Round the Corner

I got the other long border and one short border of the Kindness quilt done yesterday, which forced me to deal with the issue of the corners. I researched some ideas and decided that making progressively smaller ribbon candies to turn the corner would be the best solution. That required, though, that I ditch the security of the rulers and freehand the ribbons. I roughed them in with a disappearing marker, which helped.

They are not perfect, but I am not unhappy with how they turned out:

A little bit of the marker is still visible, which should disappear soon.

I have one short border and the other two corners left to do. I would have continued working on the quilt and finished those, but the husband came home from work early and distracted me by being a shiny toy. I gave up quilting in favor of sitting and having drinks on the (inside) veranda with him.

I know, too, how I want to quilt that narrow red border. A few more hours at the machine and this one will be ready for binding. Then it’s on to the next one.

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I am excited about teaching my serger class today. I have my machine all threaded and ready to go.

The threading paths for the loopers and needles are color coded inside the machine, so I threaded each path with its corresponding color of thread. That makes it easy, on white fabric, to demonstrate a balanced stitch as well as to illustrate what happens when tension is out of whack. I’ve also got a pile of sample items with different kinds of stitches. I think it’s important to show practical applications for things like rolled hems and lettuce edges.

With eight students—and potentially, eight different machines—getting everyone up and running might be a challenge, but it’s a good challenge. I am so glad that beginning serging is its own class now and a prerequisite to other classes.

The quilt store north of town asked about me teaching serger classes there, but that hasn’t gone any further. Out of respect, because she asked me first, I did run the idea past the owner of the store where I am teaching today to see if she had any objections. She did not. The two stores seem to get along now, although I understand that wasn’t the case with a previous owner.

I’m not interested in drama. I just want to teach people how to use their sergers.

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I took advantage of a big sale at Accuquilt and purchased the English Paper Piecing Qube from the overstock bin at the end of December. It came via the FedEx truck yesterday. I’m doing enough EPP now that it will be useful to have those dies. Strangely, the order for the strip dies that I placed earlier in December—they were also on sale—shows that it is still “processing.” One of the items in that order was out of stock, so it may be that they are waiting for it to arrive before they ship the whole order. I think these new dies will round out my die collection for the moment. I tend not to buy the dies for individual blocks because I like to make my units oversized and trim them down. Most of my dies are for the geometric shapes, like squares and triangles. And strips, of course, because those are so handy.

Ribbon Candy

The Q20 and I will be spending a lot of quality time together this month. I have five tops basted and ready to quilt and a few other items, including table runners and my Ruler Club practice quilt, waiting in the wings. Yesterday, I sat down and finished the loopy flower pattern in the center of the Cultivate Kindness top. I was going to stop there, but I was itching to try the Ribbon Candy rulers I just bought, because I specifically wanted to try them in the borders of this quilt.

It’s possible to freehand ribbon candy designs. I sketch badly, however, which means that I don’t freehand quilt well, either (except loops). Rulers were invented for people like me.

I got out my handy double-ended tape measure—zero is in the middle—and located the middle of the border. Some quick calculations indicated which size ribbon candy ruler would work best in the border. I started at the middle mark and quilted to one end, then went back to the same spot and quilted to the other end. If I needed to do any fudging, it would be less noticeable at the ends. As it turned out, the design fit perfectly into the border.

I love the way it looks:

I am leaving the corner blocks undone until I figure out what I want to quilt inside of them. There is also a narrow inner border that needs something. I don’t like to overquilt my quilts, though. They need just enough thread, but not so much that they can stand up by themselves.

I am so glad we’re doing the Amanda Murphy rulers in Ruler Club. The Handi-Quilter ones were a good introduction, but I like Amanda’s rulers much better.

I find it so interesting that some of my friends have moved over to other fiber arts or are getting back to old favorite ones. If you’re on Instagram, follow JC Briar for some great eye candy. JC was my tech editor for many years and is an accomplished knitter, computer programmer, and teacher. Last year, she acquired a treadle Singer Red Eye named Rosebud. She and Rosebud have been making some great modern improv quilts lately.

And Cathy is weaving! She posted a picture on Facebook yesterday. She’s making a lovely scarf out of some maroon and beige Merino/camel blend yarn.

I should check in with Tera and see what fascinating things she’s working on.

I fringed two prayer shawls yesterday morning while watching the (three hour long) Joe Rogan interview with Dr. Robert Malone. I followed Dr. Malone on Twitter until they banned him last week. That’s all I am going to say about it. If you want to know what I think, you’ll have to speak to me privately, and I’m unlikely to engage further with you about it if you haven’t also watched the interview and only want to repeat social media talking points.

This arrived in Friday’s mail:

I don’t order a lot from Baker Creek; their seeds didn’t seem to do as well for us as the ones I get from Victory Seeds in Oregon. Still, Baker Creek has some intriguing varieties and I’ll probably order at least a few things from them.

[I did not do cowpeas last year but wondering if I should give them one more go . . . ]

I am ready to hit the ground running this week. Temps are supposed to moderate this week—it’s a balmy 10 degrees Fahrenheit right now—but snow is in the forecast every day. I am hoping The Diva does not decide to leave me stranded anywhere. The husband thinks it needs a new starter solenoid and ordered one, but apparently, there are none to be had in the United States and it’s going to be 6-8 weeks. I can drive DD#1’s Acura if necessary. I’d prefer to be driving my car, though.

Happy 2022!

I made one last run to town in 2021 yesterday. The quilt store north of town had exactly the fabric I needed to finish a project, and when I stopped in at the quilt store south of town, I discovered I have eight students signed up for the Serger 101 class this coming Tuesday. Yay! I am so excited about that. The Serger 101 class is a prerequisite to the T-shirt class later this month, hopefully to avoid the issue of students coming in not knowing how to use the machine.

I’ll spend some time this weekend getting my class stuff organized. I’ve also been watching Gail Yellen’s YouTube channel, because she has a lot of great serger technique and project videos. I have lots of ideas for classes for this year.

“Begin as you mean to go on.” Apparently, 2022 is going to begin with quilting, sewing, and serging. I can think of worse things.

I also picked up a set of rulers I ordered at the quilt store where I am teaching:

I want to use these in the border of a quilt. I’d like to get that quilt done, as I have four more in the queue behind it.

I’d also very much like to get started on a special project for my college roommate. She sent me the Sunbonnet Sue quilt blocks that her grandmother appliquéd and asked if I could make a quilt out of them. I want to get that top made and quilted before gardening season starts.

The new lettuce growing supplies are supposed to show up here this week. I will start another batch of seeds today so they are ready when the new system gets set up. We had salad with dinner again last night, and the lettuce I cut earlier in the week has already started growing back. The husband wondered if I should just grow lettuce inside all year and skip growing it in the garden. It does seem easier to grow it inside, but I’ll probably put a patch in the garden anyway.

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In weather news, it’s -1 this morning. (That’s the air temp.) We’ve been having a cold snap. The husband put the heat lamps on in the chicken coop so that Dave doesn’t get frostbite on his comb. He only puts the heat lamps on if it goes down into the teens. I know he worries about the heat lamps setting the coop on fire, although in true husband fashion, those heat lamps are bolted and clamped in place so they can’t fall.

I’ve been watching the weather all over the Pacific Northwest. Seattle is having a weird winter, for sure. They don’t usually get snow and they’ve had quite a bit recently. “Quite a bit” is only a couple of inches, but that’s enough to snarl things there. I-90 is intermittently open and closed going over Snoqualmie Pass because people do not understand that “all wheel drive” does not mean “all wheel stop.” I’ve driven that route dozens of times in all kinds of weather—once during a snowstorm—but right now, you couldn’t pay me enough money to make that trip. There are too many stupid drivers on the road. I think a lack of plow drivers is also contributing to the problem.

