Fish Stories

Yesterday was mostly a paperwork day. I did a bit of sewing in the afternoon, but it was on a project that has to stay under wraps for the moment, so no pictures.

For today’s blog post, I thought I would share a bit about a Lenten tradition that makes me laugh. When I was growing up in northeast Ohio, we always had fish sandwiches for lunch on Fridays at school during Lent. Our little town was heavily Catholic. My mother always made fish on Good Friday, but fish every Friday during Lent apparently was a Catholic thing and we were Missouri Synod Lutherans.

My family is also of Slovak ancestry. (Szabo is a Hungarian surname, because my paternal grandfather’s family was Hungarian.) We lived in a very ethnic area west of Cleveland. Some of my favorite memories as a kid are from going to the International Festival in Lorain every summer, where we could wander from booth to booth and buy every kind of ethnic food imaginable, then sit on the lawn and eat it while listening to music and watching the dance groups perform in their countries’ traditional costumes.

Growing up next to Lake Erie also meant that our family ate a lot of fish and did a lot of fishing ourselves. My grandfather had six granddaughters before he got any grandsons, and he thought nothing of throwing all six of us into his car and taking us out to a local pond or to the lake to teach us how to fish for bluegill, sunfish, and the occasional bass. (I’m the one with the dark hair sitting down with my back to the camera and my sister is in the orange shorts.)

My favorite fish for eating, hands down, is yellow perch. (Bluegill is surprisingly good, too, although very tiny and hard to filet.) Whenever I am in Ohio, I try to have at least one perch dinner.

One of my cousins shared this on Facebook last week, which reminded me that it’s Lent and the American Slovak Club in Lorain, Ohio, is having its weekly fish fry every Friday night:

What makes me laugh is that I don’t think of perch as a traditional Slovak meal, although pierogies, cabbage rolls, and haluski (cabbage and noodles) are also on the menu. I’d probably indulge in the one pound of perch dinner, because anything worth doing is worth doing in excess.

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I’m in that transition period where I am going to have to figure out when and how much sewing I’ll be able to continue doing over the next couple of months. I didn’t touch the Q20 from June until October last year. When the weather gets nicer, I am going to want to be outside as much as possible, unless we have another ridiculously hot summer. But we’ll see. Maybe this summer, I’ll want to do more quilting on the Q20 in the afternoons. Or some embroidery or hexies. The days are getting longer, though, and that means that our evenings sitting together watching car repair videos are coming to an end.

Hints of Spring

The farm store got chicks this week. I picked up a chick schedule when I was in there on Friday. We don’t usually get chicks until after the fire department auction—which is the first weekend in April—but I also have to factor in what weeks they are supposed to get what breeds from the hatchery. I am just about at the point, though, where I may start ordering directly from the hatchery myself. I had to incubate eggs in the spring of 2020 because the farm stores kept selling out of chicks as soon as they arrived. Last year, I was able to get chicks, but I had to get half Light Brahmas and half Black Jersey Giants, which I am convinced are actually Black Stars or Black Australorps that were mislabelled, because they are not as big as Jersey Giants should be. I try to get a different color breed of chicken each year so I will know how old they are, but we’ve got a mishmash out there right now. There are Buff Orpingtons left from 2019, the crossbreeds I hatched from 2020, the two breeds from last year, the diva show Leghorns we got last spring, and Dave. That limits the breeds I can get this year. My choices are Barred Rocks, New Hampshire or Rhode Island Reds, and Brown or White Leghorns. I’m also limited by how many chicks come in on which week. I said to the husband that it seems that the farm store is ordering fewer chicks of more breeds this year. I suspect that is to accommodate backyard growers who like to have lots of different breeds. My sense from reading the posts on the local Facebook poultry group is that there are a bunch of people looking for show breeds and also a lot of people who want chickens that lay lots of different-colored eggs.

I’ll keep any further comments about that to myself, other than to note that white eggs taste the same as blue eggs. :-/

The Light Brahma broody hen is still sitting on eggs. She was turning them yesterday when I went out to check and she let me know that my presence was not appreciated. Those hens get an A for effort, even if they never manage to hatch anything.

The rain finally stopped on Friday afternoon, and while it only got into the low 40s yesterday, that was warm enough for me to make a trip out to the garden and greenhouse to check things out:

Planting is a ways off yet. The snow is receding, though. I’m standing at the east end of the garden looking west. The greenhouse is to my right.

Part of the fence between the pig pasture and the garden came down; it looks to me like a deer tried to jump it and missed. It’s not a complicated repair.

I spent some time in the greenhouse organizing the growing supplies. We’ve got enough potting soil to get started, although we’ll need a few more bags. I mix it with compost and the seedlings seem to love it. I sorted out the pots we’ll use for the plant sale, because those tend not to come back. The husband promised to move out all of the stuff he stored in there over the winter. We’re going to need every square inch of horizontal surface. Mike, Ali, Elysian, and I all start our plants in there and we’ll also have the ones we’re starting for the plant sale.

The greenhouse was warm enough that I had to open one of the doors for some air flow. I had a big flock of turkeys for company out in the garden and pig pasture.

While I was out in the greenhouse, the husband was putting the bumper guard on the new truck:

He ordered a new EGR valve for the BMW. Thankfully, the valve was in stock and didn’t have to come over on a boat from Germany. That part should be here in a few days and then he will see if he can get the car to stop throwing those drivetrain warnings. The EGR cooler still has to be replaced under the recall, but he said he doesn’t think that is very high on BMW’s priority list right now. Oh well, if my car catches fire because of it, they’ll have to buy me a new one.

We watch a YouTube channel called Just Rolled In. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The videos are compilations of cars that mechanics get in for service, and some of them are horrifying. Some people don’t do even the most basic maintenance on their vehicles.

Did I sew yesterday? A bit. I’m trying to keep current projects moving along, because my sewing time is going to become limited as they days get longer and I need to be outside.

In Fits and Starts

Yesterday was one of those days when I just wanted to finish something—anything—but I kept getting derailed. I don’t do well in those situations. I get cranky. The interruptions, although minor, were urgent, so I had to keep dropping what I was doing. I finally finished the big items on my to-do list just before dinner.

Our conversation over drinks, where I was lamenting my frustration with the day’s progress:

The husband: Did you make a ridiculously long to-do list for yourself that you couldn’t possibly get done in one day?

Me: Isn’t that what you do?

The husband: Sometimes.

All the world is queer, except for me and thee.

Both Bear Paw baby quilts are basted and ready to quilt. I used one layer from the roll of thin quilt batting in my stash; the Essex Linen is thick enough as it is that putting a thick quilt batt inside would make the whole thing too stiff. I am letting the tops marinate for a day or two while I decide how to quilt them. I’ve been looking at various custom quilt patterns for bear paw blocks, but the larger scale of these blocks means that some custom quilting designs just won’t work.

I did find this pattern, though, that I am itching to try on a quilt. This is by Christina Cameli and she calls it Bear Claws:

It might work on one of these Bear Paw baby quilts, but I plan to practice with it, first.

I got the backing sewn for the Churn Dash quilt. I went with a small red-and-white paisley print. I am pretty sure I’ll be switching between red and white/cream threads on the top and I don’t want to have to worry about what color is showing on the backing. It’s a very busy print that will help to hide the thread.

And I pulled out these blocks in an attempt to get this top moving along again:

This is the second iteration of that purple-and-green quilt from last spring in which I thought I was using Kona White for the background but actually ended up with a combination of Kona White and Kona Bone. For this version, I cut as much as I could ahead of time and kept all the fabrics together in their own bin. I had four of these star blocks left to assemble. Those are done. Now I need to cut the units for the alternating chain blocks, assemble those, and finish the top.

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In other news, the husband has created a list of all the damaged/destroyed tools that were on his truck when he was in the accident. I need to type those into an Excel spreadsheet and send them to the claims adjuster. And weird things still keep falling into place. He needed a bumper guard for the new truck, so he stopped at Currier’s Welding in Kalispell to see if they could order one for him. They had the exact bumper guard he needed because the factory had sent it to them by mistake. (They ordered one for a smaller Dodge but got the one that fits the 4500 and 5500 models.) The bumper guard on the gray truck was largely what protected that truck’s engine in the crash.

