Musical Stock Pots

Making tomato sauce involves moving tomatoes from one stock pot to another as they cook down. I keep the sink full of hot soapy water, and as I empty one pot into another, I wash the empty pot and set it aside until I run the tomato pulp through the food mill. The sauce goes into the clean pot to cook down a bit more, and then those pots get combined. I invested in half a dozen high-quality stainless stock pots of various sizes several years ago and I have never regretted it. I said to the husband yesterday morning that the only thing that would make canning easier in my kitchen would be a six-burner Viking range, but that’s up there in the “nice to have but not essential” category.

I got 27 quarts of sauce from the first round of tomatoes:

Those 27 quarts used up approximately one-fourth of the tomatoes in the freezer, so I am on track to produce around 100 quarts this year. That may be more than we actually use, but I’m doing some for DD#2, as well, and it never hurts to have extras. I aim for a two-year supply for most canned goods.

I am taking a break from tomatoes today. We’re under another winter storm watch starting tomorrow afternoon, so I want to run errands today while the weather is relatively decent. I’ll bring another wheelbarrow load of tomatoes over tomorrow morning and start the next batch of sauce.

These jars represent so much more than just food. These jars are all the seeds I planted, the seedlings I nurtured, the plants I kept watered, and the tomatoes I harvested. This is six months of hard work and I am almost as proud of this food as I am of my children. I know what went into these jars and I know this sauce is full of nutritious ingredients that will nourish our bodies.

[I ingested something that must have contained soybean oil the other day. I’m usually pretty careful about avoiding processed foods and reading labels, but I’ve been trying to use up some of the leftovers from the week of partying and I got sloppy. The offending food caused almost immediate and painful joint and muscle aches. I took some ibuprofen and they went away (which is how I know the pain is from inflammation). Interestingly, products from “health food” stores are sometimes the worst offenders because they are loaded with soy. And then I have to wonder how many people have been diagnosed with “arthritis” when it’s really just a reaction to some ingredient in what they’re eating.]

This early snow has caused panic for people trying to get their construction projects dried in before winter. The husband got back from one job around 5 pm last night, came in to say hello, then headed out to another job to put concrete blankets on a slab (it was 20 degrees when I got up this morning). He came back an hour later but then had to go out to the pig pasture to disconnect the water line and make sure the pigs had enough straw to burrow in to keep warm overnight. It was 7 pm by the time he came in to eat dinner.

I really appreciate the online community that has grown up around Nicole Sauce’s Living Free in Tennessee podcast. When social media gets overwhelmed by people whining about what they don’t have—or posting from Starbucks on their new iPhone about the evils of capitalism—I wander over to the LFTN MeWe group and read about what kinds of “get stuff done” projects people are working on. At our last family dinner together at the end of wedding week, the discussion turned to how hard it is to find people who are willing to work. I looked around and counted among our number two physicians, a dentist, a banker, two people who own their own companies, a philanthropist, an occupational therapist, someone who aspires to take over running Nordstrom, and a chicken farmer (that would be me, LOL). That was most definitely a group of people who understands the value of hard work. I have less and less patience these days for people who are looking for the easy solutions and think they can be found in the voting booth.

(Steps down from soapbox.)

I am going to eke out some time to sew this weekend, even if it’s just a bunch of straight seams on some window shades. I work hard, but I know how to play hard, too, and sometimes they look like the same thing.

Let the Sauce Making Commence

The house was very quiet after everyone left yesterday morning. However, my to-do list was full of post-wedding tasks, so I got right to work. I stripped beds and washed bedding, got sewing supplies out of the closets where they had been stashed to make room for guests, cleaned out refrigerators and consolidated food containers (I do not have to cook dinner for several days, which is heavenly), and brought a wheelbarrow load of bagged, frozen tomatoes over from the freezer in the garage. They cooked down on the stove all afternoon:

I am such a lazy canner. I put my whole frozen tomatoes into big pots, cook them down into a thick mass, then run the mixture through the Victorio food mill. The tomato pulp and a bit of juice gets canned for sauce. The skins go to the chickens, who love tomato sauce season very much. I’ve done it this way for years and it’s an efficient system for me. I don’t season the sauce until I am ready to use it; that way, I can make lots of different dishes with it.

After these tomatoes had cooked down some, I transferred them to the roaster to simmer overnight and put another batch in the pots to thaw. Those are cooking down now. I’ll do a canning run of sauce this afternoon. The big canner holds 14 quarts and I can do another seven quarts in my smaller canner. If I hustle, I might be able to get all the sauce made this week, which is good as we’re running low. And we’ll need that freezer space eventually.

The local news station posted an ominous warning on Facebook yesterday that “Tuesday is the last day to winterize!” Winter seems to be starting off with a bang here, with no signs of letting up. More snow and cold is forecast for today and again this weekend. In addition to starting sauce yesterday, I also filled the wood box, put the flannel sheets on our bed, moved the insulated curtains to the living room windows, and cut out the face fabric for another curtain. I picked up a not-quite-a-full-yard remnant of a pretty 108” wide fabric at Joanns the other day. At only 33” inches long, It wasn’t long enough to get two face fabric pieces from it for two curtains, but it was long enough to slice it vertically down the middle and sew the two halves together horizontally to make a face fabric piece for one curtain. I even matched the print across the seam. The spare bedroom has only one window, so it will go there.

I am having some difficulty finding more 108” fabric. Joanns—both online and the Kalispell store—seems to be sold out of the colors I need. I went to Fabric.com and ordered there, instead. We still have the old insulated curtains to use until I get the new ones finished, but the new ones are a huge improvement, both aesthetically and functionally. Joanns did have some gray Kona remnants, so I cut out more masks in preparation for a marathon mask-making session.

I am almost finished with that little embroidery piece I was working on last week. It’s time to cut out pieces for the Squash Squad blocks. I am also waiting for the quilt store in Spokane to send out the supply list for our class in November so I can start collecting what I need.

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The local HVAC company got the heating system installed in the husband’s shop on Monday, and the local propane company came out to install the tank yesterday. This is a new company that has expanded into our area from Missoula. They would very much like to have our business as we have two 1000-gallon tanks for the house, a 500-gallon tank for the shop and another for the rental house, and a 250-gallon tank for the greenhouse. And we own all of them, which allows us to get our propane from whatever supplier has the best price. I had the house tanks filled in May. Those will last a year, so hopefully by next spring, all the tanks will be on roughly the same schedule.

I get such a giggle out of the guys who come to work on the husband’s shop. You can tell how envious they are that he has such a nice space. Ali came over last night to switch out her snow tires; the husband put the car up on the lift and checked it out to make sure nothing else needed attention. Her little guy (he’s 5) came inside and we watched YouTube videos. He was sitting on the couch, but when the husband got up to go out to the shop, he scooted over to sit in the husband’s recliner and said, contentedly, “Tom’s chair.” Those little boys are fascinated by the husband.

The Winter of 2020 Has Begun

I am very glad I had the foresight to get the snow tires put on my car at the end of September. The tire place is going to be a madhouse today. We had DD#2’s snow tires put on as soon as she got here last week. Seattle doesn’t get enough snow, really, to justify having snow tires, but she will need them to get back and forth over the passes if she wants to come home to visit.

