The Last Couple of Miles of Summer

What a difference between last Sunday—when we were shivering outside at our church service/picnic—and today, when the high is supposed to hit 92. We are forecast to get showers on Tuesday (yay!) with a high of 65, and then it’s only going to be in the 70s for the rest of the week. Hallelujah. Between the heat and the fires and the tourists, this summer has felt like an absolute marathon.

Someone dropped a box of cherries off at our house. Thank you, whoever you are! Neither of us eats a lot of fresh cherries, but they were beautiful and I wanted to do something with them:

I washed and pitted them, cut them in half, then put them in my new dehydrator. They are about halfway through the drying cycle. Dried cherries will be great in cookies and trail mix.

I tidied the house Friday. I won’t say I “cleaned” the house, because most of it needs to be torn apart, vacuumed and washed down to get rid of the dust and ash. There is no point doing that until later in the fall, but I did clean the bathrooms and pick up and organize my sewing area. I recently joined the Mountain Brook Craft Co-Op, which is loosely affiliated with our Mountain Brook Ladies’ Club (many of the same people), and I am hoping to sell some of the stuff I’ve made at the co-op sale in September. I had to be juried in, but it’s a good fit because I think most of what they sell at the sale are sewn items. I’ve got quite a bit of inventory already. If I have some time between now and the sale, though, I’d like to make a few more items. In order to do that, my workflow is going to have to be very streamlined. I’m anticipating a couple of days of marathon cutting followed by assembly-line sewing and serging. If I don’t get stuff done before this sale, then it will get bumped to later this winter for next year’s sale.

I need to figure out what is going on with one of my Juki sergers. I have two of the same model, an MO-654DE, but the second one needs adjusting. I have the first one set up for wovens and the second one for knits. The second one does fine with knits but it refuses to make a proper rolled hem on a woven fabric even when the settings are identical on both machines. It also is much noisier than the other machine and has been that way since I bought it. Unfortunately, there is a fail-safe that doesn’t allow the machine to run when the door is open, and if the door is closed, I can’t see where the noise is coming from.

[I wish I could make three-thread rolled hems on my industrial Juki. It’s a five-thread machine that can be converted to a three-thread machine, but it doesn’t have a way to do rolled hems. Industrial machines specifically for making rolled hems and only rolled hems do exist, but I don’t plan on buying one.]

We had our last Handi-Quilter Ruler Club last Tuesday. Many of us wanted to continue into the fall but we want to do something different so we’re switching to the Amanda Murphy Lollipop templates. This ruler club also comes with a pre-printed panel for practicing quilting with each of the Lollipop rulers. This club doesn’t start until October, which is great because I have no idea how I would shoehorn anything else into September.

The husband found the YouTube channel for Engels Coach Shop in Joliet, Montana, and we’ve been watching some of the videos. (The husband just did a shop foundation for someone who collects old carriages.) The videos are very well done. We watched one where the wheelwright was making the cover to one of the carriages. In part of the video, he was sewing on an industrial machine. It took me a few minutes of stopping and starting the video, but I finally figured out that he is sewing on a Singer 12W, which was the old Wheeler and Wilson 12. The giveaway was the foot style—his machine has the same kind of presser foot as the Singer 9W I’ve been working on, which was the old Wheeler and Wilson D9. (My 9W is almost back together except for the tension assembly.) I am not sure if he was making the tops with oilskin or thin leather, but the machine handled it beautifully. I had a few moments of serious machine envy there.

I had to go to town yesterday morning. While I was at Hobby Lobby, I ran into one of my students from my June serger class. She is also signed up for this week’s class—along with another repeat student—and asked if I could show her which needles to get. I found her the ones she needed and we chatted for a few minutes.

In the few minutes I’ve found here and there to sew, Vittorio has been churning out apron ties. The next apron is going to be out of this very cute chef fabric remnant:

One of the drawbacks of the remnant rack is that by the time a fabric ends up there, the likelihood of it being sold out altogether is pretty high. Sometimes I can order more online, or find it at a nearby store (“nearby” being defined as Missoula or Spokane), but sometimes what I get is all that’s available.

Potatoes and Beans

I started digging potatoes yesterday morning:

We have a good crop this year. I dug out some Yukon Golds the size of softballs. Yukon Gold and Classic Russet make up the bulk of what we eat, but there are also some Butter Reds and a few Purple Vikings in there, too. I’ll dig them all and then sort into burlap bags for storage. The Yukon Golds need to be eaten first as they don’t store well long-term.

That area of the garden is between the raspberries and the lavender hedge, and it’s going to be where I put the strawberries next year. That way, all the berries will be in the same area of the garden. The husband dumped a load of compost in that spot last fall and the potatoes were mulched with straw, so by the time the straw breaks down over the winter, the soil should be well amended.

Our friend Anna, who has a catering business, ordered green beans for me from one of her local suppliers. I didn’t grow any this year, but they will be on the list for next year. She dropped off 10 pounds of beans for me the other night and those turned into 16 pints of French-style green beans yesterday. Elysian had gotten me a green bean cutter for my birthday and I wanted to try it out:

I am on the fence. This is a sturdy little gadget—cast iron—but it needs to be clamped to something. I can’t clamp it to either my countertop or the kitchen table, so I used the wooden stand that came with my apple peeler. I had to put the stand on top of a book, though, to get the cutter high enough off the table. It was not the most stable of arrangements. Also, you can’t do more than one or two beans at a time or the cutter jams. It was slow going.

I did the first five pounds and processed them, and while the first batch was processing, I did the other five pounds. My big pressure canner holds 19 pints; I could have done all 16 pints at once, but it worked well to do them in two batches. They only have to process for 20 minutes, so I wasn’t waiting forever between batches. (Dry beans, in contrast, have to process for 90 minutes, and the canner takes a long time to cool down enough to open.) I was taking the second batch out of the canner and making spaghetti for dinner just as the husband was pulling in to the driveway. Sixteen pints are ready for the pantry:

I may still take my friend Marcie up on her offer to get green beans from her garden, but I probably won’t french those unless I can rig up a better system. I saw that another blogger had clamped her slicer to a wooden barstool and attached a bowl beneath it with a bungee cord, so I might try that. Also, according to the Cuisinart website, I should be able to slice beans horizontally using the food processor—and my new one is here and ready to use—so that’s another possibility.

If you don’t try, you won’t know.

I was hoping to unbox my new LEM dehydrator and get it up and running yesterday, too, but I didn’t get to it. I have an American Harvester dehydrator which works fine for a lot of foods, but it’s round (a weird shape for drying things) and has no temperature control. I find it hard to dry herbs in that dehydrator without them getting cooked to a crisp. Susan has a LEM dehydrator and raves about it. She loves the stainless steel trays. I will be curious to see how it does with herbs. I would like to start drying more of mine for tea, especially as I was able to expand my patch of chocolate mint this year.

I’ve got to check the apples today. Lodi is an early pie variety and I suspect these may be earlier than usual this year. We’ll find out.

My Apron Apron

I found a yard of this fabric on the remnant rack and fell in love. It was destined to become an apron:

I made it up in a basic chef’s apron pattern. The back is Robin Pickens’ “Thatched” fabric in the same acid green that is in the print. I added a large pocket because I need large pockets in my aprons.

[Did I ever tell you the story of butt-dialing 911 a few months ago? I was working in the greenhouse and bent over to get something and all of a sudden, my phone—in my apron pocket—started making a screeching alarm sound. Somehow, I had managed to depress the right combination of buttons and soon found myself chatting with a dispatcher. It was a slow day in dispatch and we had a nice conversation. She assured me that I wasn’t the first person to have done that.]