He also asked them about getting a new Warn winch for the front of the new truck, because the one on the gray truck was destroyed. They had one in stock, which turned out, apparently, to be the only one left in the whole United States. Sixty-four of them are on backorder.

The insurance company needed to know the replacement value of the gray truck, and used work trucks are so scarce that the current value of that truck, even at 8 years old, is more than we paid for it. The way all of this has worked out has been very weird, but I am not about to look a gift horse—or truck—in the mouth.

I picked up his new computer yesterday morning and got it all set up.

Today is supposed to be the last day of wet weather. I am itching to get out to the greenhouse and garden and start making plans. That’s on the schedule for tomorrow. I will do as much set-up as I can by myself and make a list of the things I’m going to need his help with. I’ve started buying supplies as I see them in town. Yes, it’s too early to plant anything, but if I wait until it’s time to plant, things like tomato cages and landscape fabric will be sold out.

More Classes and Bear Paw Quilts

I’ve got two more serger classes on the schedule for this month. I’ll be teaching a Serger 101 class at Glacier Quilts on March 15 from 10-1, and the Bundling Up Baby class (making baby items on the serger) on March 22 from 10-1. We’ll see if they fill, as two weeks isn’t a lot of lead time, but at least customers will know that the store is offering them. We can always bump them to April or May.

When I was at DD#2’s last week and we were discussing rescheduling my trip to visit her, I mentioned that I had more serger classes coming up. She said, “I thought you retired from teaching.” I traveled quite a bit when the girls were younger—teaching at The Knitting Guild of America conferences, at Stitches, and for various guilds and stores around the country, but my last trip was in 2011 (I think) when I taught at The Yarn Barn in Lawrence, Kansas. I had already started my transcription job by then. I do love teaching, although I never expected I would be teaching serger classes.

We got another round of rain and sleet overnight. The temperature is hovering right around 31 degrees. It’s a mess out there. I’d be happy to stay put and sew, but I have a haircut appointment at noon. I’m hoping the roads are clear by then. The husband’s new computer is also waiting to be picked up and I have some book orders to mail out.

He’s been puttering around out in his shop and showing off his new truck to the neighbors who’ve stopped by. I joked that if we sold tickets, we could probably pay it off in short order. He got a call from Liberty Mutual yesterday—Safeco’s parent company—and they said that they will not contest the claim. They needed his statement, because he was the only one involved who saw the whole thing happen, but they are accepting responsibility. Now we just wait to see what the compensation is going to be.

I made another Bear Paw baby quilt top yesterday. These colors are reasonably accurate:

I also finished binding the red Candy Coated. I am going to start working on the sashing for the Sunbonnet Sue quilt so I can get that one put together.

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I had an e-mail from Joann Fabrics in my inbox this morning, highlighting all the new inventory. I was curious, so I clicked on the link. I did not look at all 84,948 items, but I did see a few that were noteworthy. The most surprising news is that Joanns is now an authorized retailer for Liberty Fabrics (Tana Lawn).

I will be curious to see if the store here gets any stock, although this probably isn’t anything I would add to my stash.

I looked at the new juvenile knits, some of which are cute, some of which look like the designers threw together a bunch of random graphics. (The latter ones will, no doubt, end up in the clearance bin in another six months, just like the current crop of ugly knit prints. I told my T-shirt class students to go stock up on those clearance fabrics for making muslins to test their self-drafted patterns.) Joann’s line of juvenile knits really have me scratching my head. They could do a brisk business in baby and juvenile knits if they offered cute prints that were appropriately scaled for smaller clothing. I sometimes wonder if the designers and the buyers even know how to sew, or if they are just employees sitting at their computers, completely divorced from the desires of their end users. Part of what makes DD#2 so good at her job with Nordstrom is that she loves fashion and has a refined sense of style. She knows what is going to sell. If I were a fabric designer for a major retailer, my goal would be to design fabrics that were so adorable that there would be nothing left to put in the clearance bin at the end of the season.

Common sense, I think, but as one of my friends in the craft co-op says, “If common sense were lard, some folks wouldn’t have enough to grease the pan.”

An Atmospheric River

Before I get to the rest of this blog post, may I suggest that if you are looking for a tangible way to help the Ukrainian people, please consider donating to Mennonite Central Committee. MCC actually has its origins in helping the people of Ukraine in the early 20th century and knows how to get help where it is most needed. You have heard me talk about MCC here on the blog, as our church participates in several of their relief sales held annually here in the US.

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This winter has been a bit of a bust, moisture-wise, especially as we were told it was going to be a La Nina winter that would bring us a lot of snow. Apparently, we are going to get all the precipitation this week. We are under what is known as an atmospheric river—a continuous stream of moisture coming in off the Pacific. It started raining Sunday afternoon, and then temperatures dropped overnight. The roads were a skating rink yesterday morning. The husband spent several hours helping one of our employees who had slid off the road on his way to work. (He took the old truck out and left the new one parked here.) Today looks to be a carbon copy of yesterday. And we marvel at the fact that it worked out for us to go to Tacoma when we did, because Snoqualmie Pass was closed for 15 hours yesterday.

I’m not going anywhere until I have to. Yesterday morning, I attacked this project:

The generator needed a cover. The husband has this same model generator on the white truck, and I made a cover for that one a few years ago. I spread the Cordura fabric out on the cutting table, started measuring, and got to work. Things were not going as smoothly as I remembered, though, and I couldn’t figure out why. Finally, the husband said, “I think you used a different material for the other cover.”

He brought the other cover in for me to look at. Sure enough, I had used a different material for that one. I pulled out my set of fabric swatches to check. The other cover was made of what’s called Traveler nylon, which is a thicker urethane-coated fabric with a looser weave. For the new cover, I had ordered polyurethane-coated 500D Cordura. The Cordura is also waterproof and will do what he needs it to do—protect the generator—although I told him that if it doesn’t hold up, I’ll order the other material and make another cover.

This cover turned out well despite my attempts to screw it up:

If I were going to do this on any kind of consistent basis, I would be shopping for a different industrial sewing machine. The Necchi BV handled the Cordura with some coaxing, but I don’t like to stress my machines.

I crossed that project off the list. After lunch, I started another Bear Paw baby quilt, then sewed binding onto the red Candy Coated quilt so I would have something to work on during a Zoom meeting I attended last evening.

[I got roped into being on the fundraising committee for our local Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation. This is an organization that the husband and I support financially, which also sponsored the plant sale and garden tour that I participated in last year. This year, I am in charge of the plant sale (Susan is helping me) and I’m also on the roster for the garden tour again this year, in mid-July. I mentioned to the husband that our committee had a meeting scheduled for last night, and he very helpfully said to me, “What is that word you’re always telling me to learn? You know, the one that starts with ‘N’ and ends with ‘O’?”]

I also played around with some doodle quilting while I was waiting for dinner to cook:

I had a couple of reasons for wanting to try this. It is hard to tell from the photo and because this was a batting scrap cut off from the tumbler quilt, but I switched to Aurifil 50wt thread in the top instead of the Signature 40wt that I’ve been using. I like the heavier thread because it looks more like hand quilting to me, but I had a niggling suspicion that things like swirls and paisleys would be easier using a thinner thread and a shorter stitch length. This quilting definitely has a more delicate appearance, and those flowing lines are smoother and easier to stitch. I don’t think it’s a matter of one style being better than the other; rather, it’s a matter of adding more techniques to the toolbox. Some quilts benefit from some types of quilting more than others, and I can’t keep using the same technique on everything just because I am comfortable with it.

I also wanted to try the doodle quilting to see if I could get my brain to switch quickly from one pattern to another. I think I did okay.

And finally, please check out the Pinovations Quilt Tutorial on the Missouri Star Quilt Company’s YouTube channel! The guest is none other than Charisma Horton, who hosted the embroidery workshop in Ephrata, Washington, that I attended back in the fall of 2019. I had such a good time at that workshop. Charisma is one of the sweetest people I know and also one of the hardest working. She absolutely deserves the success she is experiencing. I enjoyed watching her and Misty Doan making this quilt together.