If there is one lesson I take from 2021, it’s that reality has shifted. I still think we’re in a downward decline, helped along by the events of the past two years. Systems that worked on 2019 don’t work as efficiently now, and in some cases, don’t work at all. Some of them may never recover. Some of them shouldn’t recover. That’s sobering, yes, but it also paves the way for new opportunities, and it seems to me that a bit of restructuring and re-prioritizing would not go amiss in the new year.

Our Many Projects

My father-in-law wrote in his Christmas card to us this year: “T & J—good luck in 2022 with all your many projects.”

That made me chuckle. I suppose the two of us do look unhinged sometimes with everything we have going on.

To wit, our lettuce just before I cut it for last night’s salad:

I cut about half, and that was enough for one salad. (Have you met the husband? You know how much he eats.) This is why I need to scale up the growing system. I left the roots, so the lettuce should grow back again, but it isn’t going to be enough. We need a bigger system. I did some shopping yesterday morning and this is on its way to us:

It is a three-tier Sunlite shelf from Gardener’s Supply. The system comes with the shelves and the lights. I will get the growing trays from a different company. Those Commander buckets in the top pic work, but they are too heavy for me to lift when they are full of water.

I get the whole concept of bootstrapping, and there certainly is a time and place for upcycling and using less expensive materials. The older I get, though, the more I understand when it’s appropriate to just spend the money and stop messing around. We have the money for a more formal system, one that’s efficient and easy to use. I will set it up so that each shelf is a week apart in growing, which should give us a consistent weekly supply of lettuce throughout the winter.

Gardener’s Supply was having a 20% off sale yesterday, so I also took the opportunity to order my soaker hose supplies for the vegetable garden for next season.

Having gotten my shopping out of the way, I went upstairs to sew. I am concentrating on garment patterns for me this week. I pulled all of the sweatshirt knits out of the stash. I also pulled out this Burda pattern (6315), which I traced a while back but never got to:

Burda patterns feature nice designs, but they are short on guidance unless you are good at decoding hieroglyphics. I made view C, which is the pullover sans pocket with the drawstring cowl neck.

[I am just not a pocket person. I think it’s because I don’t like the feel or weight of things dragging down pockets in my clothes. I don’t use them, so I don’t put them on clothing that I make.]

I lengthened the pattern, of course, and I didn’t put the drawstring in the cowl neck as it’s mostly decorative. (DD#1 gave me a test a few years ago and apparently, I do not like excessive sensory input, which means I don’t like my clothes to be fiddly. Perhaps you already came to that conclusion on my behalf.) The fabric is the same as some I used in a Nancy Raglan a couple of years ago (and still wear). I must have bought four yards at the time, because I had enough for this top, too:

(Where is my iron?) This only took a few hours, start to finish. The new coverstitch machine performed beautifully once I got the thread tension set where it needed to be for the heavier fabric. (Test, test, test.)

I ended up taking in some of the seams as this was more oversized than I wanted it to be. I then re-traced the pattern two sizes smaller for the next iteration. I don’t have enough experience with Burda patterns to know what size I need to make yet. I also redrafted the sleeves, because the ones in the pattern were big and floppy and I like my sleeves to fit more closely. I’ll probably wear this with a light turtleneck underneath.

I’ve got enough sweatshirt fleece for four more tops. I think I might actually make some that will be long enough to wear with leggings, too—almost like a sweater dress.

I’ve got a nice collection of patterns that fit me now. The danger is that I am going to make more clothing than I really need. But after years of clothes that don’t fit, wear out quickly, or only come in muddy earth tones, it’s lovely to put on clothes that are long enough, are made well, and come in colors I want to wear. I have my eye on some hot pink, emerald green, and sapphire blue sweatshirt fleece from Girl Charlee Fabrics. You’re not going to lose me in a snowbank, that’s for sure.

Hacking the Freya Pattern

I ordered this book over the summer:

The patterns include a knot-front top (the Joni top and dress, on the cover), and I wanted to see how Tilly designed and constructed her version. I might still make hers, although I think the construction is a bit fiddly. She has written her patterns for assembling on a sewing machine, so I have to make a few adjustments to do them on the serger. Along the way, though, I got distracted by the Freya pattern, which is a simple top with several neckline and length variations. I’ve spent the last couple of days tracing that pattern in both top and dress lengths. I made up a muslin in the top. That was educational.

The Freya top is a simple set-in sleeve top that nips in at the waist. The Rhapso-T by Zede and Mallory Donahue is very similar. I made up a muslin of the Rhapso-T and wasn’t thrilled with the way it fit, but learning about the boob bump adjustment was more than worth the price of that pattern. All of the T-shirts and tunics I’ve made since then, however, lack any waist shaping. That’s not because I don’t have a waistline. On the contrary—I have a defined hourglass figure, but after making up the first iteration of the Freya pattern, I realized that the reason I didn’t like the Rhapso-T was because accentuating my waistline makes my bust look bigger by comparison. My bust is big enough. It doesn’t need additional help.

[I buy lengths of knit fabrics on clearance for my muslins, which is better than wasting good garment knits for testing.]

Is there a happy medium? I re-traced the Freya top, but I graded out the waistline a bit. I also, as expected, had to lengthen the pattern. I’ll make up another muslin and see what I think. It would be nice to have a little shaping. If I can come up with a Freya top pattern that I like, I’ll make the dress version in one of the heavier knits in the stash.

I also examined the sleeve shaping on the Freya pattern and compared it to my Liz Claiborne knockoff top pattern. I actually know quite a bit about sleeve shaping, having had to learn the relationship between armscye and cap shaping in great detail as a knitting designer. (One of my favorite stories is that of designer Norah Gaughan using calculus to work out her sleeve shapings. That is dedication.) The sleeves on the Freya are a bit wider than the ones on my knockoff top, I cannot stand to have sleeves flopping around (or bracelets, or lacy cuffs, or anything else on my wrists that gets in my way), so I narrowed the Freya sleeves accordingly.

This is all a process. And I will get back to other sewing (and quilting) soon.

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Joann Fabrics is a hot mess—both locally and at the corporate level—and I am wondering how long it’s going to last. Hobby Lobby really is their only big-box competition at the moment, and our HL has a relatively small fabric department compared to Joanns.

[Yes, we should all shop at our local fabric stores. I do, but until the quilt stores start carrying garment fabrics, I have to visit Joann Fabrics.]

Joann’s biggest problem was their point-of-sale system, which they have begun upgrading, finally. Entering remnants used to be a multi-step process of entering the regular price, the sale price, the discount, and the yardage of the remnant in order to get it to ring up properly. Overall, the system was as slow as molasses in January. Coupons didn’t always work.

The new system is not without its problems, however. I have learned to watch the prices ring up, because items that are tagged as being on sale on the floor will ring up at full price at the register. I keep coupons on my phone, but if the store has the old POS system, I have to go into my phone and toggle a switch so that the coupons will work. If they have the new system, I have to have the switch toggled the other way. The old system would e-mail my receipts to me. The new system does not, although I’ve been told it will in the future.

The website is an inventory nightmare. For some reason, they insist on showing fabrics that are no longer available either in the stores or for shipping. If they took their out-of-stock merchandise off the website in a timely manner, it would make searching for needed items much simpler.

