More Breadcrumbs on the Trail

I had an eyebrow wax scheduled yesterday morning but got to town a bit early, so I popped into a nearby thrift store to check the craft section. They had a large bookshelf full of books. I’m trying not to add to my book collection, but I went and looked anyway. You never know.

My eyes lighted on the spine of this book:

“Hmmm,” I thought. “That’s the book mentioned on the patchpieces.com blog as having a Noon and Night quilt in it.” I pulled it off the shelf and looked at the table of contents. Sure enough, it was listed there as Original Star Quilt on page 72. I flipped to page 72 and found a pattern for the Noon and Night block and a quilt designed by Liz Porter and Marianne Fons based upon a vintage quilt that had been lent to them by its owner.

I wasn’t expecting to see a pattern; for some reason, the patchpieces.com blog made it sound like the block had been mentioned in passing with no other additional information. I paid for the book ($2.50) and went on my way.

When I got home, I read the entire pattern. Part of me is annoyed that the universe waited until I had worked out all of the math and cutting by myself before dropping this book into my lap, but part of me was quite pleased to see that my numbers and method are similar—although not identical—to that of the legendary Fons and Porter. (I like my method better, but that’s just me.) Interestingly, they have their pattern’s skill level listed as “challenging.” I haven’t assigned a skill level for my pattern yet beyond noting that it is “not for beginning piecers,” but “challenging” is not far off base.

The quilt in the book is done in 30s prints on a muslin background in a straight setting. I kicked around the idea of a muslin background but went with something else. And while a straight setting is easy, I still think that block needs some breathing room.

So. I am up to 16 blocks now. I am going to need somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-60 blocks for a twin size quilt depending on sashing and/or borders.

Joanna whipped up the first test block from my instructions:

Don’t you love the fussy cutting on that great Cotton + Steel fabric? This is the kind of block that looks great in both vintage and modern fabrics. Joanna also gave me lots of great feedback on the instructions. I am no novice when it comes to pattern writing, but quilting instructions are a bit different than knitting instructions. At least we know that my method for making this block is reproducible by someone other than me.

A cold front is supposed to move through today. Hopefully, it brings with it some rain, but if nothing else, the temperatures are supposed to moderate a bit. Tomorrow and Saturday will be cooler. I plan to spend a fair bit of time out in the garden this weekend, so today will be devoted to working on the pattern and making more blocks.

Tomato Tenacity

I ran errands Monday and took WS to his Kids College class on French cooking. As we got out of the car, I noticed this in the berm in front of my bumper:

WS walked by and said, “Look, that’s a tomato plant,” and I said, “Yes, it surely is. Why on earth would it be growing there?” That led to a few minutes of speculation about the possibility of the community college having been built on the site of a former tomato farm.

His cooking teacher must be an elementary school teacher, because she has about 10 kids in that class and she’s got it running like a small factory. For anybody else, it would be like herding cats.

I had Ali’s little guy here yesterday afternoon. He’s five. We joke about these kids being little Amish boys because they don’t get much screen time. Ali doesn’t have a TV at her house, so coming over here for an afternoon of YouTube videos is a treat. I made a batch of zucchini bread while we watched the following: a bulldozer that sank in a rice paddy being pulled out by two other dozers and an excavator; several trick motorbike competitions; the demolition derby from the 2013 Los Angeles County Fair; and a series of heavy equipment failure videos. I learn a lot from watching these selections, such as why women live longer than men.

[The heavy equipment failure videos just make me laugh. When the little guy was about nine months old, I had him for the afternoon. I had to go do something for a few minutes, so I left him with the husband, and when I came back, the two of them were sitting in the husband’s recliner watching heavy equipment failure videos. This is a longstanding tradition.]

I so enjoy having these kids around. They put up with me, but they are fascinated by the husband. They always want to know where he is and what he’s doing. And they love to sit in his recliner.

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I am up to a dozen Noon and Night blocks. I won’t show you the blocks, but I will show you this:

I got out the collection of 30s/40s reproduction fabrics for my first version of this quilt. (There may be more than one version; we’ll have to see how I feel when I get the first one done.) I love how it looks so far.

I am thinking of using some of my reproduction vintage Simplicity fabric for my Poppins bag:

Perhaps the red one? I also have some fabric with sewing machines on it that would work, too. We’ll see.

Verbose

I am old enough to have done my first knitting patterns and my books in traditional print publishing. The transition from print to digital was awful. Making the PDFs was the easy part. It was all the stuff associated with delivering those PDFs that was a huge headache—setting up a website with shopping cart software (much of which had to be customized with hand coding back then), credit card processing, etc. I often think that the indie knitting designers who came after me, when most of the kinks had been worked out of digital publishing, had a much easier time starting their businesses.

(Get off my lawn.)

I love digital publishing, though, if only for the fact that that I am not limited to a certain number of pages. And that’s a good thing, because the pattern for this Noon and Night quilt is turning into a small novel.

[To be honest, that is probably why I started Twists and Turns, because I couldn’t just write a knitting pattern. I had to write about the history and the technical aspects and the design philosophy behind the pattern, too, and for that, I needed a newsletter.]

The pattern will be as long as it needs to be for me to communicate the process effectively. Another benefit of digital is that you only have to print the pages you need.

As the pattern stands, I have illustrations but no photos. I think there is a tendency by some pattern writers—not all, but some—to use photos as a crutch for poor instructions. Photos also use up a lot of ink. I do have a lightbox and a really nice camera, though, so I could incorporate some photos if needed.

Does anyone have opinions on photos versus illustrations? Or about overly-chatty pattern writing?

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I went out yesterday afternoon to get one last crop of lettuce. Cutting some of it back did not help and it bolted anyway, so I will let it go to seed now. If the weather cools off some, I plan to start another tray of lettuce in the greenhouse to transplant toward the end of August. I’ve done that in the past, and with a hoop over it, we may be able to keep it going until Thanksgiving. The temps have to go down a bit, though, because even with all the vents and doors open, the greenhouse is an oven in the middle of the day and any lettuce seedlings I start now will just bake to death.

I happened to look at the corn while I was out there and thought that I should probably check an ear to see how it was coming along. I really thought it needed another week. Nope. In fact, I am probably about three or four days late getting to it.

This is always what happens with corn—one of us happens to look at it, realizes it is ready, and then it’s a mad scramble to get it picked, shucked, blanched, and frozen. Corn doesn’t wait. So that’s what I did yesterday afternoon and now the winter supply of corn is in the freezer for use in soups and stews.

You may remember that this was the year of experimentation with the old Native American corn varieties. I planted four of them: Montana Cudu, Montana Lavender Clay, Painted Mountain, and Painted Hill. We’ve done Painted Mountain in the past. Painted Hill is a cross of Painted Mountain and Luther Hill.

I am tickled with them. I took the picture after I blanched them, because the kernels swelled and the colors really deepened:

These will stay in the rotation for next year. The Montana Cudu—the blue one on the left—produced much better than I expected. I thought it was going to be a diva. The Lavender Clay has an interesting flavor. It’s sweet, but an earthy sweet. I had a hard time not eating all of that one. I think it would be really good dried and ground into flour. The Painted Mountain/Painted Hill (they are very similar) did well, too. We’ve grown Painted Mountain before.

Part of the fun of heirloom varieties is the fact that they produce some really odd-looking fruits and vegetables. These ears were not as big as commercially-grown corn, nor as consistent in length, but they taste good and that’s what matters. I need to make a note to myself about the length of the growing season, though. Those seedlings were 10” tall when I planted them in the garden in May, and if I do that again, I need to start watching for ears around the middle of July.

Peas are done. Corn is done. Raspberries are just about done. Lettuce is done. Zucchini and cucumbers continue to produce. Tomatoes will be ripening soon—I found a ripe one the other day but I ate it before I remembered to take a picture. The beans that did come up are doing well.

My plans to sew yesterday were upended by the corn, but that happens. I have eight Noon and Night blocks done so far and I love the way it is coming together. With all the cutting done, it only takes me about 30 minutes to make one block.