I love that this print is on a dark background. I need aprons that can stand up to some dirt.

Field testing my T-shirts is giving me lots of valuable information about what fabrics I like. Right now, the Laguna Cotton is edging out the Joann Fabrics cotton/spandex fabric. The Laguna Cotton has 5% spandex to the Joanns 2% spandex, and I am finding that the extra spandex makes a difference. I wore one of my Joann shirts yesterday, and while it fit well, the fabric recovery is not as good as the Laguna Cotton. By the end of the day, it had stretched out a bit more than I like. However, it is still a useful and comfortable top.

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Round 2 of bean canning was 15 pints of black beans, the La Preferida brand that Teri suggested:

I will be doing green beans later this week.

I am looking at my schedule for September and October and panicking only slightly, LOL. I am not sure how the days got filled, but fall is going to be almost as busy as the summer. At least it won’t be as hot (I hope).

Today’s schedule includes cutting the grass for one last time—we stop cutting in July because it gets hot and dry and the “grass” goes dormant, but usually in August, the crop of weeds that makes up part of our lawn needs to be topped off. Because we’re under stage 2 fire restrictions and not supposed to be using internal combustion engines outside after 1 pm, I need to get the cutting done this morning. And our last Ruler Club class is at the quilt store this afternoon.

Cold Feels Good

We planned an outside service and church picnic for yesterday morning. Our pastor said that if he had known it would bring rain, he would have scheduled it earlier in the summer. We were under a pavilion at the local fish hatchery, so we stayed dry, but it was in the 50s for most of the morning. And this will only make sense to people who don’t do well in the heat, but it felt wonderful to be cold enough that I had to put on warm clothes.

[Hardy folks, we Montanans. We picnic in all kinds of weather.]

The rain will help the garden, but we also had some thunderstorms. We’ll have to see if there are lightning strike fires that flare up this week when it gets back into the 90s again. Ugh.

I got a giggle out of this yesterday morning:

The husband had set up some sawhorses with lumber on top earlier in the week. I called him over to show him and said that the turkeys were grateful for the rain shelter he had built for them. He said if he had known, he would have thrown a tarp over it, too.

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Saturday morning was overcast and blissfully cool, so I spent the whole morning out in the garden. The first order of business was to cut out all the spent raspberry canes. I usually do this in the spring, but there is no reason it can’t be done in the fall. I am trying to beat back the raspberry patch to a manageable size and get the thorny variety out of there in favor of the thornless one. Fortunately, the thornless one is more vigorous and it has taken over much of the patch.

I also need to evict some ground squirrels:

I wasn’t planning on digging up potatoes yet, but I am not going to leave them for the rodents to snack on. I may have to camp out there with the .22 for a few days.

I hope the cucumber vines are close to being done producing. I think I’ve hauled in almost two hundred pounds of cukes this summer. Half of what I brought in on Saturday turned into these:

They are curry pickle slices, which is a recipe from one of my canning books. I tasted some before I canned them and they were pretty good. We’ll see how they taste after a month.

The gooseberries are ripe and I got enough to make a pie for the husband. His grandmother used to make gooseberry pies when he was growing up. I don’t know that mine is as good, but I was happy to use the fruit. I also pruned out some of the branches, similar to what I did with the currants.

I transplanted another row of lettuce seedlings. The first row bolted and is about to go to seed, which I will let it do so that lettuce comes up in that spot again next spring. And I have tiny seedlings coming up in a second tray in the greenhouse. This may be the year that I finally master succession planting.

Right now, the garden is at that stage of cleanup where it looks worse than when I started, but if I can get the canes piled up in an appropriate spot and do a bit of raking, it should look nice for the garden tour.

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With all of that gardening and kitchen work on Saturday and the picnic yesterday, I did not have time to sew much besides the straps for a couple of aprons. I offered to make a garden-themed apron for the raffle gift basket for the garden tour. That fabric was pulled from the stash and is waiting to be cut out.

The cool weather made me realize, though, that I need to get started on some long-sleeve tops for the fall.

Making All the Things

I said to the husband over dinner last night that I feel like I haven’t gotten as much accomplished this summer as I wanted to. Always one for putting things into the proper perspective, he responded with, “The summer isn’t over yet. We still have several weeks to go.”

No slacking around here, trust me.

And truly, I have gotten a lot done this summer. This is just me wrestling with the guilt of spending so much time sewing instead of gardening. I did scale back the garden quite a bit this year because of the need to kill weeds, and it was way too hot for me to work out there most days. Despite that, I kept up with the mowing and weeding. The pantry will be full this winter. I don’t have anything to feel guilty about.

Today is supposed to be pleasantly cooler, and tomorrow and Monday may be downright chilly and wet, with temps in the 60s and a 70% chance of rain. I’ve even seen warnings to backcountry hikers that they may encounter snow above 7000 feet. It gets hot again next week, unfortunately, but this will be a nice respite. It still won’t be enough to make a dent in the fires, though.

I canned 14 pints of white beans yesterday.

These are some that I grew myself. The husband asked me if I was planning to enter these in the fair. (No.) I also found the La Preferida brand of pinto beans and black beans that Teri recommended. (Thank you!) The next batch of beans will be black beans, I think.

Today is a garden work day. I’m going to cut back the spent raspberry canes, transplant some lettuce seedlings, and harvest herbs.

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I finished the dark green Kensington skirt, which was a ridiculously fast and easy project that pairs perfectly with this Liz Claiborne top:

The skirt fits me like a second skin and is very comfortable to wear. No mods will be required to the pattern, although I’d like to figure out a different way to do the yoke. The pattern calls for 1” wide elastic and I did change that to 1-1/2” wide elastic. I am not convinced that the skirt even needs the elastic, however, as that ponte holds it shape well and I am curvy enough to hold it up. It almost has the feel of a scuba knit. All in all, not bad for an $8 remnant and a couple of hours of sewing. The black version is on deck.

[If Joann Fabrics ever does away with the remnant rack, I will be one sad puppy.]

DD#2 noted that I am going to have to find places to wear all of these clothes. I told her that I might be able to sport a different outfit to church every Sunday for a year.

I’ve also got a couple of aprons moving through the assembly line. I went back to Vittorio, my beloved Necchi BF, to make those. It took me a couple of minutes to get used to sewing on a sewing machine again instead of a serger or coverstitch. The difference is noticeable.

Marcie's Mystery Squash

I stopped in to visit my friend Marcie and her husband yesterday morning. We wandered around their garden for a bit and looked at what they had planted. Everyone I know seems to be drowning in cucumbers this year. Marcie was canning relish when I got there.

Their corn looks like mine, and I heard from another friend that hers didn’t do well this year, either. And yet some people have really nice looking patches of corn. I wonder what’s going on.

Tom and Marcie have some very interesting winter squash. This one is the size of a Hubbard but it’s not blue.

Marcie thinks it’s some kind of Japanese pumpkin. (Kabocha, maybe?) She said I could try one when they ripen.

Our watermelons are getting ripe, and the cantaloupe aren’t far behind:

Our cucumber plants show no sign of slowing down. I think I might make some pickles this weekend. I’ve also had navy beans soaking and those need to get canned this morning. Green beans are on the schedule for some time next week. Elysian gifted me a green bean frencher that she picked up at a thrift store and I want to try it out.

Every day, I get a few more tomatoes. It won’t be long before I’ll be bringing them in in five-gallon buckets.