At the checkout registers yesterday, I was the second person in line. There was one cashier working all by herself. (It was the poor lady from Texas who forgot to give me my bag of thread last week.) The customer in front of me was buying discounted Christmas merchandise and had two carts stuffed full of items, all of which had to be scanned individually. I knew they were short on staff, so I waited, but some of the eight people in line weren’t so patient. One lady demanded to know why the cashier didn’t call for help. The cashier apologized profusely and said there were only three of them working—one at the cut counter, one at the register, and one who was on her lunch break. Truly, it wasn’t her fault and there was nothing she could do. I thought she handled the situation with grace and humor. It’s a first-world problem, for sure, to have to wait in line at a fabric store.

Musical Hems

My mother hemmed DD#2’s pants yesterday (by hand, because she’s good that way) and I hemmed my mother’s pants on the new coverstitch machine.

I was curious to see how it worked out of the box, and I was not disappointed. I set the machine up, threaded it, changed to the clear foot from my other machine—the accessory that should come standard but doesn’t—and made a few test hems on a scrap piece of stretch velvet. The velvet was the closest I could come to the stretch velour of my mother’s pants. The only change I had to make was to loosen the presser foot pressure, which came from the factory set way too high. That is a common issue with those machines, for some odd reason.

[The machine was threaded but had not been stitched off. Stitching off a machine would be a great indication that the presser foot pressure is set too high, if Janome would bother to do that. I could tell the pressure was too high because the presser foot distorted the fabric as it was sewing. It would have distorted plain quilting cotton, too, so it wasn’t because I was coverstitching stretch velvet.]

Despite that, the machine coverstitched beautifully after I adjusted it:

No skipped stitches on the inside, even over the bulky side seams!

Normally, I stitch so that the threads cover the raw edge of the fabric. My mother had already tried to hem these pants on her sewing machine, so I coverstitched below that hem, then took her hem out and trimmed the excess fabric. Trimming doesn’t look quite as neat, but it works.

I’m delighted. I think this machine and I are going to have many happy hours together. I’ll keep the old machine to take when I teach classes. I have a basic serger class coming up January 4th and the T-shirt class starts January 19th.

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My sister and her boyfriend fly back to North Carolina today and my mother leaves tomorrow morning. DD#2 is here until Thursday. We had a nice Christmas. DD#1 sent a box of Christmas presents down from Alaska. I wish we had thought to take some pictures when my mother opened her “Men of Alaska” calendar, because her reaction was priceless. My sister bought me the Little House on the Prairie cookbook and a scratch-and-sniff book about whiskeys. (So useful!) We made lots of food and ate way too much of it. We watched the Browns lose to the Packers.

[No, Baker should not have thrown those interceptions, but it would be nice if the officiating wasn’t so one-sided. Face mask? Holding? Hello?}

I’ll start putting the house back together after church today. My schedule is completely discombobulated and have to think about what day it is. This always happens. And I’m already itching for a road trip. The January calendar is, thus far, mostly empty. That bodes well for productivity in the sewing room.

Unboxing the 3000

What have we here?

I know I said I wasn’t going to take it out of the box until after the holidays, but the box was in my way. Also, my mother brought me a pair of her pants to hem. They are a velour knit and need to be done on a coverstitch. Turnabout is fair play, I suppose, and it won’t take long to get this machine up and running.

The accessories:

Underneath, a machine! How exciting!

And here it is.

This new machine is very similar to my old one, although beefier and more polished. This machine also has the ability to do a top (decorative) coverstitch.

For those of you wondering what a coverstitch is, look at a hem on the nearest T-shirt. I most cases, it will look like two parallel lines of stitching on the outside of the garment. On the inside, there should be a looper thread that zig-zags back and forth between the two lines of stitching and covers the raw edge of the fabric. The tricky thing about coverstitch machines is that you sew with the outer, public, side of the garment facing, so you can’t actually see the edge of the hem you’re trying to cover. In essence, you’re sewing blind. You hope that when you’re all done, the machine hasn’t decided to skip a stitch somewhere and wreck the whole hem. I’m looking at you, old coverstitch machine.

On athletic wear or kids’ clothing, you will often see a decorative line of stitching on the outer side of the garment where seams come together. That’s a top coverstitch, and not all domestic machines can do that. This one can. It’s a feature I am looking forward to playing with.

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My mother, sister, the girls, and I have a tradition of having a spa day at either Thanksgiving or Christmas. We’ve missed the last couple because of the pandemic, but yesterday, the four of us went to The Lodge at Whitefish Lake for massages. (DD#2 is here, but DD#1 and her husband are enjoying their first Christmas alone together up in Alaska.) I used to have a phenomenal massage therapist. She had had a traumatic brain injury as a young adult, and as a result, she discovered she could “see” damage in people’s bodies. I asked her once what it looked like and she said it appeared as an area of blackness. I never had to tell her what what bothering me when I went in to see her—she knew as soon as she looked at me. Unfortunately, she moved to another state and I haven’t had a good massage since.

The massage therapist I had yesterday was almost as good—good enough that I will probably go back to see her every few months. Gardening keeps me limber, but I tend to lose some of that flexibility over the winter.

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The husband will be home today, probably spending the day out in his shop. The concrete batch plant shut down for two weeks. I feel like I should send them a thank-you note because that means he can’t pour anything. Also, we’re supposed to get a shot of arctic air this weekend with highs in the single digits. If there is one thing that can force him to slow down and take some time off—which even a bout of shingles couldn’t do—it is the weather. He’s also going to look at The Diva for me, because it is exhibiting a weird stuttering start when it’s cold and rainy out.

Adventures with Stretch Velvet

Despite what Instagram would have you believe, not every project is a huge success. Sometimes projects fail spectacularly. Sometimes they fall short just enough that they may as well have failed spectacularly.

I made myself a Christmas top Monday morning. It failed. It failed mostly because the fabric I had chosen did not have enough stretch for the pattern. Who knew that a difference of 4% spandex would matter? I used my “tried and true” tunic pattern, but because of my generous bust—those of you who knew me in high school will appreciate that irony—the top was too tight across the upper bodice. Despite the spandex, it didn’t have enough widthwise stretch.

My choices were to a) change the pattern to accommodate the fabric or b) change the fabric to accommodate the pattern. (The chances of finding something in ready-to-wear are less than zero, which is why I am making myself a Christmas top.) I went to town Monday afternoon to see what I could find. Our Joanns had more of that fabric, but not in the same deep teal I had chosen originally. I didn’t have time to mess around with a new pattern for that fabric, so I went with plan B. I chose a different fabric.

[I have made a note to myself to make my Christmas outfit in August next year so that I do not run into this problem again. Someone remind me if I forget.]

Joanns has a variety of stretch velvet. I knew enough not to bother with the costume velvet as the colors are garish and the quality is cheap. (I don’t know a lot of sewists making heirloom Halloween costumes.) The color choices in the garment-quality stretch velvet were black, cranberry, shell pink, and a teal green called “spruce.” I went with spruce.

Stretch velvet isn’t hard to work with if you already have some experience with knits. The hardest part is cutting the pattern pieces, because the fabric wants to slither all over the cutting table.

This time, I incorporated a very clever adjustment to the front bodice known as the “boob bump.” I learned about this in Zede and Mallory’s Rhapso-T pattern. The boob bump only works on fabrics with a sufficient amount of lengthwise stretch—I couldn’t have used it on the other fabric even if I had remembered to add it to the bodice—and basically acts as a bust dart. The stretch velvet was stretchy enough without adding the boob bump, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Pieces cut, I then spent an inordinate amount of time trying to locate the serger thread I had purchased to match the fabric. Eventually, it dawned on me that I must have left it at the store. I had ended up at a register with a very rattled cashier who wanted to tell me about moving to Kalispell from Texas—where she had lived for 30 years—and that she wasn’t adjusting to winter at all. She had given me the bag of fabric but not the bag of thread.