The Noon and Night Goose Chase

We live in an age of information at our fingertips—quite literally—so you would think that something as simple as a quilt block would not be able to evade capture. You would be wrong.

Last week, I ordered a CD from Amazon that is supposed to contain “all 1,001” quilt block patterns that appeared in the Kansas City Star from 1928 to 1961. The CD came yesterday and it does have 1,001 quilt block patterns on it. (I think it will be a useful resource.) However, Noon and Night is not among them, despite the note in Jinny Beyer’s Quilter’s Album of Patchwork Patterns that Noon and Night is a Laura Wheeler block design that appeared in the Kansas City Star in 1934.

Where is the discrepancy? I went back to the Beyer book and looked at her information about source material, specifically the Kansas City Star patterns. Beyer notes that “In all, there were 1068 patterns given in the newspaper, more than three quarters of which were pieced designs.” Aha! I don’t know who came up with the 1,001 number, but apparently, 67 patterns are still at large, Noon and Night among them.

I have scoured Pinterest, eBay, Etsy, and done various Google image searches, to no avail. This morning—because I couldn’t sleep at 3 a.m. due to the heat—I opened my iPad and did a quick Google search on “Laura Wheeler quilt block,” then clicked on the images link. As I was scrolling down, I spotted something:

Do you see it? Look at the middle of the picture. That’s the Noon and Night block. This link originally went to an eBay sale but now goes nowhere. I did a screenshot of the image to save it. Unfortunately, the resolution is so low that the only words I can make out are “Laura Wheeler Designs” and “Quilt in Light and Dark Scraps.”

This answers one question for me, at least. I wanted to know how the pattern was presented initially. Did the star points rotate or were they mirror-imaged? This appears to show the mirror-imaged version.

I’ve got an eBay search saved so that if anyone puts Kansas City Star quilt patterns up for sale, I get an alert. Maybe one of these days I’ll get my hands on an original print of this pattern. And maybe pigs will fly.

I did a lot of cutting yesterday for my version of this quilt. I may take a break today and do some prep work for the large Poppins bag. I looked at the class information again, but the store is offering it from 10-5 on a Sunday and a Monday in mid-September and that won’t work because of church. I don’t need the class to make the bag; I just thought it would be fun.

I can’t do much in the garden right now except run the sprinkler and pick raspberries. This heat is supposed to break by Tuesday, when the high is forecast to be 81. Still hot, in my opinion, but better than 97.

Blog Housekeeping

Teri, one of my blog readers, alerted me to the fact that the comment box was not displaying on my blog posts. I hadn’t changed any settings. I opened a trouble ticket with Squarespace and received this reply:

Due to an authentication issue in these browsers, we've temporarily disabled logged in commenting in Safari and Chrome. To comment, you can use guest or anonymous commenting in these browsers.

I have changed the settings to allow anonymous commenting, but comments are still on moderated status. (Also, nice of Squarespace to alert their users ahead of time about the change.)

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I’m going to have to start another project so I have something else to talk about here. The Noon and Night quilt needs to go under wraps now. I am confident in my block cutting and assembly instructions, but at some point, I may ask if anyone is willing to make a few test blocks for me to make sure my method is reproducible. My job now is to make blocks until I can’t stand it anymore, then play around with some setting options.

I’ve always been good at finding niches—Aran and cabled knitting design being a prime example—and any quilt designs I publish will continue in that vein. I want Noon and Night to be the kind of quilt pattern that would appeal to my quilt-making sensibilities: something slightly challenging to piece, scrappy but not disorganized, with opportunities for the quilter to put a personal spin on the quilt. If I can throw a bit of history and detective work into the mix—inspired by Margaret—I’ll do that, too. I am not Judy Niemeyer and have no aspirations to be. (Her quilts are stunning, though.) I am going to find my lane and stay there.

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I took WS to Kids College yesterday morning because I had errands to run in town. He’s taking Japanese Language and Culture this week and it has been fun to listen to him talk about what they’ve learned in class. I am always amazed at what sponges little kids are. I find it distressing that so much of that love of learning gets beaten out of kids in the current educational system. Our girls were fortunate enough to attend a rural school where many of the teachers were community members that they saw at church, at the grocery store, etc., and who were committed to the idea of the whole village helping to raise the kids. Unfortunately, the bureaucratic nonsense implemented over the past couple of decades has resulted in an educational system that I no longer recognize. Worse, it is one that I think no longer benefits children.

I’m curious to see how this pandemic changes the educational system in this country. Homeschooling has always been a popular option in our area, and it might become even more popular now. Not everyone has the skills or the temperament to homeschool their children, though, which is why I also see an opportunity for “microschools” to become an option. A return to an older form of schooling might well be appropriate now.

A picture of the first blooming echinacea, just to brighten up your day:

There were more bees on the lavender hedge this morning, which is gratifying, but still not as many as usual.

The Ladybug Aphid Farm

I went through the peas one last time Tuesday morning, then pulled out the plants and made some repairs to the trellis for next year. I gave the pea vines to the chickens. When I checked on them an hour or so later, there was nothing left but a bunch of stems. Sometimes the chicken yard very much resembles a piranha tank.

I have this faint hope that I’ll be able to keep the lettuce from bolting during this heat wave by cutting it back, so that all went to the pigs. We’ve moved on from lettuce salads to cucumber salads—I made instant pickles (cucumbers in vinegar) the other night for the husband because the cucumber vines are taking over the world. Likewise the watermelon and cantaloupe vines, which have little golf ball-sized fruits on them.

Weeding continues. I had a terrible problem last year with a weed that looks like clover with yellow flowers. I believe it is some kind of woodsorrel. It has tenacious roots and lots of foliage that chokes out other plants. I managed to beat that one back this year with lots of cardboard and weed barrier, but of course, other weeds took its place. I have a bumper crop of chamomile, which would be a bonus were I not allergic to it. A sip of chamomile tea will make my sinuses swell almost instantly. Chamomile is a pretty plant, though, so mostly I leave it alone unless it’s in my way.

The thistles and nettles are neverending. I find them easiest to pull up when they are just about to flower. There is a large patch over by the grapes that I intended to eradicate yesterday morning, but after a couple of minutes, I started noticing lots of these little guys:

And when I say lots, I mean like dozens and dozens and dozens. Two of them were even having a romantic interlude. I looked around and they were on everything in that patch of weeds. Then I saw the aphids, and it dawned on me that I had stumbled into the ladybug aphid farm—although perhaps “lunch counter” would be a better term. I don’t know if ladybugs farm aphids like ants do.

I stopped pulling weeds. I want ladybugs in my garden. The last thing I am going to do is make it inhospitable for them. Chemical management of weeds and insects is forbidden (by me), so I have come to accept a baseline level of chaotic biodiversity. Sometimes that includes weeds. My garden will never grace the pages of a magazine. I do try to keep the noxious weeds under control, but I am not as picky about mullein, plantain, or lamb’s quarters, all of which have practical uses. (Yes, nettles have practical uses, too, but they hurt.)

My garden produces food—for us as well as the ladybugs, apparently. And the garter snakes, whose favorite place to hang out is underneath the leaves of the zucchini plant. I have to announce myself before reaching in.

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Work on the Noon and Night pattern layout continues here and there, as does sewing up more test blocks. I can make this block in my sleep at this point. It may be time to start an actual quilt.

I’ve had to impose some design restrictions, informal ones, because there is such a thing as too many choices. A few years ago, I joined the “Bag of the Month Club,” but I let my membership lapse. It really should have been called the “Purse of the Month Club,” because it was mostly fancy purse designs. When I commented in the Facebook group that I had been hoping for a wider variety of bags—wallets, backpacks, totes, duffels, etc.—I was told that we shouldn’t put restrictions on the designers regarding the style of bags because that would squelch their creativity. I respectfully disagree. Sometimes the most creative solutions come out of situations where the choices are limited, intentionally or otherwise.

