and get the rows ready for planting beans. By next weekend, the highs are forecast to be well into the 80s.

I am pleased with how the garden looks so far this year. It’s a lot of hard work, but I enjoy it.

Fun With Chickens

The husband reminds me periodically that chickens have brains the size of peas. Some days, I think that is a generous assessment.

The chicken coop has 14 nesting boxes. Fourteen very large, comfortable, and filled-with-pine-shavings nesting boxes. Chickens do not all lay eggs at the same time, so 14 nesting boxes should be more than adequate, which is why this happens:

Every so often, one of the nesting boxes will be designated as special, and all the chickens will want to lay their eggs in that box. I have no idea what criteria determines which box is special, and it changes from day to day and week to week. If more than one chicken wants to use the special box at the same time, though, arguing and jockeying for space ensues. Believe me, these chickens did not look so amiable 30 seconds before I took this picture.

This Buff Orpington has not left this box for over a week now. Will she hatch out some chicks? Let’s hope. She likes to sit with her butt facing out, though. I find that odd:

I haven’t been able to see how many eggs she has under her, because she gets annoyed if I get too close.

The husband watches a YouTube channel where the host just finished building a chicken coop. This guy’s wife sews, and she made cute little curtains for all of the nesting boxes. (They only have half a dozen hens.) I will not be doing that.

The baby velociraptors are getting their big chicken feathers.

They have just about doubled in size in two weeks and won’t be able to stay in the brooder box much longer. We’ll move them to the fenced-off area in the coop where they can see the big chickens but the big chickens can’t get to them.

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The black bear is still wandering around. One of our friends down the road saw it passing through her yard last night. I hope this bear does not end up having to be euthanized, but that’s usually what happens to bears that become habituated to being around people. We haven’t seen it in our yard (yet). Lila would let us know if it were anywhere close with the special bear version of her “Danger, Will Robinson!” bark.

I went out to check on the garden yesterday afternoon. I have a lot of work to do out there this week thanks to all this rain. It is supposed to dry out and warm up into the 70s by the middle of the week, though, and I should be able to plant everything that is left in the greenhouse.

I have two sides of the border left to quilt on the neutral diamonds quilt and then I can trim and bind it. I am still leaning toward adding more quilting to the center, especially after quilting loops in the border. The denser quilting pattern really does help to stabilize that batting. I also have to bind the inside seams of the Get Out of Town Bag and make the carrying strap. And I stopped at the church yesterday on my way to town and picked up my knitting bag with the prayer shawl.

I’ve developed a bumpy, itchy rash on my arms. It’s only on my arms and it has been there for about a week. The husband thought maybe it was poison ivy, but I haven’t been working outside with my arms uncovered. I use only unscented, dye-free laundry detergent. I haven’t changed soaps. I had a terrible problem with allergies this spring, which was odd because I haven’t had spring allergies since I stopped eating wheat. The itchy, watery eyes and sneezing went away a few weeks ago, but then this rash broke out. It’s either a different manifestation of seasonal allergies or some kind of food intolerance. I don’t feel particularly stressed out, so I doubt it’s that, and even if I were stressed, I would expect the patch of shingles on my back to flare up. So far, calamine lotion is providing some relief. I thought about taking Benadryl last night before bed, but apparently I have developed an aversion to being sedated since my week in the ICU. (Imagine that.) Even a small dose of Benadryl is going to knock me out and I don’t want that. I’ll look at what I am eating and see if I can figure out if there is a trigger.

Exploding Quilt Batting

Today, we’re going to talk about quilt batting.

I call it “batting” because I live in the US. People in other parts of the world sometimes refer to it as “wadding,” which makes me laugh because it brings to mind (to mine, at least) big lumpy globs of stuffing. For purposes of this blog post, it will be called “batting.” No doubt that sounds just as odd to the non-US folks. Language is fun.

I have discovered that quilters have very strong opinions regarding batting. The hand quilters at my church all seem to prefer polyester batting. Someone explained to me once that that is because needles glide much easier through polyester batting than they do through cotton. In my limited hand quilting experience, that seems to be true. Apparently, the absolute worst combination for hand quilting is dense cotton batting inside a quilt pieced of tightly-woven batik fabrics.