This may all melt today and tomorrow as the temps are supposed to get back up into the 50s, but then it’s going to be cold again this weekend (high of 24 on Saturday with a low of 7). The pigs are fine out in their pen, covered in straw. The water lines are freezing, though, and that’s adding extra work for the husband.

It is what it is. We are all set for winter, and if the husband has to stop pouring concrete sooner than he planned to, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. He can spend the winter puttering in his new shop. The HVAC company is coming out today to install the heating system.

I need to get started on tomato sauce soon. That freezer has to be empty by Thanksgiving or so.

My list of sewing projects is growing. DSIL had asked for some masks and has tried a couple of prototypes. We are up to Mask 3.0, which is gray with black elastic (I am using the basic Deaconess pattern) and has a nose wire. He gave some of them to his father and brother to wear this week, and they liked them, too, so I am going to make a dozen for each of them.

I have a custom apron order. That is going to be fun to make.

This is the secret sewing project from last month that I couldn’t show you because it was part of DD#1’s shower gift:

Her MIL bought her a Kitchen Aid mixer, which provided a great excuse to make her a cover for it using the ByAnnie pattern I had just purchased. (The cover is a bit wrinkled because it was crunched up in a gift bag for a few days.) I was going to make one for my Kitchen Aid mixer, so it will be just as easy to make a third one for her MIL’s mixer, too. This was a fast sew once I got all the pieces quilted.

The Noon and Night quilt and pattern need to be finished. I am aiming for a January release of that pattern in the hopes that it will set the tone for a better new year than we had in 2020.

I have a stack of tops from last winter that need to be turned into quilts.

And I need to make the rest of the new insulated curtains. I am starting to feel like maybe this winter won’t be long enough to get everything done, LOL.

A Good Kind of Exhausted

We are all exhausted, but it’s a good kind of exhausted. This past week truly was a wonderful bright spot in the midst of the dumpster fire that has been 2020. I am going to need a day or two to recover, but then it’s on to tomato sauce and aprons.

The husband’s brother and father left yesterday afternoon to fly back to Colorado. My SIL also left after changing her flight back to LA to a flight to Baltimore, because her dad ended up in the hospital a few days ago. My other SIL also flew out there from California. The medical issue isn’t life-threatening, but he’s going to need their help getting some things arranged after he comes home from the hospital.

My mother and I made a quick trip to Missoula yesterday to return tuxes. The drive down and back (two hours each way) gave us some time to visit. We also stopped at the Amish store to resupply chocolate-covered espresso beans for the husband, who stayed home to put his shop back together after the party. Everyone else went shopping or up to Glacier Park. Our families met up for one last meal together. The kids will be back at our house for another night or two before going back to Seattle. DD#2 has to be at work Tuesday. DD#1 and DSIL are moving their stuff from Seattle to his parents’ house while they wait for his Coast Guard/PHS orders to come through to report to Ketchikan. We are hoping it is not too much longer as they would like to start their married life together on a new adventure.

Whew.

The other piece of good news—depending on one’s perspective, of course—is that it started snowing yesterday. My yardstick for snow events is the winter of 1996-1997. We had something like 216 inches of snow at our house that year (yes, that is 18 feet) beginning with snow on October 15. By the time it all melted at the end of May, there was not a U-Haul trailer to be had in Kalispell because of all the people leaving for more hospitable locations. The forecast is for similar climate conditions this winter. Indeed, we have a couple of inches of snow on the ground already with more to come today. (It’s still dark, or I would get a picture.) This does not make me sad, although I worry about family traveling back home.

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I did work on some embroidery here and there this week in stolen minutes when I could sit down in my recliner by the fire. This is nothing fancy, just a kit I picked up from Hobby Lobby last year.

The supplies I ordered for my Squash Squad blocks also arrived last week. I am just about ready to start that project. The needle case embroidery is done; all I have to do is assemble the case and that project will be finished.

The Airbnb where DSIL’s aunt and grandma stayed had these wonderful mobiles hanging up high on the walls near the ceiling:

I couldn’t get a good picture because of the location and lighting, but they were pieces of lace in embroidery hoops suspended from large branches. I thought the design was very clever.

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We all got a laugh this week when the husband accidentally locked me in the chicken coop Wednesday afternoon. I had gone in to collect eggs; he brought a bag of scratch grains over from the garage, set it down inside the coop, then went out and automatically locked the door out of habit. (He had forgotten I was in there.) By the time I realized I couldn’t get out, he had left to go check on the pigs. Everyone else was in the house. Fortunately, DD#2 pulled into the driveway a few minutes later and I yelled for her to come over. The husband was on his way back from the pig pasture and said that when he saw DD#2 running over to the coop, he figured something was going on so he followed her. They unlocked the door and let me out.

I hope to be back on a regular blogging schedule this week, barring any more unforeseen events in the chicken coop.

A Happily Married Couple

This week has been so much fun. I hate to see it end. DD#1 and her fiancé were married last evening in an absolutely beautiful ceremony attended by about two dozen family members. I don’t have pictures because I really wanted to be in the moment. However, I am sure others will be sharing some of the pictures they took, so you may see them in future blog posts.

We started our festivities on Sunday when the kids got here. The girls and DSIL (I have a son-in-law!) drove over from Seattle together and my sister-in-law flew up from Los Angeles. On Monday, DSIL’s parents arrived along with his grandmother and aunt from Wisconsin. We all had dinner together that evening. The husband’s brother and father arrived Monday night; my mother and sister were supposed to get in Tuesday night, but we had a terrible windstorm down in the valley and their flight was delayed until Wednesday morning. The rest of us had dinner again together. By Wednesday evening, the night of the rehearsal dinner, our numbers had swelled to include DSIL’s brother, grandfather, uncle, and cousin. And the wedding was last evening.

I remember saying to someone, when asked how we felt about our future son-in-law, that I was so happy that our daughter was marrying into a normal family. These people are wonderful. We have had so much fun together this week that we are trying to figure out how we can get together again. There has been much love and laughter and zero drama (except from the wedding photographer, but that was handled).

One of the delights for me has been having dear friends involved in the planning and preparation. Our pastor, who has known DD#1 since she was a little girl, performed the ceremony. Our friend Anna handled the catering and prepared the most wonderful meal. A friend of DD#2’s did the cake (Cakes by Briza, for you Kalispell peeps—highly recommended!). And yesterday, when I got to the venue before the ceremony, these two very special ladies were putting the finishing touches on the flower decorations:

The lady on the left is Debbie Kauffman, who owns Memories in Blossom. She taught at the elementary school and also drove the bus that DD#1 rode to school every day starting in kindergarten. And the lady on the right, Jan Madison, was DD#1’s first-grade teacher. I would have loved to have had everyone we know—and everyone who loved DD#1 and had a part in her life—at the wedding to help us celebrate, but this was the next best thing.

The ceremony and reception were held at Snowline. Tom and Kristen were marvelous to work with and helped us scale down from our original plans to something smaller. Sarah Gasbarro was our wedding coordinator; I told her yesterday morning that she was my new favorite person, LOL. She smoothed the way and that allowed me to relax and enjoy the entire day. I brought her a box of items and she created a beautiful display to remember and honor my mother-in-law, who died in March.

And thanks to the wonders of technology, we were even able to have far-away relatives join us for the ceremony and reception. My SIL, who has worked in the movie industry for many years, has been filming all week. She plans to create a video when she gets back home.