I found a different color thread to use for the assembly. When I went back to town yesterday afternoon, I stopped in at Joanns to retrieve my thread because I needed it to coverstitch the hems. They had it waiting behind the counter.

Never let a machine know you are in a hurry. If I had all the time in the world, the coverstitch (my old one) would make a beautiful hem without so much as a hiccup, but because I wanted to get my top finished, the machine decided that it would coverstitch nearly the entire hem before skipping one stitch. A skipped stitch wrecks everything that came before it because the thread breaks and the whole hem threatens to unravel. I didn’t want to unbox the new coverstitch machine and try to figure it out—the devil you know is better than the one you don’t—so I persevered until I had a reasonably good hem. It just needs to stay in place for a few hours while I am wearing the top. I can redo it on the new machine later.

The top is done, hallelujah:

It’s nothing fancy, just a simple tunic that I will pair with a pair of slim black pants, but I can cross it off the list.

When I stopped in at Joanns to get my thread yesterday, I took a few minutes to wander around to see if anything new was on sale. (Of course I did.) As I looked over the clearance fabric section, I spotted two bolts I hadn’t seen before, even though I scour the clearance fabric regularly. Lo and behold, they were bolts of some ponte knit fabric in navy and a gorgeous deep blue:

AND they were 70% off! I took what was left of the navy blue—not quite two yards—and two yards of the blue. They were labelled “spring ponte” and are less hefty than the ponte I used for the Kensington skirt. I think some pants might be nice.

Indoor Lettuce

Growing food indoors, especially lettuce, is a big topic in lots of homesteading groups. People have designed setups ranging from simple and inexpensive to ones worthy of commercial operations. I can grow lettuce easily either in the greenhouse or outdoors from about March to October. The winter months are the problem.

[The greenhouse can be heated with propane, but the lack of light is the limiting factor. We just don’t get enough sunlight during the winter months to grow anything out there. Also, because of its location, the greenhouse can be difficult to access when there is a lot of snow on the ground.]

I bought the supplies last year to set up an indoor growing system but didn’t get to it. This year, I was determined to give it a go. I planted lettuce seeds just after Thanksgiving. This is what they look like now:

That plastic tub is filled with a liquid growing solution and the plants are in net cups that sit down inside the lid. The roots grow down and access the solution. A Barrina light is suspended above the plants. The husband joked that this was enough for one serving of salad for him. This is true. However, I consider my little experiment a success. Now we have to figure out how to scale it up about 500% and get a succession planting schedule in place. Kalispell has a store that specializes in aquaponics/hydroponics, so I plan to stop in there and see what systems they have available. This setup works, sort of, but not for the amount of lettuce I would like to grow.

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The husband took care of defrosting the freezer in the garage for me over the weekend, so that’s all clean and ready for pork. The pork won’t be ready for another week or two yet. Tera said she’d go with me to pick it up. I haven’t seen her since we went to Salt Lake City in September.

I used some of my birthday money to order a few Accuquilt Studio dies. They always have big sales around Christmas, and the Studio dies are 60% off until December 24. I now have most of the strip dies I need, which are great for making sashing and churning through leftovers.

I want to get the backlog of tops quilted and bound by the middle of January. Our sewing group at church is also planning a comforter-tying party for a Saturday in February. We held one two years ago, just before the pandemic started (how long ago that seems), and it was a huge success. I took my bin of 5” squares to church so that some of the other ladies could take them and sew them into tops for tying.

No Remnants on the Rack

The remnant rack at Joanns is 75% off right now, so the selection is pretty thin. I did manage to snag a couple of Christmas prints, including this blue and purple snowflake one. DD#2 spotted the fabric and asked for a Christmas tree.

She says she thinks she can leave it up as decoration through January because it is more winter-themed than Christmas themed.

I cut and sewed several of these the other day and will leave them to stuff when people are here and I need some handwork to do. DD#2 and I have a pile of mending between us. I think we will set my mother to hemming pants. She is good at that and likes to have something to do when she visits. (I come by that inability to sit and do nothing honestly.)

DD#2’s tree is a slightly different pattern than the pattern I used previously. I am trying to decide which one I like better. I think my final version may end up being an amalgamation of the two.

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Yesterday started with an early-morning meeting of our pastor search committee. Our pastor has indicated that he would like to retire within a year, and thus we begin the process of finding someone to fill that position. Fortunately, he intends to stay in the community, where he is an active member of our Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation. We also hope he will continue to come help us butcher our chickens.

After the meeting, I came home and canned up 10 quarts of chicken stock that had been simmering in the roaster for two days.

I started making stock that way for convenience’s sake, because I can do three chickens at a time and the roaster sits on top of the dryer, out of the way. This batch yielded 10 quarts of some very nice, very rich stock. Our chickens tend to be on the skinny side, but I took the meat that was on them, chopped it up, and put it in the freezer.

The canner finished processing just before I left again for quartet practice. Our quartet consists of two brothers (Ken and Steve), their sister (Elaine), and me (the honorary sibling). We met at Elaine’s house to go over some of the music for this morning’s service. I like singing with them because the four of us know enough about music that our practices often involve not just singing, but taking the music apart and putting it back together. We are comfortable singing together and that makes a big difference.

While I was gone, DD#2—bless her—cleaned the bathrooms and the living room. I still have a lot to do in the next three days, including taking a load of stuff to the thrift store, cleaning the other two bedrooms, and making a last-minute grocery store run. We also have to get the Christmas tree put up and sort out DD#1’s ornaments to send them to her in Alaska.

People often comment that I seem to get so much done, and I was thinking about that again yesterday. Some of it is thanks to my energy level, but a lot of it is due to good planning and working efficiently. The couple of hours between the meeting and quartet practice was just enough time to eat lunch and run that canner load. I was motivated to do it partly because I couldn’t let the stock cook forever and partly because I have a good canning system. I set the pressure canner on the stove with water in the bottom to heat up while I strained the stock and filled the jars (which had been run through the dishwasher earlier). By the time the jars went into the canner, the water in the bottom of the canner was boiling, so it didn’t take long for the canner to come to pressure. I turned the stove off before I left, and by the time I got back from quartet practice, the canner was cool enough to open.

Most people have more time than they think they do. A lot of people fritter away time they could be using on productive tasks. And I am always thinking three or four steps ahead. I know I’ll be sitting and visiting this week. What can I work on while I am doing that? Where are the bottlenecks that are keeping me from working efficiently? How do I fix those? What can be automated or done in such a way that I don’t have to babysit the process? That’s just the way I think. Also, it helps to be married to someone who thinks exactly the same way, because I am motivated to keep pace with the husband, and he outworks most 20 year olds. He is feeling better, by the way. Thank you to everyone who has been asking about him. The shingles are healing up and the pain has lessened considerably. He is able to sleep better at night.

We Ate and We Laughed But We Didn't Sew

Yesterday was our craft co-op holiday potluck. I only had to drive up the road to Arlene’s house, which was good because it snowed all day. I didn’t feel like going any further. Sixteen of us gathered for an afternoon of fun.

The table was set in a fall theme—Arlene joked that we would have Thanksgiving first, then change the table to Christmas for dessert.

We had a business meeting followed by an amazing potluck lunch. I took a simple egg bake with eggs and our sausage. Sarah, who (like me) does not do gluten, brought lasagna with thin slices of turkey as the “noodles.” I thought that was brilliant and plan to try that soon.