Quilters of long ago used whatever kind of batting they could get their hands on, which might include old flannel sheets or wool blankets. Modern quilters are spoiled in our choice of battings. We can select from 100% cotton (organic or not), cotton/polyester blends, silk, bamboo, wool, and combinations thereof. Battings can also be low, medium, or high loft, which is an indication of how much they “puff up.” (Remember those puffy comforters from the 70s and 80s?—high loft polyester for sure.) Some battings have “scrim,” which is a a fine mesh added to the batt to help keep the fibers together.

Depending upon what look the quilter might want in the finished product, some people even combine several different types of batting in a single quilt, using polyester for loft and cotton for definition.

When I started quilting, I used the batting I could find at Joann Fabrics. That was almost always a product from The Warm Company, usually their Warm and Natural 100% cotton batting. Occasionally, I’d be able to find the Warm and Plush batting there, too, which is my all-time favorite and a slightly heavier version of the Warm and Natural. Last year, though, all of the Warm Company’s products started disappearing from Joanns. I couldn’t get Insul-Bright for potholders. Warm and Plush batting was nowhere to be found, and Warm and Natural started disappearing, too.

Apparently, the president of The Warm Company sent out a letter last year stating that The Warm Company products would no longer be sold at Joann Fabrics. No reason was given. Perhaps it was a dispute over wholesale pricing. Who knows?

Hobby Lobby carries The Warm Company products, but our Hobby Lobby’s packaged batting inventory tends to be on the thin side. I’ve also used batting from Hobbs, Quilter’s Dream, and Pellon. I keep a stash of batting on hand—I stock up during sales—so it wasn’t like I was hunting for Warm and Natural batting. Joanns started carrying batting from Fairfield. I’ve used the Fairfield Toasty Cotton and 80/20 cotton/polyester blend batts with no issues.

This long story does have a point, and it’s this:

For the neutral diamonds quilt, I pulled a batting of the appropriate size out of the stash. It happened to be a package of Fairfield Organic Cotton. This is the first time I have used this batting, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary when I unfolded it, laid it out, and pin basted it between the top and the backing. When I started working with it, though, the batting along the edges of the quilt—which extends past the top and gets trimmed off when I am finished quilting—did what you see in the picture, above. That’s never happened before.

This batting doesn’t have a scrim. Batting packaging always comes with a recommendation for quilting density. Battings with scrim can be quilted less densely, sometimes with lines up to 10” apart. This packaging recommended quilting no farther apart than 4”. That’s not unreasonable. I don’t like ultra-dense quilting where the quilt has so much thread in it that it can stand up by itself, but I do like enough quilting to hold things together.

I spent several hours yesterday quilting the center of this neutral diamonds quilt. I stitched in the ditch along all the seamlines, which created a grid of quilting lines no farther apart than 4”. In some areas, they are only 2” apart. I am not sure that is going to be enough quilting. The feel of the quilt is amazing—it is just the kind of quilt I would want to cuddle under while watching television—but I worry about the stability of the batting. I don’t want the batting to disintegrate and lump up the first time this quilt gets washed.

I am going to stitch in the ditch along the seamlines of the narrow dark brown border and then do closely-spaced loops in that wider brown border. The center section may need more lines of quilting, but I’ll wait and reassess. I won’t buy any more of this batting, however, and I shouldn’t have to. Apparently, The Warm Company and Joanns have resolved whatever differences they were having, and Warm and Natural quilt batting is supposed to be coming back to Joann stores. That’s also an American-made product, so hopefully there won’t be any supply disruptions.

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Everything is lush and green outside thanks to the rain. I popped out to the greenhouse yesterday to check on seedlings. The tray of lettuce is gorgeous:

When he built the greenhouse, the husband also made several large trays (2’ x 3’) with mesh bottoms. These are great for starting lettuce. Sometimes we harvest the lettuce for salads and sometimes I transplant the seedlings out into the garden. I’ve been transplanting from this tray, but we may also have to start eating some of this. I can just cut off what we need and let it grow back. If we get a break in the rain today, though, I’ll plant more of this out in the garden. This is Ruby, which is my favorite lettuce variety. In the greenhouse, the leaves are green, but once I plant it outside, the leaves turn a beautiful ruby red color.

Beans and Bears

I am not unhappy to see the rain, although the weather makes the husband’s concrete pours more difficult and messy. He had to undress on the porch when he came home from work yesterday and his clothes went straight into the washing machine. The rain is letting me catch up on some inside projects, though, and that’s good.

We were running low on canned beans—specifically red ones—so I dipped into the Y2K supply that Cathy gifted me last summer and put some to soak overnight Tuesday. I ran two canner loads yesterday and ended up with 27 pints.