We’re planning to extend the fun today by having a “garage party” to christen the husband’s new shop and give the kids an opportunity to open some wedding gifts. The husband is being very gracious about letting us hold a party in his space. The remaining guests leave this weekend.

As DD#1 noted last night as she addressed her family and friends, she hoped that this was a bright spot in an otherwise very difficult year. I think it was.

So Many Goodies

Yesterday was a great day. I woke up to find an e-mail from Koerts Music—James Koerts is one of my favorite arrangers and I have just about every collection of music he has released. I also belong to his Piano Club and get a new arrangement at the start of every month. I get tired of playing the same pieces Sunday after Sunday, so I am constantly searching out new, fun music to play. (Yes, church music can be fun to play!)

I went to the website immediately and purchased this:

After I printed the file, I went to the piano and played through each of the medleys. Not only are they fun to play, but each medley is balanced with popular and lesser-known hymns. I sight-read most of them easily; only a few passages are going to require some work.

[Music for church pianists usually falls into one of two categories: very short, simple arrangements or complex, dramatic pieces. Finding interesting arrangements for someone who plays for two small, relatively older congregations and who doesn’t spend hours practicing or playing every day is a challenge. Really talented arrangers want to arrange challenging music. One arranger I used to like—before she went off the rails—once stated that pianists should be able to play with equal facility in all keys, so she began releasing pieces with five and six sharps and really weird chord substitutions. No thank you.]

I was so happy with this purchase that I went back to my computer and sent a thank you e-mail to James Koerts. I know that I love to receive positive feedback, so I try to give it, too.

I also belong to a subscription service called The Church Pianist from the Lorenz Corporation. I’ve belonged to this for years—it arrives quarterly and contains about a dozen seasonally-appropriate arrangements in a variety of styles and skill levels. I depend on that publication for finding new beloved arrangers. A few weeks ago, I got a letter in the mail from the Lorenz Corporation letting all subscribers know that from now on, the publication will be available in PDF format only. I understand they are trying to save money and stay solvent, but I dread having to print music to file in page protectors in binders. It is what it is. That’s a quality publication and I have a three-year subscription.

[I have seen pianists play from music on iPads and other tablets, but I have enough issues with my middle-aged vision that I prefer to have the actual music.]

Soon it will be time to start working on Christmas music.

After lunch, the big brown truck of happiness delivered my Amazon order, including the purse embroidery book, which is very good. It features excellent designs, excellent instructions for actually making the purses—the first I’ve seen in a book like that—and excellent embroidery instructions. More projects! And this week’s Squash Squad block is the Baby Boo Pumpkin.

As if all of that weren’t enough to make me deliriously happy, Anna Graham at Noodlehead released a new pattern yesterday, the Sandhill Sling.

The Slabtown Backpack from Klum House is still up first in the queue, but I I’ll have plenty of waxed canvas in the stash to make this one, because my yard of Lime Green waxed canvas from AL Frances Textiles came in the mail:

I am prepared to be snowed in for MONTHS, people.

I have a custom apron order to make after the wedding, and I need to finish the Noon and Night quilt, but after that, I’ll be making bags and embroidering up a storm. Watch out.

Getting Ready for Guests

The husband asked, “How goes the battle?” as he was getting ready to leave for work yesterday morning. He was referring to my attempts to get the dust and dirt under control. I’ve made quite a bit of headway. I cleaned the living room so that we could move the kitchen table in there and add the leaf. We do that when we have guests at Christmas and it makes feeding people much easier.

The fit is a bit tight, but less so than it would be in the kitchen. We’ll put up a long folding table in the kitchen to hold extra stuff that comes in with people. It’s a familiar system.

I’ve just got the other end of the kitchen to finish cleaning today and we should be mostly ready. The house hasn’t looked this good since we built it 24 years ago, LOL.

I’ve wrapped most of the presents that were shipped here to the house. I also found some time to sew yesterday—I made more masks for future son-in-law based on the prototype that I took him in August. And one of our college friends needed a new pillowcase. I had made him one with motorcycle fabric a few years ago. He mentioned to me that it had worn through in a couple of places, so when I was in town earlier this week, I picked up another yard of motorcycle fabric. (I am not sure it’s the same print, but there aren’t a lot of choices in motorcycle fabric.) That will be on its way to him today.

[Speaking of the US Postal System, I sent a Priority Mail envelope containing that hat for Susan’s grandson to Seattle. On September 26. As of yesterday, it still had not arrived. The tracking number from my mail program indicates it is sitting in a sorting facility there. So glad I paid extra so it could languish for two weeks instead of being delivered. The frequency with which these kinds of things happen is mind-boggling.]

I’m enjoying watching the last bit of wildlife before everyone goes into hibernation for the winter. A memo must have gone out to the mama turkeys, because we had several come through the other day with more than a dozen babies in tow:

I wonder, sometimes, if these mamas were the babies that came through here in seasons past and remembered that we had free scratch grains. Oh, well. I am happy to provide sanctuary for baby forest animals. I just wish they wouldn’t eat my grapes.

My friend Marcie has a couple of pet blue jays. She started feeding them peanuts. They know when she is outside and will come down for treats. She said they let her know that they prefer the peanuts with the shells on. These are not Stellar Jays; they look like the Eastern Blue Jays that we had in Ohio when I was growing up, but bigger. Apparently, their range has expanded in the last couple of decades. I wonder if that was in response to the West Nile virus. That virus decimated the blue jay population back east. My mother used to walk out in the morning to get the newspaper and find them dead on her driveway.

I can tell the difference between them and the Stellar Jays by listening. Both are loud, but have slightly different variations of yelling.

We’re just bashing the Prime Directive left and right out here. We don’t feed bears, however.

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This really is my favorite time of year. We’ve had some spectacular weather recently, but I love fall even when it’s blustery and unsettled—sometimes even more so. This time last year, I was on my way to Moses Lake, Washington, for an embroidery retreat with Charisma Horton. That was such a fun weekend. I stayed at a wonderful Airbnb (once I found it), enjoyed two solid days of learning and stitching, and got to take a road trip that included dinner with DD#2, who was in Spokane for homecoming at Gonzaga that weekend.

Long-range forecasts are still pointing to a La Nina winter with an 85% chance of it being “moderate to strong,” and the possibility for much colder and wetter weather than normal. Another winter like 1996-97 would clear a lot of people out of here. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. We’re prepared to hunker down.

Removing a Layer of Dust

I am deep into housecleaning mode right now, so exciting blog content is hard to find. I took apart the laundry room yesterday, moved everything, vacuumed, mopped, sorted, and put stuff back. Then I did a couple of bathrooms. Today, I start the kitchen. (That should be fun.) I am in a constant battle against dust—dust from the road, ash from the fires, dirt that Lila brings in—that settles on every horizontal surface. It doesn’t matter how often I wipe things down with a damp cloth, in a couple of weeks, it’s all back. My vacuum cleaners are a Dyson and a shop vac with a HEPA filter. This is just a huge rock that I’ve been pushing up the same hill for 24 years.

I think we have one or two more days of nice weather, and then fall arrives for good. The weather for the wedding will be cool (50s), but no precipitation is in the forecast.