But hey, what do I know?

I want to make a few more test blocks this afternoon before I commit to anything. Sewing is about the only thing I have energy for when it’s 90+ degrees in the afternoon. (We don’t have air conditioning.) The chickens hate this weather, too—they are cranky and snappish and pecking at each other. The pigs are happy as long as they have shade and cool dirt, although I go out to the pasture once or twice during the day and spray them with the hose. This is supposed to last until the middle of next week. Ugh.

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One of my jobs as bookkeeper for the construction company is to act as a collections agency. I don’t have to do that often, thankfully. The husband’s reputation is solid enough that he can be particular about the jobs he takes and the general contractors he works for. We have what we call the “A List” of contractors, which are the GC’s who are solvent and pay their invoices on time. Every so often, though, the husband will take a small job with a new contractor. We’ve got one at the moment who is causing me no end of headaches. He asked for the invoices to be e-mailed to him, but then claims he never got them. As soon as I hear, “I can’t find your invoice,” I know that’s code for “I don’t have enough money to pay you, so I am going to stall as long as I can.” This guy did that with the first invoice we sent him. The husband refused to do any further work until we got paid. Miraculously, the contractor “found” the invoice in his spam folder almost immediately. Huh.

I sent a second invoice for the second installment and eventually received a check in the mail—made out to our construction company but for the wrong amount because it was for an invoice from another contractor. I called and spoke to the woman in the office and she said she would mail the correct check, but it’s been two weeks and nothing. The husband texted the GC and told him no more work would be done until the outstanding invoice was paid. The GC texted him back and told him he couldn’t find the invoice. I forwarded a copy of the e-mail containing the invoice—which I had sent to both the office e-mail and the contractor’s e-mail—and within an hour I got an e-mail back from the woman in the office. “Ooops,” she said, “this was in the spam folder.” Uh-huh, okay. Whatever.

The husband always tells me not to attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity. We’ve been doing this long enough that I can tell when a contractor is trying to dodge payment, although the fact that the person doing the bookkeeping is sending checks for the wrong invoices to the wrong contractors does indicate some level of incompetence. I doubt this guy is going to be in business much longer.

Getting Closer to an Actual Quilt

I’ve been using page layout and design software since the days of Pagemaker. We used Pagemaker in college to lay out the newspaper and literary magazine (the husband was the editor of both) and Twists and Turns actually started out in Pagemaker and transitioned to InDesign. Having been out of the design business for about 10 years while I was working as a medical transcriptionist, I was dismayed to discover that Adobe’s business model has changed. You no longer are able to purchase the Adobe suite of apps on disc and keep them for years. Now you have to “rent” them from Adobe.

[I have lots of thoughts about this. I am sure you can guess what they are.]

When I decided to close my Ravelry account and move everything back to my website, I went ahead and “subscribed” to InDesign so I could update my pattern files. I pay $20 a month for that privilege. I didn’t need Illustrator or Photoshop because all of those files were embedded in my patterns. Unfortunately, now that I have decided to publish a quilt pattern, I need Illustrator.

[Yes, I know there are open source packages out there, but they have never worked as well for me as the gold standard software programs. I am annoyed enough that EQ8 doesn’t behave like Illustrator.]

The husband has my old Mac tower. It still has the last Adobe suite I paid for in 2008 on it. As it is going to be in the mid-90s here this week, I thought that working in the cool basement in the afternoons, drawing all the schematics I needed in the old version of Illustrator, would be a good plan, so I headed down there yesterday after lunch.

Illustrator worked, sort of. Some features don’t show up, other features work intermittently, and that computer—for all that it served me so well for over a decade—just isn’t as zippy as my current one. I resigned myself to going back to my computer and “renting” Illustrator in addition to InDesign.

The universe must have heard me grumbling, because when I came back upstairs and checked my e-mail, there was a special offer from Adobe. If I subscribed now, I could get all the apps for $10 a month more than I am currently paying just for InDesign. That was too attractive an offer to pass up.

I’m glad I did it. Illustrator works beautifully on my office computer and I was able to draw all of my schematics in just an hour or so. I’ll have Photoshop for when I need it, and Acrobat always comes in handy.

I enjoy writing patterns. I like the writing, I like the math, I like doing layout. Pattern production is almost as much fun as making the quilts.

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I finally came to a decision about the Noon and Night quilt. Although I love the bright Kona scrappy versions on the black background, my gut feeling was that I needed to make the prototype with prints. I can make a solid-color Kona version later.

I can tell that that was the right decision, because I stopped feeling so ambivalent once I committed to that plan. You’ll have to wait to see what I chose. I was helped along in my decision-making by these two quilts. The first is “Aunt Hazel’s Quilt,” from the patchpieces blog:

The second is from the Bellwether Dry Goods website.

I cannot find the source for this photo—the Pinterest link leads to a listing of quilts on the website without photos—but I was able to grab the photo from Pinterest.

And there was this photo, also on Pinterest, with no source:

Of note, the first quilt is entirely scrappy and the star points are mirrored. The second quilt is “controlled scrappy,” with what appears to be 2-3 fabrics per block. Some of the blocks have mirrored star points but some of them rotate. (?!?) The individual block in the last photo is comprised of just two fabrics. Those star points mirror, but are positive/negatives of each other.

This is such a capricious block. Every time I think I have it figured out, another variation pops up. I ordered some source material from eBay that I hope will help me determine how this block was presented originally. That is supposed to arrive soon.

I’ve had an epiphany about quilt blocks and quilt design through this process. I used to think that there was a finite number of pieced quilt block designs out there and that there was nothing new to discover or create. Nope. Church music is a close analogy. As a church pianist, I get very frustrated trying to find fresh pieces to play. Every arranger—and I mean EVERY ARRANGER—does arrangements of about 20 of the most popular hymns. You can’t swing a cat without hitting an arrangement of “Amazing Grace,” but finding an arrangement of some lesser-known hymn is next to impossible. (Some of that is due to copyright restrictions, but not all of it.) Quilt design is similar. Want a log cabin pattern? There are thousands. King’s Crown? Good luck with that one.

I’d rather muck around in the dusty old attic of forgotten and challenging quilt blocks than try to put a new spin on something that’s been done to death. Wish me luck.

Nose to the Grindstone

The husband told me when he got home Friday that he poured 120 yards of concrete last week. That may not mean much unless you’ve watched a concrete pour and seen the work that goes into it, but I can assure you that it’s not an insignificant amount. This time of year, the crews like to pour early in the day to avoid the heat, which meant that he was getting up at 4 a.m. with me some mornings. The problem is that our animals like to stay up partying. It doesn’t get dark until 10 p.m. here, and the chickens and pigs don’t want to come in until then. He was operating on an average of five hours of sleep a night. The poor guy was so sleep deprived that he literally could not carry on a conversation with me and fell into bed around 8 p.m. Friday night.

We have four employees. None of them works a full 40 hours a week. The guy who has been with us the longest has two kids and a wife with a job outside the home. He sometimes has to drop off or pick up kids from daycare. Another guy is single, but he was having vehicle problems and then his truck broke down completely. The one guy who works the most hours per week (an average of 35) is dependable and works hard, but tends to move more slowly than the husband would like. (That is true of just about everyone.) And the young kid who works for us also has a job at a pizza place—making half of what he makes working for us—so he only works for us a couple of days a week.

I find this behavior baffling. We pay far, far above minimum wage, and although the work is strenuous, my 54-year-old husband is out there doing it. He’s the first one on the job and the last one to leave. We’re not stingy. We’d be more than happy to pay overtime—especially this time of year, when we are so busy—but putting in the minimum amount of work required seems to be the trend these days. We hear this from everyone we know who has employees. And now that the government has increased the unemployment benefit, there is an actual disincentive to work.