[Gluten doesn’t kill me, but it does make me uncomfortable, so I have to have a really good reason to eat it. Potlucks are tricky sometimes. I usually take something I know I can eat.]

We had a gift exchange and I got the bag Susan had brought. It contained dried pears (yum), homemade raspberry jam, this lovely blue tea towel—which at first I thought she had purchased, but which she appliquéd herself—and a tin of ginger snaps from Trader Joes. (The husband is enjoying those.) Sarah brought a bar of soap for each of us, and the “napkins” at each plate were dishcloths made by Arlene.

The husband saw that little mug rug and said, “Did they make that just for you?”

I so enjoy this group.

Susan and I had a quick brainstorming session after lunch because I volunteered to head up the plant sale this coming spring to raise money for the Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation. That was Elysian’s brainchild from last spring and it was so successful that they would like to do it again. Because a lot of what they sold started in my greenhouse—and will again in 2022—I said I would be in charge. Susan will help me. And I think there will be another garden tour. My garden will look much nicer this year.

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I attended an online meeting last night hosted by the Forest Service. The area across the road from us is a combination of state and national forest land that is used for hiking, camping, skiing, and other activities. A few months ago, we were notified of a “collaboration project” to move forward with making the national forest land across the road a “focused recreation area.”

It sounds as if this process started even before we moved here. I was unaware of that until this meeting, and we’ve owned this property since 1994. Thankfully, there are some people in the neighborhood who were part of that earlier process 30 years ago and know some of the history. They were also in attendance at this meeting.

I am not opposed to people using public lands. That’s why they are called public lands. What those of us who live here do NOT want to have happen is for those areas to be overrun. We already have enough traffic on our road as it is. There is a buffer of state land between us and the designated forest land, but it is possible that access to that area would be from the road that currently runs through state land. We also don’t want the area opened to motorized vehicle access.

The next meeting is in February. We will have to see what happens. I plan to continue to participate in the process.

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I spent an hour rearranging freezers Wednesday afternoon. The big freezer in the garage is empty and ready to be defrosted. The Christmas ham has been located. What’s left of last year’s sausage has been moved to the freezer in the laundry room to be used up. I’ve got a roaster full of chicken stock simmering and I’ll can it tomorrow. I’m going to put my last couple of tops together today (including my Christmas top) and organize the other bedrooms so they are ready for guests next week.

Hurdles on the Way

It has been a bumpy couple of days, which is why the blog posts have been few and far between. I am hoping things smooth out a bit now.

The pigs were scheduled to go to the processor yesterday. Last week, the husband asked me to look at his back, and I discovered that he had broken out in shingles. I’ve had shingles and know how painful they can be, but mine were limited to a small patch about 3” across on my lower back. His spread from the middle of his back around to the front. He was past the window for antivirals at that point—and he wasn’t going to stop working long enough to go to the doctor, anyway—so he toughed his way through them. I could tell he was hurting, though, because he didn’t do much this past weekend beyond getting the trailer set up for loading pigs.

Loading pigs is an arduous process. The husband can’t back the trailer into the pasture; he has to back it close to the gate, then rig up a chute from the gate to the back of the trailer. He puts their food and water inside the trailer and closes off the pig palace. The pigs know, though, that to get to the trailer, they have to walk past the (no-longer-electrified) electric fence, and they are reluctant to believe they won’t get shocked. They also don’t like it when their feet leave the ground. Getting them to step up onto an unfamiliar surface takes some coaxing. And of course, the ground where the chute is located is virgin soil that they haven’t plowed up yet, so they have to stop every so often and dig for truffles. A flock of turkeys came to see what was happening.

It’s a process. Every year, it takes most of the day before to get them into the trailer.

I came home from town Monday with several bags of marshmallows, which are the pigs’ favorite treat and useful for getting 1800 pounds of pork moving in the desired direction. The husband was close to getting them into the trailer when the neighbors stopped by to say goodbye to them. These neighbors have been feeding the pigs scraps all summer—which we appreciate—but as soon as the pigs saw them, they thought the neighbors were bringing them scraps and took off to greet them. At that point, there was no getting them back on track. It was getting dark and starting to snow. And we had run out of marshmallows.

Neither of us slept much Monday night. The husband was in pain and worried about loading the pigs. Getting a date with a processor is incredibly difficult, and I had assured this one that we would be there first thing Tuesday morning. We ran through various scenarios about what we would do if we had to cancel.

I called our friend Smokey in the morning. Thank goodness for Smokey. He has extensive livestock experience and came right over. Between him, the husband, and our employees, they were able to coax the first five pigs into the trailer. A stubborn sixth one took a bit of manhandling, but not much. While they were busy, I called the processor to let him know what was going on. He knew the roads were icy and said we didn’t have to rush.

We were at the processor and unloaded by about 11 am and home by 1:30 pm. I grabbed some lunch, changed clothes, and then headed back into town for Ruler Club at the quilt store. After dinner, the husband parked himself in his recliner—the one place where he has been able to sleep comfortably—and I curled up on the couch under a quilt. We both went to sleep. DD#2’s plane was scheduled to arrive from Seattle at midnight. Normally, he would go to get her, but I wanted him to get some sleep. I set my alarm for 11 pm, went and picked her up, and went back to bed.

We’re both dragging a bit this morning, but the big hurdle of getting pigs to the processor is behind us. With all the issues we had with this year’s batch, I am not sure either of us is eager to commit to raising them next year. We’ll see. In any case, Smokey is getting a big gift of ham and bacon for all his help.

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I probably won’t do much sewing for the next couple of weeks beyond finishing the tops I’ve already cut up. I have more cleaning to do. The craft co-op Christmas potluck is tomorrow. I have to defrost a freezer.

One of the members of the Facebook Necchi sewing machines group shared this video this week. Apparently, the old Necchi sewing machine factory in Pavia, Italy, is scheduled to undergo transformation into a shopping area. They plan to name it “Supernova” as a nod to Necchi’s most famous machine. The video is in Italian (I am going to see if DD#2 can translate), but the shots of the old factory are fascinating.

Wardrobe Enhancement

Yesterday was all about making myself some tops. The stack of knit fabric looks good on the shelf, but it looks even nicer in my closet.

I cut out my Christmas top first, but I haven’t put it together yet. It’s a stretch velvet and I’ll have to sew it with 90/14 needles. I have 80/12 needles in the serger and the coverstitch. In the interest of efficiency, I put the lighter knits at the front of the line. I also put a gray thread in the loopers for everything and changed only the needle threads as needed.

I cut my knits with a rotary cutter—the cutting is much more accurate that way and the fabric doesn’t slide around as much. This is the tunic pattern I cribbed off a favorite Liz Claiborne top.

These tops aren’t complicated. I serge the shoulders together, lay the body flat on the cutting table and pin in the sleeves (I actually use mini Wonder Clips because pins and sergers don’t mix), set in the sleeves, serge the side/sleeve seam, make the turtleneck, and set that in. The hems will get done in one fell swoop on the coverstitch later.

I made two yesterday. Robin might recognize the blue/yellow/purple fabric as I bought it when we were in Missoula.

That mauve-y print is from Girl Charlee Fabrics. I’ve ordered quite a few cuts from them and been happy with what I got, although that one surprised me a bit. It was definitely more of a pink color on my monitor. When I opened it here, I thought, “Oh, I can’t wear that color,” but the more I looked at it, the more I liked it. DD#2 can tell me if I look like death warmed over when I have it on. I can’t wear yellows or oranges, but I love prints that have bits of those colors in them.

