Dinner With Friends

I didn’t time my chicken feed runs properly last week. We almost ran out, which necessitated a trip to town yesterday morning. I try to avoid Kalispell on weekends during the summer. I was pleasantly surprised, though, to see that town was nearly empty, and I was able to get all my errands done in record time. One of the items on the shopping list was this:

The bugs have been awful this year—so bad that it has been almost impossible to sit outside. I refuse to allow the bugs to drive us away from our favorite rocking chair spot. This was the biggest bug zapper Home Depot had in stock. Hopefully, it will help.

Before I left for town, the husband helped me move some black plastic around the garden. Many years ago, I planted horseradish. Don’t ever do that. The stuff spreads and is nearly impossible to dig out. I am tired of it being where it is and will leave the black plastic there for a couple of seasons to make sure it’s gone.

The potatoes look fantastic. The husband put a whole bunch of compost in that area last fall.

The herb garden next to the chicken coop is still slated for demolition when it becomes part of the expanded chicken run, but that project is a ways down the list. In the meantime, it has run amok. There are salvias in the middle of the lavender bed and lemon balm coming up in every nook and cranny. I am enjoying the columbines, though. I love this fringed one:

And this one is such a pretty color:

The salvias will bloom next, followed by the bee balm. I’ve gone in there a couple of times to pull the ox-eye daisies and the hawkweed as they are garish white and orange and spoil the landscape. They are also classified as noxious weeds in Montana.

Our friends, Tom and Marcie—the ones that got stuck up in Jewel Basin during that storm Tuesday night—invited us over for dinner last night. (Their youngest son and his wife live in our rental house and Tom was on the fire department with the husband for many years.) Marcie is an amazing cook. We started off with chips and homemade salsa followed by a salad, and then the entree of sage chicken with bacon and tiny potatoes cooked in a creamy wine sauce:

Doesn’t that look like it belongs in a magazine? It was so good. Tom and Marcie have a pottery business. I have a whole set of dinnerware exactly like that plate in the upper left of the picture.

It was good to visit and catch up with them.

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I am working on a quilt project. This one is challenging for me because the design relies on the sashing to pull it all together, so each block looks a bit unfinished. (That’s also why I don’t have any pictures of the blocks, because they don’t make much sense individually.) The blocks themselves are not difficult to construct. This one is going to be mildly scrappy, but in a controlled colorway. I’ve already done one prototype of it in a different colorway.

I am still trying to figure out how to switch back and forth between the creative half of my brain and the “keep the wheels on this bus” half of my brain. The latter half tends to take over during the summer when there is so much to do and everything has to be done on a tight schedule. I don’t have time to manage a flood of ideas, so I keep the creative half on a tight leash. It’s frustrating, although working on a project where the design has already been fleshed out does help.

Men are so much better at compartmentalizing than women. The husband goes into “work mode” every morning and it’s like the rest of the world ceases to exist. I have trouble doing that.

In any case, it’s raining hard again this morning (yay!) and I can sew this afternoon without guilt.

Successful Serging

I thought the serger class went very well by my metrics, which were:

• No one cried, yelled, or threw the serger out the window.

• We were able to get each machine adjusted properly.

• Each student was able to make all three projects during the class time.

• There were requests for additional classes.

• The teacher enjoyed herself.

I had a total of nine students. Tera was there, which was an enormous help at the beginning when we were troubleshooting machine issues. We had a mix of machines—everything from a White Speedylock to the higher-end BabyLock and Bernina machines—and a variety of skill levels. Two of the students were cousins, one of whom sews but had never used a serger. She inherited a White Speedylock from her cousin, who had just purchased a Bernina. The Bernina cousin was still getting used to her machine. The White Speedylock cousin took to her serger like a duck to water. She had brought extra fabric and by the time the class was over, she had a a pile of completed projects. Every class has at least one outlier—the rank beginner who manages to absorb enough information to leave the session several skill levels higher.

I am a bit sorry I begged off on teaching in July and August. I truly do enjoy it. I know better than to overload my schedule, though. The store owner said she would fill in with a couple of basic classes on threads and fabrics during those months. I suspect the fall classes will be T-shirts and leggings (for adults) as those are what people were asking for. One of the students in my class used to be a patternmaker in her working life (she just retired to the Flathead), so we chatted after class and I think she’s going to be a great resource.

We have come a long was since my mother’s Stretch & Sew classes in the 1970s.

I mowed and trimmed part of the yard yesterday. Before it warms up again today, I need to mow out by the garden and finish what is left of the yard, but when that’s done, I plan to reward myself with some sewing. And Tera and I did some scheming last night. I think we’re going to take a field trip soon to The Confident Stitch down in Missoula. She’s never been there.

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We have a farm sitter coming over this evening to meet the animals. The husband works such long hours in the summer that we would like to have someone check on everything during the day if I happen to be traveling. This young woman is someone I’ve known since she was 3, because she and DD#2 took dance classes together. She is part of my friend Elaine’s extended family. She also has extensive 4-H experience with pigs. The husband suggested that I ask her about farm-sitting. He knows her because she is on the fire department.

Rain Makes the Grass Grow

The husband came home Tuesday evening and was unloading the trailer when the skies started to darken. I checked the radar and saw a large orange blob taking aim straight at us. The storm hit with a fair bit of fury. Fortunately, it didn’t last long, but just as things were settling down, my cell phone rang. Our friends, Tom and Marcie, had gone up to Jewel Basin earlier in the afternoon to hike. That’s a popular hiking area not far from here—and one they hike often—but the only access is up a steep mountain road. Their way down that road was blocked by a downed tree, and they wondered if the husband could come up with a chainsaw and help them get out.

As it turned out, he had to cut through six downed trees in order to get to them (and the other people stuck on the road). I cannot imagine how harrowing that must have been for our friends to sit through that storm and see those trees coming down around them.

We lost power until just after midnight, but no trees fell here. And the rain, however brief, was welcome.

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Susan and Rose deposited me at the BMW dealer in Spokane just after noon yesterday. We had had a lovely ride over with a short stop in north Idaho at Rose’s in-laws. I chatted with Kevin a bit about the repair. He assured me that BMW had redesigned and remanufactured that part so that it would not fail again in 30,000 miles. Let’s hope. The husband says that these recalls usually come with an extended warranty on the parts.

I lose an hour going from Spokane back to Kalispell, and even though it stays light until almost 11:00 pm in June, I am not as alert late in the day as I am at 5:00 am. My goal was to be heading east by 3:00 pm Spokane time. That gave me a short window for running some errands there, which I did, and I pulled into our driveway just before 8:00 pm.

The car seems to be running well. I had forgotten how zippy it is even for a wagon. And I am thrilled to have cargo-hauling abilities again.

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My serger class is this evening. Tera is going to come and be my assistant. Eight students are signed up, so having an extra pair of knowledgeable hands will be most welcome. My serger is threaded with four very different—and colorful—threads so I can demonstrate stitch construction to the students.

The first time teaching a subject is a learning experience for everyone, teacher included, but I’ve tried to anticipate as many pitfalls as I can.

I’ll be cutting the grass this morning before it warms up too much.

Victorian BBQ Sauce

I’ve said before that I don’t really like to cook, but I forget how much I enjoy canning. I think it has something to do with the fact that cooking and cleaning lack permanence. The husband can pour a concrete foundation without worrying that someone will come along and dismantle it an hour later. I prepare a meal and it’s gone within minutes of him sitting down to dinner. Canned food gets eaten eventually, as well, but at least for a while, I get to admire the fruits of my labor lined up neatly on the pantry shelves.