And Now It's Back to Work

The husband spent all day yesterday outfitting the new truck and getting it ready for work tomorrow. He needs to buy one more specialty toolbox to hold his set of wrenches. The one on the gray truck was destroyed in the accident. The wrenches were okay, but they spilled out all over the highway.

The generator cover is back in my queue, probably as tomorrow’s project. It’s not complicated, just a bit unwieldy to sew. I’ll sew it on the Necchi industrial.

I put together a Bear Paw baby quilt top yesterday morning:

The pieces were already cut and the top didn’t take long to assemble. Sewing with the Essex Linen is a bit different than sewing with quilting cotton. The weave is looser, so it tends to torque a bit if you’re not careful. I put this together using the Accufeed foot on my Janome 6600P and that worked really well.

[The “claws” look pink, but they are actually a light gray. I’ll be glad when I can take pictures outside again in natural light. Our carpet isn’t that yellow, either. I did adjust the color balance in Photoshop, but I can’t get it where I want it.]

This finishes at 39” x 39”, which is a great size and only requires a bit more than a yard of fabric for the backing. I haven’t decided how to quilt it yet. I did a square spiral with straight-line quilting on the one I made for Susan’s grandson, but I might try some custom quilting on this one. I chose this color combo to coordinate with a nursery-themed fabric I picked up on clearance at one of the quilt stores.

I worked on the Candy Coated quilt again yesterday, but I got into the weeds with my quilting. I suspect that happened because 1) it had been almost a week since I worked on it and 2) I am overthinking it. The problem is hard to describe other than that the quilting pattern varies ever-so-slightly from one side of the quilt to the other. I think I know what I need to do to get back on track. The quilt is going to be donated, and no one besides me will ever be able to tell what happened, so I am going to finish it today and be grateful for the learning experience.

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Nicole Sauce had a great Living Free in Tennessee podcast on Friday. In a time when the media wants people to focus on the latest crisis, it’s important to remember what is within our sphere of control. Please note that she does not advocate sticking one’s head in the sand and ignoring world events. I have to say that because someone will deliberately misunderstand the point she is making. Instead, she reminds her listeners to keep those events in the proper perspective and avoid becoming paralyzed by the what ifs. The husband and I listened to Sirius radio on the drive over to Seattle (Outlaw Country), and we heard the DJ say that her mother spends most of her time in a state of anxious terror because all she does is watch mainstream media and The Weather Channel. Having 24/7 access to news is not necessarily a good thing.

If you are feeling anxious, maybe that’s an indication that you need to take some kind of action. That has always been my coping mechanism for difficult situations. When the bottom fell out of the economy in 2009, I doubled down on my penny-tracking efforts. Knowing exactly where we stood financially—bleak as it was at the time—was better than not knowing. Focus on what is within your control and do what you can to move forward, even if it seems like you’re taking baby steps.

Home With the Truck

The husband preferred not to fly to Seattle to get the new truck, and because I need only the slimmest of reasons to hit the highway, we decided to take a road trip together to get it. We alerted DD#2 that we were coming. She offered to make us dinner at her apartment.

We pulled out of the driveway at 7:02 a.m. on Thursday and were pulling into her apartment complex by 3:30 p.m. (We gained an hour on the way.) The husband had gone to Tacoma for DD#1’s college graduation, but he had never been to Seattle. He got to see where she is living, and we sat and visited with her while she cooked us dinner.

I had reserved a hotel room down by the airport, just because it split the distance between Seattle and Tacoma and I knew the area. The sales manager at Tacoma Dodge said he would meet us at 7:30 a.m. Friday morning. We woke up, had a leisurely breakfast at iHop, and met Paul—huge props to him for making this come together—at the dealer’s office to sign the paperwork for the truck.

It is a beauty and exactly what the husband wanted:

This is our seventh Dodge Cummins turbo diesel pickup, starting with the truck we bought in 1990 in Pennsylvania. Two of them—the 2500 that is now our plow truck, and the MegaCab—were mine.

We navigated ourselves out of the big city with me leading the convoy. As much as I love to drive, that was a grueling trip—two back-to-back 9+ hour days on the road is more than I am used to, although we lucked out and had two gorgeous days of clear, sunny weather. I was planning to go visit DD#2 the second week of March, but after this trip, I’ve decided to postpone that visit until April.

We powered through and were home by 6:30 p.m. last night. Elysian had come over and taken care of the chickens for us. No peeps yet, although there are still a couple of hens fighting over who gets to sit on eggs in that box.

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I would have preferred not to postpone the comforter-tying party, but I didn’t know if we would be back in time. Depending on how things went, we might have stayed in Spokane last night. The husband needs to be back at work by Monday. He is scheduling jobs well out into the summer now.

The claims agent from Safeco finally called him while we were on the road Thursday. I have no idea how that is going to shake out, but at least the process is underway.

I have no shortage of things to do. The red Candy Coated is still waiting for the rest of its quilting. The generator cover is back in the queue once the generator gets put on the new truck. DD#2 has a set of patio furniture in need of custom cushions and pillows. And gardening season gets underway in just a few weeks, because it will be time to start seedlings in the greenhouse and prune fruit trees. Open burning starts March 1. We have slash piles in the woods that need to be dealt with. We lost another tree in last week’s windstorm. As always happens this time of year, spring comes slowly, then all at once.

It All Worked Out

Note: We have had to postpone the comforter-tying party scheduled for Saturday at the Mennonite Church. We will try to have it a month from now, on March 26.

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Our banker had loan papers waiting for us to sign yesterday morning at 11 a.m. The bank is doing an interest-only loan for us for a few months until the insurance settles, and then we will reassess. Unfortunately, we have yet to be able to speak to a human being at Safeco, which is the insurance company for the driver who caused the accident. I sat in our insurance agent’s office Tuesday morning while she tried—unsuccessfully—to get someone on the phone. She kept getting recorded messages telling her to file online. When we tried to file online, we were given a number to call, but when we called the number, we were given a message to file online. We have left messages with the person who is reportedly the claims agent, but she has yet to contact the husband. Another day of this and we will turn the claim in on our commercial liability policy and let that company deal with Safeco. (Our company told us to turn it in to Safeco before they would get involved.) We’re now almost a whole week after the accident. Even with a federal holiday in there, this is unacceptable.

We signed the papers and made all the arrangements to get the new truck, then came home to have lunch. I was on my way back to town to run errands and go to my 4:30 p.m. massage appointment when the husband called me. When he had first contacted the dealer in Tacoma over the weekend, it was about a different Ram pickup with a crew cab. He was told that that truck had been promised to another buyer. The husband had just gotten off the phone with the dealer, who called him to let him know that that sale fell through and the crew cab truck was now available. Did we want it instead of the regular cab truck? Of course! I made a quick detour back to the bank and met the husband there. We signed the new set of loan papers and I made it to Whitefish for my massage appointment in plenty of time.

The new truck should be here this weekend. And a huge shout out to Valley Bank for helping us make this happen.

Kalispell peeps, Sydney at The Lodge at Whitefish Lake is amazing. I explained to her that my back had been bothering me since staying at that Airbnb in Spokane. She worked me over from head to toe and I could feel my vertebrae slipping back into alignment as she went. She even joked that I looked taller after the massage. I’m a bit sore this morning, but it’s a good kind of sore and I am moving with more flexibility.

The Churn Dash top has been washed and pressed and is now waiting for me to find a backing for it. I also picked up another machine quilting book at Joann Fabrics:

This one has quilting designs for a dozen classic quilt blocks. I may get out my bin of orphan blocks and make some quilt sandwiches for practice. I see lots of great ideas in here.

The Quilt Top Takes a Bath

The Churn Dash top is assembled and has had a bath. I soaked it in Retro Clean for a few hours, then followed up with a wash on the delicate cycle using Retro Wash. I hung it to dry rather than tumbling it in the dryer. It looks (and smells) much better. Here it is just after I sewed on the last border:

When a quilt gets to a certain size, it’s too heavy to stay up the design wall, so I photographed it on the floor. It will finish at about 75” x 75”, which is a nice size.