I have a third top cut out but not assembled, plus the Christmas top. I’d like to get a few more cut out before I have to put the cutting table away. It’s in DD#2’s room and she’ll be sleeping there this week.

Is it weird to have a closet full of the same style top in different fabrics? Maybe, but I’ve reached the age where I care more about comfort than style. Around here, especially, I don’t think the average person pays that much attention to what other people are wearing. These tops fit me well and that turtleneck keeps my neck warm when it’s cold out. 

These are all double-brushed poly knits. I am planning to make some Nancy Raglans out of the stack of French terry. And I’d like to make a long-sleeve version of the knot-front top I cribbed off yet another Liz Claiborne top over the summer.

[Liz Claiborne is the only brand I could buy without having to try on, which is why my closet is full of it. I knew I could pull my size off the rack and it would fit. I haven’t bought as much in recent years because the quality went down noticeably when JC Penney started carrying it and now most of the tops are too short on me. When I was in Seattle, though, I picked up a few well-made tunic-length tops at the store there, which gives me hope that maybe the brand will recover. In the meantime, I’ll just draft patterns off the ones I like.]

I’ve also got a Burda pattern for a cowl-neck/hoodie style top that I’d like to try. Getting through my stack of knit fabric should keep me busy for a while.

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I’ve developed an obsession with documentaries about Mount Everest. I found a YouTube channel with just about every documentary made, dating all the way back to the early 1970s. The older ones are fascinating to watch. (Anyone remember “Turning Point” with Forrest Sawyer?) Some of the British documentaries are loaded with colonial attitudes toward the sherpas, sadly, which makes them harder to watch. Part of what is fueling this obsession is an attempt to understand the psychology of people who 1) voluntarily put their lives at risk like that and 2) survive when the odds are against them. (I said to the husband that I don’t need to go looking for life-threatening situations because the universe is happy to serve them up to me without me even asking.) I am not sure I am getting any answers to my questions, but the documentaries are good background entertainment when I am sewing.

Chicken Chimes

At the craft show Robin and I attended last month, one of the vendors was selling some unique wind chimes. I almost bought one to add to my collection, but decided against it as I was supposed to be buying Christmas gifts for other people.

Unbeknownst to me, Robin went back later and bought it for me for my birthday. It’s a rooster with three chicks:

I took most of my wind chimes down to put my winter lights up on the porch. In the spring, I’ll hang this from one of the hooks so it can add to the music. What a lovely gift!

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I outsmarted myself. When my friend asked to buy two of my canvas grocery bags, I told her I was sure I had some at least partially put together somewhere. I did indeed find the pieces to several bags in one storage bin—which became the bags in yesterday’s blog post—but yesterday afternoon, while looking for something in another room, I found two COMPLETED bags and one that just needs the handles made and the lining dropped in.

[First item on the to-do list in January is a complete reorganization and consolidation of the sewing spaces.]

I’ll take both sets of completed bags to church and let her choose the one she prefers. The other two will then be up for grabs if anyone needs to buy a last-minute Christmas gift.

I knocked out two kids’ T-shirts yesterday, one for a boy:

And one for a girl:

The only difference is in the sleeves. Both are size 12—the largest in the Oliver + S School Bus T-Shirt pattern—but the girl version has cap sleeves. (And oh, were they a pain!) The fabrics are Joanns remnants. I briefly kicked around the idea of using that bug fabric for a shirt for myself, but I didn’t have quite enough.

I hemmed these on the old coverstitch rather than unbox and try to figure out the new one. I know the old machine and its quirks, and I was reminded again why I decided to replace it. It’s so temperamental. Oh well, these tops are done and I’ll drop them off at the store on Monday.

I didn’t get the other tops cut out, so that project has been moved to today. I am watching all this weird weather and waiting to see what comes our way from Seattle. I follow the Snoqualmie Pass Twitter account, and last night they noted that officers had given out almost a dozen citations for chain violations (= trying to drive over the pass without them and most likely planting the car in a snowbank) in the space of two hours. Some people don’t have the sense God gave a chicken, which isn’t much.

Bags and Shirts

Our co-op meeting was fun yesterday—we had a big group and the discussion was lively. I got to catch up with Sarah, who brings a portable electric spinning machine with her and spins yarn. Robin made a cute table runner with fussy-cut gnome fabric. I took my finished Little Poppins bag for show and tell and sat and knocked out a few more hexies. I’m going to have to do something with all of these hexies soon.

My commission sewing is finished for the year. I was able to get the second of two reuseable grocery bags made yesterday morning before heading to co-op. This was an order from a friend at church. She showed up after church one day holding the bags I had made for her. She likes her so much that she asked if I would make a few more for her to give as a Christmas gift.

I made a whole slew of these bags several years ago—enough that I had the process down to an assembly line. I’ve got a couple, my kids have some, and I showered a bunch of my friends with them. And then stores stopped letting people bring their own bags because of the pandemic. I quit making them, although I still had parts for some bags in the stash. These are 10 oz duck canvas from Joanns with a quilt cotton lining. They are nice and sturdy.

I still have plenty of duck canvas and could make more of these, but they are down on the list. I need to do some serious project prioritizing for 2022.

Today’s task is to cut out a bunch of tops. I’m teaching a three-part class in January, February, and March at the quilt store where I have been teaching serger classes. I feel like I am still trying to find my footing there. What a store wants (or thinks it wants) and what makes a good class aren’t necessarily the same things. I know there is a lot of interest in me teaching a leggings class, but after my experience last summer when people showed up for class not having even unboxed their sergers, offering a class like that is courting disaster. I could see half a dozen students showing up with unboxed sergers, expecting to take home a pair of leggings that fits them perfectly.

Instead, I suggested a T-shirt class where we make a kid’s T-shirt. My rationale is that a kid’s T-shirt is going to be simple to trace, cut out, and assemble, giving students the experience of working with knits without being overwhelming. I expect to spend a fair bit of time on fabric selection, although I asked the store to order a bolt of Laguna Cotton and an Oliver + S pattern so that all the students come with the same materials. However, I know—I know—that there will be people who don’t look at the supply list and don’t come with what they need, and I anticipate having to explain why a slinky rayon/spandex fabric from Joanns probably won’t make a good kid’s T-shirt.

The woman in charge of organizing classes asked why I wouldn’t teach a class on making a T-shirt for the student taking the class. She said, “Don’t you think it would be better for each person to go home with something they themselves could use?” That’s a legitimate question. However, I differentiate between teaching a technique class and teaching a fitting class, and I don’t want to marry the two. I’ve left enough room in the class outline that if I get one or two really ambitious students who are comfortable with their sergers and want to try making themselves a T-shirt, we can do that. The last thing I want, though, is to have to teach fitting and fitting adjustments at the same time that I am trying to teach serger techniques for sewing with knits. Fitting (or fitting and pattern drafting) is a huge topic and needs to be its own class. I would rather plan a simpler class and have additional ideas in my back pocket to pull out as needed than plan an ambitious class that leaves students frustrated.

I’ve found that it’s also impossible to schedule a class at a time that makes everyone happy. The Jan-Feb-Mar classes are on Monday afternoons, because no one wants to drive at night in the winter (including me). However, that eliminates everyone who works during the day.

We’ll see what happens. I’m going to make up a couple of T-shirts this weekend that the store can use as display samples.

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I got my indoor lettuce-growing operation underway. This is a popular topic in the homesteading group and there are plenty of podcasts and YouTube videos about how to set one up. I started with a simple system but I think I am going to have to modify it. (Thus, I am not a good person to ask for advice.)