I made a triple batch of Victorian BBQ sauce yesterday. I started out by raiding our neighbor Mike’s rhubarb patch. I used to have a really nice rhubarb plant that produced abundantly, but it died of some black fungal infection. I put in two other rhubarb plants (in a different location). One of them tends to bolt and go to seed immediately and then do nothing for the rest of the season. Cutting off the seedy stalks doesn’t seem to help. The other one, right next to it, grows anemically. Both get a large helping of chicken manure every year. I put in a third plant on the other side of the garden. It’s growing well, so I have hopes for a reliable future supply. It should not be this hard to grow rhubarb.

Mike’s rhubarb plant needed some thinning and he told me to take what I wanted. My friend Marcie also has a huge rhubarb patch, so I got some from her, too. After running town town for an appointment and errands, I spent the afternoon chopping up rhubarb, onions, and raisins and cooking them into a lovely sauce.

I’ll pour a jar of this over a pork roast and let it cook all day in the crockpot. This is also supposed to be good on chicken. I ended up with 11 pints—enough for us and some to share.

One side benefit of canning is that my kitchen tends to be extra clean during canning season because I am constantly wiping everything down.

I discovered that Monday morning is a great time to go shopping. All the stores were empty, including Costco. I avoid town on the weekends if I can, but even weekdays during the summer can be nuts during tourist season. However, it makes sense that we would have fewer tourists earlier in the week.

It’s supposed to be much cooler today than yesterday. I might get a few tasks done in the garden, but I’ve also got to spend some time today getting ready for the serger class.

Summer is in Full Swing

Susan and her daughter rearranged their schedule to something that worked better for them, so I’ll be able to hitch a ride with them to retrieve the car this week and still be back to teach the serger class on Thursday. I worked on the handout over the weekend and that’s just about ready to go. I have a list of what I want to take with me (serger, threads, fabrics, etc.). The class samples are already on display at the store. When I traveled and taught knitting, I had a bag of dedicated teaching supplies. I might have to make one for these serger classes, too, so that I am not pulling tools from my workspaces.

I put the borders on the Cultivating Kindness jelly roll quilt over the weekend. It’s ready to be basted and quilted, but for now, it’s in the “future projects” pile. I haven’t had time to get back to the Slabtown project and probably won’t for a few more days. All that rain has made the grass and weeds grow.

One of my apple tree seedlings is struggling. It’s the Seek-No-Further that Susan grafted for me last year. (Of course, it’s the one I most want in my orchard.) Susan looked at it last evening and her assessment is that it probably won’t make it. We can’t quite figure out what happened, because the other four apple trees that we planted at the same time—two from Costco and two other grafts from Susan—look fabulous. I am going to leave it and hope that by some miracle, it recovers. Fortunately, she had grafted two of the Seek-No-Furthers, so she brought me the second one. I’ll put that one in the spot where we took out the pear tree that was destroyed by a falling tree in the last windstorm. We also took out the Fantasia Nectarine. I commented to the husband that it’s called “Fantasia” because it’s a fantasy to think that we could grow nectarines in Montana. Susan had one and took hers out, too, so I don’t feel so bad. We removed a couple of cherry trees that just couldn’t hack the winters. That’s not a huge loss as cherries are my least favorite fruit.

It’s survive or die here, plant-wise.

And we had a bear visit. Someone posted on a neighborhood social media group that a bear had gone after one of their piglets a few nights ago. This person lives down the road from us a couple of miles, so I knew the bear was probably roaming the neighborhood. The husband and our renter saw it Friday night around 10:30 pm, out by the garden. The husband said it was “not small.” (It’s a black bear.) So now I’m carrying the can of bear spray with me every time I go out to check on pigs.

I don’t think it can get to our pigs because of the electric fencing—and we close them in the Piggy Palace at night—but the fact that it was out there means it was scoping out potential dinner locations.

I processed 18 pints of chicken stock yesterday afternoon:

Pints work better for me than quarts.

I still need to pick rhubarb and make the Victorian BBQ Sauce. I might do that today as it’s supposed to be close to 90 and I don’t want to be outside. Thankfully, the temps are supposed to go back to seasonal mid-70s for the rest of the week. If the long-term forecast holds, they should stay there for the rest of the month. We do need more rain, though.

The News is Good

Kevin texted me a video of what they did to my car at the BMW dealer, starting with replacing the transfer case under the recall. The tech noted that the splines on the output shaft flange had gone bad—exactly what happened the first time—and there was no charge for that repair. The husband is hoping that this third transfer case has been remanufactured with better materials so that it does not also fail in another 30,000 miles. While running the full diagnostic panel, they found two other parts that needed to be replaced for an additional cost, so we had them do that and replace the battery as well. I am going to continue to drive this car as long as I possibly can.

Now I just need to retrieve it. Susan and her daughter are heading in that direction Thursday and offered me a ride, but that is the day I teach the serger class and I don’t want to risk not getting back in time. I have a couple of other options. Amtrak goes through Spokane, but the train gets in at 2 a.m. and I’d have to sit in a very sketchy train station downtown for a couple of hours. That’s not going to happen. Given the hiccups we had with the car hauling company, I am reluctant to use their services again.

I’ve never quite understood why there isn’t air service between Kalispell and Spokane. I looked into flying to Seattle, changing planes, and flying back to Spokane, but the ticket is close to $600. I could take the train overnight to Seattle for $49—it gets in mid-morning—Uber to the airport, and fly back to Spokane for $89, but that would take at least a couple of days.

I’ll figure something out. I know of a few other people traveling in that direction this week, and perhaps the timing will work out. I just don’t know how we would shoehorn a trip over there into the husband’s schedule right now, or he’d take me.

I met with the class coordinator at the quilt store on Thursday and we talked about additional serger classes for the fall. She agreed that I should see how this first class goes and talk to the students about scheduling other classes in the fall. I’m not crazy about teaching classes in the evening, but not everyone can make a daytime class.

Our employees were here yesterday morning, helping the husband load some things on the trailer, so he enlisted the help of two of them to move the new cutting table up to DD#2’s bedroom. (He treated the crew, including the mixer drivers, to lunch at a pizza place near the jobsite yesterday.)

That top is a jelly roll race quilt I made while I was in Alaska. The fabric is Deb Strain’s “Cultivate Kindness” line. I’m going to add a narrow border of red Kona and then a wider border of one of the prints in the top.

Now that I have my system back in place, I can organize and prioritize some future projects and finish existing ones. I probably won’t be doing any big quilt projects again until the fall, though. We had a frost warning for yesterday morning, so on Thursday (in the rain), I covered all of the plants with row cover or tarps. It did dip down to 32 degrees briefly yesterday morning, but everything seems to be fine. At least it wasn’t snow. I weeded the peas yesterday. It’s raining again now, which is wonderful even though it means that the yard and the garden will be a jungle again by the middle of the week. I’ve got a big batch of chicken stock simmering in the roaster that I’ll can and process tomorrow afternoon.

And I would be remiss if I did not note that tomorrow is National Sewing Machine Day. I was out in the old garage yesterday looking over some of my machines. A couple of them just need an hour or two of TLC to get up and running again. I am not lacking for projects.