I broke down and bought a spiralizer a few weeks ago. I had a handheld one from Pampered Chef, but it was hard to use. The OXO spiralizer I got comes with three blades and it’s sturdier than I expected considering it’s all plastic. I am having fun spiralizing zucchini. The other day I did a couple of sweet potatoes and roasted them.

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After I stopped at Marcie’s yesterday, I went to the church. We were supposed to have our monthly Mennonite Women meeting/sewing, but Pat, Elaine, and I were the only ones there. It’s getting harder and harder for our older members to make it, and several of them are finding it difficult to quilt because of arthritis. The three of us quilted and visited for a bit. We’re doing “prairie quilting” on the current top, which is bigger stitches with a single strand of crochet cotton instead of quilting thread. I am reasonably good at prairie quilting. It’s like quilting with training wheels.

I’m not sure if our group will keep meeting or not. We’ll have to talk about it.

I came home and did chicken chores. I’ve given up trying to collect eggs. It’s hot and the hens are not laying as much. Also, four or five of them have decided to park themselves on piles of eggs and act broody. The other day I went out there and three hens were crammed into the same nesting box. I have to take a deep breath and remind myself that their brains are the size of peas.

Later in the afternoon, I cut the Kensington skirt out of the dark green ponte knit and put it together. It just needs the elastic band put in, and then I can see how it fits and whether the pattern needs tweaking or not.

This book arrived yesterday:

Part of the reason I bought the book was because it includes a pattern for a knot top dress (the one on the cover) and I wanted to analyze the construction. The book is intended to be a beginner’s guide to sewing with knits, so it includes great basic information, from choosing fabrics to tips and tricks on sewing with knits. The designs are simple enough to allow for good fitting refinements, but Tilly includes lots of ideas for customizing them. My only quibble with the book—and it’s minor, certainly—is that the focus is more on sewing knits with a sewing machine than with a serger. I understand the rationale; sergers (and especially coverstitch machines) are still considered specialty machines by a lot of sewists. Still, I found myself looking at her assembly instructions and having to think through how I would do them on a serger instead of a sewing machine.

I bought the book for the knot top dress, but there is a simple turtleneck dress that has moved to the top of the list. The red Liverpool knit will work perfectly for that pattern. I’ll pair it with some tights to wear to church.

I’ve always been interested in fashion but 1) I have never had a need for it, because the chickens don’t care what I wear; and 2) I find it hard to spend money for clothing that fits badly and is poorly made. Now that I can make things that fit me and come in bright colors instead of muddy earth tones, I want to make ALL THE THINGS.

RIP Cuisinart

My 31-year-old Cuisinart food processor—a wedding present from my MIL—gave up the ghost yesterday. I went to turn it on and . . . nothing. I plugged it into a different outlet. Still nothing. I was able to save the recipe by using a smaller backup Cuisinart machine, but that one isn’t as nice as my main machine. My MIL was very serious about her kitchen appliances, so she bought me the (in 1990) top-of-the-line professional 14-cup model with all the accessories. It has seen me through many a canning season.

The husband thinks the switch went bad. He also thinks that he can take the switch from the smaller machine and transplant it to the larger one, but I know he doesn’t have time to do that right now. And it’s canning season and I need a food processor. I ordered myself a replacement machine. I think that after 31 years, I probably deserve one. I got a similar 14-cup model so that I can continue to use my collection of blades.

And if the husband can resurrect the old machine by fixing the switch, then I’ll still have a backup machine just in case, because we all know that the new machine probably won’t last 31 years.

Two is one and one is none.

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I wore one of my me-made T-shirts to town yesterday. A young woman in one of the stores told me that she liked my shirt, and I was able to say, “Thank you—I made it myself.” It is such a relief to be able to put on a piece of clothing that fits without constantly having to be tugging at it and readjusting it.

I was joking with the husband the other day that my fashion aesthetic during the summer can best be described as “Polish housewife.” It would be more accurate to say “Slovak housewife,” but Polish housewife is more familiar imagery, I think. I wear knee-length denim skirts in the summer because they are cooler than pants. Combine that with a top, the ubiquitous apron, and a pair of muck boots and I am quite the picture. My hair is long enough—and it has been hot enough—that I have been wearing it up most of the time, although it’s not covered with a babushka. My grandmother always used to tell me that I reminded her of her mother. The only thing I don’t have that Grandma Gargus had is geese. She was a braver woman than I. I have my hands full with those goofy roosters.

When I separated Baby and Dave, I put three pullets and the juvenile rooster in with Baby. We noticed a few days ago that there were even more hens in with Baby. They must have flown over the fencing or snuck in when the door was open. Maybe Dave isn’t quite the studmuffin that he thinks he is.

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Peas 2.0 have sprouted!

I didn’t think it would take long in this heat. Now I just need to keep them watered.

Plans are coming together for our community garden tour at the end of the month. I am one of five gardeners on the tour. My friend Robin is going to be my “host.” Her job will be to manage the logistics of people coming to the garden, which will free me up to talk about plants, chickens, and pigs. I’m a bit sad that attendees will see so much black plastic (I do grow things, really!), but that’s part of the food production process here, too. Next year’s garden will be much nicer without the wood sorrel and the quackgrass.

And today should be the last day of 90+ degree heat. Let’s hope. The weekend is looking particularly pleasant with forecast highs in the 70s and even some rain. I am planning to spend several hours in the garden on Saturday doing some cleanup work.

I scored another one-yard chunk of ponte knit fabric off the remnant rack yesterday, this time in dark green. I think I am going to use the dark green for the first iteration of the Kensington skirt just in case the pattern needs some tweaking.

Pantry Organization Day

I spent yesterday morning in the basement, moving and organizing all our canned food stocks. The older stuff needs to come to the front of the shelves, and I pull anything past its expiration date. I’ll keep my home-canned food for two years—three if I only have one or two of jars left of something—but beyond that, even if it is safe to eat, the flavor and color degrade.

[I don’t worry too much about botulism poisoning. I trust my sterile technique/canning abilities, and botulism toxin is heat labile, so I always make sure to boil whatever comes out of jars for at least five minutes. And for all that I freelance when cooking and rarely follow recipes, I adhere to canning recipes down to the letter.]

I made enough tomato sauce last year that we still have plenty for this year. And of course, we have a bumper crop of tomatoes coming on. I will make salsa, instead, and probably dehydrate the paste tomatoes. Our friend Anna, who has a plant-based catering business, sometimes buys produce from me. She may take some tomatoes. She’s very flexible and plans her menus around what she can get locally. We’ve chatted a bit about next year’s production. I’ll put in more than I usually plant so I can keep her supplied. I am familiar with her menu items and know what kinds of things she typically uses.

I have lots of stock—beef, ham, and chicken—on hand. The one thing I need more of is beans, like red beans and black beans. I’ll plan to do a couple of batches of each this month.

One of the local grocery stores usually has a case sale in September, and I use that opportunity to stock up on brown sugar and canned goods I don’t can myself (the husband is fond of pineapple).

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Yesterday afternoon, I tied myself to the coverstitch machine and I hemmed the half-dozen T-shirts I made last week. I also traced the pattern for the Kensington skirt (it’s only two pieces!):

I am a devoted member of #TeamTrace. It takes a few extra minutes, but the advantages are that I don’t have to cut up the original tissue pattern, I can grade between sizes if necessary, and my traced patterns are a lot sturdier. I use Pellon Easy Pattern and buy it by the bolt when Joanns has a big sale.

I think I may take a day soon and have a marathon cutting session of the rest of the T-shirts and some long-sleeve tops for this fall. I am going to want to get back to making quilts eventually, so it will help production if the tops are cut out and ready to assemble.