Our UPS guy delivered five boxes yesterday and asked me if I had ordered all that stuff. Two boxes were parts for my car, two were wedding presents for DD#1, and one was the cushion for my garden bench. And I know there is more on the way. The FedEx guy has also been making regular stops here.

This came in the mail:

This is the Laura Heine Teeny Tiny collection that I ordered for the class in November. I have the full-size pattern for the sewing machine, but the instructor (the store owner) recommends doing one of these smaller versions in the class. I think I am going to do the pincushion. I ordered this from Regal Fabric and Gifts in Spokane, where we’re taking the class, and the owner included a nice handwritten note on the invoice.

I am glad Tera and I are taking the class, though, because this isn’t so much a “pattern” as it is several stream-of-consciousness blocks of text—in a fancy, unreadable font—telling the quilter what to do. Oh, that makes my head hurt.

I ordered a book from Amazon the other day, and am expecting it in the next UPS delivery:

I looked at this book at a Joanns in Spokane last month and didn’t buy it. I assumed our Joanns would have it and I could buy it here. Nope. This is one of those times when not being an impulse buyer came back to bite me in the ass. I want this book enough to have ordered it from Amazon, which also guarantees that it will show up in our Joanns next week.

I am trying to decide if I should cram tomato sauce production into the last two weeks of October or wait until after I get back from Spokane in November. I think I may try to do it right after the wedding and get it done and out of the way. I am taking the next two Sundays off from pianist duties at church because I need the breathing room.

A Boy and His BMW

I’ve been going through the cedar chests, pulling out a few things to use at the wedding and organizing what’s inside of them, and I ran across this picture:

This is the husband, sometime in 1988-ish, with his 5-series BMW. To say that he loved that car more than anything else is an understatement. His best friend, Michael—who had been his college roommate all four years and was a gifted writer—once penned a story about the husband and his BMW. A copy of that story is also in the cedar chest. Reading it makes me laugh. because it’s so accurate. (Michael is no longer with us, which also makes that story bittersweet.) There is a line in the story where Michael notes that the husband said to him that if he ever got hurt and needed to go to the hospital, Michael should let him die rather than try to drive the BMW. (It was a manual.) We were all allowed to ride in it, but no one else—not even me, the girlfriend or Michael, the best friend—was allowed to drive it.

The husband worked for a while as the parts manager for a body shop in Baltimore that specialized in foreign cars. He knows cars (and trucks) inside and out, but I am sure that my BMW is quite different from the one in this picture. Mine has a computer, and the computer told me this week that it is time for service. When the supplies he ordered get here, he’s going to change the oil and do scheduled maintenance on it.

We also had to order a new wheel badge for one of the hubcaps on my station wagon, because I either lost one or—more likely—someone pried one off as a souvenir. (One of the hazards of driving a car like that in a big city.) They come in packs of four, so I’ll have a spare if it happens again.

I need to pick up a frame for this picture and hang it up here in my office. He has my “senior pic” photo from college hanging downstairs in his office.

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I found a 60% off coupon in my Joanns e-mail yesterday, so I ordered more of that insulated curtain fabric, enough to do the rest of the windows, but just before bedtime, I got a notification that the order had been canceled. Joann Fabrics’ entire computer system has some serious glitches. It’s possible the store didn’t have as much in stock as the website said they did. I’ll have to stop in there today and see what happened. Unfortunately, the coupon is only valid if you order online and pick up in the store.

We dug up the potatoes yesterday afternoon and got a respectable haul, mostly Classic Russets. There were only a few Butter Reds, which are my favorites. We’ll have to get fresh seed potatoes next spring. Elysian has been coming by every day to get tomatoes. I have a nice tray of lettuce in the greenhouse; I transplanted some to the garden but it was getting munched on by turkeys and/or ground squirrels, so I gave up.

We’re right on schedule for pre-wedding preps. Now I just need to clean the house from top to bottom.

Stocking Up on Stock

Every fall, we are entertained by one of the resident squirrels as it stocks up for winter by stashing pine nuts in the woodshed. (This is a horrible picture, but I took it from inside the house so as not to scare it away.)

This has happened every year since we built our house (in 1996), which makes this a multi-generational squirrel tradition. The squirrel spends most of September and October running back and forth between a couple of trees collecting nuts, then takes them to the woodshed. Occasionally, it will detour and run up on top of the woodpile or one of the husband’s work trailers. Once in a while, it even comes up on the porch. Lila sits and watches from the kitchen door. We refer to this as Squirrel TV.

The husband and I were busy yesterday, too. I canned 19 pints of chicken stock:

We took more stuff out to the storage container and rearranged a few things here in the house. He moved the freezer that had been on the porch to the old garage, which freed up space for the garden bench I bought. It’ll go out to the garden next spring, but we’ll store it here on the porch over the winter.

He stained the fence around the propane tanks and the porta-potty that were hit by a large tree limb during that horrible windstorm in March. The tree limb took out the porta-potty—which still has to be repaired—and several of the fence slats. He replaced the fence slats a few months ago and gave the entire fence a coat of stain yesterday.

I finished the insulated shades for the living room (hallelujah). There is a small piece of insulated material left, enough to make a shade for the window in the door in the laundry room. I’m going to watch for another 50% or 60% off coupon at Joanns and get enough of the insulated shade material to do the other eight windows this winter. The shades look so much nicer than the curtains I had up there before, nice enough that they are worth the hassle of making them.

He and I plan to dig up the rest of the potatoes this afternoon and that will be it for the garden.

We’re getting down to the wire with wedding preparations. The kids arrive a week from today, followed by the rest of the relatives. DD#1 very helpfully put together a timeline of events for each day of wedding week showing who needs to be where doing what. The big jobs we needed to do are done. Now it’s mostly a matter of staying on top of all the little details.

Blog posts may be few and far between next week as a result, but we’ll see how things go.

About Those Sewing Machines...

I’ve gotten a couple of requests to do a blog post about the sewing machines. My long-time readers will be familiar with this obsession, but I have quite a few newbies here who need to be brought up to speed.

I’ve always been fascinated by textiles. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Charles, kept a bag of scrap fabric in the cabinet under the sink in the back of the classroom. Whenever I had completed my work and had time to burn, I took out that bag of scraps and sewed things. Little things. Things I can’t even remember now. I embroidered. And I knit. However, being of that generation where girls were encouraged to aim higher than domestic pursuits, I managed to graduate from high school without ever taking a home ec class.

[If I were ever able to go back and talk to my younger self, I would suggest that the most useful classes I could take—the ones that would serve me best as an adult—would be accounting, home ec, and botany. Calculus and molecular genetics have not been quite as useful. Live and learn.]

My mother is a skilled seamstress and made a lot of our clothes, so there was no need for me to learn how to sew anything. She taught me to knit and I took to that like a duck to water. I did buy myself a sewing machine in 1991 and made all of my kids’ Halloween costumes, including a very elaborate Belle dress for DD#1 out of red satin, but I was completely self-taught and a bit of a hack.

Six or seven years ago, the husband came home from work one day and said that one of his customers had a Singer Featherweight that they planned to sell and did I want it? (Let us all take a moment here to appreciate that the husband knew that a Singer Featherweight had some value.) He traded labor on that job and that machine came to live here. I don’t sew on it nearly enough, but it’s fun when I do.