Safe in Spokane

Kevin—who is beginning to feel like a member of our family based on the number of texts we’ve sent back and forth—let me know the minute the BMW arrived in Spokane yesterday. Now we wait while they take it apart and see what the issue is. I asked them to call the husband directly when they find out, as he’ll know what they’re talking about. I hope it can be fixed under the recall. If not, we’ll have to decide how far we want to take this. I am not enthused about buying another car to replace that one, but I need something reliable.

I had WS here for a few hours yesterday morning while his mom had a job interview (she got the job!). He helped me put my new chair together.

I thought I might use this as my office chair, but I decided to swap it with the chair I’ve been using upstairs at my machine. That chair truly is an office chair (an old wooden one) and the new chair is a sewing chair. The back support on that sewing chair is amazing, by the way.

I cut the green Cordura for the lining of the Slabtown Backpack, and after lunch, I assembled the front and side pockets:

The pattern is thoroughly detailed and hasn’t once left me scratching my head. I really like how this is coming together. We have another day of rain in the forecast, so I’ll probably work on this again this afternoon. We also have a frost warning for tonight. I’ll have to cover everything. We had 3” of snow one year on June 10, so this isn’t unheard of, but I could do without the whiplash. The forecast high for Monday is 89. Those poor plants won’t know what hit them.

McCall’s (the pattern company) is planning to close its Kansas printing plant by the end of the year, according to this article on the Craft Industry Alliance’s website. It sounds a bit as though the Big 4 got caught flat-footed with the recent resurgence in sewing and are trying to catch up. The source cites customer complaints about the quality of the pattern tissue (no, really?) and notes that the Simplicity plant in Wisconsin—which will now do all the printing—can print higher-quality tissue patterns. Perhaps they will also revisit their 1950s-era sizing charts.

There are so many great indie patterns companies out there.

I need to get my serger class handout ready this weekend. The store wanted to have me teach a class on the third Thursday of every month, but I asked to hold off on any more classes until this fall. Summer is always nuts, and trying to fit two more serger classes in with everything else could very well have sent me round the bend. Also, seeing how this first class goes will give me a better idea of what to offer next.

Where in the World is My Car?

In the ongoing saga of “How shall I get from point A to point B?” I discovered yesterday that no one seems to know the whereabouts of the BMW. I had made arrangements for a company in Kalispell to put it on a car hauler heading west and drop it off at the dealer in Spokane. It was supposed to go last Thursday, but the truck driver got sick and the company couldn’t find a replacement driver. I was told it would leave Monday, so I called the BMW dealer and told them to expect it then. I called yesterday morning just to confirm that it had arrived. Kevin, my contact in the service department, said it wasn’t there. I called the car hauling company. The woman there who had made all the arrangements for me was out of the office, and the young woman I spoke with had no information. She said she would try to find out where it was and get back to me. She never called back. As it happens, the farm store is right across the highway from the car hauler, where we had left the car, and I had to go into town yesterday afternoon to get chicken feed. I can tell you that the BMW is not in their parking lot, where we left it last week, but beyond that, I have no idea where it is.

I don’t believe it is time to panic just yet. Hopefully, the car hauler was delayed until yesterday and the BMW has been delivered safely to Spokane. When I related all of this to the husband, he shrugged and said, “Well, it’s insured.” I’ll check with Kevin again this morning.

I am driving DD#1’s Acura, but it’s a two-door coupe with a hatchback. Naturally, this was the week that I had to get pig feed, chicken feed, pick up the husband’s new cut-off saw, make a Costco run, and buy a new office chair to replace my broken one. I miss the station wagon. Also, my left knee is starting to complain about having to work a clutch pedal again. The Acura is a solid little car, though. It’s getting me where I need to be, and for that, I am grateful.

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I finished mulching the potatoes yesterday and then planted the corn, finally. I’ll mulch that with some chicken manure this weekend. I opened the door to the Piggy Palace so the piglets could come out and I could monitor them while I worked. They wasted no time in exploring the pasture:

I expected to hear a few squeals when they ran into the electric fencing, but they all seem to have a good appreciation of its location. They were out in a paddock when we picked them up, so it’s possible that they already know about boundaries. In any case, they had a jolly time rooting around and eating rocks. (That is a pig thing that I don’t understand. All the pigs we’ve ever had have eaten rocks.) When the husband checked on them in the afternoon, they had all gone back into the Piggy Palace for a nap.

My plan for today involved moving the strawberries, although it’s raining right now and supposed to rain today and tomorrow. I might move them anyway. Rainy days are good for transplanting. If I decide to stay inside, I think I am going to make some Victoria Sauce. Elysian made this last year and gifted me a jar. I put it on a pork roast in the crock pot and it was amazing. It’s a good way to use up rhubarb, and we currently have a lot of it.

While I was in Alaska, DD#1 made this Instant Pot Smoked Sausage with Green Beans and Potatoes. I made it last week for the husband. It’s peasant food, basically, and he liked it so much that he requested it again. A double batch of that will be dinner tonight. The bonus is that it only takes about 15 minutes of prep and then two minutes in the Instant Pot. I’ve decided that one of my goals for this summer is to level up my food game in the kitchen. Cooking is one of my least favorite activities, and as a result, I’ve gotten lazy. I make the same meals over and over again (mostly what I can make in huge quantities to feed the gaping maw). It is time to experiment again and add some new dishes to the menu.

And I want to keep plugging away on the Slabtown Backpack. I went stash diving and unearthed just enough dark green Cordura for the lining. The zippers are here, too, so I can move ahead with that project.

Six Little Piglets

The piglets are here and settling in nicely:

It was a bit of a harrowing ride getting them home. We use a large dog crate to transport animals. That worked well for last year’s batch of pigs, but when we got to the farm yesterday, we realized that this year’s batch of pigs was a few weeks older—and much bigger—than the ones we got last year. Six of them in the dog crate was a tight fit. The husband, usually very laid back on the road, drove faster than I’ve seen him drive in a long time. We were worried that one or two might suffocate or die of heat stroke on the 40-minute ride. Thankfully, everyone was fine. There are five females and one male. These are Hampshires, a popular 4-H breed here. The pig supplier told us that if they had been born six weeks earlier, they probably would have gone to 4-H kids. Some of their littermates were sold as breeding stock.

We’ll let them out into the pasture this evening and the husband will do some fence training with them. He is like the Pied Piper of piglets. They will figure out quickly that they should follow him around. And getting another dog crate at the thrift store is on my list of things to do.

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If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that community is very important to me. Sadly, most people are lacking in any kind of community, and what community there may have been was utterly destroyed by the pandemic lockdowns. Don’t talk to me about the people who died from covid unless you’re willing to include in that number the people who committed suicide from despair. Our church community took a hit, too, but we have a great leadership team that navigated us through the past year with grace and consideration. We had Zoom-only church for a few months, but we’ve been meeting every week in person—albeit in smaller numbers—since last September. We will continue to provide a Zoom link for those who want to join us that way, but as of yesterday, we are back in the church house for both Sunday School and services.

The worship resources provided by Mennonite Church USA for the next several weeks are entitled “Joyride,” and I find that very fitting. I commented that it was about time we were joyful again. We had a full house yesterday, including a large family visiting from Virginia and a young man who is studying at the University of Montana in Missoula. He is from a Mennonite background and drove the two hours up from Missoula to attend church with us yesterday. He plans to come back when his schedule allows. (Bonus: He plays the piano and would be willing to fill in for me—yay!) We have small children running around after years without young families. We sang. We laughed. We visited. It was loud and chaotic and utterly wonderful.