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Our whole community is on tenterhooks because of the big fire down in Finley Point, not because it threatens us—it doesn’t—but because we’re all keenly aware that “there but for the grace of God go I.” Something similar could happen here. I’ve been getting calls and texts from neighbors asking me what I know about various fires. I monitor the scanner and any fire calls for our department get sent as alerts to my phone. There are fire maps on the internet, but it takes some drilling down to figure out exactly what the maps are showing, and that’s causing a fair bit of confusion. One of the maps had a fire symbol in our neighborhood, but it turned out to be just a smoke investigation. No fire was ever found, but the map didn’t reflect that information. Another map showed a wildland fire that our fire department responded to back in May, but there was nothing to explain that the fire had long since been extinguished. And while social media is great for keeping people informed, some of this information gets passed around as gospel and people panic.

I’ve got a bag packed and know what I need to grab should we have to get out of here in a hurry. It’s nothing I haven’t done every fire season for 27 years.

We’re up in the 90s again today and tomorrow and then the heat finally breaks. What an awful summer.

Rain, Glorious Rain!

This was the most beautiful sight I’ve seen all summer:

A storm rolled in around 4:30 yesterday afternoon. I’d been watching the radar for over an hour as the system came up from Missoula. It wasn’t moving very quickly, which meant that we got a drenching rain for quite a while. One rainstorm isn’t enough to put out the fires—we’d need a week of rain like this to make a dent—but every little bit helps. The temps cooled a bit, too. The high today is supposed to be 83 with the possibility of more rain, followed by three days back up into the 90s. We’re not out of the woods yet, and unfortunately, this may give people a false sense of security. We still have the entire month of August to get through, and that traditionally has been our fire season.

Those poor people down in Finley Point—the reports are that upwards of 20 homes were destroyed in that wildfire after it jumped the highway. It has been confirmed that it was caused by humans, but the investigation is ongoing.

I can’t access the video to embed it here, but if you go to the NBC Montana Facebook page, there is a six-minute video taken by one of their reporters from a boat on Flathead Lake showing the utter devastation of that fire. It’s hard to watch if you know the area.

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I’m going to take advantage of the cooler weather to get some things done around the house today. A thorough deep clean will be on the schedule this fall because of all the ash and dust that has floated in this summer. I need to organize the pantry and rotate what’s left of last year’s stock to the front of all the shelves. Canning season is going to begin in earnest shortly.

DD#2 sent me the link to this very nice article about the Amish store in St. Ignatius. This is the one I visit whenever I go to Missoula.

I’ve also got half a dozen T-shirts made that still need their hems done, and today would be a good day to assembly-line them through the coverstitch machine. Then I could actually wear them.

Some of lavender hedges I put in more recently—within the past couple of years—bloomed this year. I transplant little seedlings and have no idea what color the flowers will be until the plants get bigger. Twenty years or so ago, I put in about 40 different varieties of lavenders spanning the entire spectrum of colors, so it’s always a surprise. My favorites are the deep, dark purples and the very light pink/white ones. This one is especially pretty:

The bees like them, too.

Breaking the Back of Summer

July went out with a bang. Yesterday was brutal. We got up to 100 degrees here and it was even hotter than that down in Kalispell. The wind started blowing around lunchtime, with stiff, hot breezes well into the wee hours of the morning. It only went down to 72 overnight instead of the 50s. (I usually open the doors and windows when I get up to let the cool air in, then close them back up to keep things cool, but I can’t get the house cooled off this morning.) A new wildfire started south of us in the mountains on the east side of Flathead Lake, prompting immediate evacuations. Firefighters were able to jump on it quickly and get it out, thankfully, and people were returning home by nightfall. To top it all off, dispatch was having problems with outgoing communications to rural fire departments. I thought for sure we were going to get some big, devastating event. It just felt like that kind of a day to me.

ETA: The winds shifted overnight and blew this fire away from the first evacuation zone and toward Flathead Lake. More evacuations were ordered for that area and now we’re hearing that upwards of 20 homes may have been lost. The highway is closed. Pray for rain.

While we were baking in the heat, Spokane got hammered with heavy thunderstorms that caused downed trees and power lines and flash floods. We’re supposed to get some of that same weather starting tonight. Until then, we’re back up into the 90s again today.

The heat totally saps my energy. I don’t want to sew. It’s cool in the living room, but I don’t even want to sit and do handwork or read a book. Cooking is out of the question. Mostly I wander around muttering about how much I want it to snow.

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I organized all my knit fabric on Friday. One bin was set aside for scraps, which I’ll take with me to classes so that students can play around with the different types of knits. Another bin has larger chunks of leftovers that could be used for small projects, like baby items and headbands. I put half the fabric in one pile for winter tops, and the other half in a pile for a few more short-sleeve T-shirts. I’ve decided my next iteration of that Liz knot top is going to be in black rayon spandex—possibly both long- and short-sleeve versions—because a simple black top is so useful.

If the quilt store owner decides she wants to carry some knits, I am going to suggest she bring in some of the Robert Kaufman fabrics. I am such a Kaufman Fabrics fangirl. I have a huge stash of Kona and I am becoming very fond of their Laguna Cotton, a 95% cotton/5% spandex blend. It is my favorite for nice, basic T-shirts. Not only does it come in wonderful saturated solids, there are tons of great prints, too. On the rare occasions when I can find RTW shirts that do fit me, the selection is usually limited to muddy earth tones and ugly prints.

These are some of the prints that arrived this week, all cotton/spandex blends:

I ordered from Fabric.com. They don’t do remnants, so If what you order is close to the end of the bolt and less than a yard, they send you the extra at no charge with a note on the package saying, “Jackpot!” The pink and green circle print was a jackpot cut and included an extra half a yard. I like the red tree print, but it might lean too orange for me. There was a green colorway of that print, too, but it was only available in the quilting cotton.

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I picked the first tomato on Friday, which has to be a record. The second batch of peas is planted—we’ll see if they produce anything. I have more lettuce to transplant to the garden, but I am waiting to do that until it cools off (and rains) this week. The raspberries are just about done, so I’ll need to get in there and prune out those canes.

The track loader arrived on Friday, so the husband spent yesterday using it to clean up the area where he dug the water line. (The cab of the loader has air conditioning.) I think that is going to be a very useful purchase, much like the forklift.

Liz Claiborne Knot Top Redux

I finished the new incarnation of the Liz Claiborne Knot Top. Overall, I am happy with it. Here it is sans sleeve and bottom hems.

I think it actually looks better on me than on the dress form, but it’s hard to get a good picture of me wearing it. You’ll have to take my word for it.

The Postives:

It fits, mostly, and requires only a few minor tweaks to the pattern. I need to add a smidge of width at the bust. (I am bustier than the dress form but my waist is narrower.) I may shorten the sleeves a bit. I’ll decide after I hem them. I may also change the top of the bodice and the sleeves to the same sleeve shape I am using for my T-shirts. This one has a much taller sleeve cap. It’s not bad, just different.

I will say that I don’t usually wear V-necks—even though DD#2 assures me that they are very flattering on me—because I have a couple of divots in my chest that are scars from my Hickman catheter placements when I was having chemo. (I had one, it got infected, so they took it out and put another one in on the other side.) I think I just need to get over myself. There is a reason this was one of my favorite tops.

