Janet is Closed

Nicole Sauce, who does my favorite Living Free in Tennessee podcast, has a policy of taking time off periodically and telling people that “Nicole is closed.” Janet is going to be closed this week. Except for a few previously-scheduled commitments, I am not going to be available to solve problems, manage projects, or head off emergencies. If I don’t answer phone calls or texts, that’s why.

I spent yesterday afternoon tracing a stack of patterns in preparation for a marathon sewing session. I will start with the apron order. After that, it’s the lounge pants from New Look 6689:

The Renee ponte pants fit well, but I need to make a few other pants patterns to better understand crotch shaping and potential adjustments to that area. The top is nice, too, but it’s further down the priority list.

I’ve got the Love Notions Laundry Day Tee traced and ready to make. I joined the Love Notions pattern support group on Facebook and that has provided a wealth of fitting information, as have the patterns themselves. The patterns come with a full bust pattern piece, so I don’t have to do the full bust adjustment myself. After the LDT comes the Love Notions Tessa Sheath dress. I still have a couple of yards of that summer ponte in a lovely periwinkle blue that is earmarked for that pattern, although I plan to make a muslin first to make sure the length is good.

I scoured the clearance bins at Joanns the other day and came up with some slinky, sparkly dark green Lurex stretch knit—it sounds hideous, but made up into the right top, it’s going to be spectacular, I think—and I’ve got another New Look pattern to go with it:

I bought this one because I wanted to see how the cowl shaping compared to the Easton Cowl pattern. The basic design is similar, but this one has some additional shoulder pleating to help drape the cowl. I will not be making those flutter sleeves, ick. Sewing the Lurex may prove to be a challenge, but I have to try. If this works out, it may end up being my holiday outfit, and kudos to me for not waiting until the last minute to make something.

This is all part of the educational process. If I am going to be teaching clothing classes, I’d better broaden my experience.

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My refrigerator has some new artwork:

Our renters have a little girl who is a quite a firecracker. She was selling pictures the other day at a stand in her yard, so I went over and bought two of them. Please note that she signed her name in cursive, and she just finished kindergarten.

WS had his lemonade stand set up during the garden tour, so several tour guests came to my garden carrying their drinks. His lemonade has quite the reputation—you can choose to drink it plain or have raspberries, strawberries, or huckleberries added to it. I’m partial to the strawberry version.

And I am making progress with the little rooster. He decided that if the hens could eat scratch grains out of my hand, he could, too. I’m waiting for him to start practicing crowing. That should start any day now.

They Came, They Saw, They Toured

I think we had a successful garden tour yesterday. I was exhausted by the end of the day—I talked to a lot of people and I am not used to being out in the heat like that—but I met quite a few new people and answered many questions. The lavender shortbread cookies seemed to be a big hit. My baking skills are minimal, but it’s hard to screw up a recipe with only three ingredients, one of which is butter. The husband was happy that there were a few left over for him to eat.

My friend Robin was my hostess, and she sat and greeted people as they came in. We got to catch up after not seeing each other for almost four months.

Racer snake stayed out of sight, as did his garter snake friends; I checked the zucchini before the tour to make sure that no one was hiding under the leaves waiting to scare the living daylights out of a guest:

Racer snake completely ignores me when I am out there, but the garter snakes see me coming and slither off to hide.

I picked the first zucchini yesterday! The avalanche will not be long in coming.

I am trying an experiment. We can’t grow sweet potatoes here, but apparently, the leaves are tasty and good in stir fry and sautes. I had a couple in the house that had started to sprout, so I popped them into a pot and put them in the garden. The first leaves have poked through the dirt:

We’ll see how they taste.

I need to step up my baby rooster training efforts. One of the Barred Rock pullets managed to get from the separate space into the big coop yesterday. The baby rooster knew the pullet was not where she was supposed to be and was pacing back and forth, obviously agitated. I scooped her up to put her back with her friends—which made her squawk—and he started to come at me. I calmed him down and told him what a good rooster he was for looking out for his hens. I want him to be assertive about taking care of them, but he has to direct his instincts in the right direction.

It’s a process. At least he’s been watching Dave, which is good. I want to find a home for him. I’d keep him but Dave doesn’t like competition.

I hope things calm down now. I need some peace and quiet. The co-op sale has been scheduled for September 23rd and 24th, although I said to Robin that I may not sell there this year. I don’t have that much inventory and my cousin is getting married the weekend before. We’ll see.

I’ve figured out where I want to run away to for a few days—the trick is going to be shoehorning a trip into the schedule between Zoom interviews of interim pastor candidates and having to play piano at church on Sundays. The new Homestead Foundation website is just about ready to launch, too. I am getting together with the treasurer this week to get the e-commerce links set up, after which we’ll be able to take donations and sell memberships.

But first, sewing.

Down the Garden Path

For the locals, here are the details on this Saturday’s garden tour:

The Mountain Brook Community Center, 2353 Foothill Rd, will host a fundraising garden tour on Saturday, July 16th from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm entitled, “What’s Growing in Mountain Brook (Legally).” The tour will feature 5 working gardens in the Mountain Brook community, which has its own microclimate challenges for gardeners.

Gardeners will begin each hour of the tour by introducing their gardens and participants will be free to ask questions and meander through gardens as they wish.

Five artists have been chosen to paint in the gardens, Lavonne Burgard, Lindalee Cleveland, Therese Ely, Lael Gray, and Sunnie LeBlanc. Sunnie LeBlanc will be doing Plein Aire paintings. Garden refreshments will be served.

Six artists will be at the Mountain Brook Community Center: Gail Hanson, Sandra Marker, Chris Olson Hartley, Dixie Turner, and Pam Wheat.

Tickets are $10/person. To purchase tickets, call the library, 406-314-8232 or stop by Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 5-8 pm. Tickets are also available for purchase the day of the tour. After touring all five gardens, drop off your punched ticket for a chance of winning a gift basket.

Come and join us! I am sure all of us will be emphasizing the challenges of gardening in Montana in our talks this year.

I love my lavender. I’m going to cut some today to use in baking the treats we’ll be serving at the garden tour.

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In the midst of getting ready for this garden tour, I’ve also been juggling my responsibilities as a member of our pastor transition team. We went from having one candidate a few weeks ago to now having several. We are trying to schedule Zoom interviews, but that’s made more challenging by the fact that people are traveling—candidates as well as team members—and one of our team members drives truck around the state during the week.

I’d still like to get away for a few days, but that’s going to have to wait until we get these Zoom interviews scheduled.