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The tracking number indicates that the 12” zippers from Klum House should arrive today and I can move on to the next step in the Slabtown Backpack project. I’m also expecting some knitted ribbing fabric to arrive from an Etsy seller. I pulled out a yard of Jane Sassaman fabric to make a Noodlehead Firefly Tote. Sewing time has to fit into bits and pieces of time now instead of the marathon sessions I have during the winter, but at least it’s sewing.

A Day in the Garden

All of my good intentions to weed Friday morning were upended by a line of thunderstorms that came through here as I was getting ready to get out of bed. (One clap of thunder was so loud that I thought it was going to scare me back into heart palpitations.) I don’t mind weeding, but I do mind weeding when it’s hot and muggy—which it was for most of the morning—so I stayed inside and reorganized the pantry. I’ve got nice big cabinets, but they are deep, and sometimes stuff gets lost in the back of them. That led to cleaning and organizing the laundry room, and the whole project took most of the day.

My friend Susan came by in the afternoon. She is making an I-Spy alphabet quilt for her grandson, and I told her not to buy more fabric until we went through my collection. She left here with a bag of goodies. We tore the fabric bins apart in the process, but I assured her that was perfectly fine because they are on my list to reorganize, too. I think we’re going to have to figure out how to get the new cutting table upstairs. Having it down here is not working well.

Yesterday was much cooler. The husband went out to get the pig pasture ready and I worked in the garden. I finished weeding the potatoes and then mulched them with straw:

We got a huge round bale last spring that has sat and rotted nicely for a year. Rotted straw makes great potato mulch and then it just becomes part of the soil amendments. The bale is sitting at one end of the garden, so I forked the straw into the old Little Tykes wagon to haul it over to the potatoes. That worked.

The husband used the big string trimmer around the edges of the fence to make sure the electric fence wire was exposed. The piglets will learn to respect it. He also trimmed the perimeter of the garden for me:

My goal is to have a wide enough strip of grass around the edge of the garden that I can just come in there with either the rider or the push mower and keep that trimmed down. With all the rain we got a few weeks ago and then the hot weather, the grass in that area was over a foot high. Now it’s manageable again.

We moved one of the billboard tarps to a different part of the garden to kill the rest of the weeds. We’re trying not to till—because we actually have fewer weeds that way—but there are some really stubborn weeds that take drastic measures to eradicate. I won’t use chemicals.

And we decided we will close off that back portion of the garden where the strawberry bed used to be and let it become part of the pig pasture. That area got all overgrown with quackgrass. I’m going to move the strawberry plants that are left to a different part of the garden. There are only two of us here and we don’t need as much garden space, so it’s time to consolidate some things.

I took lettuce seedlings out of the tray in the greenhouse and transplanted a row of them into the garden, then re-seeded the tray.

My currant bushes are looking phenomenal. Cathy suggested I prune them and they seem to concur with that advice.

My garden/yard projects for this week are:

• Move strawberry plants and mulch them

• Plant the corn (I didn’t do that yesterday because the location will be dependent on where the strawberries go)

• Weed the peas (that won’t take long)

• Keep the grass mowed everywhere

• Plant some beans?

• Pick rhubarb

I also need to make up my class handout for the serger class. Five people have signed up so far and the owner of the quilt store is thrilled. I put a limit of 10 on the class, but that is pushing it a bit. Five students will be a good-sized serger class.

We pick up piglets this afternoon!

Tomatoes, Grapes, and Hardware

The tomatoes are all planted. I need to replace a couple of tomato cages. I really like the heavy coated red and yellow galvanized wire ones and I’m hoping I can find more:

From this angle, I am looking straight into the pig pasture. (It’s hard to see the fence, but it’s there.) Our pigs have a very nice place to live while they are here. We pick up piglets on Sunday.

The grapes are leafing out, right on schedule:

I weeded the potatoes until I couldn’t stand the bugs anymore. They seem to be especially bad this year.

I mowed again—I could have waited another day or two, but it’s fun riding that mower around. The backyard takes 20 minutes on the tractor and then I do the trimming with the push mower. I came inside when it got too hot. We hit 86 yesterday. Anything above 75 and I wilt. There is a reason I live in Montana. It’s supposed to be cooler this weekend.

My afternoon project was to begin assembling Slabtown. The first step was easy—make the side pockets and sew them to the side panels. The pockets have a crease from marking, but a quick shot with a hairdryer at the end will make that crease disappear.

The next step was to add some leather accents and hardware. Adding hardware always makes me nervous. There is so little room for error. I bought the hardware kit for this pattern so I would have the correct pieces and the tools to attach them. The line snap—that piece in the center of the leather tab—is one I’ve done before, so that wasn’t too hard. I went out to the husband’s shop and used his anvil as the hard surface.

The tubular rivets on either side were new to me. The require a “tubular peening tool,” which bends the edges of the tube downward and into the leather on the backside of the piece to secure the rivet:

Pretty cool. This bag has a fair bit of hardware, so I’ll get even more practice in later steps.

I would have kept going, but the next step involved attaching the zipper to the front pocket. I clipped the zipper to that pattern piece and discovered that it was too long. I checked the pattern—it called for a 12” zipper. I checked the zipper—it was 14”. (These came as part of the kit and they’re metal, so I can’t shorten them easily.) I know that there have been at least two iterations of this pattern and I’m wondering if I got the kit for the first iteration, which must have had longer zippers. Klum House is sending me the correct zippers, but it’s going to take a few days for those to get here. I’ll just set this aside for now and work on something else.

We delivered the BMW to the transport place without incident last night. I drove it and the husband followed behind me in the truck. We took the back way into town in case there was a problem. The warning message didn’t reappear, but I can tell something is going on with the transmission because the car just wasn’t shifting smoothly. Oh well, it’s going to be the BMW dealer’s problem to fix shortly.

Back to Bagmaking

Anna Graham at Noodlehead released a new pattern a few weeks ago called the Firefly Tote.

I might stick this in the queue soon. I love the way this design provides a way to feature those fun prints that are too big to cut up. And either size would make a great knitting or sewing project bag.

I should also make myself a new purse. I’m using an Eagle Creek crossbody travel bag, but it’s not ideal.

First, though, I want to make the Slabtown Backpack. I’ve had the supplies for over a year and it’s time to move this project to the finished column. I pulled out the cutting table yesterday—what a joy to cut on a stable surface!—and prepped the waxed canvas pieces.

I still need to choose a lining fabric. I could use some Tim Holtz quilting cotton if I interface it. The pattern suggests a 10 oz canvas. Meh. Nylon or a light cordura is a possibility, although I’d like to use something from the stash. I’ll keep thinking about it and work on the parts that can be done until the point where I need to make a decision.

I’ve been making more hexies and hexie flowers. That’s good handwork for an hour in the late afternoon while I bask in the sunshine on the porch and wait for the husband to get home.

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I talked to our pig supplier yesterday. She has a litter of piglets ready to go, but another customer wants to look them over and choose breeding stock. Once that’s done, she’ll let us know and we can pick ours up. I am anticipating that it will be sometime this weekend.