The total was actually 28 pints, but one jar didn’t seal, so it went into the fridge. I cooked down a ham bone the other day and that jar gives me a good excuse to make a batch of red beans and rice.

Once this stretch of rain ends, I need to think about planting beans out in the garden. It should be warm enough. I am devoting quite a bit of space to growing dry beans just because we eat so many. I have the seed from last year’s crop of purple Kebarika beans and Vermont Cranberry, as well as white ones and the green ones that came from a bag of beans I bought in the Hispanic food section at a Wal-Mart in Spokane. I also ordered Black Calypso and “Steuben Yellow Eye, AKA Molasses Face”—there’s a name for you—from Victory Seeds in Oregon.

We have had our first neighborhood bear sighting. Someone who lives around the corner from us posted on Facebook that they had a black bear on their porch around 9 o’clock last night. It’s that time of year. The chicken coop is electrified, but I’ll need to pay attention when I am wandering around the property.

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I pieced the backing and basted that neutral diamond scrap quilt together yesterday while waiting for beans to process. I think I am going to start quilting it today, although I am having a heck of a time trying to decide what kind of pattern to quilt. I may just stitch in the ditch on the center diamond portion. The quilt also has two borders, a narrow one and a wider one. I’ll probably quilt loops in the wider border. We’ll see. Perhaps inspiration will strike while I am working on it. Finished is better than perfect, though, and it’s not the only quilt top in the queue. I am not going to drive myself nuts over it.

Our pastor has been hosting weekly informal Zoom get-togethers which are great for catching up with everyone. My friends Elaine and Joann were knitting during yesterday’s gathering, and I commented that I need to retrieve my current prayer shawl project from the front pew at church where it has been languishing since March. (I keep it there so I can knit during the sermon time.) I don’t have any suitable prayer shawl yarn here or I would just start another one. The blanket strips I have been knitting for another group project are all done.

Nothing jacks up my anxiety level faster than having to sit still with nothing to work on. I should have grabbed some embroidery.

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I’ve been watching a YouTube channel recently called “Sidestep Adventures,” produced by a guy in Georgia who wanders around the countryside in search of old cemeteries. He has found some with headstones dating back to the late 1700s. His approach is very thoughtful and respectful and the videos are not as macabre as they might sound. Truly, though, stories like the one where a family buried six children in the space of 10 years help put the current situation into perspective. We have little to complain about.

What We Take for Granted

I was asked to make a couple of aprons as a custom order. The aprons themselves are not complicated, but the customer had some specific ideas of what she wanted. Above all, they need to be sturdy and able to withstand repeated washing and drying. I had some turquoise 100% cotton twill in the stash. My customer liked that, but I only had enough for one apron. She asked if the second one could be the same fabric but in chocolate brown.

On a good day, I might be able to source what I need in Kalispell. Three months into a pandemic, with broken supply chains and reduced operating hours in stores, the chances of finding 100% cotton twill in chocolate brown were slim to none. I also need to adjust my errand-running schedule. I prefer to go into town early in the morning. I can’t do that anymore.

• Joann Fabrics is now only open from 10 am to 5 pm, and their first hour is reserved for at-risk customers.

• Wells Fargo Bank pushed back the time their drive-through opens from 9 am to 9:30 am with no warning. Their website still lists the opening time as 9 am. Does opening half an hour later really make a difference?

• Hobby Lobby is only open from 10 am to 7 pm.

I forget all these things and head to town at 8:30 in the morning so I can be the first one in the door, only to have to drive around and waste gas and time until everything opens. Our local bank, where we keep the husband’s business accounts, is open at the drive-through only, but at least they are keeping to normal business hours.

From now on, I need to run my errands after lunch, which really chops up the day.

Hobby Lobby has 100% cotton twill, but not in chocolate brown. They are also out of some other supplies that I need, and while those supplies are not critical, I wonder if they are gone for good. Joann Fabrics has plenty of twill—even chocolate brown—but all of it has spandex in it. Fabric with spandex eventually breaks down after repeated washing and drying, so I can’t compromise. I need the twill to be 100% cotton. They are also running out of thread, batting, and interfacing. Again, I am good on those items (for now), but I wonder what else is going to disappear.