Today and tomorrow focus completely on garden prep. I’ve been waiting to cut the grass one last time. Most of the weeding has been done; it’s minimal thanks to the black plastic.

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It turns out the duck that was in our yard did not belong to WS but to someone else in the neighborhood. Apparently, that person’s chickens got out of the coop. I think the duck may have been living with the chickens and escaped at the same time, which explains why it was hanging around our coop and looked like it wanted to be inside with the chickens. (I suspect Dave would have had something to say about that.)

Elysian sent WS over with a net and the duck has been reunited successfully with its family.

A Bear Was There

We have a path from our property through the woods to the other property where the greenhouse and garden are located. I walk that path multiple times a day. I know immediately if something is different. Yesterday morning, I asked the husband if he would walk out to the garden with me when I went to turn the water on. It was about 6 am—early enough that I shouldn’t be out wandering around by myself. As we walked down the path, I spotted some pieces of rotted tree stump spread around. They hadn’t been there the day before. I pointed to the stump:

“A bear did that, didn’t it?” I said.

“Probably.”

“This is why you are coming with me to the garden.”

The bears like to dig for grubs in the rotted tree stumps. This stump was only about 100 feet from the chicken coop, but presumably, the bear has figured out that it will get a nasty shock on the nose if it goes looking for a chicken dinner. The husband opined that it would be great if we could get the bears to dig up all the tree stumps for us.

It has taken a couple of days and a lot of hose dragging, but I think I finally have my watering system in place. We just had a thunderstorm rumble through, but not enough rain to fill a teacup so I’m trying to be diligent about watering every morning.

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There has been no sewing. None. I had Ali’s little guy for a few hours yesterday; it was too hot for me to be outside, so the scheduled activity at Auntie Janet’s Summer Camp was watching Jurassic World Legos on YouTube. The boys don’t watch much TV—which is a good thing—so when they come here, it’s a treat I don’t feel too bad about providing. I sat and watched, too, and knocked out a few hexies.

I’ve got the Love Notions Laundry Day Tee pattern and Tessa Sheath Dress pattern in the queue. (I might still do the Vivace Dolman, too, but I’m going to start with these.) Part of me asks myself, “How many T-shirts and dresses and ponte pants do you really need?” but then the other part points out that in order to understand pattern drafting and alterations, I need to sew these garments in actual fabrics, not simply theorize the construction in my head. At some point, I will have to do a ruthless purge of my closet. I am getting closer, though, to being able to sew the things I want to wear, in the colors I want to wear, and have clothes that fit me perfectly.

The last time Joanns had thread on sale, I picked up a spool of this:

Some of the patterns I’ve made recently—the Easton Cowl and the Renee ponte pants—require that some of the stitching be done on the sewing machine. I’ve been using regular thread and it’s been fine, but I’d like to try this on the next batch of patterns. This is stretch thread that can be used in both the top and the bobbin. I am curious to see how it behaves.

Blog posts may be few and far between for the next couple of days. I still have a lot to do to get ready for this garden tour. I’ll try to remember to take some pictures, though.

Little Bunny Foo-Foo

We have a rabbit. It hangs out here by the house, which is fine with me. At least if it’s here, I know it’s not eating produce out in the garden.

I christened it “Foo-Foo,” a name that baffled the husband until we determined that he did not know the song about Little Bunny Foo-Foo hopping through the forest, picking up the field mice and bopping them on the head.

(I sang it for him.)

I often tease him that he came into this world as an adult in a child’s body, but given the bizarre things I’ve pulled out of my brain from my childhood—like a song about a rabbit bopping field mice on the head—maybe he thinks that’s a good thing.

Moving on . . . when he came to bed last night, he said, “Did you know we had a duck?”

“A duck? We don’t have a duck. WS has a duck. It must have wandered over here.”

“It was out by the chicken coop eating scratch grains.”

I will see if it is still here when it gets light out. I think it’s looking for a pond.

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I have alerted the husband that once this garden tour is over, I plan to disappear for a few days. I am not sure when, or where I am going to go, but I need a few days alone not being responsible for anyone or anything. I may also just tell people I am going somewhere but stay here and sew without answering the door or the telephone. I haven’t decided. A few days of sewing in an Airbnb elsewhere would be ideal, but all of my supplies are here. Joanns had New Look patterns on sale this week. They hardly ever go on sale, so I took advantage and bought a couple. I’ve traced them and would like to test them out.

And of course, in the middle of all of this, we had an unexpected development in our pastor search process. It could be a good development, but it comes with time constraints. When it rains, it pours.

I begged off attending the Homestead Foundation board meeting last night. I want to live in a world where we have board meetings at 6 am, when I am happy and fresh and ready to tackle the day, instead of at 7 pm when I am tired and cranky and done with people. I gave Susan (the president) my report about the progress of the website. The garden tour booklet is done and I am going to start printing and assembling it today. I need to do some baking on Thursday; each of the gardens will have refreshments, and I’d like to serve some lavender shortbread and lavender lemonade. Lavender is one of the things my garden is known for, and seedlings from my plants have been shared all over this valley. The lavender hedges should be close to peak for the garden tour on Saturday. Have I mentioned that it’s going to be 91 degrees? We’ll be making use of that pop-up canopy I bought before the plant sale.

I also need to clean up the greenhouse. The garden looks reasonably good. It will just need some touching up here and there, and the husband has promised to do the trimming with the big weedeater some night this week.

And it occurred to me yesterday that it’s almost August. This is one of the weird things about living in Montana—summer is so short anyway that when we have a cold spring and cold June, summer feels even shorter than normal. I don’t mind; I prefer cooler weather, but the fact that fall is breathing down our necks just as the weather is starting to warm up is a bit disconcerting.

The young woman who does my eyebrow waxing got caught out on Flathead Lake Saturday during that hailstorm. She has bruises on her arms. We were joking yesterday that we should create a tourism campaign about not coming to Montana, because Montana will try to kill you, in lots of creative and horrifying ways.

That Road to Hell

This has been a difficult week. Everything I’ve attempted to do in the spirit of moving some things in a positive direction has come back to me in spades in the form of criticism and disapprobation. I’ve had to explain and defend myself left and right. Even an online community that I usually consider to be a good support system felt it necessary to tell me what I was doing wrong. The criticism is one thing; what bothers me more, though, are the swirling undercurrents in society that seem to be driving this behavior. Or maybe it’s the coming full moon. Either way, grace and kindness seem to be in short supply.