The Negatives:

The negatives mostly have to do with the fabric. The Dreamstress has an excellent blog post about the differences in T-shirt knits in terms of weight/thickness, recovery, and stability. In short, this Hobby Lobby rayon/linen/spandex fabric lacks stability. For you handknitters out there, imagine a worsted weight yarn knit in stockinette stitch on size 11 needles. That kind of fabric is going to want to torque back and forth. This fabric behaves in much the same way. Less stable knits tend to be drapey, but they can be difficult to work with. I really had to finesse this one through the serger. Trust me when I say that you don’t want to have to take out any seams. I would like to make the next version in a more stable rayon/spandex or cotton/spandex knit.

The neckline finish is an issue. I decided to do a narrow hem on both the front and back pieces because I don’t want to take the time to go up the learning curve with the binding attachments right now. I will do that at some point, but it was easier to do the narrow hem on the Janome. The lack of stability in the fabric meant that the neckline stretched out of shape in the process, although I was able to steam it back into shape. (Mostly.) I need to go back and listen to a recent Sewing Out Loud podcast where Zede gave some tips and tricks for working with finicky knits. (I hope the coverstitch machine doesn’t decide to spit this one out.) The neckline finish also has to be done before the front piece is twisted on itself. I did the front finish and back finish on this top separately. Next time, I may sew one shoulder seam, finish the neckline, twist the front, and sew the other shoulder seam.

So there you have it. I’ve got another “tried and true” pattern to add to the collection. The Big Brown Truck of Happiness brought a delivery of more knit fabric this week—I gave the driver a loaf of zucchini bread—and I’ll be making even more tops to replace the too-short ones in my closet. I’ll provide a review of those fabrics in the next couple of blog posts.

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The husband has been spending his evenings getting the water line to the new shop in place:

The rocks. Oh, the rocks. This is what glacial till looks like, boys and girls. All of those rocks probably came down from Canada.

Plumbing the bathroom is on the list for this winter. The husband also put pumps in next to the new shop and next to the well casing, which will make hooking up hose and getting water to fruit trees much easier.

The construction company bought a piece of equipment:

The husband is 55, and despite the fact that he is in excellent physical shape and thinks he is still 21, he needs to be mindful of overdoing things. (I learned that lesson—I bought a tractor.) This is small enough that he can load it on our trailer and take it to jobsites to load and unload concrete forms with the fork attachments. I think it may get delivered this weekend. I have been promised a lesson on operating it, because I also have some plans. Heheheh.

Clothing for the Spatially Challenged

Some projects get finished right away and some projects evolve over time. I don’t stress too much about it as long as there is eventual forward progress. I did a couple of posts in June 2020 about a Burda knot top pattern—Burda 6911—fully intending to see that one through, but it stalled. I need to revisit that pattern and re-trace the dress version, which has more ease through the midriff, and cut it off at the appropriate length. I haven’t taken the time to do that.

When my favorite Liz Claiborne knot top gave up the ghost, though, I decided to take it apart and use it as a pattern, so I am back to thinking about knot tops again. This shirt’s construction is completely different than that of the Burda top. The Burda top has two separate front sections, one of which gets pulled through a hole formed by the bust dart in the other section. (Go read the linked post.)

The Liz top has one front and one back section. The front section looks like this:

(No doubt my mother and DD#2 are thinking that it is good this top got a hole in it because I have been wearing it past its expiration date.) The front is cut from a single piece of fabric. One side is rotated up and over itself and back down to create the knot. The two front pieces are then seamed down the center. The sides of that front opening are cut on the true bias, so in this herringbone fabric, the seam forms a chevron pattern.

This construction is infinitely easier than the Burda top, which is good because I prefer this top. The neckline doesn’t plunge down as far.

I have two issues to sort out. The neckline needs to be finished in some fashion before making the knot. The Liz top had a narrow bound edge. I need to look at the binding attachments I just got for my coverstitch machine to see if they can do something similar. Someone else who made the Burda 6911 top—which requires a similar finish—blogged about that process and said she used foldover elastic. That might work. The little keyhole at the top of the divide also needs some kind of finish. On the Liz top, a narrow 1/4” hem was folded back there and sewn down.

I am going to change the sleeves on my version of this top. The original top had tiny little cap sleeves, which I didn’t hate, but I’d prefer something with more coverage. I’ll frankenpattern something together.

This green fabric is a rayon/spandex knit. I think the rayon/linen/spandex knit I got at Hobby Lobby will be perfect for testing out my version of this top.

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We’re getting some monsoon moisture—not enough to be significant, but it is wonderful to get some rain. I prepped the area in the garden for another batch of peas and another couple of rows of lettuce. I am trying to think creatively about gardening going forward, because I have seen some information that indicates that this may be a climate shift that persists for years and possibly decades. If we’re going to have excessively hot, dry summers, then I need to change a few things. Peas, broccoli, and cauliflower may have to become fall crops.

And it’s raining hard enough now that I think I will spend the morning on pattern drafting.

More Fun With Knits

As a quick followup to yesterday’s post, let me just say that I have seen some pop psychology assessments that describe the current obsession with politics and social justice as a form of religious fervor. Many of those involved have eschewed organized religion or find it lacking in some way, so they fill that need for meaning and purpose with something else. While that’s a very simplified explanation, I think there is a grain of truth to it. I’ll just say that my feeling about any kind of evangelism—secular or otherwise—is the same: Practice whatever belief system you like, just don’t shove it down my throat. Extend to me the same courtesy. And just because I don’t share your same level of engagement or express it the same way, don’t assume that that means I don’t care.

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I had never heard of Liverpool knit, so I ordered a length of it. The Girl Charlee website defines it thusly:

A crepe or bullet textured stretch fabric for accessory and apparel garments constructed of two very lightweight fabrics fused together which gives it a lofty feel. Ample four-way stretch and a beautiful full-bodied drape, this medium weight stable knit fabric is ideal for dresses, jackets, skirts, pants, tops, and more.

The fabric I ordered is 100% polyester, richly textured, with narrow ribs that look like cables (how delightful!)

It has a fair bit of heft. I got enough to make a dress, and I think that’s what it is going to become. (It’s a darker red than the picture shows.)

I stopped in at Hobby Lobby yesterday while running errands and discovered a big bin of fabric on clearance. One of the bolts was a rayon/linen/spandex blend knit. The content is 91% rayon, 6% linen, and 3% spandex. That amount of linen is hardly enough to make a difference, but the fabric was only $5 a yard, so I bought a yard and a half to make a T-shirt. I am curious to see how it wears.

And then I found two one-yard chunks of knit fabric on the remnant rack at Joanns. I can get the body pieces out of one yard and the sleeve and neckband from the other piece, so I bought both remnants for a grand total of $8. Remnants are 50% off the current price of the fabric, so if the fabric is on sale, the remnant is 50% off the sale price.

One of my favorite Liz Claiborne knit tops—a knot-front top from several years ago, when they were still making things long enough to fit me—has a hole in it. The hole is such that I can’t easily repair it, so I am taking the top apart to use it as a pattern for a new version.

I’ll have plenty of new tops to wear soon, and as it looks like it may stay warm well into September, I am going to get a lot of use out of my me-made wardrobe.

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Another group of turkey mamas with babies in tow showed up behind the chicken coop yesterday. I can tell this is a different group because these are toddler babies. The other group has older babies. I tossed out a few handfuls of scratch grains for them. I’d rather they eat with the chickens than decimate my garden, although I wouldn’t mind if they ate a few zucchinis.

What is the Message?

This blog post has been marinating for a few days. No doubt someone will take offense at it, as being offended seems to be an Olympic-level sport nowadays. Whatever. I pay for the ability to write in this space and I am going to use it.