This whole unemployment benefit thing chaps my hide. It is always framed as money generously bestowed by the state and federal governments onto people who have been forced out of work. Nowhere is it ever explained that it’s funded by a tax on employers. We pay several thousands of dollars every year into the Montana unemployment fund and a smaller amount to the federal government. I have no problem doing that so that our regular employees have something to draw on during the winter when their hours get cut. Workers who have left our employ voluntarily, though, are not supposed to be eligible for unemployment benefits, but I can just about guarantee that every guy who has ever left us when we still had plenty of work available will try to file for them.

Here’s the kicker, though: Every time benefits are paid out to someone, they get charged back to the employer’s account. If we exceed the payout amount in a given year, our rate goes up and we have to pay more into the fund the next year. We had one guy who told the husband that he was going back to Michigan to work for his uncle. However, he made the mistake of telling another one of our employees that he was actually going to file for unemployment and then spend the next couple of months hunting. Word got back to us. Hell, no, he was not going to vacation on our dime. I fought that one with the state and he was denied anything.

Like a lot of other people, I wonder how the federal government is going to pay for all this free stuff it is handing out to people, but then I remember that they will come back to the productive people, the employers, the people who actually show up and work, and they will expect us to pick up the slack.

Atlas Shrugged isn’t fiction in our little corner of the world.

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I was out in the garden by 6 a.m. yesterday, trying to get ahead of the heat. I started the sprinkler, did some weeding, and was going through the pea patch when the husband came out to join me. I am going to make one last pass through the peas this week and then I think we’re done. We have enough in the freezer for this winter.

We brought in a few raspberries:

There will be many, many more in the next week or two. These get laid out on cookie sheets and frozen, then bagged up.

Pruning is a paradox. You would think that cutting plants way back would diminish their ability to produce fruit. Not so. I cut those raspberries back to within an inch of their lives this spring and now they are getting revenge. Same thing with the grapes. The apples decided to take a year off. Only the Red Wealthy and the Golden Delicious have fruit on them, and not much. That’s fine with me.

The blueberries are starting to ripen:

So sweet.

The turkey mamas seem to have lost one of their poults. They show up every afternoon for scratch grains and have had only three babies with them lately. The husband says that sometimes he sees them roosting on the rafters of the chicken yard when he goes out to close up the coop.

The baby Brahma roo got brave enough to eat out of my hand yesterday. We’re making progress. I don’t want to spoil the roos too much, but they need some socialization with humans. I now have three confirmed roos, all of whom were trying to impress me with their crowing skills when I was in the coop.

On the Subject of Cow Farts

That got your attention, didn’t it? More on this topic below the fold.

I ran my errands early enough yesterday that I missed most of the traffic in Kalispell. Friday afternoons in town are a nightmare. This was my haul:

I got the Slabtown pattern printed, picked up more foam, and grabbed this Simplicity pattern for $1.99 at Joanns along with some thread that was on sale. I have this image in my head that won’t go away of a jacket like this made from a white broken twill-type fabric. Where that image came from and why it persists is a mystery. I would never make myself a jacket out of white fabric. I live in Montana, not Manhattan. But I can see the fabric very clearly.

The hens cooperated by providing enough eggs for another batch of zucchini bread. Elysian grew cabbage this year. She borrowed my cabbage shredder the other day and brought over a bag of cabbage for us, so I planned a stir fry for dinner last night. While I was in the kitchen baking and doing prep work, I listened to the most recent We Drink and We Farm Things podcast. The more I listen to these two women, the more impressed I am.

This episode was entitled” It’s Being Yodeled at You.” The topic of discussion was a new Burger King commercial that has the farming social media community in an uproar. I follow a few farming accounts on Instagram and Twitter, but apparently not the ones that were upset about this commercial. Also, we don’t watch network TV and we have ad-free YouTube accounts, so the chances of me seeing it in the wild are slim to none. I had to go look it up and watch it.

[Warning: The commercial is pretty cringe-worthy, but watching it is helpful to understanding the discussion.]

This is what I love about the hosts of this podcast, Bev and Sam: They took apart this topic and looked at it critically and dispassionately. They drilled down and read the research behind it. They don’t take anything at face value, which is a refreshing attitude in this climate of constant and instant outrage. They raised the following points:

• Using kids in propaganda is generally a bad move.

• Farmers do not like being made scapegoats (no pun intended).

• The problem is actually not cow farts, but cow belches, and Bev and Sam noted that they also got this wrong in a previous podcast on this subject.

• The research behind using lemongrass in cow diets to reduce methane emissions appears solid and deserving of more attention (emphasis mine), but to use it to support a marketing campaign seems premature.

This commercial looks to me like an epic fail by BK’s marketing team. I agree that they could have made the point that this is an area of research with some promise, but without the hyperbole and the horrible country music theme. It’s condescending.

I know a lot of people who evangelize about plant-based diets. I am all for eating healthier and eating more vegetables—have you seen the size of my garden?—but the husband cannot get 5000 calories a day from plants, although he does love his salads. I am not a big red meat fan, but even I have noticed that if I go solely plant-based for a few days, I really start to drag. Human beings are complex organisms. I am convinced that everyone has differing nutritional needs. I like it when we all have the freedom to choose what works best for us as individuals.

Plans B, C, and D

On Wednesday night’s newscast, the meteorologist said that Kalispell should watch for thunderstorms between noon and 3 p.m. on Thursday. Right on schedule, at 7 a.m. Thursday morning (that’s sarcasm), we got a thunderstorm with about 10 minutes of rain. We got nothing else for the rest of the day, and it was much hotter than forecast.

I should get paid so much to be so wrong so often.

I was going to make another batch of zucchini bread, but I had sold all our eggs to WS the night before. He buys them from me at wholesale and sells them from a fridge up at the corner. This kid is going to go far. He is a very savvy businessman and he’s only 6. I said to the husband that I probably could have gone up to the corner to get a dozen from the fridge, but he would have charged me full retail, LOL.

I went into the coop to check inventory, but the hens don’t finish laying until late afternoon. All of the nesting boxes were occupied, and the hens let me know in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t welcome in there. I should have enough eggs today to make more zucchini bread, though.

Elysian said that a woman stopped on Wednesday and bought all the eggs in the fridge. People who do not live on farms have a far different view of food production than we do. This lady wanted to know if she could reserve six dozen eggs every week for her family. (She is not the first person to ask.) Elysian is very clear with people that eggs are on a first come, first served basis. What’s in the fridge is what is available. We have no control over what the hens do. They might decide it’s too hot and stop laying. They might molt and stop laying. They might get mad at the farmer for bothering them and stop laying. Our chickens lay about two dozen eggs every day, pretty reliably, but I also know from experience that they tend to stop laying in August and we have a dry spell before the pullets start laying. Our chicks were later than usual this year, so our dry spell might last longer.

I listened to an interview with Joel Salatin a while back, and he said that when this pandemic/meat shortage started, he had people calling him up asking how much they had to pay him to get put on his “premium subscriber” list (he doesn’t have one) to get guaranteed purchases of meat. One of the bottlenecks we have here is a shortage of meat processors. We only have two left here in the valley, and the husband and I actually use someone two hours away in Eureka, Montana. I called our processor on Tuesday and got the last available processing date in November for the pigs. One of our neighbors processed his own cow a few weeks ago because the processors are booked solid. I might be able to do one pig, but I have no desire to process six.

[Thank your federal government for making the regulations so onerous that starting up a meat processing business is an uphill battle and one that no one wants to fight anymore. We have room here for three or four more processors but we won’t get them.]

The upshot was that I could not make zucchini bread. I thought I would start working on the Slabtown Backpack. Normally, I will cut bag pieces by measurement with the rotary cutter because they are almost always rectangles. This bag has some large, oddly-shaped pieces, though, that are best cut out with pattern pieces. I could have printed the pattern pieces on my printer, taped the sheets together, then cut the patterns out, but I have no patience for that. I will take the large-format file to the blueprint shop today and have them print it for me.

There went that project. I thought I might quilt some pieces for the large Poppins bag, but then I realized that I did not have enough of the foam interfacing I needed. I’ll have to stop at the quilt store and get more today.