I’m happy with it. I am happy that it will soon become a quilt instead of a collection of abandoned blocks. I’m happy that this part is done and I can cross it off the list. I need to find a backing for it.

I also basted the comforters that Pat made from my bin of 5” blocks:

These will be tied on Saturday at our comforter-tying party. If you’re in Kalispell, you are welcome to join us at the Mennonite Church in Creston from 2-5 pm. We will meet in the fellowship hall with dinner afterward (baked potato bar). All you need to know is how to tie a simple knot.

I had the brilliant idea to baste these using the basting function on my Q20, but it didn’t work as well as I thought it would. I did one comforter that way, then pin basted the rest of them. I can pin baste as quickly as I could wrangle these through the machine. We’re using polyester batting and I don’t quilt with that, so I wasn’t used to how much it slides around. It’s also a bit like quilting air.

My YouTube playlist this week has been filled with videos of free motion quilting, mostly swirl quilting patterns. I’ve gone back and watched the Angela Walters ones—which are excellent—but I’ve also become a fan of Adria Good’s longarm quilting videos. They aren’t so much teaching videos as they are videos of her working on quilts, with the most wonderful background piano music. I’ve learned a few things along the way, too, one of which is that I should not be so critical of my own quilting. It’s better than a lot of what I’ve seen out there.

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The husband found a truck at the Dodge dealer in Tacoma, Washington and put a deposit on it to hold it. This one has everything he needs on it, including racks and toolboxes. It’s a standard cab, which wasn’t his preference, but at this point, it’s the best option. He was mostly using the backseat of the gray truck for extra storage anyway, although it was handy when he needed to transport our employees around.

Presidents’ Day threw a wrench into the works as the banks and insurance offices were closed. I have our banker’s cell phone number, though, and he told me to use it when needed. (One of the advantages of living in a small town.) I texted him yesterday and made an appointment for 9 am this morning. I have no idea how long it is going to take for this mess to work its way through the insurance companies and the various lawyers, so we need to arrange for a loan for the new truck. Our banker will make that happen ASAP. As soon as the paperwork is in place, the husband will fly over to Seattle, DD#2 will pick him up, and he’ll go get the truck.

We didn’t take the brunt of the winter storm—that seems to have hit further north Sunday night—but we’ve had heavy wind gusts all day yesterday and overnight. It’s also very cold. The wind is supposed to die down this morning. There are few things I hate more than wind. I don’t like these storms. They really set my teeth on edge.

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Barring any other emergencies, the rest of my week is clear except for a massage appointment on Wednesday afternoon. I used to have a fabulous massage therapist here who did craniosacral therapy; an hour with her made me feel like I got hit by a truck, but it was worth it to have my body put back together properly. Unfortunately, she moved to Colorado. The massage therapist I had at Christmas, when we had our girls’ spa day, is almost as good. My back has been bothering me ever since I stayed at that Airbnb in Spokane, and while I could go to the chiropractor, a massage is more appealing. I wouldn’t have waited so long, but this was the first open appointment.

We’ll see what I can get done this week. I am trying to stick to one project and see it through to completion, so I’ll probably finish quilting the red Candy Coated quilt.

A Few Minor Churn Dash Block Problems

I did not get as far on the Churn Dash top yesterday as I had hoped. I made a run into town in the morning for a few supplies because we are now under a winter storm warning for the next two days. This looks like it may be one of those back door cold fronts with strong east winds off the mountains. I am hoping we don’t lose any trees, although we don’t have as many to lose since that big storm two years ago brought down the ones in our woods. In any case, I’m planning to stay put for a few days.

I’ve had to take apart and re-sew a couple of the Churn Dash blocks. This is one of the drawbacks of quilt block swaps. They usually include one or two participants who think they can eyeball a quarter-inch seam instead of using a quarter-inch foot or seam guide. I’ve run into two blocks so far that were 9-1/8” instead of 9-1/2”, and that’s too big a discrepancy to hide in the seam. Fortunately, the Churn Dash is not a complicated block. I only have to take out a few seams in each block and re-sew them. That slows down the process of putting the top together, though.

I am also going to have to wash this top once I get the outer border on, but before I baste and quilt it. A couple of the blocks came from a home where someone was a smoker. The smell isn’t quite as strong now that they’ve been airing on the design wall, but it’s noticeable. I suspect a quick wash might also brighten up some of the dinginess.

While I sew, I am thinking about how I want to quilt this one. I have this Amanda Murphy free motion quilting book which has lots of great ideas organized by specific quilt block designs, including Churn Dash:

The actual quilting is a ways down the road yet, though.

I ordered this tool a few days ago:

My favorite apron—the one I am copying for myself—is one layer of fabric with a 1” wide binding on the top and sides. The side bindings extend to form the ties. I need to make miles of this kind of binding, and the thought of cutting 4” wide strips, folding them in half and pressing, then folding the edges into the middle and pressing again was daunting. I was on the Sailrite website ordering polyester binding for the Cordura generator cover, so I threw this into the cart, too. It came yesterday and should speed up the process of making binding.

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The husband has three different dealers looking for a truck for him. He thought he had found one in Colorado Springs—which would have been great as his dad lives there and he could go visit him and pick up the truck—but when he called the dealer, it had already been sold. Part of the problem is supply chain issues. Part of the problem is that he needs a very specific kind of truck. Not all dealers sell cab-and-chassis trucks, because the dealer has to be able to service them in order to sell them. He would like one with a flatbed already on it. He also needs one with the max tow package. The dealer in Colorado has another truck in stock that ticks all the boxes, but it’s a standard cab and he would prefer an extended cab. If that’s the only one available, though, that may be the one he gets. He could order one built to his specs, but it will be 4-6 months before he gets it, and we’re heading into another busy construction season.

He spent yesterday sorting through and organizing all the stuff we took off the gray truck. That truck is currently at the tow company’s impound lot, but he is making arrangements with them to get it back so he can take the usable parts off of it.

We have really appreciated the notes and calls of concern from friends and neighbors. Our community is wonderful.

It Could Have Been Worse

The husband had an eventful day yesterday, and not in a good way. I was cooking dinner around 4 pm when the phone rang.

“I was in a wreck. I need you to bring the white truck down and get me.”

He assured me that he was not hurt. I hung up and called our friends Tom and Marcie to see if Tom could go with me. They were in Bigfork, so they told me where they would be waiting when I came through and I could pick Tom up there. I put everything away and went and got the white truck.

[The husband has two Dodge cab-and-chassis pickups with flatbeds on the back. The gray truck—the one he was driving—is a 2014 Dodge 5500. The white one is a 2008 Dodge 4500. I drove a Dodge 3500 MegaCab for a number of years, but mine wasn’t a dually. I’ve been driving little station wagons for the past decade, so it took a few minutes to adjust to driving the Titanic again, but it’s rather like riding a bike.]

I stopped and got Tom and we drove down to the accident scene. The wreck happened on Highway 35, which is a state highway that runs along the east shore of Flathead Lake. It is a winding and narrow road. MHP had shut the highway down, but they waved us through to the accident scene.

The husband was not hurt. His truck, however, is totaled:

I don’t care about the truck. I am grateful it protected him. The airbags didn’t even go off.

The husband had been down in Polson, on the south end of Flathead Lake, at a job he is working on there. He said he was coming back up the highway, following a Subaru, when they approached a curve, but instead of negotiating the curve, the Subaru went straight and crossed the center line into the other lane, into the path of a Ford truck towing a trailer. The driver of the Ford tried to miss the Subaru, ended up going sideways, and hit the husband’s truck. I think that five vehicles ultimately were involved. The ambulance transported the driver of the Subaru to the hospital. Everyone else appeared to be okay.

He was towing our (thankfully empty) dump trailer, but it’s damaged, too.

We transferred all the tools from the gray truck to the white truck and waited while the various tow companies came and got the vehicles out of the road. The highway was shut down for close to three hours, and it was after dark by the time they got our truck loaded up. Marcie had dinner waiting for all of us when we got back.

He’s going to have to replace the truck. I am sure insurance will cover it, but this is not the best time to be looking for another truck. He takes good care of all our vehicles precisely so they will last as long as possible. At least he has the white truck and can keep working.