Once they were on my radar, I started seeing vintage sewing machines all over the place. I like to tinker. I also inherited from my father the need to buy old things and fix them up and get them running again. He once brought home an old mantle clock consisting of nothing but pieces of wood in a paper bag. He put it back together, stained and polished it, installed a mechanism, and got it working.

The next machine that came to me was advertised on Craigslist. The description said only that it had belonged to the seller’s aunt, a professional seamstress. I met the seller at a storage unit in Kalispell and came home with this, for $40:

I had never heard of the Necchi brand. It’s Italian. (How did it end up in Montana?) The machine was in good shape for being almost 70 years old, but the wiring was shot. I asked the husband if we could rewire it. Thus, I learned basic soldering and wiring skills, and fitted this machine with a new, more powerful motor and an electronic foot pedal. This is my beloved Vittorio, named for the founder of the Necchi Sewing Machine Company. I love this machine so much that if the house were on fire, I would save it or die trying. I sew on it almost daily. It functions basically as an extension of my body and if you’ve ever had a tool like that, you know what that’s worth.

The other machine I can’t live without is also a Necchi—a BV, which is an industrial model. It lives here in my office:

This machine came from a department store in Salt Lake City where it was used to sew draperies. My friend Tera, who travels to SLC frequently, picked up the machine and brought it back to Montana for me. It’s essentially a bigger, beefier version of my little Necchi. The machine came in a table with a clutch motor. I took the motor off the table and moved the table top to a set of industrial treadle irons. This machine is powered entirely by my legs. I use it when sewing waxed canvas bags. It makes the most beautiful topstitching of all my machines.

[I could wax poetically about Necchis (I have a few more), but I think I’ll save that for another blog post.]

Word got around. People started offering me machines they found in their garages and attics. I came down one morning to find one had been left on my porch overnight. I hated the idea that any of these would end up as scrap or in the landfill. There were machines tucked into every nook and cranny of our house, including three of the four bathrooms. I’ve slowed down considerably on acquisitions; I simply don’t have room. And honestly, only a few models have any real value. When I visited the Sewing Machine Museum in London last year, our tour guide said something that stuck with me: Old sewing machines are like toasters. They are everywhere. And like most toasters, they aren’t worth much, even though a lot of people who find grandma’s Singer in the attic think it’s going to fund their retirement.

[The All Saints Spitalfields stores are notorious for using vintage sewing machines in their decorating schemes. It pains those of use who collect them—the machines have been welded so they are no longer operational—but there really are a lot of old sewing machines in the world.]

When the husband moved over to the new shop, I took over the old garage. I’ve moved most of my machines in need of repair out there, along with my supplies:

Some of these are donor machines that give up their parts to fix other machines. Some will get fixed up and donated to groups that need them. You can also see my Singer 31-15, which is another industrial machine in a treadle base.

So now I have a dedicated spot to work. Hopefully I can find some time this winter to get back to tinkering with machines. My sewing skills have increased exponentially (meaning I have learned to do things properly) and I’ve tackled all sorts of projects from Cordura generator covers to quilts to clothing to waxed canvas bags.

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I registered for that Laura Heine collage quilt class in Spokane in November, and yesterday morning, I got a text from my friend Tera letting me know that she had also signed up for the class. Yay! We’ve rented an Airbnb for the weekend and we’re making a mini-vacation out of it. We’ve been wanting to do this for a long time—take a class and a trip together—so I am thrilled that this worked out.

And I need to note here the passing of two knitting luminaries in recent weeks: Cat Bordhi and Annie Modesitt. I did not know either of them especially well, but we often taught at the same knitting conferences. Annie, in particular, did not deserve what life threw at her; her husband was diagnosed at a young age with multiple myeloma, and just before his death two years ago, she was diagnosed with an aggressive lymphoma. Cat also died from cancer. If you are any kind of knitter, their books and patterns are well worth seeking out.

Life is short. Make the most of it. As Amy at A Farmish Kind of Life notes, “Eat that cake while you can still taste it.”

Fabric Temptations and Future Projects

It occurred to me that I have some blog readers who might not know about my history—distant and not-so-distant—that factors into my personal risk assessment. In 1994, when I was 28 years old, nine months after we had moved to Montana and when DD#1 was 18 months old, I was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia. I spent six months in and out of the Cleveland Clinic undergoing chemotherapy. Thankfully, the leukemia went into remission and has never returned.

And then in February 2018, after coming down with the flu, I ended up in the ICU. All I remember is the husband taking me to the emergency room on a Friday night. I woke up a week later. The intervening time is lost to me because I was heavily sedated and on a ventilator.

I sometimes joke that I have survived two assassination attempts by the universe (gallows humor, you know), but I want people to know that I don’t make remarks about coronavirus flippantly. On the other hand, as the husband notes so often, it’s the stuff you don’t see coming that is going to take you out. I am way more concerned about the people driving down the road looking at their phones—I counted six of them on my way to town Tuesday—than I am about this virus.

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Now onto the fun stuff. I follow AL Frances Textiles on Facebook and a post about their new color of waxed fabric popped up in my feed the other day. The new color is called Lime:

They are taking pre-orders right now, so I bought a yard. I am a sucker for anything green.

And not fifteen minutes later—I kid you not—I saw a post from Klum House for their new color of waxed canvas, called Cobalt:

That’s a gorgeous shade of blue. I haven’t ordered any (yet) because I need to sew up some of what I’ve got. I am really happy, though, to see some of these brighter shades in addition to the ubiquitous muddy earth tones.

I’ve got everything to make the Klum House Slabtown Backpack, so that will be up in the queue after the wedding. I also registered for that Laura Heine collage class in Spokane the first weekend in November. (Tera?)

I haven’t forgotten about the Noon and Night quilt, either. That needs to be finished.

I have one eye out for an industrial walking foot or needle-feed machine. The husband says I should buy myself something, but really, I have everything I need and also most of what I want (and I am not just talking about sewing machines). A sit-down longarm quilting machine would be nice to have, but that’s a huge chunk of change. A new Juki 1541 walking foot machine is a couple thousand dollars.

[There is a Juki industrial on display at DD#2’s Nordstrom store in Seattle—to help advertise their alterations service—and I always pet it when I walk by. I have been hinting for a tour of the alterations department but so far, no luck, LOL.]

A Singer 111W walking foot machine popped up on Craigslist yesterday for $250; unfortunately, it was in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, which is 2-1/2 hours away. I told the husband that I didn’t think it was going to last at that price, and indeed, the listing was gone when I checked this morning.

My philosophy is that the right machine will appear at the right time.

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This has been simmering since yesterday:

I’ll strain the stock today and can it up. Lila will get some chicken skin as a treat.

My Two Roos

The chicken coop is settling back into a normal routine. I expect egg production to increase, both because the pullets are laying now and because the hens are much less stressed out.

The Buff Orpington rooster has resumed his post as clan leader:

I still call him Baby, which is a horrible name for a rooster, but nothing else seems to stick. He comes when I call him, too, so I think he knows that’s his name.

And the other rooster has been christened Dave.

He just looks like a Dave to me, all laid back and cool. He’s getting the hang of being a rooster, too, having figured out that the ladies will like him a lot better if he doesn’t ambush them from behind the waterer. He has also learned to call them over to eat instead of gobbling up the scratch grains. Baby occasionally chases him around, but there hasn’t been any bloodshed.