Now that I see it in action, I can see what I want to change and what kind of a system might be better. This is part of not being able to visualize things ahead of time. Once I get the system dialed in, though, I expect that we’ll be able to grow plenty of lettuce in the basement to keep us in salads all winter.

Christmas Preps

I am having a small anxiety attack over where I am going to put people when they come to visit. Even though we’ve kept beds in all the bedrooms, those rooms are also full of sewing stuff. I am trying very hard to clear out some projects before I have to put everything away. I am also making a plan of attack for what needs to go where. I suspect some stuff, like the Accuquilt cutters and dies, will have to get moved to the yarn room in the basement for the duration. DD#2 arrives next Tuesday and she needs a good spot to set up her home office. I put her on the table with the Q20 last time, and that worked well, but what do I do with the six basted quilts that are stacked up there? (Put them on the couch in the basement, probably.) I also need to have enough stuff available to work on so that I am not sitting around with nothing to do. Oh, the horror of having to sit with nothing to do, LOL.

I’ll get it figured out. I made two weighted blanket covers yesterday afternoon and will deliver them this morning, so that’s nine yards of fabric no longer sitting on my cutting table. Grocery bags are up next. I still have to cut out my Christmas top and a sample T-shirt for my January serger class and make those. I will probably finish them on the Janome 1000cpx coverstitch and wait to unbox the new one until after Christmas. No sense adding a new variable to the mix. The closets will be filled. I’d like to put up some extra shelving in DD#2’s room, but the husband is rather stressed out at the moment and I hate to ask him to add another job to the list.

[The check engine light has not come back on and the computer is not throwing any more EGR codes, but I am still getting the drive train malfunction message. It comes on and goes off—and it did that all the way to Seattle and back—so I don’t think it’s more than a minor issue. The car is running fine. The Diva and I hauled eight bags of pig feed and did a Costco run yesterday.]

The concert for tomorrow night has been canceled, which I think is a relief to all involved, especially the music teacher. This time of year is just so hard. I am struggling with feeling like I haven’t gotten everything done that I wanted to get done in 2021, and it’s almost 2022. I am aware that some of that is the result of having a ridiculously ambitious to-do list, but if you think mine is bad, you should see the husband’s. We are two peas in a pod.

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Robin brought these pins to co-op one Thursday and I loved them:

These are made by Dritz, but I’ve also seen similar ones from other manufacturers. I usually use the yellow ball-head pins, which are fine, but I like these better. I also have the very thin glass-head pins, but I tend not to use those as they seem to have an affinity for stabbing me. I’ve picked up a couple of packages of these on my travels.

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I ordered four fruit trees from Stark Brothers this week. I would have ordered from Fedco, but they didn’t have what I wanted. I got a Macintosh apple, a Hale Haven peach (the variety my grandfather grew), a Reliance peach, and a crabapple. DSIL’s mother was telling me about a pickled crabapple recipe at Thanksgiving and it sounded good, so I thought we should put in a crabapple tree, too.

The trees should arrive in April. I would like to move the peach trees to a more protected area of the property, but I need to think a bit about where that might be. I suspect the one peach that has produced for us is also a Reliance and I think I bought it at Costco. I like that Stark Brothers tells you if what you’re selecting is hardy for your zone. Hale Haven is supposed to grow here, but we’ll see.

I’m also working on getting the indoor lettuce-growing operation up and running. If it goes well, we should have fresh lettuce after Christmas. Stay tuned.

Deep Clean, Christmas Tree

I have nothing exciting to write about today because all I did yesterday was clean the kitchen. We’re talking deep clean, though—I took everything out of the cupboards and drawers, washed it all, vacuumed and cleaned all the surfaces, filled a couple of boxes of stuff to donate, and finished by washing the baseboards and mopping the floor. The husband took down the pot rack for me so I could give it a bath in the tub. I still need to clean the fridge, but I ran out of energy by the end of the day.

We get a lot of dust here. The smoke from the fires in recent years has added to that with a lot of fine ash. I feel like I am forever vacuuming and wiping it up. The whole house could use the same kind of cleaning. The living room is next on the list, and then I’ll have to see how much of the upstairs I can get done before Christmas. My office could use a good cleaning, too, but that’s not critical right now.

I’ve still got two sewing commission projects to do this week. I am making a two weighted blanket covers for one person and some grocery bags for someone else. I also made a stuffed Christmas tree for my sister.

These are like potato chips. I asked her what color and she said, “Denim blue or ivory,” so I pulled this remnant out of the Christmas fabric stash. I made myself a template out of template plastic (AKA cheap plastic cutting mats from the Dollar Store). Cutting three pairs out of a double layer of fabric is quick and easy. Sewing takes another few minutes, and then I can sit and and stuff them in the evening. Joanns had Poly-Fil on sale this past weekend so I bought a large bag. And that stainless steel chopstick works perfectly for stuffing.

The husband happened to be here at lunchtime yesterday when our department was paged out for a fire call, so he spent the afternoon on a structure fire. It snowed all day, too, which meant there were a lot of MVA calls all over the valley. The UPS guy stopped to drop off a package and mentioned that someone had gone off the corner down the road from us. People seem to be having a hard time remembering (or learning) how to drive in this weather. I’ve been driving DD#1’s Acura RSX for the past week so the husband could work on the BMW. It’s a little sports car with a manual transmission, but with snow tires on, it handles nicely on these roads.

We’re hoping the husband has managed to fix The Diva. My 2007 Dodge MegaCab had a similar problem. Those diesels have a special emissions system on them that is supposed to collect all the soot from the burned fuel and then incinerate it at a really high temperature. That system never worked well on the MegaCab. The BMW dealer replaced the sensors on The Diva, but the computer was still throwing EGR codes. The husband actually took the EGR valve out and cleaned all the soot out of it. He also put a new gas cap on. We’ll see what happens when I drive it again.

I’ve been rendering lard and that’s almost done. The pigs go to the processor next Tuesday, so moving some things around and defrosting a freezer is on the list for this weekend, but I’ll try to find more exciting blog fodder than that.

The Quilt Won the Argument

A quilt and I had an argument Friday.

I lost.

That’s okay, though. The quilt was right.

I started quilting the jelly roll race quilt top I made when I was in Alaska last spring. The fabric is “Cultivate Kindness” by Deb Strain. The center of the quilt is a riot of bright colors and the backing is a red tone-on-tone print. I’m not confident enough about my machine quilting to have it be front and center, so I usually choose a thread color that blends in. I had thought to use a pale gray Signature 40wt on top and Aurifil 50wt in the bobbin. That’s a thread combination I use a lot in the Q20. For some reason, however, it wasn’t working. (I also used that Fairfield Toasty Cotton batting again, and I just need to stop buying it because I don’t like it.) I could not get the tension sorted properly. It took me three hours with a seam ripper to take out 10 minutes of quilting.

[Even when using the same brand and combination of thread weights, the tension still has to be adjusted on the Q20 every single time. The manual even says that the bobbin tension should be checked and adjusted every single time a new bobbin is inserted into the machine. Different colors of thread take up dye differently and that absolutely affects the tension. Black is notoriously difficult.]

After ripping out the botched quilting, I had a glass of wine and put the quilt in time out until yesterday morning. I ditched the gray thread in favor of a bright multi-colored Signature 40wt variegated on top, even though I knew it would show more. I kept the red bobbin thread.

The quilt was much happier with that combination. I am quilting loopy flowers all over to echo the flowers in the fabrics.