With no other choice but to order some twill, I came home and started surfing fabric supplier websites. I try to use Fabric.com as a last resort because it is owned by Amazon, but I can find fabric there when I can’t find it anywhere else. Not this time, though. The landing page of their website says, “Due to reduced capacity, some items have been temporarily removed from the site, and new orders can take up to 30 days to arrive.” They had no chocolate brown twill.

Ironically, I ended up back at Joann Fabrics. The Joann.com website has 100% cotton twill available in chocolate brown. The minimum order is two yards (this seems to be a new requirement). I don’t need two yards, but I had to order two yards. Of course, they are also experiencing shipping delays, so there is no guarantee I will get what I need in a timely manner, but we’ll see.

Believe me, I know that these are all first-world problems, and they are minor compared to what other people are facing. I am not trying to keep a business afloat. I certainly can’t start or expand my fledgling sewing business, though, if I can’t source fabric. My hope is that some of this manufacturing comes back to the US—even if supplies cost more—but even if that happens, it’s going to be a long, bumpy ride.

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I found out the other day that the Boyd-Walker Sewing Machine Company in Spokane closed in December. They had been a Pfaff dealer there for 75 years. Apparently, though, the owner had cancer and died last year. I am bummed about this. The store wasn’t big, but they had all sorts of sewing miscellany. They also sold refurbished vintage machines. I know the entire back of that building was full of old machines and I wonder what happened to them. Hopefully, someone bought the stock so it wouldn’t end up as scrap.

I am really struggling with not being able to get in my car and get on the road. For the past half dozen years, I thought nothing about popping over to Spokane and Seattle to see my girls and do some shopping. I haven’t been on a road trip for over three months, and anyone who knows me knows that I get twitchy after about six weeks. That need to adventure by myself is a bigger part of my psyche than even I had realized.

I think I am going to have to pick a day when the weather is crummy and road trip to Missoula. I can’t go far, in any case, until the chicks are a bit bigger and don’t need to be checked on every few hours. The minute Jay Inslee opens Washington State again, though, I will be hard pressed not to get in my car and head for Seattle.

And that’s enough whining for today. I don’t think I’ve posted this picture yet (ETA: Whoops, yes I did. Sorry. Side effect of blogging at 5 am.)

This is an apron pattern I was playing around with last week. It’s reversible—the back is another coffee-themed fabric.

Violets in the Woods

I went out early yesterday morning and weeded the peas and prepared a bed for the broccoli seedlings. The corn and cowpeas continue to look good under their hoops. I am tempted to remove the hoops over the corn as I don’t see any frost-level low temps in the forecast for the next couple of weeks. Waiting until Memorial Day is considered safest, but we had 3” of snow on June 10 one year so it’s a gamble no matter how you look at it.

I startled a turkey by the grape vines. It ran out from the tall grass and flew away. We had a mama turkey nesting back there one year, but I looked and didn’t see anything. If there is a nest, it may be well hidden.

Our morning board meeting session ran from 10-noon. I set the laptop up on the counter in the kitchen and cut up a ham during the first part of the meeting, then got a chair and my knitting and knitted for the second part. Everyone is used to seeing me working on something. I either knit or bind quilts. I simply cannot sit still and listen unless my hands are occupied with a project.

Our board is comprised of members from congregations in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. We usually meet in Oregon, where the denominational office is, but had planned to have this meeting here in Kalispell. Unfortunately, the pandemic changed those plans. I have enjoyed my four years on this board and even though we’re all Zoom-savvy by now, meeting via video conferencing is nothing like being able to visit in person.

Our Executive Conference Minister noted during the meeting that the denomination is warning congregations that we may not be able to engage in congregational singing for the foreseeable future. Singing together has been identified as a potential “superspreader” event. I said to the husband that telling Mennonites they cannot sing together is like telling a fish it can no longer live in water. The whole concept makes me very sad.

We had a two-hour break between the morning and afternoon sessions, so I went out and cut grass in the front yard. The husband was busy all day cutting up and clearing the downed trees in the woods. I think we lost two dozen trees out there in that March windstorm, and not small ones, either. This will be an ongoing project. All the brush has to be piled up and the logs stacked.

There are violets all over the property. Yellow ones:

And purple ones:

People have been commenting that there are fewer trilliums this spring. I don’t see any in our woods in the usual places, either. I wonder why that is.

Elysian’s 6 year-old son came over to get eggs while I was cutting grass. They keep a small fridge on the corner of their property—which is right at the entrance to the state land hiking area—and sell eggs and veggies out of it. They do a brisk business. When they run out of their own eggs, we sell them our eggs at wholesale. Elysian’s son is quite the entrepreneur, even at such a young age, and this has been a great opportunity for him to learn math and basic economic principles.