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I was in town most of yesterday trying to bludgeon my to-do list into submission. I was able to get everything crossed off, although that means that other stuff has floated to the top to be dealt with on the next trip. I met with our accountant for an hour in the morning—we do a check-up every fall to see where the construction company is financially and to make plans for the upcoming year.

I am in desperate need of a road trip of some sort. I may have to make do with a quick trip to Missoula next week. After the wedding, though, I plan to treat myself to a weekend in Spokane. The small quilt store there has a Laura Heine workshop scheduled for the first weekend of November. I have the Laura Heine pattern for the sewing machine collage, and I would be way more comfortable tackling that pattern with some guidance. The owner of that store is an excellent teacher.

I am aware that part of my restlessness and this desire to go on a road trip is a response to this pandemic. I am very weary of the restrictions, especially because I think much of this has been politicized and because the level of scientific (and statistical) literacy in this country is so abysmal.

[And yes, I do know someone who has had coronavirus and spent a few days in the hospital.]

I don’t think we’ve yet come to grips with all the knock-on effects of “14 days to slow the spread” that has morphed into six months of “If you don’t wear a mask, you obviously want Grandma to die.” I sit here in my office listening to the scanner, and there has been a definite uptick in calls for suicides and attempted suicides. Church looks different. We can’t have conferences and other gatherings. (Last October, Elysian and I spent a fabulous weekend at the Spokane Food and Farm Expo, which has been cancelled for 2020.) So many of the personal interactions that serve as the glue to hold communities together are forbidden. Have we considered what those losses are doing to us? What about all the business that have folded and aren’t coming back? Yesterday, while I was in town, I stopped in at the embroidery store that opened in Kalispell last winter only to discover that it’s completely empty. That business never really had a chance.

Part of me is angry that my daughter can’t have the wedding she envisioned when we started planning this a year ago. She will still have a beautiful wedding, but who wants wedding pictures full of people wearing masks?

I have so much more I could say, but I’ve got things to do today. I’m tired of this, though, and I don’t accept the assumption that we’ll never be able to go back to the way things were. I won’t surrender to that level of fear. Life is risky. Ask me how I know.

I'd Rather Clean the Garden Than the House

I came home from church yesterday, ate lunch, called my mother, then headed out to the garden to decide what to attack. I ended up pulling out all of the Indian Stripe and Cherokee Purple tomato plants. I have plenty of those two varieties in the freezer because they ripened earlier. The Oregon Star paste tomato vines are loaded and I’m bringing in ripe ones daily. As we’re in for a week of nice weather, it’s worth keeping them going. I also left the Dirty Girl plant because it’s still producing.

The husband came out to see what I was doing. He pulled up the vines in the watermelon patch and gave the overripe and smaller melons to the pigs:

Having the garden right next to the pig pasture is very handy. Excess and overripe produce goes right over the fence:

We made piles of all the vegetation. It will decompose over the winter. We also covered the Oregon Star plants with a couple of concrete blankets to protect them from the frost we got last night. I don’t see another frost in the forecast this week, but I’ll keep a close eye on the overnight temps and cover the plants again if necessary.

I am going to have to do something about the grapevines next year. A week ago, they were loaded. I was waiting for the grapes to ripen. Yesterday, I discovered that they have been completely picked over by birds and my domesticated (wild) turkeys. The mamas with the three babies—now almost-grown juveniles—are still here, and we’ve seen them over in the garden. I got some grapes, but not as many as in past years. I need to make a note to put bird netting on the vines next August.

The animals have to eat, too. I try not to get too torqued about it. The turkeys have become part of the landscape to the point that Lila walks right past them in the yard. And now we have another mama with six poults hanging out here.

Digging potatoes is on the list for next weekend, and that will bring an end to the 2020 gardening season. At least when I clean up the garden, it stays that way for several months, unlike the house.

The pullets have started laying, right on schedule (full-size eggs for comparison):

Hopefully, we’ll get back on a regular egg schedule soon. Eggs are always scarce until the pullets are at full production.

I fervently hope there isn’t another chick shortage next spring. I don’t want to have to hatch out my own chicks again. It was a fun experiment that turned out well, but I know that it’s always going to result in more roosters than we want, and I don’t think my nerves can take it, LOL. Also, it messes up my system of knowing which chickens are the oldest based on breed. I’ve now got a bunch of crossbred hens out there.

I’ve re-written the to-do list and, as usual, I have plenty of stuff to choose from this week. The first task today will be bagging and freezing those chickens and delivering half a dozen of them to Jeryl as a thank-you for helping with butchering.

A Calmer Coop

Item #1 on the to-do list has been crossed off—we butchered chickens yesterday. I was a bit worried that we would have to postpone due to weather, because around midnight Friday night, we had a torrential downpour with a surprising amount of wind. The front had moved through by morning, though, and we woke up to 45 degrees and partly cloudy skies. 

The husband was up early getting everything arranged:

Our pastor, Jeryl, always comes to help us, and I give him some processed chickens in return. Elysian and WS also came over to help and brought seven of their chickens. We did a total of 25 birds: eleven of our hens, seven of Elysian’s hens, and seven roosters. 

We got started as soon as Jeryl arrived. The three of us have butchered together before, so we’ve worked out an efficient system. The husband dispatches the birds, I scald and pluck them (that red boxy thing in the picture is the chicken plucker), and Jeryl eviscerates them and puts them in a cooler with ice and cold water. His workstation is to the left of the picture.

[I was laughing to myself as I was plucking chickens, thinking that if someone had asked me, “Where do you see yourself in 25 years?”, plucking chickens would not have been one of my answers.]

Elysian helped Jeryl. Her son, WS, alternated between “stations” because he was interested in the whole process. At the end, though, he told me that he really thought his job should be to get the chickens out of the coop. He is something of a “chicken whisperer”—most little kids are—but with all those roosters, I didn’t want to take a chance. 

Setup, butchering, and cleanup took the whole morning. We had to make sure there was nothing left to attract bears. The birds are in the fridge in the garage. I was advised to give them 48 hours before freezing them. 

Now we’re down to about 30 hens and two roosters. The atmosphere inside the coop is much calmer. I was able to let the lame chicken out of the isolation ward. (I had put my big Buff rooster in there with her while we were butchering.) She can very much hold her own against the other hens; one of the Buff Orpington hens tried to peck at her and she turned right around and fluffed up her neck feathers and went back at her. It helps that she’s from a Brahma mother and is bigger than most of the other hens. 

Getting this job done is a huge weight off my mind.

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After lunch, the husband got the orchard ladder out for me so I could pick the Golden Delicious tree and retrieve a few stragglers from the Honeycrisp tree. (Note to future self: The Golden Delicious apples aren’t ready until the end of September.) If I have time this week, I think I might make either another batch of pie filling or some applesauce. Grapes are on the schedule, too.

My back is bothering me again—it’s muscular, not structural, and sitting in my Swedish recliner helps to stretch the muscles out—so when I was done with the apple trees, I sat and worked on an embroidery project. 

This is the needle case I have to finish before I will allow myself to start embroidering squash. I started the third bird yesterday. The end is in sight. After the embroidery is done, I’ll add a few appliquéd embellishments and sew the case. 