I’m going forward anyway. We’ve had to make some sudden adjustments to the garden tour plans. One of the tour participants had to pull out, so we are swapping in my friend Susan’s garden. I just finished laying out the garden tour booklet, which means a few last-minute adjustments, but that delay meant that we were able to sell a few business card ads for the booklet to help raise money. (See? It’s always possible to find the positive if you’re willing to look.) I also indulged myself for a few hours yesterday afternoon and worked on the Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation website. This kind of work is not something I would want to do professionally or full-time, but it’s a form of design and I enjoy it, although I enjoy it far more now than I did when I had to hand code everything. I also like being able to showcase what our community organization is doing. The website is close to being done and I am hoping to have it up by the end of the month. I think it looks great, although given my experiences this week, no doubt there will be people lined up to tell me how I could have done it better.

The husband was trying to finish up a job about an hour and a half south of here, so he was gone all day yesterday. He had given one of our employees permission to work on his vehicle in our shop. That kid and a buddy were here most of the day. I spent the morning out in the garden trying to wrangle my watering system into shape. The robins are gone, thankfully, so I was able to pull all the hoses out of storage, but then I had to organize them and lay them out. The basic system is in place, though. I’ll tweak as needed.

And I finished up one more knot top:

This is the Azalea Top by Sinclair Patterns. The fabric is some double-brushed poly picked up for $3 a yard from the Joanns clearance bin at one of the Spokane stores. I am ambivalent about this one. It looks okay on me, although it needs additional length. And I think I somehow managed to put the sleeves in backwards despite carefully transferring the marks from the pattern pieces. I must have turned them around. I’ll have to take those out and redo them. (I understand the rationale for shaped sleeve caps in wovens, but knit fabric is so forgiving that including it seems unnecessary to me.) The knot construction is also very, very fiddly. I don’t like this one enough to make more of it.

I was hemming this top on the coverstitch yesterday afternoon when I started to hear rumblings of thunder. We’ve had some serious storms this week. On Thursday night, a huge system came barreling up from the southwest and dropped golf ball-sized hail on parts of the valley. The damage was spotty, though, and missed us. (I didn’t know anything had happened until the husband got home from fire training and came to bed, as apparently I slept through it.) We weren’t so lucky with yesterday’s storm, though, and got a few minutes of nickel-sized hail. As soon as it was over, I went out to check on the garden. The only casualty appeared to be this parsnip:

RIP, parsnip. (I planted parsnips once and now they come up all over the garden.)

Those of us whose gardens will be featured on this tour have been comparing notes on what a challenging gardening season this has been. Despite what some people, like Michael Bloomberg, would have you think—"I could teach anybody, even people in this room, to be a farmer. It's a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn"—growing food is not a foregone conclusion. It rains, it doesn’t rain, it snows, it hails, it’s too hot, it’s too cold, rabbits and ground squirrels think you planted a buffet just for them, grasshoppers snack on the tomatillos . . . I could go on and on, but you get the idea. I will be grateful for everything that comes out of the garden this year, even the zucchinis.

I realized yesterday that it’s been a full-court press since the plant sale in May. I went from the sale to traveling to getting ready for this garden tour, and I am ready for a break. Next week is going to be all about stuff I want to do. I’ll make my custom apron order, make a few more tops for myself, and play around with making that bodice block.

Racers in the Garden

I’ve figured out where the snakes like to sun themselves in the morning, so I am careful not to disturb them when I go out to the garden. Yesterday, this one was hanging out at the far end of the lavender hedge:

Montana has ten native snake species, four of which inhabit our corner of the state: garters, gophersnakes, rubber boas, and racers. We do not have rattlers where we live. I’ve got both garter snakes and racers in my garden. The difference is in the size and coloration. Garter snakes tend to be smaller, with orange or yellow stripes down their backs. Racers are larger—I had one here a few years ago that was a good two feet long—and are solid grayish brown.

I like the racers because they will eat small rodents, but they also act as a deterrent to the larger ones. (I’d love to have a gophersnake because one of those would take care of the big rodents, but I’ve never seen one here.) And the bug population has decreased significantly in the past week or so. Grasshoppers were turning my tomatillo plants into lacy works of art until the snakes moved in. Now the tomatillos are growing unmolested. I have never had a problem with tomato hornworms or potato beetles, either.

I worked in the garden yesterday morning until it got too hot. (Just for reference, anything over 75F is “too hot.”) My friend Susan came over with a supply of paper and we spent the rest of the day copying and folding our community organization’s quarterly newsletter so she could mail it out today.

Our community organization—the Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation—is having some growing pains. The organization itself has been in existence for 20 years and was established to help maintain the original schoolhouse campus that sits in the middle of Mountain Brook. Up until a few years ago, the local school district had control of that campus, but they wanted out from under the responsibility. What followed was months and months of legal detective work to find the descendants of the family that had donated the property in 1927, because the original terms of the donation specified that the property would revert back to the family should it ever stop being used as an educational institution. When the sole living descendant was identified, she chose to donate the campus to the Homestead Foundation.

The husband and I have supported the organization financially, but this year, I got drafted into being on the Fundraising Committee. Sadly, there have been a lot of personal squabbles that have gotten in the way of some of our activities, but such is the way of human beings attempting to work together, I think.

The organization operates on a shoestring. We have determined that we need to raise a minimum of $15,000 a year just to stay viable. That amount comes from memberships as well as special activities such as pie socials, the plant sale, a yard sale, and our upcoming garden tour. And that $15,000 doesn’t reflect all of the miscellaneous donations of time and a tremendous amount of sweat equity—like spending five hours printing and folding a newsletter—that go into making these things happen.

[I have an office-sized copy machine that does double-sided copies and I am happy to have it be used for situations just like this. I also got to spend time visiting with Susan, although after we were done, I ordered a paper-folding machine to make the process go more quickly the next time, LOL.]

I want this organization to succeed. I hope that everyone involved can focus more on the goal, which is to help this community organization grow and thrive, and less on the specifics of how we get there. And we need to be careful not to let perfect be the enemy of the good. Yes, we should strive to do the best job we can, but we should also have some grace for ourselves and others. We are halfway through 2022 and we’ve already raised half of our financial goal for the year, and I think that’s amazing.

Once the garden tour is over, I need to finish setting up the Homestead Foundation website. We have so many amazing activities to share with the community and that will help us to get the word out.

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I do not have any more serger classes schedule until the beginning of August, which is good because I am going to need the breathing room after this garden tour. Next week is going to be spent making the garden pretty. I think the baby robins have fledged, so I’m hoping to be able to retrieve my soaker hoses and finish setting up the watering system without being killed by their parents. We are supposed to get much warmer temps next week and I expect stuff will start taking off.