Should business and politics mix? I’m not talking about corporate cronyism here—which definitely should not exist—but rather, should a business owner’s political beliefs be front and center as part of his or her daily operations? The short answer is that the owner is in charge of running the business and is responsible for making the business decisions. However, I am reminded of something that a friend of mine said after visiting the Flathead Valley. Many of the churches here have large, prominent signs of the Ten Commandments or other religious quotations on display on their properties. After driving around town for a couple of days, my friend noted that “Perhaps these churches aren’t sending the message they think they are sending.” How astute. When pressed to put a similar sign on our church property, our pastor responded that if we did put up a sign, it would say, “Love Thy Neighbor.”

I went to a small, independently-owned business the other day to pick up a specific product. This store had social justice-themed signs plastered all over the front window. Displays within the store called attention to minority suppliers. There was a sign on the bathroom door stating, “Gender Neutral.” (Not in icons, but in words.) I understand that the owner feels strongly about social issues and wants to make that concern known, but I came out of that store feeling like the product the store wanted to sell was not the product I went in there to get. In the words of my friend, “Perhaps this store wasn’t sending the message it thought it was sending.” I am sure that part of the intended message was that discrimination would not be tolerated, but would I have been welcomed in the store had I been wearing the “wrong” political attire? The knife of discrimination cuts both ways, coughRavelrycough.

I am going to be sexist here for a moment, too, and note that these kinds of things tend to happen in women-owned businesses (as this one was), and it is women who tend to care about this kind of virtue-signaling. I have never heard a man say, “I’m not going to shop at that hardware store because it hasn’t made its position on Issue XYZ clear.” Never. The husband isn’t interested in the voting record of the general contractor who hires him, nor is he going to grill homeowners on their political affiliations.

Actions are always going to be more important than words. A large majority of my mother’s employee workforce at her metal stamping plant is made up of minorities and always has been. A couple of them have worked at the plant for more than a decade. She draws from the area around her shop and those are the people who live there. She has never once felt the need to put up a sign proclaiming that Black Lives Matter.

Voting by pocketbook certainly is a way to effect change. I have the choice to spend my dollars at a business or not. I have had a few people tell me that they wouldn’t shop at a store like that. I understand that position, but product availability where I live is also a factor. I don’t have the choice of 15 stores in a major metropolitan area. If I want a store to be viable where I live and carry the products I want, I have to be willing to support it.

So those are my thoughts. You are welcome to weigh in on the comments. Be civil.

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The husband is putting in the water line to the new shop so that he can finish plumbing the bathroom.

We sited the shop to take advantage of the existing septic system in that part of the property. The 14’ x 70’ trailer where we lived for a few years while building our house was on that system. The husband has to run the water line from the well head to the shop, which is a distance of about 75 feet, and it has to be at least six feet deep. That backhoe certainly has paid for itself in the year that we’ve had it.

One of our friends has a shop and he told the husband that one of his favorite purchases was a heated bidet toilet seat for the bathroom. Every so often, I tease the husband and say I am going to order one for him.

Fowl

The husband spent some time yesterday morning re-installing the fencing we use to separate the chicks from the big chickens after they get transferred from the brooder to the coop. Baby and Dave now have separate spaces in the chicken yard, with separate entrances into the coop, although they can see each other. I put a few hens in with Baby. This isn’t a good long-term solution, but it will keep them apart until the fall.

I put black plastic down in another section of the garden. I am supposed to be part of a garden tour at the end of August and I feel bad because I don’t think there will be much to look at. However, the garden tour was scheduled after I decided that this year would be a “rebuilding” year for the garden. What is out there looks great—except for the corn—so I will just have to explain what I’m doing. The tour organizers said that people will want to see the pigs, too.

[I am not sure what is going on with the corn. I have a few theories, but I need more information.]

There are a few sections of the garden that are going to get infusions of chicken manure this fall, now that I have the tractor and wagon and have a good way to transport it over there.

I also watered the fruit trees in the front yard before it got hot—there are half a dozen young trees that we just put in this spring that need regular watering, but I watered the established trees, too, as they’re looking a bit stressed. The State Fair tree only has about a dozen apples on it after not producing any last year. I did prune it pretty heavily this spring, though. The two Honeycrisps have apples, the Lodi has apples (yay!), and the Red Wealthy is loaded. The Golden Delicious is taking a year off. We still have that one tree whose variety is unknown—and one of the tree maps shows it as an apricot—but it has fruit on it this year and they look like apples to me. WHO KNOWS.

We’re waiting for Amazon to deliver another fence energizer like the one that powers the electric fence on the chicken coop. The husband is going to put up a temporary fence around the fruit trees soon so that the bears and deer can’t get to the apples.

This group was wandering around while I was out working:

I counted 12 baby turkeys. They are going to be surprised to find out they can’t get to the grapes this fall. I have a plan to protect the bunches of grapes as they ripen.

At least I don’t have to shoot ground squirrels anymore. That problem has mostly disappeared.

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I cut out four more T-shirts yesterday afternoon. I will assembly-line them through the serger and coverstitch machines. A big purge of the closet is on the schedule soon, too.

The husband asked me over dinner what’s on the sewing schedule after I get all these T-shirts made. I just laughed. I told him that that is up to the universe. After all, I had no idea that I would be teaching serger classes this summer. I do want to get back to designing and making quilts, but it’s nice to be able to make myself good-fitting clothing, too.

I finished and bound off a prayer shawl while watching a meat-canning webinar yesterday afternoon. It just needs the fringe.

Has anyone else seen this yarn from Lion Brand?

I am tempted to pick up a skein and try it out (if I can find it locally). The last 100% hemp yarn I knitted with was some that I spun myself. Hemp is still one of my favorite spinning fibers.

[I made myself a vest with that yarn and some woman tried to buy it off of me at an art festival in downtown Kalispell.]

One skein would be enough for a knitted washcloth or two. I haven’t made any of those in a while.

Last Rooster Standing

As of yesterday morning, we had four roosters—Dave, Baby, and two juveniles that showed up in the batch of White Rock chicks that I got from the farm store in April.

As of last night, we have three roosters—Dave, Baby, and one juvenile. I went out to check on the chickens just before dinner, and as I opened the door to the chicken yard, I noticed a dead juvenile rooster surrounded by a bunch of white feathers.

I am pretty sure Dave took him out. He was standing next to the body. I looked at Dave. He looked back at me with one eye, then the other eye, then turned around and sauntered off.

This is a problem and I am not sure how to solve it. I thought I had a plan, but this latest homicide shifts the equation a bit. I was going to let Baby out of solitary, but it appears I am going to have to keep Baby and Dave separated indefinitely. Baby was pretty beaten up last time. After a week by himself, he looks better—bored, but better. I posted on the local poultry Facebook group to see if anyone would like a gentle rooster for their girls. Baby would do fine with just a couple of hens, and he’d love some place where he could be spoiled. Roosters are difficult to re-home, however.

We’ll probably butcher in the fall. I had already planned to include the two White Rock roosters. The one that is left may not make it until then if Dave decides he needs to get taken out. That leaves Dave and Baby. Some people would think this an easy decision: cull the problem rooster. I like Dave, though. He’s a bad boy, but I’ve never seen a rooster as devoted to the hens as he is. Maybe too devoted.

I go back and forth. I probably should cull Dave and keep Baby. My chickens don’t free range, so it’s not like Baby would have to fight off threats from predators.

I will try to figure out how to keep peace in the coop until the fall. I did say to the husband, however, that I think I am done with roosters. Men are a lot of work.