I am trying to decide if I want to cover the tomatoes again tonight. We are supposed to get a frost, but then we’re in for a stretch of really nice fall weather. I may compromise and pull the Indian Stripe and Cherokee Purple plants but leave the Oregon Star paste tomatoes as I can always use more of them.

Complicated Rectangles

I’ve made two of the four insulated shades for the living room. The first one tested my resolve to make four of them. From a sewing standpoint, these are utterly simple: two side seams, a top casing for the tension rod, and a bottom hem. This is not an heirloom christening dress. The issue is that I am working with six yards of 54” wide insulated fabric and two 60” x 108” chunks of fabric for the covers, none of which fits easily on my cutting table. Instead, I’ve had to lay everything out on the floor of our bedroom and cut there. The insulated shade piece needs to be 46” wide by 44” long. The fabric cover needs to be 48-1/2” wide and 56” long. The wider cover fabric is sewn to the insulated fabric at the sides, and because it’s larger than the insulated fabric, it wraps around each side edge to form a facing on the back.

The whole process is just very cumbersome. I’m sewing on the Janome with the even-feed foot engaged. I really ought to have my small table set up behind it to help hold the extra fabric—that’s the table I use when I machine quilt—but it is currently in the living room, covered with tomatoes.

The finished shades, however, are a huge improvement over the previous version:

These fit nicely inside the window frame. The fabric is a very light beige print. (I may release and re-sew the hem on this one because it looks a bit wonky here. The second shade turned out much better.)

Each shade takes about two hours start to finish. I’ll definitely finish the other two for the living room, but I need to think about whether or not I want to make eight more.

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We are butchering tomorrow, which is why I am writing this blog post on Friday afternoon instead—I won’t have time in the morning. After lunch, I got the scalding pot and the huge cooler out of the storage shed and cleaned and sanitized both of them. I brought a hose and nozzle over from the greenhouse and hooked them up to the spigot on the side of the house. The new fridge is plugged in and cold. Barring any torrential downpours in the morning, we should be good to go. I’ll be glad when it’s all over. I am looking forward to a much calmer and less crowded chicken coop, though. Even just moving those two roosters out of there the other evening has made a difference.

Our pastor is coming to help—the three of us have butchered together several times before and we have a very efficient system. Elysian and WS said they would like to come help, too, and bring some of their chickens. WS asked if he could run the chicken plucker and I said sure. He’s not afraid to jump in and help.

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And I whipped up—literally, because it took less than half an hour—this darling little beanie for Susan’s grandson.

The fabric is a knit remnant from Joanns. The piece wasn’t very big, about 10” long by the width of the fabric (54”, I think), and I could probably get three or four more beanies from it. I sort of fussy cut the top pieces so they would have complete dinosaurs, but I wasn’t paying attention and put the band on upside down. Ooops. I don’t think this child (or his parents) will care. The pattern is a free download from Made For Mermaids. I ran it up on the serger. Easy-peasy.

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The second Squash Squad embroidery pattern was released this morning. This one is for the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin. I had never heard of such a thing, so I looked it up. Turns out that this is also known as the Cinderella pumpkin, which is a variety I grew a few years ago. Huh.

I might have to build a fire in the fireplace tonight and wheel my embroidery cart in and finish one of my current projects so I can start embroidering squash.

Little Things Make a Difference

The husband takes a couple of apples with him to work every day. In the fall, I buy them by the case at the grocery store, but even a case only lasts about two weeks. (He really likes apples.) These little stickers are the bane of his existence:

Asking a man who hasn’t yet found consciousness to remove these stickers while he is making his lunch in the morning is a rare form of torture. When I take apples from the box and put them in bowls on the table, I remove the stickers so he doesn’t have to. I have fingernails and the stickers pop off easily for me.

Happy spouse, happy house. I just wish the apple growers would stop cultivating these ridiculously large apples. When I can find them, I try to get the Fuji 113s because they are a reasonable size.

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I painted the ice cream parlor chairs yesterday. I should have bought two cans of paint because I need just a smidge more to touch up a few spots. I’ll pick some up next time I am in town. These need to sit for two weeks and then I can clear coat them. I have three of the four seats re-covered.

When Susan and I were in Seattle a few weeks ago, we went to Ikea with DD#2. This is how I shop at Ikea: I see something I think I’d like, but I don’t buy it. The next time I go back, I buy it. The problem is that I might only get to Ikea once every 3-4 months. (I’ve stopped doing that at Costco because I know if I don’t buy the item when I see it, it might not be there next time.)

I went to Ikea with DD#1 in June and saw these hanging baskets. I thought it would be cool to have a couple of them on the porch to hold some small herb plants. I did not buy them.

When we went to Ikea in August, I bought three of them. I should have bought four so I could hang them two and two—three linked together is a bit too long. I’ll have to pick up one more next time I’m there, or have the girls get one and bring it home with them.

On my more delusional days, I think how nice it would be to have hanging baskets full of flowers across the front porch. I might start with one or two next summer and see how it goes. Do I really need one more thing to take care of?

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Two graduates of Janet’s Finishing School for Baby Roosters went to their new home last night. I “met” a woman in a homesteading group on the internet 4-5 years ago and discovered she lived around the corner. We’ve chatted back and forth since then but never met in person. When she found out I was giving away roosters, she offered to take one. We met in person for the first time when she and her husband came over yesterday evening. The funny thing is that she doesn’t live in the neighborhood anymore as they have moved further out to a big piece of property.

They took the large rooster out of the White Orpington mother. He was the one I was most hoping to find a home for as he is such a good roo and will do well with his own flock. They also took one of the Buff Orpington roosters. The Buffs seem to be late bloomers; I think he will also be a great rooster, but he needs a few weeks yet. My Buff Orpington rooster was the same way.

I wish I could find homes for the others, but no luck so far.

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I still don’t have time to sit and do any handwork right now, but Sue Spargo has started a stitchalong on Instagram—she calls it an Instastitch—and I’m downloading the patterns and stashing them to work on later this winter. This one is called “Squash Squad.” It’s nine different kinds of squash that make a 15” square wallhanging.

IT’S EMBROIDERED SQUASH, PEOPLE.

How can I not do this project? Instagram is not my favorite platform for these kinds of things, but I’ll cope.

Enough Tomatoes?

I’ve been packing the empty pork freezer with tomatoes:

My rough calculation is approximately 50 gallon zip bags. I have room for maybe a dozen more in the door. Ali and her little guy were over yesterday and I told her to help herself to the tomatoes left on the vines. I am going to bag up what I have ripening and bring in a few more, but I think I am close to being done. These will sit until after the wedding when I will schedule a marathon week of sauce-making followed by a long vacation weekend. This freezer has to be empty by the end of November.

I know people here who lovingly prune and train their tomatoes to maximize production. I would love to be like those gardeners, but I can’t quite get it together. I go for quantity (I put in 46 plants this year) and hope for the best. That strategy seems to work. My tomatoes produced heavily, even without pruning.

It rained yesterday so I still haven’t painted the ice cream parlor chairs. That will be the first item on the to-do list if it stays dry today. I did re-cover one chair seat. I am not thrilled with the fabric I got, but the outdoor fabric selection at our Joanns leaves much to be desired—mostly large-scale tropical prints, none of which were suitable for small chairs like this, let alone small chairs in a decidedly non-tropical location. Oh well. I’ll cover these with what I have and if I find something I like better in the future, I can always re-do them.