There went that project. I finally gave up and made two more Noon and Night blocks, one warm:

And one cool:

Do I have a plan for all of these experimental blocks? No, I do not. They are pretty to look at, though.

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We have started Baby Rooster Comportment lessons here. If I end up selling a couple of these extra roos, I want them to be well trained. Every afternoon, I throw scratch grains out into the chicken yard and most of the chickens go out there to eat. The Buff rooster (who has recovered completely from his leg injury) comes back into the coop and waits for me to get a handful of scratch grains to feed him. The baby chickens stand inside their cage and watch as he eats out of my hand and then calls a few hens over to share. Yesterday, I fed the Buff rooster and then went into the chicks’ cage and crouched down with a handful of scratch grains. Some of the baby roosters came over to investigate but haven’t yet figured out what to do.

There are two roos that I am SURE are roos; the jury is still out on the others. Some of the chicks have developed combs and wattles, but that’s not a reliable characteristic because the hens of certain breeds also have them, albeit smaller than the males. I am watching to see who is crowing and who displays more dominating behavior. This guy, whose mother was a Light Brahma, has acted like a rooster since day one and clearly sits at the top of the baby chicken pecking order:

He likes to stand on top of the waterer and practice crowing. If he doesn’t turn into a jerk, I think he has the potential to be a very nice rooster. There is a baby Buff Orpington rooster, too. He’s not quite as dominating as this one, but he also has potential. We want roosters to know that their job is to protect the hens against threats, but not to see the farmer as one of those threats.

A Riot of Color

Our temps got up into the high 80s and low 90s yesterday. I did my garden work early—weeding the beans, mowing the perimeter, and trimming with the weed whacker. The pigs kept me company. At 11 a.m., we had our weekly “Coffee With the Pastor” Zoom meeting. This is a group of about six of us that have been meeting regularly just to visit. We talk a lot about gardening. And after lunch, I made another six loaves of zucchini bread and did some sewing.

The tomatoes are looking particularly splendid (or overgrown, depending on your perspective, as I never did get them pruned):

Once I got in closer and started looking, I could see that they are loaded with fruit, too. We’ll be in good shape for sauce this winter. They like this spot and do well here.

The beans have been a disappointment. Whole rows of them never germinated. We did have a lot of rain at the time I planted them. Perhaps the beans just rotted. The plants that did come up look great. The husband says that section of the garden has never produced well, which is true. We probably need to haul a load of manure or the rest of the compost into that area this fall to amend the soil. Having tilled in all that rotted straw will help, too.

Every year is different.

The lavenders are just starting to open. (My darker lavenders are out in the big garden; these are white and pink and are in the herb garden.) The salvias are almost as promiscuous as the lavenders and seed themselves everywhere, including into the middle of the lavenders.

The consensus yesterday during our Zoom meeting was that there are indeed fewer bees this year. My lavenders should be a buzzing mass by now. The fact that they aren’t is a bit disconcerting.

The bee balm has just started blooming.

I used to have a dozen or so varieties, but this one—I believe it’s ‘Jacob Cline’—is the only one left. Bee balm is related to mint and it really is too dry for it here. The other varieties died out. This patch is pretty reliable, though.

The raspberries are coming on; the husband goes into the garden every morning after letting the pigs out and has a couple of handfuls. I ate some as a snack after weeding.

Experiments with the Noon and Night block continue unabated. My design wall is very colorful right now:

I am still trying to decide which fabrics to use in the finished quilt. I am pretty sure it will have a black background but I don’t know if I want all solids or if I want the stars to be bright scrappy prints (30s reproduction fabric, maybe?). If I am going to publish the pattern, should I use an entire fabric line instead of pulling from my stash? I like the arrangement of the bottom block, where I used a different color for the center than for the small star points. Piecing the block so that blue diamond comes together perfectly is the hardest part. I wonder if the occasional mismatched point is because of something I am doing or if I’m going to have to lower my expectations a bit. The size calculations for my block units seem pretty solid and reproducible. I am doing all the piecing on Vittorio, my Necchi BF, and he’s working like a champ.

This is not a block for beginning piecers, that’s for sure. Even making the units bigger and trimming them down doesn’t leave a lot of room for slop.

I don’t want to get tired of this block before I start a quilt. My order of waxed canvas arrived from Klum House the other day, so I might start the Slabtown Backpack. I waited until they had the bright green that I wanted in stock. I think that will be a fun project. I made their Fremont Tote pattern last year and it was very well written.

Noon and Night Version 2

I received a lot of messages of support after my post yesterday. Thank you. This blog is a sacred space in my life and I was sick and tired of having it invaded. I probably shouldn’t have waited so long, but I really thought ignoring the offender was the best strategy. If it happens again, I will take additional action.

Here is where we are in the Noon and Night saga: I finished four blocks in the first variation, the one where the star points rotate. Kate, I still want to explore your alternate setting idea, but I went ahead and sashed these with 2-1/2” strips just to see how a straight setting looked:

(The wallhanging is squarer than it looks from the hasty picture.) These blocks are so busy that I do think they benefit from the additional space between them.

I had a few minutes yesterday morning—between blanching peas and some other tasks—to start putting together blocks in the second variation. I’ve toned it down a bit for this iteration with only four colors:

I suspect this will be my preferred version. I like the mirror-imaging of the star points.

It feels a bit odd to be obsessed with a project again. The husband and I have had many conversations where I have said to him, “If I ever make noises about becoming a designer again—” and he’ll finish with “I am supposed to hit you upside the head with a 2 x 4, right?” During drinks on the veranda the other night, I was waxing poetically about this project and he looked at me and said, “You’re going to go down this road again, aren’t you?”

We’ll see. I’ve got InDesign fired up and I’m working on a pattern layout. This is going to go slowly until harvesting is over. We’re about to be inundated with raspberries and zucchini and I was a bit horrified when I looked at the tomatoes yesterday. The plants are HUGE.

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I offered to take WS to Kids College again yesterday because I had errands to run in town. I thought three hours would be plenty of time to get everything done, but there is so much traffic in Kalispell that getting anywhere takes twice as long as normal. I’ll have to run back in today to get scratch grains and pine shavings at the feed store.

I decided to go to Wal-Mart to get some of the things on my list. It’s right next door to the college and I thought it would save time over driving downtown to the grocery store. Oh my, what a mess. They have closed all but one entrance, which funnels everyone into and out of a small area. Social distancing, my ass. I fail to see why that was necessary. Of course, I parked at the Home & Garden entrance, where I usually do, but the only open entrance was clear at the other end of the store. I got some additional exercise. And, as usual, they did not have enough registers open. I won’t be going there again.

We are hearing stories from realtors we know that people are calling up and buying property here sight unseen. This mass exodus into Montana from places like California and Seattle is making me very nervous. You have no idea how hard I am praying right now that we have a Really Bad Winter. Most of these people moving here think it’s going to be like this all year. If we hadn’t built that new shop, we might seriously be considering selling our place and moving somewhere less crowded—and we’re 20 miles outside of town.

Lessons in Boundaries

I hate to have to write this blog post, because I try very hard to keep the more unpleasant parts of my life off the blog, but I have reached my limit.

About 18 months ago, I ended a long friendship with someone because that person was unwilling to respect my boundaries. In my final communication at that time, I said, “Please do not contact me again.” Apparently, that wasn’t clear enough. I subsequently had to block that person on Messenger. I’ve also had to put the blog comments on moderated status—something I was loath to do—because of continued commenting by them on my blog posts. (Did I mention the part about not respecting boundaries?) I have absolutely no desire to open up a line of communication with this individual. I made my wishes plain. The relationship will not be restored. I am calling them out publicly on the blog in the hopes that doing so will end this nonsense once and for all.

D—

We are no longer friends because you would not take “no” for an answer. That strategy may have served you well in your professional life, but it destroys relationships. I find it baffling that you seem to believe that continuing the very behavior that forced me to end our friendship—namely, not respecting my boundaries—will somehow magically make me want to be friends with you again. I do not want you in my life. Any further attempts at communication from you, whether via text, e-mail, or blog comments, will be deleted with no response. DO NOT CONTACT ME AGAIN.