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I was going to spend yesterday morning weeding and cleaning up the garden, but I spent three hours re-doing the watering system, instead. We’ve been using oscillating sprinkler heads set on top of T-posts. They work, sort of, sometimes, but they malfunction more often than not. I started one the other morning and watched it for a bit to make sure it was working properly, but when I came back a few hours later, I discovered that it had gotten stuck in a position where it watered the top of the greenhouse and nothing else.

It has been so dry, too, that even if we water early in the morning, a lot of the water just evaporates. The plant roots aren’t getting a good, deep soaking. I dug out all the old soaker hose to see if I could make that work. The reason it took so long was because there were three different kinds of hose, some had male fittings at both ends (why?), some had female fittings at both ends (also why?), and I needed hose in two different places in the garden. And soaker hose is harder to put down around plants that are already in the ground. After some monkeying around, I came up with a system of hoses and manifolds that will let me get the water to the places it is needed. It will work for the rest of this season. Next year, though, I need a plan. Someone on the homesteading chat group suggested a system of hoses with spike watering heads that can be placed in the ground next to each plant. That looks like it would work well for the tomatoes.

Hopefully, I can get the weeding done this morning. I think I’m also going to plant peas again today to see if I can get a fall crop.

The bee balm is blooming in the herb garden:

Fire Season, 2021 Edition

Stage 1 fire restrictions went into effect last weekend, and stage 2 restrictions are set to go into effect this coming Monday. You would think that the “no explosives” admonition would be obvious, but it’s not, because people are stupid.

I set up a group text for people in our community. I monitor the scanner, and our fire department dispatches get sent to my phone, so I am in a good position to let people know if something is happening. The group text is the modern version of a phone tree. I sent out the first notification yesterday afternoon with a note saying that I hoped it was the only one I needed to send.

A line of dry thunderstorms came through Wednesday afternoon and sparked a wildfire five miles west of Polebridge. Glacier Park was overrun by tourists last year, so the park instituted a ticketing system for 2021. Tickets sell out within five minutes every morning, leading many people to look for other places to visit that do not require tickets. One of those places is the North Fork, which is along the western edge of the park. (Another is the state and federal lands across from our house.) The Polebridge Mercantile is the last stop in civilization before heading into true wilderness. Unfortunately, many people go up there thinking it’s Disneyland.

[This is a long article but worth reading if you have the time: Off the Grid and Overrun. It sums up the current situation in the North Fork nicely.]

So now there is a forest fire burning five miles west of Polebridge—the Hay Creek Fire—and threatening an area frequented by tourists who are woefully unprepared for wilderness, let alone wilderness that’s on fire. I see that some of the roads and hiking trails have been closed, which will help.

Our neighbor Ali works for the Forest Service and with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. She texted me yesterday afternoon that she’s been assigned to the Hay Creek Fire.

The Robert Fire that burned so much of the western side of Glacier Park in 2003 started on July 23, 2003 at 4:45 pm. I was in the kitchen cooking dinner when the first fire department dispatch went out.

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I stopped in at the quilt store yesterday morning to pick up this book that Tera recommended:

It has lots of great color photos and looks like a terrific resource for serging in general. While I was there, the woman who coordinates the classes and I chatted a bit about our coverstitch machines. I told her I had just gotten binding attachments for mine but hadn’t had a chance to try them yet. She then asked me if I would be willing to help her fine-tune a pattern for fit.

That request surprised me a bit, although I think I can help her out. I said to the husband last night that my spatial perception abilities have improved dramatically in the last couple of years. I can’t park a trailer 3” from a tree like the husband can, but I can draft a T-shirt pattern that fits me well. Sewing with knits almost feels like cheating to me, because I am not having to create the fabric AND fit it simultaneously like I did when designing sweaters.

Maybe I did the difficult thing first, LOL.

The Carousel, Fabric, and Some Street Food

Elysian, WS, and I went to Missoula yesterday. As a Navy veteran, she goes through the VA for some of her medical care. She needed to get some dental work done, but being the VA, and this being Montana, the nearest dentist that could/would do the work was in Missoula. They told her to bring someone in case she needed to be sedated. I don’t need much encouragement for a road trip. We left at 8 am for an 11 am appointment just in case we hit tourist traffic on the way down. We arrived in plenty of time. I had planned to drop her off and take WS over to the carousel, but when she checked in, they informed us that if they had to sedate her, I would have to remain on the premises. After a quick scan, though, the dentist said he could do the work under local anesthesia in about an hour.

We left her at the dental office. The carousel didn’t open until noon, and it was still only 11 am, so WS and I headed for Joann Fabrics. WS is used to this part of traveling with me. He likes to look at fabric, too, and we imagine all the things we could make with the different kinds we see. I bought a chunk of cotton/spandex for a T-shirt. We then went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to pick up a tablecloth that DD#1 had asked me to get for her. Just as we were finishing up there, I got a text from his mom that she was all done at the dental office, so we zipped back over and picked her up.

They hadn’t let her eat the night before and I knew she was starving, so we brainstormed possible lunch choices. We decided to go to the carousel, which is downtown, to see what was nearby. We were pleased to discover that on Wednesdays, there are food trucks and live music in the park next to the carousel. She got a cup of ice cream, WS had a taco, and I had a plate of some spectacular Thai chicken peanut curry. I like street food. While they finished eating, I walked up to The Confident Stitch, which is just a block from the carousel, and bought another piece of Kaufman Laguna Cotton, this time in a pretty green and white print.

[I am going to have about two dozen new T-shirts when this serger marathon is over.]

Elysian was starting to feel the effects of the novocaine wearing off, so I offered to take WS on the carousel. I have ridden this carousel many, many times over the past 25 years. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people and all of the outside horses were taken, so we couldn’t try to get the brass ring. We had two inside horses:

The carousel goes fast and they are generous with the length of the rides. By the time we got off the ride, it was after 2 o’clock. Elysian wanted to stop at the Amish store on the way home—she had never been there—so we left Missoula and headed north. WS and I each enjoyed a cup of ice cream while we tried out the Amish-made glider rockers on the porch of the store.

I may go back to Missoula with her in two weeks when she goes in for a followup visit. I can think of two or three other places she and WS would enjoy visiting.

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When I got home, I discovered that the fabric I ordered from Girl Charlee had arrived. This is what I have to add to the pile of T-shirt fabrics:

The top is another double brushed poly/spandex blend. Underneath that is a striped fabric that the Girl Charlee website only describes as a cotton/rayon/spandex blend. The percentages were not given. I like the feel of that one very much. The green vine-y print is the Laguna Cotton from The Confident Stitch. Elysian said it reminded her of peas in the garden. The bottom is the black and multicolor cotton/spandex fabric from Joanns.

I may need to take a break from the knits and make myself some more aprons. I have been hard on my aprons this summer. I almost need one for each day of the week.

The produce tsunami is in full swing. The cucumber plants are producing like crazy, as are the zucchini. I expect to be bringing in tomatoes before too long, which is unheard of. I don’t usually get ripe tomatoes until the end of August. I said to the husband that we may not need to cover them from frost in September to keep them going like we usually have to. It is still hot here, but only in the 80s instead of close to 100. After weeks of excessive heat, mid-80s are almost pleasant.

Five T-Shirts Later . . .

I have made five T-shirts for myself, all using the same self-drafted pattern but in different fabrics, and I’ve learned a few things in the process. This has been a useful exercise.

T-Shirt #1: Made from what I believe is a cotton/spandex print from Joanns from last year (probably 98% cotton/2% spandex).

This one fits me well, although the color makes me look like death warmed over. Oh well. I love the feel of the fabric.

T-Shirt #2: Made from pink 60/40 cotton/polyester interlock from Joanns.