It could have been worse.

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I am past the halfway point of quilting the red Candy Coated. I’d like to get it done today if I can. My original plan was to make a Cordura cover for the generator that was on the gray truck, but I’ll postpone that for obvious reasons.

I also started putting the Churn Dash rows together. I can probably finish that assembly today, too. I got the comforter tops from Pat last week and will start basting those together for the comforter-tying party next Saturday.

No peeps yet. It’s been a game of musical broody hens—one day I went out and there was a black Australorp sitting on the eggs, and for the past couple of days, one of the Light Brahmas has been parked on top of them. I don’t care which hen hatches the eggs as long as she takes care of the chicks.

Part of the Mystery Has Been Solved

I dashed off an e-mail to the address on Ree Nancarrow’s website and received a note in response. Ree said, “What a fun note to receive!” and then went on to offer a possible explanation:

During the years I was a member of Denali Quilters at Denali National Park (including Cantwell, Healy and Anderson), we often had retreats. Before the retreat someone chose several blocks and provided instructions for everyone attending the retreat. Anyone could make as many blocks as they wanted to. The person’s name was written on a piece of paper, one paper for each quilt block they made, and put into a basket. One name was drawn out of the basket, and that person got all the blocks. Why they kept my name on the back of the quilt block is a mystery for sure, as well as who it might have been.

So there you have it. At least part of the mystery has been solved, although we don’t know how the blocks ended up here in Kalispell. I may put a note about this on the quilt label when I finish the quilt.

I’ve added some sashing strips to the design wall. They are pulling the layout together nicely.

I’ll finish this one and then start working on the Sunbonnet Sue quilt.

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The second installment of the T-shirt class went well. I have five students. One student, Mary, came with not only her class T-shirt put together, but three other T-shirts that she had made for her granddaughter and one she made for herself. Her granddaughter is a very tall teen who has trouble finding clothes to fit. Mary is thrilled that she’ll be able to make shirts for her granddaughter and her granddaughter is thrilled to have clothes that fit. Mary hemmed all her shirts on my coverstitch machine during class and copied the T-shirt she had brought to class so she could make one like it at home.

One of my other students worked as a pattern drafter in California. I love having her in class as I am learning more about that part of the business. She brought the T-shirt she had made and hemmed it on the coverstitch machine. She also offered to teach us how to do a rub-off of a T-shirt at the next class because another student wants to copy a raglan-style shirt and that style wasn’t in my class plan. I asked that student if she had an old one she would be willing to take apart and copy, but she didn’t, so we’ll try the rub-off method.

I am very happy with the way this class has been going. I’m itching to make some more tops, though.

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Our trip to the processor in Eureka yesterday was great. Cathy and I got to visit and catch up, and not only did we get to talk to the manager of the processing facility, he took us on a personal tour. The new owners have expanded and made some improvements. We each got a copy of the cut sheet so we will know what options this processor offers to customers. The exciting part is that they are getting their certification that will allow them to go beyond what’s called “custom exempt” processing. All of our pigs and Cathy’s cows are sold this way—basically, we raise the animal for someone else, sell it to them, and they pay to have it processed. We are not allowed to sell individual cuts, only whole or half animals. Under this certification, though, we will be able to sell individual cuts or smaller batches of meat. That will open up our markets to people who don’t want to pay for or don’t have freezer space for a large animal.

We will need to make a decision soon about ordering weaners. If we decide to go ahead with pigs this year, I want to get on this processor’s schedule ASAP. Cathy is a bit more flexible with her scheduling, because beef can go in whenever it’s ready.

I was laughing a bit to myself during our tour, because if someone had said to me when I was 30 years old, “Where do you see yourself in 25 years?” I very much doubt I would have said that I saw myself standing in a meat locker examining cow carcasses. Life is an adventure.

E-I-E-I-O

This is a long post, but yesterday was an eventful day.

Accuquilt offers a new Die to Try on the first Tuesday of every month. The die is a limited-edition release, but if it’s popular enough, they will make it a permanent part of their line.

The Die to Try for February was the Farm Animals Medley:

Their marketing department saw me coming from a mile away. I ordered this one and it arrived yesterday. I am positively giddy thinking about appliquéing little pink pigs all over everything, LOL. I wish they had included a sheep, too, but oh, well. I am sure I can get into enough trouble with just chickens, pigs, and cows.

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My friend, Scott, posted a funny follow-up story about his Singer 128 on his blog. I got a laugh out of it. I feel partly responsible for leading him down the vintage sewing machine garden path, but it has provided a lot of entertainment.

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The owner of the Quilt Gallery, the store here in Kalispell where I am teaching serger classes, said some very lovely things about me in yesterday’s Facebook Live video. I watch their Tuesday morning videos to find out what’s new in the store, not to go fishing for compliments about my teaching abilities, but she just happened to be talking about the serger classes I’m teaching there. I said to the husband last night—after I made him watch the video—that it is gratifying to be able to use so many of my knitwear design skills in teaching these classes. Knit fabric, after all, is knit fabric whether it’s tiny stitches knit on a machine or larger knit stitches made with two needles.

The Quilt Gallery is hosting a Bernina Academy Mystery Make—Overlocker Edition at the end of April. This is a two-day class taught by a Bernina educator. On the first day, students learn how to make a variety of different stitches using the Bernina L850 and L890 air-threading sergers. On the second day, they use their stitch sampler to make a project. I signed up immediately. Besides the fact that I get to be a student, not a teacher, the class will give me some hands-on practice with the Bernina sergers. I let Tera know about it in case she wanted to join me, but she’s taking a longarm class that same weekend.

The Sew Expo, hosted by Washington State University, traditionally has been held in early March in Puyallup, Washington. That’s only a few miles from Pacific Lutheran, where DD#1 went to college. This year, it’s a virtual event. Gail Yellen announced her classes on her YouTube channel right after tickets went on sale. I really wanted to take her coverstitch class, but it was already sold out. (I am not sure why they put a limit on virtual classes, but whatever.) Perhaps next year, they will have it in person again and I can make a trip over and take some classes.

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The Churn Dash blocks went up on the design wall yesterday:

I miscounted the first time and missed a block. There were 25 blocks in the bag, so I have just enough for this layout. I don’t need to make any. I also made the sashing strips but still have to cut them to length.

While I was pressing the blocks, I noticed a piece of paper taped to the back of one of them. It had “Ree Nancarrow” written on it and nothing else. Curious, I went to my computer and Googled the name and this website popped up. Ree Nancarrow is a quilt artist who spent many years in Alaska. Why was her name taped to one of these blocks? They don’t seem to match her quilting aesthetic. She does mostly landscape and wildlife art quilts.

It’s a mystery.

I have an evil plan to get my friend Sunnie—who is a supremely talented painter—to make an art quilt when she is here in Montana this summer. It doesn’t have to be big; even something the size of a placemat would be do-able and not overwhelming. I think I can enlist Robin and the other ladies in the craft co-op to help me. Sunnie, you’ve been warned. :)

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Cathy and I are taking a road trip tomorrow to Eureka. There used to be a processor up there that both of us liked, but he had his building sold out from under him early in 2021. That left me scrambling to find a place to take the pigs last fall. A new processor has opened up in that same building, so we’re going on a recon mission to scope out the place and ask questions. The processor we used this year was okay, but I’d like to see what services this new processor offers. And I am excited about getting to spend time with Cathy. I realized the other day that she and I literally have not seen each other for more than a few minutes at a time in almost two years.

The minister from the Lutheran church where I play for Lenten midweek services called yesterday. We talked for about 20 minutes. I get his weekly e-mails, so even though I haven’t played there since the pandemic started, I’m more or less aware of what’s happening with their congregation. Our discussion was sobering, though. These lockdowns damaged our communities in so many ways, large and small, and that includes churches. He’s not sure they will have the numbers to be able to have Lenten services, although I put the dates on my calendar anyway.

Churn Dash Sashing and Cornerstones

Yesterday did not go as planned because I spent the entire morning trying to straighten out an e-mail issue while dealing with a snarky tech support person. I managed to solve the problem without his help (or snark), but it wasn’t what I had planned to do when I woke up. And I think those two e-mail addresses are going to go away after this billing cycle ends. I’m done with that company.