I’ve cleaned up the sewing room(s) and put away everything except the black fabric for sashing the rows of the Noon and Night quilt and a few other small projects. I picked up the Warm Window insulation for the shades yesterday and will get those cut out, too. They’re just rectangles with straight seams so they’ll be easy to put together.

Cleaning and organizing. I feel like the squirrels who have been busy stashing pine nuts in the woodshed. Lila likes to watch them from the kitchen door.

One Appliqué Project Was Enough

That itch has been scratched. The crab soup apron is done. I finished it yesterday morning while waiting for the sun to come up and the temps to warm up enough to work in the garden.

A couple of notes about this project before I post the pictures.

I bought the crab soup appliqué kit at a little store called Quilt Vine, in Trappe, Maryland, just south of Easton. This is a darling little store that is packed full of all sorts of goodies and I always stopped in there when I visited my in-laws.

They have quilt designs using this appliqué, but it was on display in the store on the front of a wraparound apron. As I had no desire to make an appliqué quilt—but I can always use more aprons—I decided to use my appliqué in the same way.

Their display apron was lined.

I did not find out what pattern they used for the apron but knew I had something similar in my pattern collection at home. I used Simplicity 5201.

I traced the size Medium from the pattern. I should have checked PatternReview.com, first, because several other reviewers noted that this finished apron is huge, and it is. I probably could have done with a Small.

The Simplicity pattern is a single layer of fabric finished with bias binding. I had a few moments of trying to puzzle out how to line my apron—and I wanted it lined to hide all the thread ends from the appliqué—because I couldn’t figure out how to turn what is basically a möbius strip inside out after sewing in the lining. I pulled out another apron pattern from my vast collection and followed their instructions. Basically, you leave the shoulder straps unsewn, turn the apron inside out through one of them, then sew the straps and strap lining shoulder seams. The openings get sewn shut with the topstitching, which I did on the Necchi industrial only because it makes the nicest topstitching of all my machines.

The lining is a pale yellow beach-y type print with starfish and shells on it. I could not find crab-themed quilting cotton anywhere in Kalispell, not surprisingly.

I don’t have any full-length mirrors in my house, so I had to get creative with the picture of me wearing it:

Yes, it’s huge. It’s also much longer than I expected, and I am not short. The picture on the front of the pattern makes it look like it stops just above the knees. Maybe it does on someone who is 6’ tall. I would only make the long version if I were trying to look like Ma Ingalls.

I wish I had placed the appliqué a bit further up, which would have left room for some pockets, but I was totally freelancing this.

This is not my favorite style of apron as it requires a bit of work to get into it. I am glad no one was watching me try to get it onto my dress form. I was laughing the entire time.

(I made a linen crossback apron for Cathy a few years ago and used the free pattern from Purl Soho. I like that design much better and that pattern was also a lot of fun to sew.)

This project is done and I have another apron to wear. I also know how to do machine appliqué should the need ever arise again.

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I went out to the garden after lunch, intending to deal with tomatoes, but I only got as far as the lettuce bed. I put down more cardboard, then pulled up the lettuce stalks and laid them on top. The lettuce went to seed weeks ago and I would just as soon it comes up in that area again next spring. The garden looks ugly now, but all that vegetable matter and cardboard will sit under the snow this winter and decompose.

And I dug up a row of potatoes:

These are mostly Yukon Golds with a few Classic Russets. The Yukon Golds don’t keep well, so we usually eat those first. The Classic Russets are my favorites. After these dry out for a few days, I’ll sort them into burlap bags and we’ll put them in the root cellar. Only eight more rows of potatoes to dig up!

If it doesn’t rain today, I’ll paint the ice cream parlor chairs, which have been scrubbed down.

I’ll leave you with a picture of our neighbor’s sunflowers. I have never seen any this tall!

Mike was out working in his garden, so I popped over to visit with him for a few minutes. His property backs up onto the pig pasture. He’s been feeding the pigs leftover kale and beets and I promised him a couple of packages of bacon in return.

In Search of a Weedless Garden

The husband and I went out to the garden right after breakfast so we could stay ahead of the rain that was coming in. We took the two smaller billboard tarps off the strawberry bed and moved them over to where the beans had been, then spread the larger billboard tarp out over the strawberry bed:

This bed is at the very back of the garden. It was added on specifically for the strawberries, but I should have done a better job of staying on top of the weeds. The whole bed got overgrown with wood sorrel. To the left is our neighbor’s property. To the right is the pig pasture. Directly at the back of this bed—where the pigs are standing—is a small section of the pig pasture, and beyond that is another neighbor’s property.

At 20’ x 60’, this tarp fits almost perfectly in this space. I may have to leave it on through next summer, too, in order to kill the weeds underneath completely, but we’ll see how this area looks next spring. In addition to strawberries, I’d like to put an herb garden in this section.

Not tilling the soil has made a huge difference in the number and kind of weeds in other parts of the garden. The “weeds” I did have this year were chamomile, lamb’s quarters, dill, and cilantro, none of which I find terribly annoying. (And my friend, Anna, who owns the catering business, was more than happy to take the excess cilantro off my hands.) If I can get the wood sorrel out of this section, I’ll be happy. It has tenacious roots. Tilling seems to spread it around even more. I hate it almost more than quackgrass and that’s saying something.

I picked another five-gallon bucket of ripening tomatoes and then the rain started. It was beautiful. Friends down in the valley are telling me they didn’t get much, but it rained off and on here for most of the day.

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My storage container—I have one and the husband has one—is now rearranged and organized. Mine is filled with canning supplies, a few sewing machines, and a bunch of stuff belonging to the girls. I moved all of their stuff to the front of the container so they can go through it next month and decide what they want to take with them.

I ordered heavy-duty shelving. The husband was going to get me shelving from one of his clients, but that fell through. When I checked the other day, none of the stores in town had shelving in stock. I need shelving strong enough to hold sewing machines. The shelving I ordered is supposed to arrive by next Friday. We’ll put some of it in the garage and at least one unit in the storage container.

I also took advantage of the 60% off Joanns coupon that showed up in my e-mail and ordered the Warm Window insulation for the shades for the living room. At $36.99 a yard, it’s not inexpensive, and I needed six yards. The husband says he doesn’t know how Joanns makes any money off people like me. I don’t either, but maybe they make it up in volume. When that gets here, I’ll have everything I need to make the four shades for the living room and a small shade for the door in the laundry room.

We finally have reservations for the rehearsal dinner—finding a place that could accommodate 13-14 people on a Wednesday night was no easy feat. This is a restaurant my kids loved when they were little. It’s under new management, with a new menu, but DD#1 was happy to see that they still have the girls’ favorite appetizer of fried wonton wraps filled with cream cheese.

Looking at the forecast, I see that we have about one more week of nice weather before we get another frost. I’ll bring in what tomatoes I can until that happens—even if I have to set up another table for them to ripen on—and call it good. I should have plenty for sauce. All that’s left after that is grapes and potatoes.

This afternoon, if it’s not raining, I plan to scrub down the ice cream parlor chairs in preparation for giving them a coat of touch-up paint tomorrow. I’ll also cut out the new covers for the chair seats.