I wore this one all day yesterday (can you tell?). This qualifies as a “beefy T” due to the interlock construction of the fabric, meaning both sides look like the knit-stitch side of a sweater with no purl side. Temps yesterday stayed relatively cool—80s instead of high 90s due to overcast skies—and I was quite comfortable. My only complaint about this kind of fabric is poor recovery. Once it stretches out, it tends to stay that way. I think it may also pill because of the polyester. I line-dry most of my clothing in my laundry room, but washing can also cause pilling. We’ll find out. One of the pieces of fabric I bought in Missoula last week is 100% cotton interlock. I’ll see if I can tell a difference when I make a shirt out of it.

T-Shirt #3: Green bamboo/rayon/spandex (?) from The Confident Stitch in Missoula.

This fabric is not listed on their website, but because they carry deadstock, once the fabric is gone, it’s gone. This T-shirt is tighter on me and is a good example of Zede Donohue’s admonition that “Knits should skim, not cling.” Note to self that any future shirts in a similar fabric need additional ease. I will wear it anyway. I adore the color.

T-Shirt #4: A double-brushed poly from Joanns (90% polyester/10% spandex).

Even though the polyester fabrics of today are a far cry from those used in the horrifying polyester leisure suits of the 1970s, I tend to avoid polyester in favor of natural fibers. This one isn’t bad. The double-brushed nature of this fabric makes it feel like peachskin to me. I wore this top to church Sunday because DBP looks dressier than cotton or interlock. I like clothing that I don’t have to tug at and adjust and this top fits the bill. I am still working on perfecting my neckbands, which are averaging a B+. I look at what I make and if it looks better than what is currently coming out of third-world sweatshops and being sold in stores, then I am happy. Admittedly, that is a low bar. My coverstitch hems, though, are on point.

T-Shirt #5: Made from 100% cotton jersey from Joanns. Eh.

The fabric was a disappointment. It was thinner than expected and gave me some fits. Despite being a knit, this fabric had very little stretch. Any future tops in a similar fabric need additional ease. The neckband either needs to be cut on the bias or made from ribbing because making it long enough to bind the neck opening means that it tends not to lie flat. This could be a good one to try binding instead of a neckband. I am tempted to buy another yard and re-make it to test all these theories because I really do like the fabric, which is from the juvenile apparel section of Joanns. Perhaps I should confine my purchases to the adult section.

For all my moaning and groaning about spandex, a small amount is helpful. T-shirts don’t fit nearly as closely as leggings do and thus it is tolerable to me. This project is ongoing. I still have a few more fabrics in the knits pile to make into shirts, as well as the blends I ordered because they weren’t available locally.

What I’ve learned:

• I don’t need as many dressy tops as I do utilitarian ones.

• I am a sucker for fun prints and bright colors

• Polyester is not evil, at least from the standpoint of the hand of the fabric, but comes with other issues depending on one’s personal philosophy about resource depletion.

• Spandex is useful in small amounts.

• The fabric content affects ease (something I knew on a basic level, but needed to see in action). Paradoxically, the most stretchy and least stretchy fabrics require additional ease.

Finally, even though spending this much time with my serger was not the plan I had for this summer, developing and teaching serger classes has been a positive because now I have both a basic T-shirt pattern and a good understanding about the differences in fabrics. Not all knits are created equal. And no matter how much I love the print, if I don’t like the resulting garment because of the way the fabric behaves, making it was a waste of time and money.

[Spoonflower is always an option. I have this niggling feeling that at some point, I am going to dip my toe into fabric design, and Spoonflower would be the way to start that process. Because I need another hobby.]

I like having clothing that fits me.

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We have a significant chance of thunderstorms this afternoon, but given the current humidity levels, they probably won’t come with much rain. Hopefully, they will not spark any new fires. One of the Seattle news stations tweeted a picture yesterday of a brush fire at the entrance to the Tacoma Mall, and I knew exactly where it was because I used to shop there when DD#1 was in college at Pacific Lutheran.

There were also three horrific vehicle accidents in the same part of Kalispell on Friday and Saturday that resulted in two fatalities. Getting through town is an ongoing exercise in defensive driving. People are in such an awful hurry.

Janet Versus the Turkeys

The currant bushes are producing abundantly, but it’s a race between me and two mama turkeys. They travel in a caravan with about a dozen poults between them and seem to believe that the garden is their own personal cafeteria. (Yesterday, I saw them head out of the garden and march across the pig pasture. The pigs did not care.) I harvested half the currants on one of the bushes earlier in the week, but when I went back to finish the job, the whole thing had been picked clean. I got most of what was left on the other bushes yesterday. Cathy suggested I prune out the bearing branches, which makes collecting the currants easier and also opens up the bottom of the bushes for better airflow. (And for better turkey access.)

I have about five gallons, which should be more than enough to try Cathy’s blackcurrant curd recipe. These were off the Belaruska bush.

I’m going to have to figure out how to keep the turkeys from hoovering the grapes this year.

I also brought in another half dozen zucchini and 22 cucumbers and made a huge batch of what my kids call “instant pickles,” or cucumbers in vinegar. The husband loves those. Processing all of this produce also means consolidating and moving things around the freezers. A couple of them desperately need to be defrosted soon. I am not going to make as much zucchini bread this year because we still have some left. And I need to count the number of jars of tomato sauce on the shelf. The tomatoes may be better used up making salsa this year than plain sauce, especially if we get the bumper crop I am expecting. Susan gave me half a dozen hot pepper plants, and those peppers would go nicely in the salsa, too.

The raspberries are delicious. The husband has been having a couple of handfuls every morning when he lets the pigs out. I beat back that raspberry patch in March but you’d never know it. The paradox of pruning.

The peas are done. The lavenders are in full bloom, although covered with fewer pollinators than I would like. It has been that way for the last couple of seasons. That’s troubling.

Even in a rebuilding year—when half the garden is covered with black plastic to kill stubborn weeds—we’re still getting quite a bit of food. I have lots of plans for next year’s garden.

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I am sure that Dave the rooster now thinks his name is Dave-Don’t-Be-An-Asshole, because that’s what I say to him every time I go out there. I moved the Buff rooster to the separate area of the coop for a few days because Dave would not stop hassling him. Dave is the one that really needs a few days of timeout, but I am not sure he would get the message. I might have to find a new home for the Buff rooster. We just can’t have this much toxic masculinity in one coop. It’s a fine line. The characteristics that make Dave such an excellent rooster—he does a stellar job taking care of the hens—also make him aggressive toward the other males. He steers clear of the husband, though.

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DD#1 sent a picture of another bear. The picture was taken from the safety of their living room:

I made some comment to the husband about how disconcerting it would be to walk outside and see a bear in the yard and he said, “Did you forget where you live?” LOL.

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I finished T-shirt #3 yesterday afternoon and #4 is waiting to be hemmed. I discovered that even though I am using the exact same pattern, the fit is slightly different depending on the fiber content of the fabric. T-shirt #3 was a bamboo/rayon/spandex blend (I think) that I got at The Confident Stitch in Missoula last summer. The fabric feels wonderful but it’s clingier than the cotton/spandex and the 100% cotton shirts. I’ve ordered a couple more lengths of fabric in fiber combos I can’t find locally just so I can see what I like the best. (Have you ever heard of Liverpool knit?)

I also looked at the Kensington skirt pattern. The construction is dead simple: a front, a back, and two yoke pieces. Interestingly, the pattern suggests using a sewing machine for construction rather than a serger. After reading it over, I can understand the designer’s rationale for that recommendation. The Janome should handle the ponte knit with no issues.