[I don’t have much tolerance for people whose preferred method of communication is snark or sarcasm. Learn to communicate like an adult, not a 14-year-old.]

I was so irritated that it took a bit of effort after that to get myself back on track. I pressed a few lengths of fabric and watched the latest A Quilting Life podcast on YouTube. After lunch, I wrote up the class handout for tomorrow’s T-shirt class and started gathering my supplies together.

I also worked on the sashing for the Churn Dash quilt. I hadn’t intended for that quilt to shoot to the top of the queue, but both it and the Sunbonnet Sue quilt will have the same kind of sashing design. I would rather get comfortable with making the sashing and working the bugs out on the Churn Dash quilt, first.

Electric Quilt 8 has many features that streamline the work associated with making a quilt. It will tell you how much yardage of each fabric you need. It will spit out rotary-cutting instructions. It will create and print templates if you need them. However, it cannot factor in the many different tricks and shortcuts for making blocks, like making slightly oversized units and trimming them down after sewing. All of the instructions it generates assume that you will cut each individual piece exactly to size and sew it together perfectly.

This is the proposed layout for those Churn Dash blocks.

The sashing is made up of three narrow strips sewn together. The cornerstones are an inverse of the sashing strips. The teeny-tiny blocks in those cornerstones measure 1-1/4” before they are sewn together. In no universe would I be able to sew together anything that small and have it come out the correct size. My plan was to sew the narrow strips together, first, then cut them into smaller units and sew the units together. EQ8 only gave me the dimensions of each (tiny) unit, so I had to translate that into a strip and then figure out what size pieces I needed to cut from each strip.

Strip sewing is one place where I really appreciate the Accufeed system on my Janome sewing machine. Most sewing machines are engineered such that the feed dogs feed the bottom piece of fabric at a slightly faster rate than the top piece of fabric. That’s useful when you want to ease in one of the fabrics, but it can wreak havoc when sewing strips together. They end up being twisted and wonky. The Accufeed system—or a walking foot—feeds the fabrics through at the same rate. I put the quarter-inch Accufeed foot on my machine and ran all the strips through. They came out perfectly straight.

This is what the cornerstones look like after sewing the three units together:

I pressed the seams open on the back.

I usually press my seams to the side, but in blocks this small (3”), pressing them open does help to reduce bulk. I also used my tailor’s clapper as a seam press to flatten them, a trick I learned from Kimberly Jolly at Fat Quarter Shop.

All 36 cornerstones are made. Now I need to cut the sashing strips to the correct length and sew them to each block.

I’d like to get back to working on that red Candy Coated quilt soon.

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In other news, the accountant said he will have the construction company tax returns done this week. I still have to get him what he needs to do our personal returns, but that shouldn’t take long to put together. I’ve also scheduled my trip to Seattle, although the first Airbnb I attempted to reserve required proof of a vaccine passport. I found a different one about five minutes from DD#2.

Our church’s Mennonite Disaster Service group is going to Okanogan, Washington, for a week in March to help out on a project there. One of our members will be there for the entire month of March as a team leader. We don’t send a group every year, but in years past, we’ve had people go to Detroit, Texas, New Orleans, North Carolina, and a few other places.

Emergency Truck Sewing Repairs

The husband has been working on his older work truck this week (he has two). The driver’s side seat needed a new foam replacement seat, and in the process of taking the factory cover off to get to the foam, he noticed that the factory cover needed some repairs. The factory cover had been covered with a twill aftermarket seat cover, but the twill cover didn’t protect the factory cover completely and the wear wasn’t apparent until he took the twill cover off.

I have no pictures because this was a rush job. He wanted to get the seat taken care of yesterday. I patched one hole by sewing a piece of thick scuba knit on the inside (to match the base fabric) and stitching around the hole to keep it from fraying any further. There was also a broken plastic clip that hooked onto the base of the seat frame to hold the factory cover in place. That clip had been sewn to the cover—by a much stronger machine than anything I have—but the piece of thin backing plastic was broken and the clip was falling off. I substituted a piece of Peltex interfacing for the backing plastic and used heavy-duty upholstery thread to sew the clip back on through the existing holes (by hand). Peltex is used for bag and purse bottoms.

[This is why I have the equivalent of a small Joann Fabrics store in my house.]

“You just saved us $160 for a new factory seat cover,” he said when I had finished. He has to buy a replacement twill cover, but the factory cover should last a few more years, at least.

We also looked at and measured the Honda generator on his newer truck for which he requested a Cordura cover. I have the fabric, but he wants a slightly different style for this generator than the cover I made for the other generator. This is not a complicated project. The front zipper will be the hardest part and even that isn’t that difficult. I just need to set aside a few hours to make it, probably next weekend.

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The tumbler quilt is all finished. I am very happy with the way it turned out. The border looks even better than I had hoped it would:

I did stars in the corners with one of my Amanda Murphy star rulers. That was done more out of desperation than anything else, although someone at Ruler Club noted that a few of the tumblers were made from star fabric, so perhaps I was channeling an unconscious design idea. (Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.) The binding is navy blue Kona.

I didn’t have time to work on the Candy Coated quilt yesterday. I finished prepping the backs for the comforters because Pat is bringing them to church today, and I cut a few more 5” blocks so she could make one more top. We have scheduled the comforter-tying party for the afternoon of February 26th from 2-5 pm. We’re planning a meal afterward, probably a baked potato bar. Any Kalispell peeps are welcome to join us! We’ll be working in the fellowship hall at the Mennonite church.

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I am a premium member at Living Free in Tennessee (my favorite podcast, by far), and as part of my membership, I get access to monthly webinars on various topics. I attended the bacon-making webinar yesterday. The presentation was excellent. I am undecided, though, about whether or not I want to try it. The process is not complicated; I just don’t need yet another project. However, I did learn a few things about the cutting process, and I will be better able to let the processor know how we want our pork processed in the future.

People tend to get fixated on “bacon,” meaning the bacon that comes from the pork belly, but almost everything except the ham and the picnic shoulders can be made into some form of bacon. I already knew this, because our previous processor would make Canadian bacon from the loins and Kansas City bacon from the roasts. We do try to maximize the “bacon” we get from our pork. I did not know, however, that the cheek/jowl meat can also be made into bacon. That’s standard practice in Italy. I suspect both processors we have used just took that meat and added it to the sausage, which is fine, but I’d like to try making bacon with those cuts next time we do pork.

I hate to waste anything from the animal. I always take the organ meats (dog treats), the fat (lard), ham hocks (soup) and neck bones (stock). If we’re going to put in all that work raising the animals, it just makes sense to get our money’s worth from them.

Don't Be a Jerk When You Come Here

The tire place called Thursday to tell me the new valve stem had come in. Apparently, the first order got lost, so they had to order again, and it was 10 days before the second order came in. I had my car there by 8 am yesterday morning and was on the road again by 9. Now I am down to one light on the dashboard. The check engine light presumably will stay on until BMW fixes this EGR cooler issue, but at least it doesn’t yell randomly like the tire pressure monitor did.

[I am so traumatized by the warning chimes on my car that when the chime goes off to the tell me the temperature is 37 degrees, I always get a bit of a gut clench until I see that it’s just that alarm. LOL]

It took me most of the morning to get all my errands done.

I’m trying very hard not to complain about all the people moving here, because we moved here 29 years ago, but my experience at the Panera drive-through is so emblematic of why we dislike this recent influx of foreigners, especially Californians. I pulled into the Panera parking lot intending to grab a quick bite to eat from the drive-through. A Ford Explorer with CA plates was parked just at the entrance to the drive-through—not in the drive-through, but blocking the entrance—with two empty car lengths ahead of it. I sat there for a few moments, expecting that the driver would notice that someone was behind them and pull up. Nope. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the car just to my left was trying to pull out of its parking space but apparently didn’t see me. I tapped on my horn to warn them and they stopped. The Ford Explorer still didn’t move. By this time, I was annoyed, so I honked the horn. The Ford Explorer moved into the drive-through just enough for me to pull up so the car to my left could leave.