Old School Serging

Yesterday’s Serger 101 class was a lot of fun. The lady from the Joanns cut counter did indeed sign up, so I had two students. She brought an old, old Juki MO-104 three-thread serger.

(Pic borrowed from the internet because I forgot to take a picture of her machine.)

According to the Juki website, that MO-100 series of sergers came out in the 1970s. I am sure they were state of the art at the time, but hers now holds the record for the oldest serger I have ever had in class. Except for needing some oil—and it could stand to have a good servicing anyway—the machine serged beautifully. She was thrilled when she was able to thread it with a decorative variegated thread in the top looper and make a colorful edging on some flannel baby blankets.

The other lady had a new Bernette serger, which is the lower-end line of Bernina machines. They still have the same air-threading technology as my Bernina L860 does, however. I got her comfortable with changing settings and tensions, and by the end of class, she was experimenting with all sorts of stitches. The lady with the Juki saw what she was doing and asked me if she could do those same things on her machine. Unfortunately, those early machines are pretty limited. She can’t do rolled hems, and even serging knits is going to be trickier with only three threads (she wants to take the ponte pants class and I doubt she will be able to sew that fabric on her machine). We talked about upgrading and I gave her some options. I pointed out that if she wants a newer machine, she doesn’t have to spend a boatload of money, and that knowing the limitations of her current machine will help her decide what features she wants to pay for.

Today is an all-day serger apron class at the other quilt store.

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The other night, while surfing Pinterest at 11:30 pm because I couldn’t sleep, I ran across a website called Dresspatternmaking.com, so I popped over and took a look. Oh.My.Goodness. This is a whole website devoted to drafting your own sewing patterns. I even purchased and downloaded an e-book on making my own bodice block. I do know some of this from my knitting design days, but sewing is a different beast. The author writes:

In the garment production industry, these systems work well. A pattern is drafted to a figure with predetermined proportions. All other sizes are based on that initial figure; they are ‘graded up’ or down. In this system, there is a proportional relationship between certain measurements (e.g. hip and thigh), so that proportion needs to remain consistent for every size.

She notes that this system works well if your body shape is similar to that being used as the standard in the industry.

However, if your body is different in a large degree to the Standard Figure that the block making instructions are based on, and you also differ in a number of ways (very small waist, larger hips, smaller thighs, large protruding bottom), it can be very difficult to determine where to start to make adjustments, especially if you are new to sewing or fitting.

She has devised a system, particularly, for fitting bodices based on cup size rather than full bust measurements, which makes total sense and is the one area that frustrates me beyond belief. I could have the exact same full bust measurement with a D-cup that someone else has with a B-cup, because their weight is distributed differently. If I choose a pattern size based on full bust measurement, it is going to fit me badly in the shoulders and upper bodice. (WELCOME TO MY WORLD OF SHOPPING READY TO WEAR.) I would have to choose a smaller size and do a full bust adjustment. How much nicer it would be to be able to draft my own tops to fit ME and not have to do a FBA or use hacks like a boob bump. (That BB method does work well with knits, though, I have to admit.)

[I have concluded that one of the reasons most Liz Claiborne stuff fits me (reasonably) well is because my body shape must be close to that of the blocks they are using for drafting their lines.]

I plan to study this designer’s methods before my pants-fitting class next month because I am sure we are going to have some fitting issues that need to be addressed. And I need to enlist the husband’s help for measuring again, because I need about 30 different measurements and can’t take them all myself.

Spoiled by My Serger

I had two tops I wanted to get done yesterday. Never let a sewing machine know you are in a hurry. I had far more problems than I should have had.

I started with the Scout Tee. Let’s just say that my expectations for this top were pretty low. There is a small subset of women who look good in boxy woven tees and I am not part of that subset. (Also, “woven tee” seems like an oxymoron to me.) Everyone I’ve seen around the sewing universe who raves about this pattern is 12” wide and weighs 98 pounds dripping wet, including the woman who designed it.

Still, the pattern was sized for a D-cup, with darts, so I was curious to see how it would look made up. I got it all cut out, went to work, and was immediately reminded why I never used to enjoy sewing. I don’t relish making clothes out of woven fabrics. I have been spoiled by the ease of making knit tops on my serger. I got to the part where I had to attach the neck binding and hit an impasse. The pattern directs you to cut a band on the bias and use that to finish the neck opening. Perhaps if I had just followed those directions, I would have been okay, but I decided that I wanted an accent color on both the neckline and hem, so I went looking for some Wright’s bias binding in my stash. The fabric was white with small black polka dots.

I did not have any black 1/2” bias binding, although I had every other color imaginable. I had 1/4” bias binding, but I tried to attach that and it was an unqualified disaster. I spent more time taking it out than I had in making the top up to that point. Disgusted, I put the top in time out and moved on to the other one.

The Liesel + Co Easton Tee is a cowl neck knit top. I used some periwinkle blue cotton/spandex that I thought would be light enough to allow the cowl to drape. The pattern does say that if you choose a heavier knit, you might have to cut the front on the bias. I did not and it turned out fine.

The pattern gives the option for using a facing on the back or binding the back neck edge. I chose the facing, although I somehow spaced out and missed the step about adding interfacing to that piece. I ended up having to topstitch the facing down later. If I ever have time one of these days, I am going to put the binding attachment on my Juki serger and learn how to use it, but yesterday was not that day.

Some of the steps have to be done on the sewing machine. The first thing I will change when I make this top again is to widen the seam allowances. A 1/4” seam allowance is fine for piecing quilts; it is too narrow for clothing, especially knits that want to curl. At a minimum, it should be 3/8” but 1/2” would be even better. Very few indie pattern designers use 5/8” seams.

Once I got past sewing the shoulders together—the trickiest part because of the self-fabric cowl—the rest of the top went together quickly.

I was pleased to note that this size included a “boob bump” a la Zede Donahue of the Sewing Out Loud podcast, although if I hadn’t been familiar with the concept, I might have thought the pattern had a problem as nothing was noted about easing in that extra fabric on the side seams.

I’ll be making this top again. I like the way it fits and the length is not bad. The cowl neckline is flattering. I will change those sleeves, though—there was slightly more than one inch at the underarm before hemming and the pattern specified a 1” deep hem. I couldn’t quite figure out how that was supposed to work. I am not a fan of cap sleeves anyway. The pattern also includes long sleeves.