The husband set up the fencing in the chicken yard last weekend so the babies can go outside without being harassed by the big chickens. It’s always funny to watch them try to figure out how to get out of the coop—usually they fall out—and get back in by climbing up the ramp. The Leghorns that he brought home last month finally ventured out, too. I don’t think they had much outdoor time at their old home, so they were reluctant to leave the coop. Once they went outside, they decided it was Good Thing. I see them out there often now.

My lame rooster died last week. I knew he was failing and there wasn’t much I could do about it. We gave him a good life, short though it may have been. And the two big roosters seem to have settled their differences, at least for the moment. I much prefer peace in the coop.

A Bumpy Ride

It’s been an eventful week or two here—we have had a bunch of vehicle issues topped off by me visiting the ER yesterday afternoon. I will discuss that here, briefly, because many of my family members and friends may want to know, but I have to preface this by saying that while I appreciate everyone’s concern for my health, it really does no good to treat me like a china doll that is about to break. Please do not insinuate that I am not taking care of myself or that I work too hard. I think I do a very good job of taking care of myself. I don’t smoke, I drink one glass of wine per day, I exercise—I spent all day Saturday working in the garden and yard—and we eat food I cook from scratch using a lot of ingredients we grow ourselves. It just so happens that I’ve got a colorful medical history with a lot of issues. I can’t do anything to change that. As I pointed out to the husband, I could have a perfectly spotless health history and die in a car wreck on the road. Life is full of risks. Believe me, I know that better than anyone. I am not taking unnecessary risks, but neither am I going to sit around and let life pass me by.

The official diagnosis was an episode of atrial flutter, where the electrical impulses to my heart got out of sync. I waited to see if it would resolve spontaneously (in some people it will), but when it did not, I decided that I should seek medical care. The husband was setting up a job, so I called my friend, Elaine, and asked if she would drive me to urgent care. The docs at urgent care did an EKG and suggested I go over to the ER. There, I got settled in a room and discussed the plan of attack with the ER doctor. He wanted to start with a dose of medication and see how my heart rhythm reacted. That gave him a much clearer picture of what was going on. After consultation with a cardiologist, he came back and said they wanted to do a cardioversion, which is basically shocking my heart with an electrical current, similar to what they do when someone is crashing. They sedated me for that part (although Elaine stayed in the room) and I felt absolutely nothing. When I came to again, my heart rhythm was back to normal. According to Elaine, I told them all about my chickens while I was still loopy and coming out of the sedation, LOL. After another hour or so of observation, they gave me my discharge paperwork and sent me home. I have to make an appointment with a cardiologist for later this week.

This is not a benign condition, but it is treatable. The question is why it is happening. This could be a late side effect of one of the chemo drugs I got for the leukemia 27 years ago. Idarubicin is known to be cardiotoxic. Of course, given that the Cleveland Clinic doesn’t seem to care about long-term followup of cancer survivors—an oversight that annoys me to no end—information about long-term effects of treatment is almost nonexistent. This could also be linked to my known MTHFR mutation (I had to explain that one to the ER doc as it’s not a widely-known problem). I’ll lay all of this out for the cardiologist and see what he thinks. As with many of my medical issues, there may never be a clear-cut answer.

Props to the medical staff at both urgent care and the ER. Given my medical history, walking into a hospital causes me no small amount of anxiety. I appreciated the fact that despite this being a cardiac event, they did not immediately escalate the situation to Defcon 3. In addition, my having experience as a medical transcriptionist and a solid grasp of my medical history allowed all of us to skip the preliminaries. It’s far easier for everyone when they don’t have to translate everything into layman’s terms. And I also appreciated having Elaine’s calm presence with me. She brought her knitting and worked on a sweater.

Let’s move on to some sewing, shall we?

Just before I left for Alaska, the cutting table I ordered from Tracey’s Tables was delivered via freight. I told the husband not to worry about it until I got back. We finally had time to uncrate it over the weekend. I had thought I would put it upstairs in DD#2’s room, where my original cutting table has been living, but this is a substantial table made of solid oak. It weighs several hundred pounds. We might be able to get it up there if we can find another strong guy to help the husband move it, but I am inclined to leave it down here. I have it parked in my office at the moment.

I can pull it out, flip up the sides, and do my cutting here. When DD#2 was home, we talked about moving the bed out of her room to give me more space for my sewing supplies. I need to think about that some more. We do get guests every so often and I like to have a place for them to sleep, but I could rearrange things to make my workflow more efficient.

Also before I left for Alaska, I had a marathon cutting session with my Accuquilt cutter and made lots and lots of little paper hexies and fabric hexies. These were a terrific portable sewing project to work on at DD#1’s house in Ketchikan. I sat next to the window and watched the seals playing in the cove while making a pile of these:

I even sewed some together to make a little hexie flower:

No, I have no idea what I’m going to do with them. I likely will make this my summer project for working on at church, as wrangling a prayer shawl around is getting to be a bit much.

I still have a few tomato plants and the corn to put in the garden, and then weeding season will commence. The husband worked on the potatoes, which are looking stellar. I’m still trying to get in touch with the pig lady to see if she has stock for us. If she doesn’t, we’ll take a year off.

Here It Comes

I am curious to see how this year’s tourist season plays out. We have become Aspen-ified here in Kalispell, with businesses having to cut hours and services because of a huge labor shortage.

DISCLAIMER (and please don’t bother to comment unless you’ve read the whole post): The current labor shortage is a complex problem with many factors feeding into it. No one magic bullet is going to solve it. I will cut short a conversation with anyone who says to me, “Well, employers just need to pay more,” especially if that person has never owned a business with employees. I am happy to discuss potential solutions with people willing to make a good-faith effort to understand what owning a business with employees is actually like, not what they think it should be like in a perfect world of rainbows and unicorn farts where employers have money trees growing in their backyards.

Before we moved to Montana, I worked for a software company as a tech support specialist. (Some of you are old enough to remember 300 baud modems.) Every year on the employee’s hiring anniversary, the company provided a printout explaining not only how the person’s salary was calculated, but also the additional expenses such as payroll taxes, unemployment tax, health insurance, pension contributions, and work comp costs associated with that position. That was done to give the employee a clear picture of exactly how much it cost the company to employ him or her. Some people might think that’s harsh, but perhaps if that kind of information were more readily available, it would help to stem this epidemic of misunderstanding of the costs of running a business. Depending upon the position, the total cost of having an employee on the payroll could be twice the stated monetary compensation. As the employee’s compensation went up, so did the associated costs.

In any discussion of economics, we need to start with the basic understanding that “the government” traditionally has not had any money except that which it takes from taxpayers. (I say “traditionally” because of the rampant money-printing that the government is indulging in currently—creating “money” out of thin air—which comes with its own set of problems.) Many people seem to think that all of these unemployment benefits that are being handed out are provided as manna from heaven. They aren’t. Unemployment benefits are funded by a tax on employers. We pay quarterly unemployment taxes to both the state and federal governments, although the majority of it goes to the state. And if the government is handing out benefits left and right, I’m sure you can guess who they are going to go back to when they run out of money.

I am vigilant about watching to see who files for unemployment benefits from us, not because I don’t want our employees to be able to collect benefits when we don’t have work for them, but because every dollar that is paid out in benefits gets charged against our account. We have employees who file for benefits for a couple of months every winter when things shut down. I never contest those claims because they are using those benefits in the manner for which they were intended. However, anyone who has left our employ voluntarily is not eligible to collect from us, although many of them try.