I worked on the front yard again after dinner, but I’ll have to finish it today. I also want to get those broccoli seedlings in the ground and put the zucchini out under a hoop. Lots to do while the sun is shining.

In Between the Raindrops

I did not get out quickly enough yesterday morning to cut the grass before it started raining. I stayed inside and sewed.

The Get Out of Town Duffle Bag is finished except for the inside binding and the shoulder strap. Here is one side:

And the other:

This was such a quick make, or perhaps it seems that way because I made the byAnnie Ultimate Travel Bag last year and many of the techniques were familiar. I was almost disappointed when I got to the end and the bag was finished! I doubt I could fit a weekend’s wardrobe in this bag, but it would be perfect as a day trip bag with a change of clothes. If I were a young mom with a baby, I’d use it as a diaper bag. I also think it would make a good bag for carrying around a small sewing machine—like that Janome Gem—although I might beef up the carrying straps a bit and make then 1-1/2” wide instead of 1” wide.

I also have the byAnnie Round Trip Duffle pattern. That pattern is similar to this one but a bit bigger.

I am going to use my Accuquilt 2-1/2” strip cutter to make the bias binding for the inside of the GOOT bag. That’s a method I haven’t tried yet, but I’ve seen it demonstrated and it looks like a slick way to cut binding accurately.

We have a few days of sunshine before the rain starts again. I’ll be making aprons next week as I have a custom order to work on.

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The husband asked the Architectural Review Committee to pick a siding color for the new shop. That involved taking the sheet with the (tiny) color swatches out to the old garage to hold them up against the siding on that building so that we get something relatively close. He got a price quote from the supplier, so I think he’ll order the siding and get that installed soon and that project will be finished.

I might make another attempt at cutting the grass today between our board meeting sessions. I haven’t been out to the garden in a few days to see how bad the weeds are. This hasn’t been the warmest spring that I can remember, but it certainly has been warmer than the past couple of years. The peas are already a couple of inches tall. No doubt the weeds are racing ahead.

Competing with China

I hemmed the sunshade yesterday and hung it back up.

I also installed a grommet at each side, about halfway up, so we could tie the shade to the posts and keep it from billowing out in the breeze.

The rod system the husband rigged up works very well:

However, I noticed that the Coolaroo is starting to fray a bit around a couple of the grommets. I think that was due to it blowing around in the wind before we designed this hanging system. I’ll dab some Fray-Chek on there, but were I to do this again, I would probably put a square of heavy-duty interfacing under the grommets for added stability.

I stopped at Hobby Lobby yesterday, and as I was walking around the home and garden section, I rounded a corner and ran smack into an end-cap display of Coolaroo sunshades, 12’ x 12’, with mounting hardware, 50% off. When I got home, I e-mailed my friend Scott—who gifted me with the roll of Coolaroo after he finished making a shade for their pergola—and joked that he and I were competing with China. I didn’t look to see how much Hobby Lobby was charging for the shades. I don’t want to know and it doesn’t really matter. My custom-made shade works perfectly for this situation and that’s all that matters.

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I took a break from the GOOT bag and messed around with an apron design on Wednesday. I had this cute coffee-themed fabric in the stash:

It’s reversible:

Some day I will figure out the white balance adjustment on my iPhone. I need to get a replacement battery for my fancy digital camera and go back to using that one.

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All is well out in the chicken coop. The peeps will start working on their second (40-pound!) bag of chick grower soon. I see a significant difference between these chicks and the ones we usually get from the farm store. The ones from the farm store travel through the mail when they are literally just hours old, and they seem to take longer to recover from that stress than these chicks have. These chicks only had to travel from the kitchen to the chicken coop.

With all the rain, our yard is starting to look like a jungle. I cut the grass in the backyard yesterday afternoon and was hoping to do the front yard this morning, but it’s supposed to rain all day again. Tomorrow’s forecast is warm and sunny. However, I have a denominational board meeting via Zoom so I won’t get much done outside. (This is my last board meeting. My term ends in June.) I need to plant some lettuce seedlings on Sunday and get the zucchini plants out under another hoop. And weed. The weeds grow faster than anything else.

Rooster or Hen?