Again, my apologies to my blog readers; I am sorry you had to be part of this, however tangentially. Hopefully, this situation will resolve and we can carry on as before.

A Matter of Degrees

I couldn’t let go of this Noon and Night block now even if I wanted to. It is inside my head and shows no sign of leaving. I’ve been getting my garden work done in the morning when it’s cool and spending the afternoons cutting and measuring and sewing. The good news is that as I make more of these blocks, I get faster. Yay.

One more block of Version 1, where the star points rotate, will give me enough for a wallhanging:

That block at upper left has some badly-matched units, but I didn’t feel like taking the block apart. That was a math error that has since been rectified. I haven’t been terribly picky about color placement, either, as I am using up a bag of Kona scraps, but once the blocks are made and laid out, I start to see where I might change things. I do think the blocks need some kind of sashing to give them some breathing room. And as much as I like this scrappy version, I am curious to see how this block looks with more controlled fabric choices. Luckily for me, I can try out all these ideas in EQ8 ahead of time.

That math issue drove me nuts for a couple of hours. Three units get sewn together, then two units get sewn together, and then those two combination units get sewn together. The two units that get sewn together to make the second combination are the same shape, so I started out by making them the same size. However, when it came time to sew them to the three-unit combination, the star point kept getting cut off. I made the two pieces smaller, thinking that would solve the problem. It solved the star point problem, but another problem popped up in a different place. It was rather akin to having too short a sheet on the bed: if you tuck it in at the bottom, it doesn’t come up high enough, but if you pull it up to cover you, your feet are cold.

The solution was easy, once I figured it out. Those two pieces, even though they are the same shape, have to differ in size ever so slightly—by 1/8”. Cutting them that way makes everything go together perfectly.

After this is done, I need to make some of the Version 2 blocks, where the star points are mirrored.

The husband and I were having cocktails on the veranda the other night and I asked him if he had ever had a set of these as a kid:

“Nope,” he said. “I had Tonka trucks and GI Joe dolls and a cap gun. Are kids allowed to have cap guns anymore?”

Just so you know, I didn’t have one of those tangram sets, either. Perhaps that would have helped my spatial perception development.

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Back when this pandemic started and the call went out for sewists to make masks, my neighbor Theresa asked me if I could make some for her daughter’s pediatric nursing unit in California. Dawn and her fellow nurses were having trouble finding masks because of the PPE shortage. I must have made at least three or four dozen for them. Dawn has been here, visiting, and last night she brought me a thank-you gift:

Dawn made the card and all the nurses signed it—it made me tear up to read all the sweet things they wrote.

And Dawn made me this beautiful picture, which is going to get hung up over one of my sewing machines:

On the back is also written a thank-you note and dated “Pandemic 2020.”

Somehow, I don’t think any of us are going to forget this year.

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A black bear is roaming the neighborhood. Fish and Wildlife knows about it, but they’ve been busy with grizzlies closer to town. Our neighbor Mike called the husband Friday night to tell him that a black bear had just come through his yard on its way to the piggy pasture, so the husband headed out there. (I can always tell when something is an emergency because the husband—who normally isn’t in a hurry—moves with speed and purpose, although he rarely runs.) I went upstairs and got the shotgun and the bear spray, but by the time I got out to the pasture, the bear had moved on. Our renters’ dog chased it off; he is a 16-pound terrier who thinks that he’s a Rottweiler, but he does a great job of scaring bears.

I was awake at 2:46 this morning, though, and heard another neighbor’s dog barking. It is normally very quiet out here, so when dogs are barking at odd hours, I pay attention. Rosie sounded very insistent. The husband got dressed and went out with the shotgun and walked back to the pig pasture to make sure the pigs were okay.

I am a bit concerned that this bear sees the pigs as a food source, but the pasture has an electric fence and he’d have to be incredibly determined (and hungry) to breach those defenses. Most bears are pretty lazy.

My Thursday Lunch Date

During the summer, our local community college runs a program called Kids College. They offer a series of week-long classes, three hours long each day, geared to specific age groups starting with kids in first grade. Our girls did Kids College when they were growing up, and that was 15-20 years ago, so this continues to be a popular program. I mentioned it to Elysian because I thought her son (hereinafter referred to as WS for blog purposes) might enjoy it. He’s six. Also, sometimes moms need a break.

[I have made it clear that Ali and Elysian’s boys are welcome here any time as long as we’re home. They might get to watch truck videos on YouTube or they might be put to work, depending on what we’re doing, but I want them to feel like this is a home for them, too.]

This week, WS has been taking an afternoon class on ocean creatures. The only drawback about this program is the driving to town part, as it’s too far to go, drop the kid off, and come home, so it’s just easier to stay in town. I told Elysian that if there was a day she needed to get something done at home, I’d be happy to drive WS to Kids College and run my errands during those three hours. She asked me on Tuesday if I could take him yesterday, as she thought she might try to get all her meat birds processed. I said that was fine. As it turned out, my stylist had an opening at 2 p.m.—and I was desperately in need of a haircut—so it worked out perfectly. To give Elysian a bit more time, I asked her if I could take WS to lunch with me beforehand.

One of his upcoming classes at Kids College is on Japanese food and culture, so she asked me if I would take him to the Japanese steak house (she paid for our meals). They cook your food on the grill while you watch. I thought that would be fun, so at 11:30, we walked in and were seated at the grill where they proceeded to cook our food in front of us. The part where they set the grill on fire was a big hit:

WS is a pleasant, curious kid, and although he might be a bit reluctant at first, he’s usually willing to try new foods and new experiences. We both had the grilled shrimp and vegetables.

We played a game of looking for out-of-state license plates while we were driving around and came up with about 14 of them by the end of the day, everything from South Carolina to Arizona. I got a giggle out of the fact that someone at Kids College thought I was WS’s mom—it has to be the mask, because I’ve also been carded while wearing my mask. I didn’t say anything, but I thought, “Oh my, I am 54 years old and old enough to be this child’s grandmother!” and that made me laugh.

It was a good day.

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I’ve got a huge bucket of peas waiting to be shelled and blanched. I cut the grass in the backyard yesterday morning—hopefully for the last time this summer, as we usually don’t have to cut it past July—and I have one more section to finish this morning and trim with the weed whacker. We’re in for some of that heat, now, that has hit the rest of the country. We’ll have to get some hose laid and the sprinklers set up this weekend. I expect things to start taking off.

And I want to get back to working on that Noon and Night block project, as I have become a bit obsessed with it. I am starting to wonder what other blocks have languished in oblivion in the past hundred years.

Driving Around Western Montana

I made a quick run to Missoula yesterday—I have a whole list of people who have expressed interest in accompanying me on one of those trips, but sometimes my decision to go is made at the last minute based on what’s happening here. Also, I try to leave by 7 a.m. I didn’t think that was enough lead time to ask someone to ride shotgun. Don’t worry, though, I likely will be making a few more trips this summer and I’ll try to plan the next one in advance.

It took me a bit longer than two hours to get there as I had to stop at one of the farm stores and pick up a new chicken waterer. The one for our big chickens sprang a leak. Elysian brought over a spare and set it up for our chickens to use until I got home with the new one.

The weather was lovely for a drive, but, tourists. Ugh. So many tourists. I wouldn’t mind them so much if they would just go the speed limit.

Joann Fabrics was my first stop, but I didn’t find anything on their remnant rack. Just behind Joanns is another strip mall with a new-to-me Janome/Bernina dealer and fabric store. I am not sure how long they have been there, but I haven’t been to Missoula in a while. Perhaps it is my age, but I get very annoyed when I go into a store and no one greets me, or when I have to stand and wait for service while two or three employees mill around trying to find anything else to do besides help customers. An elderly lady came in to the store a few minutes after me. She went to the counter and said she had called about having a machine serviced. The woman behind the counter said, “Okay, go ahead and bring it in.” I looked at this petite lady and thought she might need help (which ought to have been the responsibility of the store employee!), so I asked her if I could help her bring the machine in (it was a huge, computerized Bernina). And finally, after another five minutes of me wandering around looking at stuff, someone hollered from the back of the store and asked if they could help me find anything. I said, “No, thanks,” and walked out.