[We had one former employee who quit in September and told the husband he was going back east to work for his uncle. We found out from another employee that this guy’s real plan was to go back east and collect unemployment and spend the fall hunting. As expected, he submitted an unemployment claim a week or two after he left. I contested his claim—because he quit and we still had work available—and the state agreed with me. No doubt he was disappointed to find out that we weren’t going to fund his hunting season vacation.]

Work comp is another big expense of ours. Rates are, not surprisingly, based on how difficult/dangerous the work is. Construction has some of the highest work comp rates out there. And here’s an example of how that works: The husband hired a guy who started working for us on March 1. He was a 60-year-old retired homeowner for whom the husband had done a job last year. The guy was in good physical shape and wanted to pick up some extra spending money. The husband needed the help. He worked for us for five days. On his last day of work—and you’ll understand why it was his last day of work in a moment—he tore his bicep muscle off the bone when he tried to pry a 2 x 6 out of the ground.

I filed the claim immediately on his behalf so he could get timely medical treatment. He had two MRIs followed by surgery and rehab. “The government” is not going to pay for that treatment. His health insurance isn’t obligated to cover it. All of those costs will get charged to us via work comp and our work comp premiums will automatically increase for the next three years. (I am waiting to find out how big the increase will be.) He got hurt on our job and we are responsible for seeing that his treatment is paid for. We have done everything we could to make that happen. But it is a huge hit for us for as a result of having an employee for one week.

I don’t disagree that wages haven’t kept up over the last several decades. Corporate CEO compensation is bizarrely distorted compared to what workers make. I made less working full-time as a medical transcriptionist than I did in my first job out of college. (It’s “just typing,” you know.) Classifying people as independent contractors in a gig economy has allowed companies to dodge costs associated with having employees. However, the solution isn’t as simple as paying people more, especially for small business owners. Employers have a lot of extra costs that aren’t always obvious to casual onlookers.

Part of the labor shortage here is also being caused by unaffordable housing. We are in a part of the country that many people want to visit. Some of them even want to live here. A lot of long-term rentals have been converted to Airbnbs, and what long-term rentals are still available have monthly rents in the $1600-1800 range. (For the record, we charge our renters a very reasonable amount and haven’t increased it since they moved in about seven years ago, because they are good renters and we want them to be able to save enough money to buy their own place eventually.) Some local companies have started buying up real estate, like apartment complexes, to provide housing for their employees.

And of course, if the government is handing out extra money in the form of additional unemployment benefits, that is going to be a dis-incentive for people to look for work. We even had an employee ask the husband last summer if he could be laid off so he could collect unemployment—and this was in the middle of a huge custom home foundation project. (The answer was no.)

I see a perfect storm on the horizon: We will have an influx of tourists shortly who will want services that are being provided marginally or not at all because people can no longer afford to work and live here. This is going to take some time and creative thinking to untangle.

You’re no doubt aware, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, that we lean libertarian. I don’t even enter into discussions with certain people because I get so frustrated by the ones who immediately call for more government intervention with no understanding or acknowledgement of how many of these problems are caused—directly or indirectly—by the government. It reminds me of that joke that the government will break your leg and then be happy to sell you a crutch.

Here endeth today’s sermon.

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I did buy some fabric in Alaska:

We went to the Whale’s Tail Quilt Shop in Ketchikan. I remember visiting this store when we stopped in Ketchikan on the cruise. Sadly, it is in a retail mall that has seen a lot of businesses go under as a result of the pandemic. And this store was thin on inventory because of recent shipping delays. Props to these store owners for hanging on in what is arguably the most business-unfriendly environment in my lifetime.

I’m not a huge fan of batiks, but all the Alaskan-themed fabric is batik, so I bought this one. I will probably make an apron out of it.

And now, I am off to the garden to plant.

Waiting to Plant

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional planting time here in Montana. We could still get a frost—or even snow­—but conditions usually have warmed up enough that plants are safe in the ground. Yesterday was gorgeous, with sunshine and temps into the low 70s. Unfortunately, today isn’t supposed to get much above 50, with wind and rain. The rest of the weekend looks good, though, and next week is supposed to be sunny and warm. I took advantage of yesterday’s nice weather to cut the grass and run the weedeater around the garden so I could get to the garden this weekend to plant. It is so amazing to me how the weeds and the grass outpace everything else. 

The potatoes and peas are up. The potatoes need to be weeded (of course), but it’s a small area and won’t take long. The black plastic in other parts of the garden helps considerably. I try to keep tilling to a minimum. 

These are the plants that need to go in:

• About 60 tomatoes, including Amish Paste, Oregon Star paste, Indian Stripe, Cherokee Purple, Dirty Girl, and Purple Russian paste.

• Cauliflower

• Corn

• Cucumbers

• Watermelon

• Cantaloupe

• Lettuce starts

I also need to plant beans, but I am not sure the soil is warm enough yet. The berry bushes look amazing, and the grapes are about to leaf out. 

Once I am finished with the planting, I get to try out the John Deere tractor in the yard. The husband mowed while I was gone and said that we should have gotten a tractor like that years ago. Huh. 

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DD#2 and I visited the Nordic Museum in Seattle last weekend. The husband has Norwegian ancestry on his mother’s side. Of course, I was most interested in the fiber-related displays, like the spinning wheels:

And the clothing:

And this dress, which the display said was knitted from fiber spun from plants and moss. I am surprised it has survived and survived in such good condition.

This was a pleasant way to spend a Saturday morning.

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In other news, I think the BMW is headed over to Spokane next week via car transport, hopefully to be fixed with the recall work. I haven’t decided what to do about it after that. I need to have a reliable car and that one has proven that it isn’t. I’d prefer to have a vehicle without all of the bells and whistles, because bells and whistles break. I really wish that human beings were better at recognizing the point of diminishing returns. Technology is great, but overly complex systems break more often and cost more to fix when they do.

Cars, Quilts, and Knits

I got back to Seattle late Wednesday afternoon (the 19th) and headed to the Airbnb. The little studio space in the other half of DD#2’s duplex wasn’t available, so I stayed at a different one a few blocks away.

The backup camera on DD#2’s Jetta stopped working a couple of months ago. She had made an appointment at the dealer to have it looked at and asked me if I could take it in for her on Thursday morning so she didn’t have to miss work. I had nothing pressing on my schedule, so I didn’t mind sitting and waiting while they looked at it. Unfortunately, all they could tell me was that it was a break in the wiring somewhere between the dash display/radio (which still works) and the camera, and that to take it apart and hunt down the cause would be a day’s labor at $150 an hour.

I have lots of thoughts about vehicles right now, none of them charitable.

The husband is willing to take a stab at fixing this camera issue, but the car has to be in Montana for him to do that. More on that in a moment.

I spent the rest of Thursday visiting various stores on my list to pick up mundane necessities like socks and underwear. I went to Half-Price Books and found up a blacksmithing book for the husband. I am familiar enough with Seattle that I am quite comfortable keeping myself occupied during the day while DD#2 is working.

Friday’s schedule included a trip down to Puyallup, about 40 miles south/southeast of Seattle and not too far from Pacific Lutheran, where DD#1 went to college. I know this area, too, and there was a quilt store I wanted to visit.

The Quilt Barn in Puyallup is a lovely store, chock full of all sorts of fun things for quilters. I bought two new Handi-Quilter longarm rulers for the Q20 and a wool/cotton quilt batt.