In my reading about how to determine if chicks are roosters or hens, I ran across this website with a good explanation of using the difference in wing feathers to sex chicks. We will have to wait until the chicks are older for verification of its accuracy, but I can see some differences. Apparently, rooster chicks have wing feathers that are the same length while hens have wing feathers that vary in length.

I am 99.99999% sure that the chick in the middle of this photo is a rooster:

His wing feathers are all the same length. He is also sporting some pretty nice tail feathers. This particular dude is the largest and most aggressive chick of the whole bunch, and tends to strut around like he owns the place. He may require an attitude adjustment from Big Daddy (that’s our rooster’s new name) when he is older. He is also the handsomest of the chicks, being an allover creamy white color with black striping on his wings. I’d be inclined to keep him if he doesn’t end up being too full of himself.

Sometimes the little suspected rooster chicks puff up their chests and go at each other in a miniature display of male dominance. Besides being entertaining, watching their behavior is a good way to get to know their personalities. I spend a lot of time in the chicken coop looking over the edge of the brooder box.

It’s hard to see because of the heat lamp—and I don’t want to handle the chicks more than necessary—but this one is likely a female:

Her wing feathers go from short to long.

Another way to determine if chicks are hens or roosters is to use sex-linked characteristics—specifically, down coloring patterns. I need to print out a cheat sheet and take it out to the coop with me and examine individual chicks. Sex-linked characteristics depend on the breed of the father, the breed of the mother, and whether the chick is male or female. Those spots on the heads of some of the chicks are sex-linked characteristics.

My initial assessment of the gender distribution in this batch of chicks is 4-5 likely roosters and the rest hens. I’lll be thrilled if we do indeed get 12 hens out of a group of 17. That is as many pullets as we were planning to get from the farm store and more than I was expecting. I would have been satisfied with half and half.

Time will tell, though.

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Work on the GOOT bag continues here and there—yesterday afternoon, I assembled the front zipper pocket and bound the top edges of the other pockets:

For once, I lucked out with the zipper. I like the way the designer has you assemble the zipper pocket, but it requires using a zipper a few inches longer than the opening. Once it is inserted, you cut the excess zipper tape from both ends. I went digging through my zipper collection and fished out a 10” length of zipper tape that must have been left over from another bag project as it had been cut on one end. A zipper pull was still attached. Yay! I had the correct zipper in the correct length and got to use up a leftover.

The rain continues and I do not have to go anywhere, making this a good day for sewing. I’ll work on the GOOT bag, but I’d also like to get some quilt tops basted together in anticipation of quilting them. The husband asks me periodically if I would like a longarm machine; I would, but we really have no place to put it. I do look at the smaller, sit-down longarm machines from time to time. Perhaps one of these days. For now, the Janome does a fine job.

The thread rack at Joanns is about half empty, and from what I understand, they are having trouble restocking other products. I have plenty of thread, but I’ve been picking up packages of rotary cutter blades as they go on sale because I wouldn’t be surprised if they become scarce, too. I’ve kept all my old blades and could sharpen them if I have to. Re-sharpened blades don’t work quite as well as new ones—I’ve tried all the tricks and I also have an electric sharpener—but in a pinch, they’ll do.

It Is a Small (Musical) World

Thank goodness the wind finally stopped. There was no wind in town yesterday, but up here, it blew until the sun went down. We are supposed to get rain for the next couple of days, which is perfectly fine with me. We need it.

I dropped off cowpea seedlings at Cathy’s yesterday and got to see the baby calves and chat with her for a bit. Cathy also sings and plays the piano and has a great interest in hymns and hymn history. She pulled out a hymnal I haven’t seen before. I have an extensive collection but I don’t have everything. Cathy grew up in the Baptist faith, although she often attends our Mennonite church here. The hymnal that the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship uses is this one:

I sat down at her lovely Chickering baby grand with this book and played a version of O Love That Will Not Let Me Go that I’ve never heard before. The traditional tune for that song is "St. Margaret,” and as a church pianist, I have to say that it ranks right up near the top of the list of songs I hate to play.

[Other songs on that list include Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy, and Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. In short, any songs with weird intervals and/or what I like to refer to as “gratuitous accidentals” get put on that list. Also on that list is just about anything by Marty Haugen, who is a well-known Lutheran composer—the Lutheran church I play for did his Holden Evening Prayer one year, which includes a song written in E-flat minor with six flats. Five flats is not hard, but remembering that C is also flat in the key of E-flat minor requires serious concentration.]