On to the next stop.

Quite a while ago, on one of these trips, I stumbled upon a quilt store in a very strange location. It is in the basement of what looks like a typical office building. The first floor of this office building is a gym. The only way to get to the basement level is via elevator. (There has to be a set of stairs somewhere, to be compliant with fire code, but I haven’t been able to find them yet.) The elevator leads to a store with bolts of fabric on shelves and in piles. Off the main room are a couple of smaller rooms with shelves containing even more bolts of fabric, some of which have never been unwrapped from their plastic coverings. I think the store owner makes an attempt, at least, to keep fabrics together in their collections. Other bolts of fabric, though, are stacked here and there with no organization whatsoever. I have to make about three trips around the store to orient myself.

[My mother may remember a yarn store in Aurora, Ohio, which had a similar stocking system of bags and bags of yarns piled everywhere, including the much-beloved Brunswick Germantown…]

The likelihood of finding out-of-print fabrics in these kinds of stores is higher than normal, which makes shopping at them great fun despite the chaos. I had in the back of my head the possibility of finding some of the background fabric from this quilt block:

I lamented that I had made this block from some remnants and had no idea where the fabric came from. Alas, the store had none of this particular fabric, but I recognized a bolt of fabric from the same collection—a different print—and was able to look at the name and designer. It’s from the Soho Chic collection by Sandy Gervais. A quick Google search when I got home yielded up the name of a fabric store in Texas that still has stock, so I ordered a few yards from them. I probably won’t be able to find that green dragonfly fabric, but I likely can find something similar (and perhaps a bit more sedate, because this is awfully busy, much as I love it).

I did buy a couple of yards of Kona at that store, in a dark gray that will be great for binding.

By then, it was time for lunch, so I headed to the Good Food store. This is a huge grocery store along the lines of a Whole Foods or Wegmans, but it’s local to Missoula. I remember it in its previous, much tinier location. They moved about 10 years ago and took over an old grocery store and the hardware store next to it. I got some curried chicken salad and a drink to go and also picked up a few specialty items I can’t find here in Kalispell.

After lunch, I headed back to downtown Missoula to The Confident Stitch. This is fast becoming one of my favorite stores. It’s not large, but Kate, the owner, is a savvy businesswoman who is earning herself a solid national reputation. The customer service is on point, both in person and by mail order. The Confident Stitch carries some higher-end quilting cottons, but they really shine in their garment fabric selection. I bought enough of a soy/cotton/spandex knit in a lovely grass green to make a T-shirt.

Missoula has one other quilt store that I did not visit on this trip. I needed to leave Missoula early enough to have time to stop at the Amish store between there and home. I go to the Amish store mostly to buy fabric, as they have a respectable selection of Kona (although they, too, were out of black). Last summer, when I was there with Margaret, I bought one of those pincushion/thread catcher combos. I was hoping to buy another one to keep by my industrial Necchi, but they didn’t have any in stock. The Amish woman who was cutting the Kona for me said they would ask the lady who makes them to make a few more, so I have a legitimate reason to go back in a couple of weeks. I also bought some chocolate-covered espresso beans for the husband.

I came home, unloaded all my treasures, set up the new chicken waterer, and made a big salad for dinner. I have a lunch date with a 6 year-old today, and I think it is going to be great fun. Details tomorrow.

Getting Closer to Noon and Night

Check this out:

It’s a complete Noon and Night block, or a variation of it. I say “variation” because, as with many quilt block patterns, the same block could be called by several names, or the same name could be applied to more than one version of the block. The March 4, 2013 blog post from the PatchPieces blog has the most information I’ve been able to find on the provenance of this block. That blogger had a quilt from her aunt featuring this block. When she recreated it in EQ, she rotated the larger star points. Therefore, when I drew it in EQ, I also rotated the star points. However, when I looked in the Jinny Beyer quilt encyclopedia—as well as at the picture of this blogger’s aunt’s quilt—I noticed that the larger star points mirror-image each other, like this:

I will have to ask my friend from church if I can see what the block looks like in her quilt. I like both versions, but I think the mirror-image version is the “official” one, seeing as it is the one in the Jinny Beyer book. Finding the original Kansas City Star pattern from 1934 would put an end to the debate once and for all, but that’s like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. (The few books containing reprints of those Kansas City Star patterns don’t include this one.)

It took me two days and much experimentation to get to this point. Some of that was due to my spatial deficits, but I am also considering turning this into a publishable quilt pattern. Therefore, I went slowly and deliberately, making many notes, and asking myself, “What would be the best way to present this information?”

This is how I got to the finished quilt block after drawing it in EQ8, with notes on potential construction issues:

• EQ8 will print out templates. Templates are okay, but time-consuming to make and use. They were, without a doubt, the way the original quilt was constructed.

• EQ8 will also print out rotary cutting instructions, but only for the units in a block that lend themselves to rotary cutting. This block has four identical quadrants, and each quadrant is comprised of six units (a total of seven pieces, but one piece is used twice). Five of the six units are standard shapes—triangles, squares, and a trapezoid—but one piece is a weird shape and does not show up on the rotary cutting instructions.

• HOWEVER, the piece that doesn’t show up on the rotary cutting instructions is basically a triangle with one of the side points cut off. Furthermore, it starts out the same size as one of the other triangles in the block, so, theoretically, it could be included in rotary cutting instructions with an additional step added for cutting off that side point to make the required shape.

• What size quilt block yields rotary cutting instructions that make the most sense? In EQ8, it’s possible to resize a quilt block with a click of a button. I experimented with 8”, 9”, 10”, 12”, 14”, and 15” block sizes. The rotary cutting instructions for some of those block sizes got really wonky; no one wants to be cutting 6-3/16” HSTs. (I was discussing this with the husband and he said he gets plans like that from architects all the time, with foundation measurements like 25’ 8-15/16”, which I suspect is a side effect of using CAD software and not common sense and a tape measure.)

• EQ8 gives the option for rounding or not rounding. I always prefer to make my units and blocks a bit bigger and trim them down. However, I’ve got to be careful that rounding doesn’t propagate errors throughout the entire block, because 1/8” can mean the difference between nice, sharp points and points that get chopped off, or cause the framing carpenter to say bad words about the concrete contractor.

• Through much trial and error, I discovered that the units have to go together in a specific order. At one point in the process, I did wonder if this was one of those blocks that would be best constructed with foundation piecing. I hate foundation piecing. (That technique relies on good spatial perception skills, so hate is not too strong a word.) If foundation piecing had been the only (or best) way to make this block, it never would have made it off my cutting table.

• I made each quadrant separately—and oversized—and trimmed them down before sewing them together as a four-patch. This is Mary Poppins piecing (“Enough is as good as it gets”), although it’s pretty darn good for flying by the seat of my pants. It occurred to me, while sewing, that the quilters of the 1930s and 1940s who made quilts using this pattern likely weren’t seeking perfection. They used templates and cut the units out of whatever scraps of fabric they had without regard to grainlines, and if their points didn’t line up exactly—well, that quilt was still going to keep someone warm.

I’ve got plenty of Kona scraps, so the plan is to make three more blocks and sew them together into a wallhanging. Making three more blocks should give me plenty of opportunity to make sure my math and cutting/sewing instructions for the block are accurate (and decide which version to use), and then it’s on to designing an actual quilt. I like the idea of scrappy bright fabrics on a black background, although the all-Kona solids is a nice look, too.

Just for giggles, I drew the (much simpler) Noon and Light quilt block in EQ8:

You can see that the trapezoid/triangle unit takes up one entire half of the quadrant, and the points of the star are identical. This would be a snap to rotary cut and piece, but where is the fun in that?