I also stopped in at Joanns, where I hit the motherlode on the remnant rack. I had gotten an e-mail earlier in the week from the quilt store here in Kalispell. They put my serger class on the schedule for June and decided to go ahead and make it a monthly event. We had talked about doing that, but not until the fall. It really doesn’t matter either way to me as I have plenty of ideas for additional serger classes. The remnant rack at this Joanns had half a dozen pieces of juvenile knit fabrics that will be perfect for making up samples for future classes. Kids’ clothing doesn’t require much fabric. (And any grandchildren that might come along are going to have plenty of cute Grandma-made outfits.) The quilt store owner and I talked about fabric for the classes and she knows some of it will come from Joanns as she doesn’t really want to carry a line of knits.

[I related all of this to the husband later that day and mentioned that I had not planned on teaching serger classes, but here I am, because this, apparently, is how the universe has decided I should spend my summer. Whatever. I just go where I’m told.]

On the way back, I stopped at Ikea, another Half-Price Books store, another Joanns, and got some lunch. I try to time my trips so I miss the worst of Seattle traffic, although it’s never great no matter the time of day. DD#2 met me at the Airbnb and we ordered in pizza for dinner.

My original plan had been to stay in Seattle until Monday. DD#2 had some other stuff going on, though, that she needed a break from, so between those things and the car issue, we decided that she would come home to Montana for a week. She’s telecommuting until this fall and can work from anywhere. We left Seattle Sunday morning. She followed me to Spokane and then continued to Kalispell. I stayed in Spokane overnight because I needed to stop in and visit with the BMW dealer and also retrieve my sewing machine from the quilt store where I had left it for service.

Musical Cars and a Trip to Alaska

Not everything on this latest adventure went as planned. The BMW was all packed and ready to go on the morning of May 13, but as I started to pull out of the driveway, the car made a very strange noise, followed by a warning chime and this message on the dash:

Drive train malfunction! Drive moderately!

Sigh.

Almost exactly two years ago, on May 1, 2019, the CV joint/transfer case in the BMW blew up (literally, with a bang), rendering the car undriveable. Fortunately, I was only five miles from home at the time. We had the car towed back here. The husband took it apart and discovered that, due to a design and manufacturing defect, that part had failed spectacularly at only 70,000 miles. Long story short—he ordered the replacement parts, changed them out, and I’ve driven the car for an additional two years and 32,000 miles with no issues.

It appears that the replacement part also may have failed. I said a short prayer of thanks that this happened at the end of my driveway and not somewhere between here and Spokane with no cell phone service. The husband helped me transfer all of my gear to DD#1’s car, which we’ve had here since the wedding. My FIL gifted her his 2001 Acura RSX when she graduated from college. It’s a terrific little car, but not very practical for Alaska. After that short delay, I was on the road to Seattle.

[The Acura has a manual transmission. Driving a stick is like riding a bike. The skill comes back quickly, but that car did take a bit of getting used to. The last manual transmission car I drove was my Jetta station wagon, which had a terrible clutch. Everyone who ever drove that car— including the husband, who can drive anything—stalled it at least once. You had to rev the engine while letting the clutch out very slowly, because it wouldn’t catch until it was almost all the way out. Hills were lots of fun in that car.]

I made it to Seattle without further incident and was on a flight to Ketchikan on Friday morning. The airport is actually on an island, so I had to take a quick ferry ride to get to Ketchikan proper, where DD#1’s smiling face was waiting for me at the top of the gangplank. We drove to their house, which sits on the edge of a small bay. This was the view out of my bedroom window:

A storm was starting to move in, and by the time I got up the next morning, that little bay was churning and angry. At high tide, the water comes about halfway up the rock seawall. At low tide, about 50’ of beach is exposed. Seals make frequent appearances in the bay, and DD#1 told me that they had also seen a whale out there.

This was not my first visit to Ketchikan. I had been there in September of 2009 when JC Briar and I taught on a Craft Cruises Alaskan knitting cruise. The town’s tourism industry has taken a big hit because of the pandemic. Also, the week before I arrived, the entire town went on high alert due to a covid outbreak that was traced to the high school wrestling team, so most everything was closed.

[I understand that cruise ships will start calling there again in July, which sounds like it will be just in the nick of time, although many businesses weren’t able to survive the year-long shutdown and have ceased business permanently.]

Ketchikan reminds me a lot of what Kalispell was like in 1993, but with internet. I don’t require a lot of entertainment, so the kids and I spent most of our time hanging out at the house—that view is better than television—and catching up. I had been hoping to go to church with them, but the service was canceled for Sunday morning, so we went to a hiking area on the north end and walked around.

Ketchikan’s climate is very similar to Seattle’s. They do get snow, but not as much as you might think when you hear “Alaska.”

We went to a small state park called Totem Bight for our picnic lunch on the beach:

And walked around to look at the totem displays:

We finished up the day with a visit to a nearby nursery to get a few flowers and herbs to plant around the house. The kids are renting a place from a friend of DSIL’s family, but it hasn’t been occupied for a while so they’ve been cleaning up the yard.

DD#1 had all the supplies on hand for making S’mores. DSIL built a fire in the fire pit and we sat out there after dinner and enjoyed the sunshine.

DSIL has settled in to his new position as a dentist in Ketchikan, but DD#1 hasn’t yet found a job. She suffers from a double dose of being unable to sit still—she got it from both her father and me—and while she’s had fun setting up housekeeping, I think she’s a bit restless. I bought her a small Cricut machine and she’s been learning to use that. It is a bit of a family joke that she has always loved her Dymo labelmaker. The Cricut is an extension of that and I am pleased that she has a creative outlet.

I would visit my children no matter where in the world they might be living, but they’ve done us the great (unasked-for) favor of locating themselves in the same geographical area. I flew back to Seattle on Wednesday, the 19th, to spend a few days with DD#2. I’ll talk more about that part of the trip in the next blog post, because it also involves malfunctioning vehicles.

The Sweet Spot

I sewed my nine Providence blocks into a wallhanging on Sunday. I picked up some fabric for a border yesterday and now that’s done. The top still needs to be quilted, but I like the end result enough that I think I will go ahead with a larger quilt size. I’m keeping that one under wraps for the moment.

The supply list and photos for the serger class are done and should be going up on the quilt store’s website soon. I have started working on the handout.

And I hit the sweet spot with the hem on the tops I made over the weekend:

I have one of the first-generation Janome coverstitch machines. This particular model has been plagued with problems—so much so that I doubt Janome will ever recover their share of that market now that other manufacturers have come out with their own coverstitch models. Thank goodness for the internet and for people willing to share their experiences. When I joined the coverstitch group on Facebook, I discovered that many Janome coverstitch owners had to raise the feed dogs. I opened the machine, oiled it thoroughly (it was tight and noisy), adjusted the feed dogs as directed, and put the machine back together. That helped considerably, but I had still had issues with the tension. The machine works well on thicker cotton and woven fabrics, but when it came to hemming lighter, slinkier knits, I had all sorts of problems.

Are you wearing a T-shirt or other knit top? Look at the hem. It probably looks similar to the one in the photo above. A coverstitch has several variations, but often consists of two needles with a looper thread that swings back and forth between them. Unlike a serger, however, the coverstitch has no knife and doesn’t cut the fabric. On the front side, the stitch looks similar to what you would get using a twin needle on a sewing machine. Done correctly, a coverstitch “covers” the raw edge of the hem. The kicker is that you have to sew with the front side of the garment facing you, and hope that you’re catching the hem properly underneath.