Once the Easton Tee was done, I went back to see if I could complete the other top. I went ahead and made my own black bias binding—I should have done that from the start—and finished the top.

Eh. It fits, but it looks like a maternity top on me. (Interestingly, the length of both tops is the same.) I expected it might because the silhouette widens from the bust down to the hips. I should have set the sleeves in flat, as I am used to doing, instead of following the directions. They are not my best work, but they look equally awful, so that’s okay, LOL. Maybe this top would be okay in a drapey rayon or even a knit, but I’m not likely to make it again. The designer did make it up in a couple of knit fabrics, as detailed in this blog post. Go take a look and you’ll see what I mean about the subset of women who look good in this style.

I learn something even from the projects that bomb. I like the upper bodice shaping on the Scout Tee and likely will use that in other tops because the darts are where they are supposed to be. If the pattern were lengthened into a tunic or dress and made out of a knit, it might be okay. I was reminded again that I prefer knits to wovens—both wearing and sewing—and that I know what is likely to look good on my body and what won’t. I also prefer the speed and ease of making tops on my serger.

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We went to a neighborhood BBQ Sunday afternoon hosted by our friend, Smokey. He put on quite the spread—appetizers, potato salad, macaroni salad, grilled ribs and chicken, and fried catfish and hush puppies. I love catfish, so I stuffed myself silly with that and some hush puppies. Several people commented to the husband and me that, “It is nice to see the two of you sitting down,” and “Every time I drive by, you guys are are out working.” I did not realize the neighborhood took such notice of our activities.

The schedule is stuffed full this week. I have a serger class today and another one tomorrow, the grass needs to be cut (probably Thursday), and I have to finish the garden tour booklet and get that printed. Next week be spent making the garden pretty in preparation for the tour on July 16. Hopefully, I can get to my soaker hoses soon, too, and finish setting up my watering system.

People Want to Make Clothes

I am hoping to get two projects done this weekend. The quilt store south of town will put classes for these on the schedule, but I need to make the sample garments, first, and I’d like to get them done ASAP. I’ve also got a custom apron order that I want to finish soon.

One of the tops is the Easton Cowl from Liesel + Co:

It calls for a lightweight knit, so I pulled all my knit fabric out of the stash to see if I had something suitable (I did). I would rather use up my stash fabric than buy more.

The second one is the Scout Tee from Grainline Studio:

I did not have enough of a suitable fabric for this one. It’s a woven tee, not a knit. Part of me is wishing I had splurged and bought a yard(ish) of the Liberty Tana Lawn when I saw it at the Joanns in Seattle, but I am not a flowy lawn clothing type of person and had no idea what I would do with it.

Because I needed fabric and thread, I made a rare weekend trip into town. Fortunately, the Joann Fabrics store is on the east side, just over the bridge, so I didn’t have to go into Kalispell proper.

I found two different lightweight cottons for the Scout Tee. One was a lovely Swiss dot in the clearance bin, marked down 50% with another 40% off because the stores are trying to make room for new stock. The other fabric was also a lightweight polka dot—a chambray—which I got for 75% off because there was a flaw in the fabric. It is not a big flaw and I can work around it, but the saleswoman offered the discount and I wasn’t going to refuse. Thread was “buy three, get three free,” which is always a good time to stock up on cones of Maxi-Lock serger thread. I also scored two yards of another knit on their Doorbuster sale for 60% off. (Maybe I should have bought a lottery ticket, too.)

Both top patterns have cup sizing options, which is fabulous. Most Big 4 patterns and even a lot of indie patterns assume a B cup. These go up to a D cup. The Scout Tee has darts in the pattern for that size. I may transfer those darts to the Kristin dress pattern because they appear to be in the correct location and also long enough, but I’ll know once I’ve made the top.

I traced both patterns and washed the fabric. Today and tomorrow are looking stormy, so I’m hoping to be able to knock out both tops. I’ve got a Serger 101 class on Tuesday afternoon and a Cookin’ in Color Apron class all day Wednesday and after that, I have to hit garden tour stuff hard.

I ran into someone I knew at Joanns. She and I were chatting at the cut counter and I said something about my serger classes this week. The lady at the cut counter got very excited and said, “You teach serger classes? And how to make your own clothes? Where do I sign up?” I gave her the information about the serger classes and I suspect she will be in Tuesday’s class. She wants to make her own clothes for the same reason that I do—because RTW fits so poorly.

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Something has been mowing down the peas about 6” from the ground. I wondered why they were struggling because I don’t usually have a problem growing peas. We do have more rabbits than usual this year, however, including one that has taken up residence here by the house. And ground squirrels, ugh. I would be picking off the ground squirrels with my .22 but the neighborhood is too busy and I can’t do it safely.

I saw two more garter snakes out in the garden yesterday morning—big ones—so I suggested that they move over to the other side of the garden and patrol the peas. The snakes have a tendency to hide under the leaves of the zucchini plants and scare me to death because I am not expecting to see them there. I don’t mind them, but I have to remember to look, first.

Reconnected

We were without internet for at least 60 hours. I noticed it was out when I got up at 4 am Wednesday morning. It finally came back on around 4 pm yesterday afternoon. According to our neighbor, Smokey, who stopped and visited with the repairman, a cable had come loose between the service boxes. Those of us who live here have longed complained about the fact that CenturyLink put the service boxes on a sharp corner—a corner routinely missed by motorists. Those boxes have taken a beating. If internet goes out, that’s the first place to check. The boxes haven’t been hit recently, but the damage has been cumulative and the cable was a casualty.

CenturyLink got in just under the wire, literally. I told the husband to be prepared to be without internet until the middle of next week, because if they didn’t fix it by 5 pm Friday, they weren’t going to work on it over a holiday weekend. The fix is temporary, but at least we’re all back online.

What did I do with my copious spare time? What I usually do, but without YouTube or periodic checks into social media. (I did miss having YouTube on in the background while sewing.) I puttered in the big garden—I am adding flowers and herbs here and there, which I’ve thinned out of the existing herb garden. I saw two garter snakes and half a dozen ladybugs, signs of a healthy ecosystem.

I do not use any kind of pest deterrents in my garden, and the fact that we have pollinators, beneficial insects, and happy garter snakes says to me that I must be doing something right.

I tried to install the rest of my watering system yesterday, but I needed soaker hose from a storage area, and when I went in to retrieve it, I was attacked and screamed at by two robins. They had a nest with babies on a shelf in that area. I retreated. I have never had birds attack me like that. They watched me the rest of the time I was out there, too, to make sure I wasn’t going to venture anywhere near that nest.