Anyway, this hymnal includes O Love That Will Not Let Me Go set to a different—and quite beautiful—tune called “Donna.” I would be sorely tempted to paste that version over the version in our hymnal.

Cathy showed me another song she really likes from that hymnal. She said, “This is a Lutheran one,” and I said, “Oh, I probably know it.” As it turns out, I didn’t. It’s a Christmas song called Where Shepherds Lately Knelt. I played through it once and then looked at the bottom of the page where the tune name and hymn text information appear, and was delighted to find out that the words were written by Jaroslav Vajda.

I might need my mother to pop in here with additional information or clarification, but Jaroslav Vajda was born in 1919 in Lorain, Ohio, where my family is from. His father was a Lutheran minister and may have been minister of the church I grew up in (?), but in any case, I remember hearing that Jaroslav Vajda was connected to our congregation. He was a prolific hymnist and wrote over 200 original and translated hymns. One of his most well-known hymns is Go, My Children, With My Blessing, which is set to the tune “Ar Hyd Y Nos” and appears in the Mennonite hymnal.

Who knew?

I came home and immediately ordered a copy of the Celebrating Grace hymnal and also found a lovely choir arrangement of Where Shepherds Lately Knelt, so we might be doing that at Christmas this year.

I have to say, the Baptists really do have church music dialed in. Catherine, who was our church pianist for many years, came from a Baptist background and taught me most of what I know about being a church pianist. I am eager to see what else is in this Baptist hymnal. The arrangements appear to be very singable and without the goofy chord substitutions found in the some of the Lutheran hymnals.

Maybe You Shouldn't Grow Cowpeas in Montana

Saturday was a beautiful day. I got out to the garden while it was still cool (50 degrees is shirtsleeve weather in Montana), carefully prepared a bed, built the frames for the hoop house over it—and took a hit to the chin when a piece of the flexible conduit we use for the frames slipped out of my hand and snapped back—planted the cowpea seedlings, and watered them in. Later in the day, the husband brought out the roll of row cover, we cut a piece to length, pulled it over the frame, and secured the bottom edges with long 2x4s and metal T-posts. I was satisfied that I had provided the most hospitable environment possible for these delicate little zone 8 plants. I extended the growing season by starting them in the greenhouse. I planned for cold temperatures. I gave them every advantage I could think of.

I did not anticipate hurricane force winds.

I hate the wind. And hate isn’t even a strong enough word for how I feel about it. It sets my teeth on edge and makes me cranky. When we woke up Sunday morning, the covers were off all the hoops. Thankfully, it had only dropped to the high 30s. The cowpeas seemed a little shocked, but not frozen.

And still the wind blew. All day. Huge, swirling gusts. It took the covers off all the hoops again and again and again. It is 5:09 a.m. as I write this and I fully expect that when I go out to the garden this morning to check, there will be no row cover on the hoops. The wind died down overnight, but is supposed to start up again this morning.

Sigh.

Perhaps this is a message from the universe that I should not try to grow cowpeas in Montana. As long as the plants are not frozen, however, I am going to hold out hope for a crop.

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Someone on one of the homesteading groups I belong to noted a few weeks ago that canning supplies were starting to sell out. Indeed, when I checked at our grocery store—which usually has a decent supply of lids and rings—there were only a few items available. I have plenty of jars thanks to Margaret, who gifted me hers when she moved. I also have plenty of rings. I try not to buy lids until I need them because I don’t want to risk the rubber seals drying out. However, it seems prudent to stock up now in case they aren’t available in August.

I went to the Lehman’s website. They sell bulk lids in sleeves of several hundred. (That’s not excessive; I do at least 75 jars of tomato sauce alone every season.) The lids were listed as unavailable, but I could still order them and Lehman’s would ship when available. I ordered a sleeve of each and got the shipping notice last week. Whew.

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The pieces for the GOOT bag body are quilted and cut:

The cutting part is always nervewracking, and it was made especially so with this project because I only had a 34” long remnant of that Alexander Henry butterfly print (“Chiara,” from 2014, by the way.) The pattern calls for a full yard, but the designer builds a certain amount of slop into the pattern and I was confident I could get all the pieces I needed from the length of fabric I had.

Of course, that was predicated on me not screwing up any of the subcuts. I somehow managed to cut one of the outside pockets width x height instead of height x width, which doesn’t sound like a problem except that the quilted lines were running horizontally instead of vertically. I always have a contingency plan—eliminate that pocket, make it from another fabric, etc.—but I managed to get everything I needed cut from the original fabric.