The Ford Explorer still had two car lengths between it and the car ahead of it. Finally, the Explorer pulled up and the woman inside gave her order. She then moved up just enough so that I couldn’t get to the order kiosk. (There were still two car lengths between her and the car ahead of her.) I had to wait until she pulled up further. When I was done, I tried to pull forward so that the lady behind me could give her order, but the Ford Explorer had only moved a few feet. Her window was down, and I was so very tempted to yell, “People like you are why we hate Californians!” but I restrained myself.

Honestly, I would have been annoyed by that behavior even if she had had Montana plates on her car, but the CA plates were just icing on the cake. That is not how most people behave here. (And my apologies to my CA readers, because I know not everyone in CA behaves like that, either.)

It’s not even tourist season yet.

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I worked on the red Candy Coated quilt again yesterday afternoon. I’ve got one quadrant quilted:

I could feel the shift when I finally relaxed into the process. My quilting improved from that point, although Amanda Murphy is right. Part of what quilting does, besides anchoring the layers together, is add texture. As more quilting gets added, everything blurs together into an overall textural effect. I did lament to the husband that it seemed like my really nice swirls were in the sections where the thread blended into the background, so you can’t see them.

One added benefit of those gripper rings is that they keep me from hunching over my work, so my shoulders don’t get as tired. I did switch back to the larger ring and will continue to use that one. I found that as I got better—and faster—I was bumping up against the smaller ring too often.

DD#2 asked me when I was coming to Seattle again, so I’m planning a trip there in a few weeks. (Why yes, I’d be happy to take a road trip.) If BMW gets its act together, perhaps I’ll be able to combine that with a stop in Spokane to have the dealer do the recall work, but I’m not holding my breath.

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Broody Hen has been parked in her nesting box for almost two weeks now, so we may know by the end of next week if she’s got any chicks. The gestation period is about 21 days.

We have to make a decision about pigs soon. We had talked about taking a year off so that the husband could get some infrastructure work done out in the pig pasture. If we’re going to go ahead, I need to let the breeder know soon how many weaners we’ll want.

And my seed order arrived yesterday:

I’m always a bit nervous until I have seeds in hand, although I keep a backup supply in the freezer that I rotate out every year or two. I put a few veggies back on the list this year, like collard greens and acorn squash. I still have to get a fresh batch of seed potatoes. We saved the Yukon Golds for seed because they were so nice, but everything else has to be replaced. I’lll pick those up as soon as the feed store gets them in stock.

Why I Love Show and Tell

Our sewing group meeting yesterday was great fun. We always do show and tell after lunch. The eye candy yesterday was over the top. I think my favorite was this flying geese quilt that Beth did:

Beth and a couple of the other women have longarm machines on frames. While looking at the quilting on the various pieces, we got into a discussion about rulers on frames versus rulers on my machine, which is a longarm in a table. Beth said she is struggling with rulers because she has to hold the ruler with one hand and move the machine—which has handles—with her other hand. When I quilt with rulers, I am able to have both hands on the ruler while I slide the fabric around. The machine is stationary.

The differences between the various machines fascinate me.

When I got home, I sat down with the red Candy Coated and started quilting that one. I have decided to do meandering swirls. Swirls are basically loops with tiaras. I switched to the stippling foot, which is open on the front and allows me to see what I am doing. I also got out one of the Bernina gripper rings that I bought in Spokane a few weeks ago:

I don’t like wearing gloves when I quilt, although I have to in order to maintain a firm grip on the quilt. I am so used to feeling my work with my fingertips—be it knitting, sewing, or whatever—that to have gloves on that eliminate that sensation is very disconcerting. I bought the gripper rings after seeing Amanda Murphy use them in one of her videos. I was hoping they would allow me to free motion quilt without having gloves on.

I love the gripper rings. What a game changer. This is the 8” ring; there is also an 11” ring. I switch back and forth periodically because I can’t quite decide which one I like better.

My swirls are okay, but I can tell the difference between mine and ones that are done on a frame. The machines on frames are on ball bearings and move smoothly across the fabric. My swirls still look a bit jerky to me. I need to work on smoothing out the motion. I was also quilting late in the day, which is not my best time. This is not an heirloom quilt, though, and I have to practice on something in order to build up the muscle memory. I am not unhappy with this so far.

We did a lot of laughing over lunch yesterday. I left feeling grateful that I live where I do and also for the islands of sanity in the midst of the chaos of the last couple of years. I wonder about the psyche of this country, because I think that in some ways, we’re damaged beyond repair. And we did it to ourselves. How the human race has managed to avoid annihilating itself is a mystery.

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One of the ladies in Ruler Club is also a student in my T-shirt class. She chose—with my blessing—to make a T-shirt to fit her rather than starting with a kid’s T-shirt, so I asked her how her first iteration turned out. (Students are supposed to bring them to next week’s class so we can hem them on the coverstitch.) She said she was very pleased and just needs to make a few tweaks to the pattern.

The class manager at the store and I talked about it and decided to schedule another T-shirt class for April, May, and July. We had some requests for an evening class to accommodate people who work, so this one will be on Tuesday evenings from 5:30 to 8:00 pm. The store owner is also very interested in a T-shirt class for people who don’t have sergers and want to learn how to sew knits on their sewing machines (thank you, Joanna!). That’s going to be a one-session class, though, focusing on the kids’ T-shirt pattern.

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I started making backs for the tops that Pat has put together. I don’t have to do much other than measure the wideback fabric and rip it to the correct width. (Widebacks are ripped, not cut.) When we tie comforters, we usually put them into a frame, but we only have one spare frame and we want to tie 4-5 comforters at our party in a few weeks. The last time, I sewed all of the backings and tops together, first, so that each one was finished except for the tying. That was a lot of work. My brilliant idea for this group of comforters is to make the quilt sandwiches and then baste them on the Q20. We’ll still have to bind them after they are tied, but we can do that by machine.

Another Prep Day

Today might end up being another prep day. I bought the fabric I needed for the Churn Dash sashing yesterday. I also cleaned out our Hobby Lobby of some Essex Linen that they just put on clearance.

This will be perfect for a few more Bear Paw baby quilts. I adore that sage green.

I finished quilting the tumbler quilt. It is trimmed and ready to be bound. I need to cut and make that binding—probably navy blue Kona—and attach it today. I’ll take that quilt with me to sewing tomorrow to work on it there. And if I have time to trace those other two garment patterns today, I’ll do that, too.

I took the tumbler quilt to Ruler Club yesterday, but here’s the thing: I brought show-and-tell, but so did several other people. That was so helpful. I think it’s always good to look at what other people are doing and ask, “Why did you make that particular design choice?” or “What would you do differently next time?” One lady brought a quilt top that she had made 20 years ago and said she was now inspired to get it out and finish it.

I do hope the store decides to continue Ruler Club for another session when this one is done.

I stopped at my friend Cassie’s house yesterday morning to drop off a sewing machine. She texted me last week and asked if I could help out her kids, who are in 4-H. The 4-H club has machines that the kids can take home and use, but they were getting frustrated with the machine they had borrowed. I said I would look over my collection and find something suitable. I have a couple of Singer Spartans, which are the 3/4 size version of the Singer 66, and thought one of those would be a good choice. The one I pulled out last week looks like it has hardly been used. The wiring is study and sound, the machine is clean, and it makes a lovely stitch.

When I got to her house, however, she was on her way out to the barn to check on a cow that was about to calve. We visited for a few minutes and decided to postpone the sewing machine session until later in the week.

[She mentioned that the local 4-H group would love to have some help with the kids’ sewing projects, which I knew, but I just can’t shoehorn anything else into the schedule.]

Your sewing machine eye candy for this week is my friend Scott’s latest blog post. A few years ago, I introduced Scott to the wonderful world of vintage sewing machines. He has picked up and rehabbed a few machines since then, but I thought he had scratched that particular itch because he told me he was done. Apparently not. His latest acquisition is a crinkle-finish Singer 128. (The crinkle finish is also know as the “Godzilla” finish in sewing machine circles.) Do check out his blog, because he posted a mesmerizing video of the bobbin winder mechanism in motion.