[At least I know enough to leave the wildlife alone, unlike the tourists in Yellowstone who are trying to pet the bison. This is not Disneyland, people. Even the robins will try to kill you.]

I also sewed. I made a pair of navy blue Renee pants. I think I’m going to swap this pair out for the hot pink ones I left on display at the quilt store.

I made a Style Arc Kristin dress:

This is also navy blue ponte, but it’s what Joann’s labeled as “summer ponte” and it’s lighter than the ponte I used for the Renee pants. I found it a bit easier to sew, too.

I did make some changes:

• I left off the patch pockets. I am not much of a pocket person. Were I to need pockets, I would put them in the side seams.

• Reviewers said the back zipper was unnecessary, so I left it out. I have no trouble getting the dress over my head.

• I had to adjust the neck facing because I eliminated the zipper. I might make the facing a bit deeper next time. I understitched it and tacked it to the shoulder seams and the neckline lies nice and smooth, but I wonder if a slightly deeper facing might be better.

• The bust darts—oh, the bust darts. These kinds of dresses have the potential to hang like shapeless potato sacks, so I was happy to see the darts and some waist shaping in the pattern. Unfortunately, the darts were nowhere in the vicinity of where they needed to be. They were too short and too far down on the body. I ended up opening the side seams and taking the darts out, then adjusting their location and making them longer. I did that completely by intuition. Amazingly, they look better now, although I think I still need to move them up vertically a bit more. I’ll play around with the pattern a bit.

• I like the length—above the knee looks very strange on me and this falls to just below my kneecaps, although I liked the length better before I hemmed the dress. If I make a long-sleeve winter version, I’ll lengthen it a tiny bit. This pattern includes a tunic-length version, too.

I washed that fabric before I sewed with it, but I think the dress needs another trip through the wash, then left hung to dry. Or steamed well.

Once the pants and dress were hemmed, I went back and cleaned and organized my sewing area. The owner of the quilt store where I am teaching the pants class in August thinks that I should teach more clothing classes. She may have an uptapped market there—almost all of the Robert Kaufman ponte she ordered for the pants class is gone. Joanns is the only place to get garment fabrics locally and that’s not saying much. I came home with patterns for two tops that she’d like me to make and teach. The only problem is that she orders fabrics in colors that she likes, which all tend to be muddy earth tones. She would never order hot pink ponte.

After cleaning up, I created a stack of patterns matched up with fabrics to make them. If it is cool and rainy here on Monday, as predicted, I plan to have a marathon cutting session in preparation for an assembly line sewing session.

Cut Off

Our internet went out yesterday morning. According to CenturyLink’s website—oh, how I hate thee, CenturyLink—current repair ETA is tomorrow morning. They keep pushing that out, however, so I have no idea when we will have access restored. Cell phone reception at our place is spotty, at best. If I stand in the middle of the driveway, I can check e-mail. Text me if it’s urgent.

I should not be this dependent on a utility, but several things have come to a standstill precisely when I need to work on them. I will be out in the garden if you need me.

Ponte and Patterns

No trip would be complete without some fabric-related shopping. At the store in Issaquah, I bought a couple of thread storage boxes. Thread is threatening to take over here and I need a good way to corral it. Floriani makes some nice drawer boxes that work really well for the smaller spools of decorative serger thread.

[I will be appearing on Quilt Gallery’s Facebook Live in a few weeks to talk about thread. The owner and employee who usually do the Tuesday morning broadcast will be away at a conference, so I offered to step in and talk about the Wonderfil threads that the store carries.]

I hit the Joann Fabrics in Renton, Kent, and Tukwila, although I am being much more selective about what I buy. I found enough remnants of a navy blue double-brushed polyester to make a top, and I also scored some navy blue ponte for a pair of Renee pants. I am making an effort to sew a few basic pieces of clothing that I need and that coordinate with pieces I already have. Navy blue has been hard to find. Sometimes I get tired of wearing black.

Ketchikan has a quilt store downtown called The Whale’s Tail. I wonder if it is under new ownership. When I was there last year, I was waited on by an older woman who spent several minutes complaining to me about the loss of business from the pandemic and supply chain issues. (Products are difficult enough to get to Alaska without supply chain disruptions.) I expected to see that the store had closed, but it’s still there, staffed by a couple of younger women. They also have a website, which they didn’t have before. Inventory is still a bit thin, but it seems like someone is making an effort to revive the store.

I bought this pattern:

The store had one of these kuspuks made up and on display. I thought it would be good to have something uniquely Alaskan in my pattern collection.

My mother and I spent Thursday and Friday in Seattle. On Thursday, we took the ferry over to the peninsula to visit DSIL’s parents. We also got to meet his younger sister, who was visiting from Norway. She went there a few years ago to get her master’s degree but due to the pandemic, she wasn’t able to come back for the wedding. She’s still working and living there. DSIL’s uncle—his mom’s brother—lives in Norway, too, so there is a strong family connection.

On Friday, we took a different ferry over to Bainbridge Island. My youngest cousin on my dad’s side, who also works for Nordstrom, is getting married in September and we wanted to check out her wedding venue. My girls, DSIL, my sister and her boyfriend, and my mother and I are staying at an Airbnb in Seattle for the wedding and I thought it would be good to know where we were going.

We had stellar weather in Seattle. This is a view from the sun deck of the ferry just before we left. Trust me when I say this is not usually how Seattle looks.

It’s about half an hour on the ferry over to the island, and then it took us another half an hour to find the venue because Google Maps confused a roundabout for a stop sign. The island is very pretty, so the detour wasn’t a big deal. We found the venue—it’s lovely—then went back to the town near the ferry landing to do more shopping.

Bainbridge Island sports a cute little store called Esther’s Fabrics. My mother went to the boutique next door and I popped in to see what Esther’s carried. I bought this pattern:

Yes, I can draft my own patterns, but there is value is seeing how other designers approach the process. This booklet has a lot of good information. I also got two lengths of some decorative ribbon, one with Singer sewing machines on it and one with pigs on it.

My mother was supposed to fly back to Cleveland on Saturday morning, but at 11:30 pm Friday night, Alaska Airlines texted her to say that the flight was cancelled and they could not re-book her on anything else. We couldn’t find a flight leaving Seattle for a few days, but Delta had one leaving Spokane in the afternoon with a few seats still available. We had enough time to pack up and hit the road, and I dropped her off at the Spokane airport in time for her flight. As much as I like Alaska Airlines, these flight cancellations are a problem. They’ve done this to DD#2 twice. My mother is supposed to take this same flight to Seattle in September for the wedding. At least we were able to find a workaround. There were several hundred other people on that flight back to Cleveland who probably got stuck in Seattle longer than anticipated.