I have about half of the center done. I am not sure what I will do in the border, although it would be a good opportunity to try some of my new Amanda Murphy rulers from Ruler Club.

This is not an heirloom quilt. This is one of half a dozen tops in the “need to get it quilted and bound” stack.

I also made a tree yesterday:

This is a pattern from the Amanda Murphy Modern Holiday book. (I am turning into an Amanda Murphy fangirl.) I made it because it looked like fun, and it was. I might make a few more. It consists of six tree pieces sewn together into three pairs, turned inside out, stacked and sewn down the center, and stuffed. I need to get more stuffing, though, as this one tree used almost an entire bag.

[Yes, my office is a mess at the moment.]

DD#2 and I had dinner at a sushi restaurant near the movie theatre last weekend. I do not eat raw fish, and if you want to know why, I’ll pull out my clinical parasitology textbook and show you. I do, however, like cooked fish, and this particular restaurant has a nice selection of cooked rolls for us uncouth Americans. I had one with scallops, DD#2 had one with spicy crab, and we split one with avocado, cucumber, and cream cheese. Spokane also has a sushi restaurant that is a favorite of ours, and it was there that I learned to eat using chopsticks. (The restaurant will provide forks, but you have to ask.) The sushi restaurant in Seattle had stainless steel chopsticks, which I had not seen before because I live in Montana and don’t get out much.

Chopsticks are very useful for poking out corners of sewn pieces and for stuffing Christmas trees. I did an Amazon order last week and added a package of stainless steel chopsticks to the cart. There are five pairs in a pack, so I put two of them with my sewing supplies. We’ll use the other ones if I ever get around to learning how to make my own sushi rolls.

A Mini Brick Road Runner

Every so often, a pattern comes along that immediately gets put into the “tried and true” column. These are the patterns that get used over and over and over again. The Candy Coated quilt from Sunday Morning Quilts is one; the Nancy Raglan by 5 Out of 4 Patterns is another. Shari McConnell of A Quilting Life often talks about how much she loves the Mini Brick Road table runner pattern from Atkinson Designs, so I bought a copy of the pattern the last time I was at the quilt store north of town.

This is not a complicated pattern, but it is clever. The instructions have you take a selection of squares and divide them into two piles. One pile gets cut one way and the other pile gets cut a different way. The fabrics in each pile are sewn together in random combinations to make new squares which are then laid out to form the runner.

I was curious to see how long one of these would take to make. I grabbed a selection of Christmas remnants, did the cutting and the sewing, and about two hours later, I had this:

Of course, I still have to quilt and bind it, but in terms of instant quilting gratification, this pattern is right up there near the top of the list.

A couple of notes:

• I made the size indicated in the pattern, but this is infinitely customizable by changing the number of squares.

• I might add a border, but I haven’t decided yet.

• No guidance is given in the pattern on fabric selection beyond suggesting a fat eighth/fat quarter bundle. Shari McConnell usually uses fabric from the same line in her versions, and they all seem to be of medium value. I would say that if you choose fabrics with higher contrast—as I did—make sure that some of them are solids or read as solids. I made the first pile of blocks and then subbed a few pieces of dark green Kona into the second pile to quiet things down a bit. The units all bump up against each other, so using too many prints will result in visual chaos. I’d say that half prints and half solids would be a good combination.

I’d like to try this with fall/harvest fabrics next.

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One day a few weeks ago, I found the husband cleaning out his trucks with a battery-operated Milwaukee vacuum cleaner. I commented to him that I thought that one of those would be a great thing to have in the house. (Yes, I could borrow his, but it lives on his truck, so if he’s not here, neither is the vacuum.) I have a 12-gallon Shop-Vac here for vacuuming the wood floors, but it’s big and unwieldy and I don’t like to cart it up and down the stairs for small jobs. The Dyson that I keep upstairs works great on the carpeting, but it has a 3’ long inflexible wand that makes it difficult to use for jobs like cleaning the sergers. Also, I am limited by where I can take those machines because they require electricity.

When I came home from Seattle, a birthday present was waiting for me on the kitchen table:

I was delighted! ! I’ve been a bit baffled by the reaction I’ve gotten from people who know about it though—a reaction which can best be summed up as, “My husband knows better than to buy me a vacuum cleaner for my birthday!”

To which I say, “Great! I hope your husband knows you as well as mine knows me and gets you something that makes you happy, just like my husband did.”

I have a pretty severe metal allergy and can’t wear jewelry. I am not interested in lingerie. I love presents that make my life easier and more efficient. Now I can clean my sergers and vacuum up loose chicken feed from the back of the car. And I will never understand censuring someone for not getting the “proper” kind of gift if the gift is something the recipient appreciates.

Lifelong Benefits

I have been so scattered and unfocused recently, to the point where it was causing me almost physical discomfort and stress. I was pretty sure that part of the reason was that I haven’t sewn much other than some hexies for about 10 days. I like to shop for fabric, but at a certain point, the joy of shopping for fabric morphs into frustration that I can’t make something with all this beautiful fabric I have acquired. Frustration and I are not friends.

After finally being able to sew for a bit yesterday, I did feel better, which rather confirmed my suspicions about what was going on. I also didn’t like that the stress was spilling over to my piano playing, which made me stress out about the concert scheduled for last evening. I gave myself a stern talking-to on the way to the church in town. And then the kids came in and started warming up their instruments, and I looked at all the parents sitting out in the pews and felt their excitement, and by the time we started the first song, it was clear that it was going to be a magical evening. For all the years that I have been playing, I am still amazed at the synergy that happens when a group of individuals comes together—even novice string players like these kids, who had only played together twice—to create music. Unexpected things happen and then other unexpected things happen. The director, a retired music teacher herself, even said to me afterward, with some amazement, “Did you notice how the kids realized they got ahead of you in that one spot and stopped and waited to come in again?”

It’s a cliché at this point, but truly, music and other creative pursuits confer so many positive, lifelong benefits. Even if those kids never pick up their instruments after high school, they will have learned discipline, teamwork, and the joy that comes with adding something beautiful to the world. I am grateful to all the music teachers I had over the years, and of course, to my parents for getting me to piano lessons and being forced to listen to the rousing strains of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” every morning before breakfast. LOL.

Clara, the music teacher whose students performed last night, sent me a lovely e-mail and asked if the three of us—Clara, Anna (the retired music teacher) and I—could continue working together. We shall see what happens next. And I woke up this morning feeling like I could attack my day with my usual laser focus.

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Speaking of creative pursuits, I was delighted to discover that DD#2 has taken up cross-stitch. Both of my kids know how to knit, and DD#1 has her Cricut machine and a piano, but DD#2 didn’t seem to have any relaxing hobbies. She said she watched a couple of YouTube videos, bought some supplies, and just started stitching. I bought her a book of patterns while I was there and told her she could raid my embarrassingly-large stash of embroidery thread while she is home. (At some point, I will switch from hexies back to embroidery in the evenings.)

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I don’t have much homesteading news to report. The chickens were unhappy with the snow that we got last week, but we’ve been breaking temperature records this week and now it feels like spring out there. (The temperature was 60 degrees when I got to the church last night for the concert.) The pigs have filled out nicely. We still have three up for sale—either whole or in halves—for late December delivery. I am about to put together some fruit tree orders for next spring. I want to try a few more varieties of peaches in a better spot on the property. I found out, when I was in Cleveland, that the variety that my grandfather grew was called Hale Haven. I think they will grow here. A variety called Reliance is also supposed to be very cold hardy.

We need a picture, and this one seems appropriate. This is a beautiful cross-stitch piece made by my friend, Pat, that was on display in the foyer of our church.