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I am in the process of upgrading the husband’s IT systems. For years—decades—he has always gotten the hand-me-down computers from the kids and me. He’s currently using my 2008 Mac tower, which was bleeding edge hardware at the time I bought it, but which can no longer be upgraded. I ordered him a new iMac yesterday. We kicked around the idea of getting him a laptop, too, that he could take out to the new shop with him. His new Bosch scan tool has a browser, though, so what he really needed was a way to get internet out in his shop. He bought and installed a wireless antenna that picks up the wi-fi from the house. At some point, we may need to run a phone line out there, but this setup works for now.

I also got him a new phone. I’ll have to take his current phone with me on Saturday to have everything transferred over at the Verizon store, but that shouldn’t take too long.

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I picked up this book while I was at the store for Ruler Club yesterday:

This is by Christina Cameli. She’s a quilting designer and teacher who lives in Portland, OR. I’ve seen her on some crafting shows and she’s great fun to watch. The cool thing about this book is that each page of free motion combinations comes in a black and white illustration. I can make a copy of the page and then practice by stitching over the paper with just a needle, no thread. I’m hoping this will help me get better at free motion. Rulerwork is all well and good, but there are times when a little background fill is needed.

Mondays Are Prep Days

I’ve fallen into a pattern of having Monday be the day that I prep projects to work on throughout the week. The system seems to be working, so I’m keeping it. I’m finding that doing so allows me to 1) clean up the mess that resulted from the previous week’s work, 2) organize and re-file anything I’m done using, 3) produce a pile of projects to work on throughout the coming week, and 4) make a shopping list if I am missing anything I need.

I’ve been making table runners here and there—instant gratification projects if ever there were any—and had half a dozen that needed to backed and basted. That was the first order of business yesterday morning. I pulled out my bin of leftover batting scraps and my bin of Christmas fabrics and got all of them ready to be quilted:

When I need a quick quilting project, I’ll sit down at the Q20 and knock out one or two of these.

I cut fabric for several more of these:

This is Jeni Baker’s Bear Paw Baby Quilt, although when I made this one, I used Essex Linen rather than quilting cotton, an idea I got from Anna Graham at Noodlehead. (The quilt in this photo went to my friend Susan’s second grandson.) Baby quilts are always handy to have on hand, and I had enough fabric to cut pieces for three of these. I’m using the Essex Linen again.

I am in desperate need of more aprons for myself. I went through my apron drawer a few weeks ago and culled some of the ones I don’t wear as much because I don’t like the style. Having a long torso means that waist ties don’t always sit where they are supposed to, and I hate when they ride up. I took the apron I reach for most often—because I love the way it fits—and traced a pattern from it. I cut six aprons from a pile of heavier-weight fabrics that I’ve been saving, including some twills, some canvas, and some linen. These still need pockets and ties, but the body parts are cut.

I ran more cotton fleece and terrycloth through the Accuquilt cutter for two more batches of makeup pads. I’m going to need the serger for another project soon, so I’d like to finish making these while it’s still set up for this particular threading.

And finally, I traced the Kristin dress pattern in preparation for cutting it out. I was a bit dismayed to discover that the instructions for putting this together are minimal, and that’s being generous. I first looked for them within the PDF, then realized that they were printed at the bottom of the sheet I was tracing:

Those are the only instructions. Fortunately, this is not a complicated dress. I also have enough sewing skills that I can figure out what needs to be done if it isn’t specified. I’m leaving out the zipper. This dress probably won’t get cut out until next Monday, because I’d like to cut several garment patterns at once and I need to trace two more patterns.

The only task I didn’t complete—because I need to get three yards of a red print fabric—was cutting the sashings for the Churn Dash and Sunbonnet Sue quilts. I want to do those at the same time because I’ll be cutting the strips on the Accuquilt cutter.

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I texted Kevin yesterday morning to tell him about the heater in my car shutting itself off. He texted me back and said he was not aware that it was related to the EGR cooler issue and thanked me for passing that along. The husband said that I should let BMW know that he is available for consultations on their product, LOL.

I made a salad last night with the first cutting of lettuce from the new system. The second tray isn’t far behind, and I started a third one a few days ago. I got a notice from Victory Seeds that my seed order shipped. I tend to stick to the same varieties every year—gardening is tricky enough without experimenting with our food supply—but I did add a few new items to try.

That Answers That Question

I drove the Acura to church yesterday morning and left The Diva here with the husband. He replaced the starter solenoid and hooked the car up to the scan tool to read the codes that the computer was throwing. The scan tool informed him that the reason the heater is working intermittently is because of the EGR cooler, which is the subject of the most recent recall. The computer shuts off the heater periodically, presumably to help keep the engine from catching on fire. That is not likely, but there is a non-zero chance it could happen. The EGR cooler already failed once and was fixed under a recall, but the recall part is also failing. However, BMW does not yet have a fix for the problem. I guess that until they do, a whole bunch of BMW owners are driving around wondering why their heater is only working intermittently (and hoping their cars don’t catch on fire).

[I might text Kevin this morning and ask him if he knows that the heater shutting off is a thing.]

The tire pressure monitoring system is also having intermittent seizures and flashing lights at me, but that’s because I stopped in at the tire place last Wednesday and asked them to look at the right front tire with the slow leak. They determined it needed a new valve stem—and ordered one—but as of Friday, said valve stem had not yet been delivered. The valve stem is connected to the tire pressure monitor, so they had to take the TPM out. It is currently sitting in the cup holder. The computer keeps looking for that TPM, though, and when it can’t find it, it freaks out.

Sigh.

Some days, I fail to see how all this extra technology on my car is helping me. There is such a thing as a point of diminishing returns. We were watching a Car Wizard video the other night and he said that he hates working on BMWs because people buy them but don’t have the budget to do the (relentless and ridiculous) maintenance on them, so they slowly fall apart. I would not have this car if I didn’t also have my own personal BMW mechanic. And I won’t ever buy another BMW.

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My friend Ginger brought her latest project to church yesterday to show me. I didn’t think to take a picture, but she sent me one later in the day.

This is boutis, a form of French quilting. (The Art of Boutis, by Kumiko Nakayama-Geraerts, is a good resource.) The picture doesn’t do it justice. The texture of the piece is amazing.

Ginger is so creative—for many years, she has done the visuals at our church. Walking into the sanctuary every Sunday is a treat for the eyes. She also knits and sews, and now she is doing boutis.

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This is the pattern I chose to quilt in the border of the tumblers quilt:

I am using one of Amanda Murphy’s Lollipop rulers; in Ruler Club, we are using the Mini Lollipop rulers, but there is no triangle shape in that set, so I got the set of larger ones. This was a bit tricky because she doesn’t include any instructions for using the motifs horizontally. They are intended to be used vertically, in columns, and there are few markings on the ruler for horizontal positioning. I did some experimentation on a quilt sandwich, though, to determine the correct spacing.

That bottom horizontal line of traveling quilting is going to be hidden in the binding, so when the quilt is done, it won’t show. The motifs will look like they are coming up from the edge.

This is how the ruler looks when I am using it:

Amanda Murphy says she now prefers to call them “templates” rather than “rulers,” but I still think of them as rulers.

I’ve got both long borders done. (The math was easier for those sides.) I’ll do the two short borders and the corners, trim the quilt and attach the binding, and this one can be crossed off the list.

I need to practice stitching in the ditch. Mostly I do okay, but there are a few places where it shows. I love how the variegated blue thread looks in the border. The stitching is more visible than it would have been if I had used a solid blue that matched the fabric, but the contrast isn’t so great that the mistakes stand out like sore thumbs.

I might take this to Ruler Club with me tomorrow for show-and-tell, although I don’t want to be that student. That’s the teacher part of my personality coming out, I think. It’s always helpful to have visuals.

I mocked up a quilt design in EQ8 with 25 Churn Dash blocks so I could get a yardage estimate for the sashing and borders.

This sashing is similar—although not identical—to the kind of sashing I plan to use for the Sunbonnet Sue quilt. I need to set up the Accuquilt cutter to cut strips for both quilts, and then I am going to be sewing a lot of long, straight seams.