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I got my garden chores done yesterday morning before it got hot. (It got up to 86 yesterday, which for some people is not “hot,” but my friend Anna and I were discussing how much we prefer cooler weather.) The rows of lettuce and collard greens have been weeded and I did more trimming with the weedeater. I was able to find some replacement plants at the nursery on Sunday and I will get those put into the ground today. The husband has been pulling stumps and doing some landscaping in the yard in order to make it easier to mow the grass. I’ll get some garden and yard pics today while I am out working.

The Fish Were Biting

DD#2 went up to Ketchikan on Friday—we arrived on Sunday—and specifically requested to go fishing. One of DSIL’s colleagues has a boat and was only too happy to take them out on Saturday.

DD#1 caught a 32-pound halibut:

DD#2 also caught a halibut, albeit a slightly smaller one. Here are the kids are with their haul for the day (several halibut and one ling cod):

We bought the kids an industrial-grade vaccum sealer for Christmas last year and they are getting a lot of use out of it. Living so close to the water gives them plenty of opportunity to feed themselves for the cost of a yearly license and some effort. We had dungeness crab for dinner one night:

Seafood for dinner every night is my personal idea of heaven, living as I do in cow country.

We also had crab fries for lunch one day at a local restaurant, which is dungeness crab over fries with a spicy ranch sauce and cheese on top. Yum.

The bay is full of fish and seals—sometimes sea lions and whales—and the eagles like to perch in a tree next door to see what they can scavenge. I counted two dozen of them in the tree one afternoon:

DD#1 got us all tickets for the lumberjack show downtown. That was great fun.

DD#2 flew back to Seattle on Tuesday and we followed on Wednesday. I had reserved the Airbnb close to DD#2’s apartment again as a home base for my mother and I to do some exploring on Thursday and Friday. More on that in tomorrow’s post, along with details of some of my fabric shopping.

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Traveling in the spring and early summer is always tricky. I went to Alaska in May last year, which is typically when I do most of the garden prep and planting. I shifted the trip to late June this year, thinking that most of that work would be done, but I hadn’t counted on such a cold, wet spring pushing the growing schedule back three weeks. The husband faithfully watered what was still in the greenhouse. I have a bit more transplanting left to do this week.

The peas look more anemic than usual—too much rain?—and the corn still looks shell-shocked. I’m going to top dress the corn with some chicken manure. The tomatoes, amazingly, are coming along well. The potatoes are spectacular, as is the lettuce, Swiss chard, and collards. We had a salad with our lettuce last night. We will have zucchini, no doubt, but something got to the melons and cukes. I went to a nearby nursery yesterday and picked up some replacement vegetable starts to fill in the bare spots. The beans I started in the greenhouse never germinated.

The grapevines are loaded. I have never seen that many grapes on them before. One of the members of the homesteading group I frequent manages a vineyard, and she generously advised me on pruning the vines a few weeks ago.

I will watch produce sales this summer and pick up what we need. I can get beans and carrots for canning. The husband might miss fresh watermelon and cantaloupe, but the grapes should make up for the loss. And the raspberry bushes are covered with flowers—and bees—so I expect we’ll be swimming in raspberries shortly. The cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli love this weather.

Palouse Falls, Lumberjacks, and Other Fun Stuff

I have been traveling. I had planned a trip to take my mother up to Alaska to see where the kids are living. Alaska Airlines just started a nonstop flight from Cleveland to Seattle. The plan was for me to drive to Seattle and meet her there. We would fly up to Ketchikan, spend a few days, then fly back to Seattle and spend a few days.

My college roommate messaged me a few months ago and said that she and her husband were coming to Spokane and would drive over to Kalispell for a visit. Marcia’s brother lives in Moscow, ID. The dates happened to coincide nicely with the trip to Alaska, but rather than have them come here, I just tacked on a couple of extra days and met them in Spokane before heading to Seattle.

The three of us had a great time together. I suggested we drive out to Palouse Falls. I had seen pictures of the falls but never visited. They were up for an adventure, so last Friday morning, we headed west from Spokane on I-90 to Ritzville, took a hard left, and drove south for about 30 miles. There is a waterfall out in the middle of acres and acres of scrub and farmland, on the Snake River. It is quite a sight:

The falls were designated a State Park Heritage Site in 2013 thanks to the efforts of the elementary students in nearby Washtucna, WA.

As you can imagine, the falls are also a magnet for people who don’t have the sense God gave a chicken. Four people have died here and the area is peppered with warning signs. Despite that, we saw several groups of people hiking into the unauthorized area in an attempt to get to the bottom. We wisely stayed in the safe zone. This is Marcia’s husband leaning on one of the “People Have Died Here!” signs:

Marcia and I only manage to see each other once every couple of years, but we pick up where we left off every time. We capped off our visit with dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in Spokane—Luna—where all three of us had an amazing dinner of sea bass cooked to perfection.

I left Spokane bright and early Saturday morning and headed to Seattle. My mother’s flight didn’t arrive until later in the evening, but I had a few errands to run. The first stop was the sewing machine store in Issaquah that I visited in April. The saleswoman and I got to chatting and I mentioned that I live in Kalispell and teach serger classes here. “Oh, could you come and teach for us?” she asked. “We need a serger teacher!” She and I exchanged contact information and I promised to e-mail her when I got home.

I did some other shopping, checked into the hotel, then picked my mother up when her plane got in. On Sunday morning, we went back to the airport for our flight to Ketchikan.

Ketchikan is a vastly different place than it was when I visited in May 2021. The cruise ships are coming back to visit:

There were at least two ships in port every single day we were there. It does make for a very crowded downtown, but the kids don’t have to drive through there to get to work, which is good.

I’ll save the rest of the pictures and travelogue for tomorrow’s post. Today is a catch-up day. The garden looks good but needs some attention. Our garden tour is three short weeks away.

A Lot of Water

Parts of the Flathead Valley are flooding. There have been some road closures and evacuation orders. The rain finally subsided to a slow drizzle overnight. We had a system parked over us for most of yesterday and the rain just kept coming and coming. If the clouds clear enough this morning, I will be curious to see how low the snow levels got and how much snow might be up in the mountains as a result. Temperatures are supposed to warm up today—81 by Friday—and all of that precip is going to come roaring down into already-swollen rivers.