The machine balked at hemming lighter knits like rayon/spandex. The most noticeable issue was “tunneling,” where the looper thread pulls too tightly on the backside and creates a raised ridge of fabric between the two needles on the front. Common sense would dictate lowering the looper tension to keep that from happening—except that it happened even when the looper tension was on 0. Can’t get much lower than 0.

The other problem was that I could never keep the hem from shifting out of place as I sewed. I tried washable hem tape, a hem guide attachment (not cheap) and a few other fixes, with mixed success.

I’ve got a chart showing suggested thread tension, looper tension, stitch length, and differential settings for different weights of knit fabric. I had the presser foot pressure knob at the suggested 3/8” height. Before I hemmed the two tops I made on Saturday, though, I went back to the hive mind for any additional suggestions. I ran across a post on one forum, authored by someone with industrial coverstitch experience, in which she commented that most domestic coverstitch machines come out of the factory with the presser foot pressure set way too high. On industrial machines, apparently, the foot pressure is very light. Hmmm.

I took some scrap fabric to the machine and started messing around with the presser foot pressure. By the time I was done—and happy with the stitch I was getting—the presser foot pressure knob was set at a height of 5/8”. The tunneling disappeared, although it came back as soon as I set the looper tension higher than 0. (I might be able to fix that if I took the machine apart, but I think I’ll just live with it.) The best—and most unexpected—benefit, though, was that the hem no longer shifted out of place as I sewed. I was able to keep my left index finger on the fabric as it fed into the machine, feeling the hem edge underneath and guiding it between the needles. (I can’t see it, remember?) Hemming was almost effortless, where before, it had been an unpleasant fight with the machine. And it required nothing more than a quick press with an iron to set the hem in place.

Replacing this machine doesn’t make much sense given that I only use it for one specific task. I know what adjustments I need to make to get the results I want. I suspect, though, that a lot of these Janome machines—the 900cpx and the 1000cpx, which is the model I have—were either junked or donated to thrift stores. (The 2000cpx model doesn’t have quite as many issues.) If you can find one cheap, they are worth having once they are adjusted properly.

Depending on the interest, I might teach a coverstitch class at the quilt store in the future.

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I’ve got an appointment to leave my Janome (speaking of) sewing machine at the quilt store in Spokane on my way to Alaska/Seattle and pick it up on my way back. Part of the reason I bought the Janome coverstitch machine was because my 6600P sewing machine has been such a joy. This is its yearly service appointment. I won’t take it to the Janome dealer here in Kalispell. The owner is a class A jerk. I stopped in there a few weeks ago to get some quilting thread and happened to let slip that it was for my Bernina Q20. He doesn’t hesitate to trash talk the brands he doesn’t carry, and he made sure I knew what a poor decision he thought it was that I had bought that machine. (Belittling a customer is an interesting marketing technique. I am not sure how he stays in business.)

And Tera and I have a quilting trip planned for September. She mentioned that she was going to Garden of Quilts in Salt Lake City and asked if I wanted to come with her. I’m going to fly down for two days and meet her there. We both signed up for an English paper piecing class on Thursday afternoon, have tickets to the special event with Jenny Doan (Missouri Star Quilt Company) on Thursday night, and tickets to the quilt display on Friday. The quilts are hung up in a botanical garden and Tera says it’s quite a sight.

Leggings and Tops

I made two pairs of baby leggings on Friday and tried out a couple of different construction techniques:

The pair on the right has hemmed leg openings, which I did on my Janome coverstitch machine. One of these days, I may get around to replacing that machine, but I’ve got it adjusted perfectly now and it makes a good stitch. That pair also has an elastic waistband. The pair on the left has a “yoga band” waistband with no elastic, and cuffs on the bottom. The longer cuffs on baby clothes make more sense, as they can be folded up and let down as the baby grows.

I used the last of the dinosaur knit print for one more knot-top baby beanie. That one and the green one both have a ribbed knit band. I might run up another pair of baby leggings and use the same black ribbed knit for cuffs.

Tera called and offered to come help with the serger class next month, an offer I happily accepted. She knows a lot about serging and sewing with knits and will be a big help as an extra pair of hands. I’m not planning to include the baby leggings in this first class; these were more for me to play around with construction techniques. A leggings class really needs to be a class unto itself.

The weather yesterday was awful—it hovered around 30 degrees all day and alternated between rain and snow. The poor husband was out stripping a foundation in the morning and came home soaking wet. I spent the day making some tops for myself. This is a pattern I drafted off a Liz Claiborne top—Liz Claiborne used to be my favorite brand because it fit me well and looked good, especially back when Isaac Mizrahi was designing for that label. Alas, ever since the Liz brand was taken over by JC Penney, the quality has gone way downhill. Everything is now too short, the sizing is capricious (will I wear a size 6 or a size 12 in this pair of pants?) and the quality has suffered. I took one of my favorite Liz tops and copied it and made myself a top last fall. I wear it all the time because it is so comfortable. It’s a simple tunic-length pattern. When I make these long-sleeve versions, I add a turtleneck, but I also have pattern pieces to make it with short sleeves and a plain neckband.

I made a cheery flower version:

And a black one with small white flowers.

Each of these takes about two hours, start to finish. It’s so nice to have a top that is long enough on me. I’m about comfort, not fashion. I also know that the clothes I make won’t fall apart after one wash.

I’ve got a nice supply of knit fabric laid up. I might make a few more of these. I’ll need some summer versions eventually, if it stops snowing.

After the husband came home yesterday, he put new front brake pads and sensors on the BMW. I need to get the snow tires taken off this week and then I can put that car back in sport mode.

And We Meet Again

According to the minutes, our last Mennonite Women meeting was March 5, 2020. We haven’t met for over a year, so our first get-together in more than 13 months was cause for rejoicing. Some of the women worked on the quilt that Pat and I set up on Tuesday:

They are doing a form of quilting called “prairie stitch,” which is done with a single strand of crochet cotton. It looks especially nice on this cheater top:

Elaine and I got out a comforter and spread it out on a table between us so we could tie it. She worked from one side and I worked from the other and we got most of it finished.

Holly showed us some wallhangings she put together. She said that one benefit of the pandemic was being able to get out and finish a whole bunch of kits and works-in-progress. I think that resonates with many of us. She’s going to send the wallhangings to Margaret in Indiana, who will hand quilt them and forward them to Mennonite Disaster Service. MDS gives each homeowner a hand-quilted wallhanging at the completion of a project.

I have missed this so much.

Yesterday was a gorgeous spring day with temps well up into the 70s. We’re back to cooler and rainier weather today, though, so I’ll be inside working on a few more serger projects. Out of curiosity, I went into the Old Navy store in Kalispell yesterday. The store opened just a few months ago, and while I stopped buying clothes from Old Navy when their inventory deteriorated to poorly-made goods that fell apart after one washing, I wanted to see what kinds of kids’ clothes they had. I picked up a pair of baby leggings so I could analyze the construction and possibly re-create them for a future serger class. I also found a top for myself made from knit fabric—the kicker is that this knit fabric is a blend of 55% linen and 45% cotton. I knew these plant fiber knit blends were out there, but I hadn’t seen any in person.

Clothing research. It’s about time to make myself some summer T-shirts, too.