In related sewing news, the black American Made Brand cotton I ordered arrived and has been washed and pressed. I picked up the large set of stays and pattern for the full size Poppins bag at the quilt store in town. Klum House finally got the color of green waxed canvas I wanted in stock, so I ordered that for the Slabtown backpack pattern. When I am not hauling produce in from the garden, I’ll have plenty to keep me busy.

Some Days I Like Twitter

Twitter is a useful dumpster fire. I sometimes cringe at things that bleed into my feed from people I follow, but in terms of providing immediate access to current trends, Twitter does the best job of all my social media accounts, so I put up with the detritus.

Every so often, though, Twitter showers me with Good Things. The first is a young woman whose Twitter handle is @hollymathnerd. I have been following her for quite a while—long before she got to the follower count she has currently—and she’s one of my favorite people. A recent college grad with a degree in math, she is more mature than a lot of 50-somethings I know. She writes eloquently—this article on Medium.com discusses how not to be fooled by statistics—and I hope she finds a job soon that is worthy of her many talents.

I also follow a couple of Cleveland Browns-related accounts (speaking of dumpster fires), and last week, Nathan Zagura, who is the sideline reporter for the Cleveland Browns Radio Network, tweeted about some new shirts he had received. I looked further at his tweet and discovered that they had come from a company in Vermilion, Ohio—not too far from where I grew up—called Szabo Apparel. They have a Twitter account, so I followed them and also messaged the owners to let them know I would be shopping there.

My new Browns T-shirt arrived on Saturday:

But I was delighted to find a second shirt in the package, too!

These are nice quality shirts and I will be sporting them all summer. If you are looking for Browns swag, please consider supporting this veteran-owned business. They also have some really nice Cleveland merchandise that isn’t sports related. You can tell them I sent you.

[I have no idea what is going to happen with the NFL this fall, but I will carry on as I have for more than four decades as a long-suffering Cleveland Browns fan. Woof woof.]

The first batch of peas have been shelled and blanched, and I’ve got another zucchini on the counter waiting to get made into bread. I am saving my sewing for this afternoon. It’s either going to be messing around with that Noon and Night quilt block or tracing View C (the black and white striped top) of this pattern:

I’m still looking for a few tried-and-true patterns to make up the base of my fall wardrobe. I’ve got some nice lengths of French terry that I think will work well for this.

Stuff That is Still Inside My Head

I’ve been playing with Electric Quilt 8 (EQ8) here and there as I have time. I’ve figured out the drawing tools; I am so used to Illustrator that whenever I go to another drawing program, I expect it to behave the same way and get frustrated when it doesn’t. I have been able to figure out how to draw blocks and color them, though, and this morning I even discovered how to print the templates for a block I drew. Margaret may remember this one:

One of the ladies in our church had an antique quilt made by a family member. I can’t remember for sure if it was just the top and it needed to be quilted or if it was a quilt that needed to be repaired, but our quilting ladies worked on it and it was on display in our fellowship hall for a few weeks. None of us had ever seen the block, though, and it took some sleuthing to discover the block’s origin. According to The Quilter’s Album of Patchwork Patterns by Jinny Beyer, this is called Noon and Night, and it is attributed to Laura Wheeler, Kansas City Star, 1934. I’ve wanted to recreate a quilt from this block and decided it was time to get it out of my head.

I can see why this isn’t a popular block. There are six components to each quadrant of the block, and they don’t lend themselves well to rotary cutting shortcuts and/or chain piecing. EQ8 will print out a sheet with each unit, including the seam allowances, which is very helpful. I am going to play with this a bit and see if I can come up with an efficient way to put it together. I may also get a quote from Accuquilt on making this into a custom die.

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The baby robins left the nest yesterday. I was a nervous wreck. One must have flown earlier in the day, because by the time I noticed that they were out hopping along the porch rafters, only three were left. I saw another one leave, and the last two must have flown after I went to bed. I had a talk with Lila about leaving them alone, and I also had a short discussion with a garter snake on the ground near the porch just in case it had ideas about dinner. (I have no idea if garter snakes eat baby birds, but I wasn’t taking any chances, and this was not a small snake.) The fawn was cavorting around the front yard and the four baby turkeys and their mamas are still hanging out near the chicken coop.

I also seem to have acquired a pet raven or a crow—I know there is a difference, but I can’t get close enough to this one to tell which it is. I’ve been putting old/rotten eggs out in the woods rather than in the compost bin. The crows like them. Apparently, this particular bird has decided that I need to do that on a regular basis, because it shows up every day in a tree near the house and harangues me for a few minutes.

I said to the husband that all I need is a giant toad to appear in the driveway and my life will be complete.

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I spent some time organizing my sewing stuff yesterday, putting parts into labeled bins by machine model. The husband is going to see about getting me that industrial shelving this week and then I can get all the machines and the bins off the floor. I also got the 31-15 treadle operational. My college friend, Scott, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, also acquired a 31-15 in a treadle this week (I may have enabled that purchase slightly). We’ve been chatting back and forth about our machines and comparing notes.

And I gave the BMW a spa day. I’ll take it through the car wash this week, but I went over the inside with a shop vac and hoovered up all the bits of chicken feed and pig feed. Sometimes I feel bad about using my BMW as a truck. Until Dodge makes one that gets 40 mpg, though, I’ll keep driving my station wagon.

Black Concrete and Zucchini Bread

Yesterday was one of those days when everything went sideways, starting with the 20% chance of rain that turned into a 100% chance of rain and took with it my plan to cut the grass. A conference call scheduled for late morning happened an hour later than it was supposed to. I had to spend an inordinate amount of time chasing down e-mails, including the one for payroll. One of the general contractors sent us a payment, but it was for another sub’s invoice, not ours, so I had to get that fixed. The whole day ended up being a wash, productivity-wise, and I was pretty cranky by the time dinner rolled around.

The husband, at least, had a good day. He and one of our employees poured our neighbor’s porch. I got some shots at the beginning and the end.

Here we are, waiting for the festivities to begin. The husband is talking with the mixer driver.

This is the husband and our employee, Matt, getting ready for the concrete to drop.

Matt’s wife is a hobby winemaker. She took some of our grapes last year and made the most amazing wine from them, and they aren’t even wine grapes—they’re a table grape variety.

The concrete is definitely black!

Mike, our neighbor, helped out, and even I got pressed into service at one point to hold some foam in place.

By midafternoon, the job was all done and looking great! It really ties the house together nicely. Mike’s porch faces east and doesn’t get a lot of direct sun during the day, because of the mountains, so the concrete won’t get too hot.

When the sun finally came out in the afternoon, I tried out my new weed whacker. I noticed our renter using a little DeWalt battery-powered one a few weeks ago. She said she had borrowed it from her father-in-law. I mentioned it to the husband during one of our porch sessions. We have a weed whacker—it’s gas powered, temperamental, and too heavy and unbalanced for me to use efficiently. The husband thought I should get the Milwaukee battery-powered string trimmer because he has a whole bunch of Milwaukee tools and extra batteries, but when I compared the two at Home Depot, the Milwaukee one was longer and about 10 pounds heavier. I bought the DeWalt. I like it very much. It’s nice to have something sized for me. Even Elysian complains about being frustrated by tools that are designed for men to use, and she was a Navy diver and electrician so she’s no lightweight.

[I think tool companies are missing a huge demographic by not making more tools that are sized for women. Maybe DeWalt has a clue and will take advantage of that underserved market.]

I am going to try to get the grass cut this morning before it heats up here. I need to check the pea patch again today, and more of this might happen:

I brought in two zucchinis the other day and made a batch of six loaves of zucchini bread. Two got eaten fresh and the other four went into the freezer. I usually make and freeze about three dozen loaves every summer. I am not the world’s best baker—when DD#2 was still living at home, I would subcontract the zucchini bread production to her—but I’ve used this recipe for years and it’s hard to mess it up.