I know, “Measure twice, cut once.” Believe me, I hear that all the time, either in my head or from the husband.

The next step is to cut pieces from the contrasting fabric that make up the handles, pocket bindings, and other bits. I prefer to cut parts that way rather than cutting every piece from every fabric right at the beginning. My fear is that I am going to lose something if I am unable to work on the project continuously from start to finish, so I only cut parts as I need them. That makes more sense to my concrete sequential brain, too.

It’s supposed to rain mid-week, so I should have time to work on this again.

Weekend Miscellany

The Accuquilt Zoom presentation I attended yesterday morning was quite good. Truly, these are aimed at helping retailers sell product, but the presenter provided a lot of good design-related information, which is the content I love. And the quilt store here that hosted the presentation offered a 20% discount on items to all attendees. I took advantage of the opportunity to pick up another die and some cutting mats. I do not want our quilt stores to go out of business.

[The husband said this must be like when the Snap-On tool trailer comes to local hardware stores, although there is no accompanying scantily-clad “Mr. Accuquilt” needed to help sell items.]

I do prefer the in-person presentations in the stores. I wonder, though, if those are going to become less and less common.

I stitched down the binding on the Moda Love wallhanging while I watched the presentation. I swapped it out for another wallhanging I made that Margaret quilted for me that hangs over our kitchen table. I need to wash that other wallhanging, so the Moda Love wallhanging is in its place temporarily:

I adore quick and easy projects and this one certainly fits the bill.

Speaking of laundry, the husband is still trying to fix the dryer. This is the Amana dryer we bought when we built the house 24 years ago. Just after Christmas, the timer stopped working and the dryer wasn’t putting out any heat (it’s a gas dryer). He replaced the timer and got it to produce heat, but only on the delicate cycle. The heat stopped working altogether last week. I have a clothesline mounted on the ceiling in the laundry room, but I would prefer not to have to line-dry everything. He took the dryer apart again and ordered more parts for it. (I think they came in the mail yesterday.) Perhaps by the time he is done, the dryer will be completely rebuilt. I don’t care as long as it works.

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DD#1 and I had a video chat yesterday so she could see the chicks. She and her fiancé are still at his parents’ house while they figure out what the next couple of months hold. Her fiancé was in the middle of his final clinical dental rotation when the state of Washington closed down. He can’t take the second part of his board exams because the testing facilities are closed. Graduation was supposed to be the first weekend in June, and although it sounds like the class will still graduate on time, it won’t be an in-person ceremony, which we were all looking forward to attending. He has worked so hard for the last four years and it is frustrating to be so close and not be able to celebrate that accomplishment. DD#1 is still working as an OT, thankfully. I know this uncertainty is wearing on them, though.

The chicks are moving out to the brooder box in the chicken coop today. I decided that at least one of them must be a rooster because it was awake and peeping loudly at 4:30 a.m. this morning.

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A new store called “Got Me in Stitches” has opened in the shopping area north of Kalispell. I drove through the parking lot to take a look but have not yet gone inside. The sign says “Yarn and Embroidery,” which is promising. What a hard time for a new retailer to be opening, though, especially as the local news has been filled with stories of other small retailers going out of business.

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The sunshade project has gone through some modifications. We hung it from nails in the porch rafter but ran into two problems. First, we would prefer being able to move it out of the way when we don’t need it so we can watch the woods for bears. Second, the wind blew it down. I didn’t think the breeze was that strong, but the shade was rather like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge; when it got moving back and forth at just the right frequency, it popped off the nails.

The husband’s first thought was to hang it from a narrow rod threaded through the grommets, much like a curtain. That would allow us to move it out of the way. The metal grommets are only 5/8”, though, which were the largest ones I could find. I suggested that we hang it from a rod using shower curtain hooks. The designer, in her infinite wisdom, put in 12 grommets, which is exactly how many shower curtain hooks come in a package. I got the hooks and he stopped at the hardware store and bought a metal rod. Hopefully, we can get that installed this weekend. I may have to make a tie-back for the post. I have some leftover Cordura that would work nicely.

Two brains are better than one.

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I have an eyebrow wax scheduled for Monday and a haircut on Tuesday. I can’t wait any longer. I know both salons have instituted safeguards and I feel comfortable going ahead. My hair hasn’t been cut since the beginning of February. It’s at a length now where I have to start putting it up or it drives me nuts.