I’ve seen many comparisons to the Flood of 1964. That year, a cold spring left most of the snowpack up in the mountains until June, when it warmed up suddenly and the remnants of a hurricane came up the Rockies. Evergreen, the eastern part of Kalispell along the Flathead River, was underwater. (That’s where Joann Fabrics is now.) I don’t think this is quite as bad, but this is more water than I’ve seen here in a long time.

I have not been out to the garden since Sunday.

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My serger class on Monday went reasonably well. I am always a bit nervous when teaching a new class for the first time because I don’t know where the hiccups will be. We were making the Cookin’ in Color Apron by Sue O’Very. As it turned out, the copies of the pattern that the store ordered hadn’t yet come in, so we had to work from my pattern. (The students each bought a pattern and will get that copy when it arrives.) I was supposed to have three students but one had to cancel due to illness. All three of them had taken my earlier Serger 101 class.

The second issue was that the apron is designed to be made entirely on the serger. There are pros and cons to that approach. Constructing something completely on the serger is one way to demonstrate its capabilities. Paradoxically, that also gave me the opportunity, in this class, to pontificate on the serger’s limitations. The apron pattern includes a zipper pocket. Can a zipper be put in using a serger? Yes. Is that the best tool for the job? I don’t think so. Doing zippers on the serger requires a special piping/cording foot. One student had ordered the foot but it hadn’t arrived yet. The other student didn’t have one. I had anticipated this problem and brought my Juki serger with the piping foot and a sample of a zipper I had done using that machine. I set the machine up and told the students they could do their zippers on my machine.

[I made two of these aprons ahead of time, one on each of my sergers, and even between those two machines, the process of putting in the zippers was vastly different.]

The serger is a tool. In a sewing room, I would expect to be able to use whatever tool is appropriate for the job. I also like to topstitch my zippers, and sergers can’t topstitch.

That issue aside—inserting the zipper is the first step in the pattern, so we got that out of the way early—the rest of the class went smoothly. That store also wants more classes, so I am in the process of putting those together.

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It’s almost time to start working on another embroidered chicken:

I still have to add beads in the crosshatch section, but the threadwork is done.

It's Almost Time to Build a Boat

It’s the middle of June and the furnace is running.

The rain is still coming down. There has been some minor flooding down by the river. We’re on the side of a mountain so no flooding worries here, but my rain barrels are filling up quickly.

I wore my Renee pants to church yesterday. I am ready to make more. Honestly, I think that consumers—women, especially—have tolerated poorly-made, ill-fitting clothing for so long that we’ve all forgotten what it feels like to wear clothing that isn’t like that. I told the husband that I am going to make myself a whole closet full of clothing that I like in colors I can wear (Hot pink! Emerald green! Turquoise!) and then cull everything that doesn’t quite fit.

[My friend Elaine has an aunt who came to the funeral for one of her brothers wearing a hot pink suit. I told her how nice I thought she looked and I decided then that I want to be the elderly woman showing up at funerals in hot pink.]

I bought two lengths of Robert Kaufman ponte at the quilt store the other day—one black, one black sparkle—and I have some Kaufman royal blue sparkle coming from Fabric.com. (The sparkle is very subtle; these are not party pants.) The hot pink Joann Fabrics ponte is not bad, either, so I’ll keep my eye out for more of that fabric in other colors. .

DD#2, my fashionista daughter, tells me that skinny is out and wide leg is coming back in. I will consider modifying the legs on that pattern. The fit is perfect, especially in the waist and the rise. I did not have to tug those pants back into place at all yesterday. Usually I’m hitching my pants up half an hour after I put them on. And the spandex content wasn’t enough to bother my skin.

My friend Susan and her daughter came over yesterday after church. Our four girls stair-step in age and grew up together. Her younger daughter lives in Bozeman where she has a ceramics studio. She’s visiting her parents for a few days. We spent some time yesterday talking about her current sewing obsession, which is designing and making the perfect merino wool bra. Merino wool underwear—actual underwear, not long underwear—is surprisingly comfortable. Hikers and travelers prefer it because it’s easy to care for. Nordstrom carries a brand called Icebreaker (I have some), but the problem is that the currently-available bras only come in general sizing of Small, Medium, and Large. Susan’s daughter wants to figure out how to make bras that can be sized by band and cup sizing. Listening to her talk about that process was fascinating.

Susan brought me two apple trees that she grafted for me. She has a Duchess of Oldenburg tree that I raid in the fall for my canned apple pie filling. She thought I should have one in my own orchard, so she gifted me these grafts from her tree. The husband planted them out front with the rest of the trees yesterday.

Susan and I went out to look at the garden and discovered a dead rabbit. We’ve seen several hopping around the property lately. This one had tried to get through the fence from the pig pasture to the garden and gotten stuck in the fence and died. It was a sizeable rabbit. The death must have happened some time between Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon, because we were out there all day Saturday.

I am hoping not to have a rabbit infestation in the garden. So far, nothing has molested the lettuce or Swiss chard, but I wonder if one of them got my melons.

I started making a muslin for the Sinclair Azalea top:

I can only work on it for short stretches because it makes my brain hurt. I am going to have to go watch the video again for the next couple of steps. The fabric is some double-brushed poly that was on the remnant rack at Joanns. Occasionally, I find two remnants in the same fabric that together provide enough for a top. I’m not crazy about the print, but for a prototype, it’s fine.

My serger apron class is today. Heavy rain is in the forecast for the entire day, so it will be nice to stay inside and make something.

The Coolest Boss Ever

The husband’s four employees—all young guys in their early 20s—adore him. One of them told me the other day that the husband is “the coolest boss ever.” If I were going to get on my soapbox and rant, I would deliver a sermon about how we have failed the young men of this country by removing any sense of purpose and direction in their lives. I won’t, because I want to talk about my garden, but I will say that I am proud of the husband’s willingness to teach these kids some marketable skills. I watched them one day when they were here working. At the end of the day, they all gathered around while the husband told them what they would be doing the following day, and then each of them shook his hand and said, “See you tomorrow, sir.”

[I get called Ma’am, too, which I think is hilarious, but what was even more hilarious was the day I showed up at the jobsite and one of them yelled over to the husband, “Sir! HR is here!” They know who signs their paychecks.]

The husband spent the day helping me with the garden yesterday. It rained, but we worked out there anyway. I took two showers and changed my clothes three times over the course of the day. I said to him that the weather reminded me of all the times I went on spring camping/field trips with the girls when they were in elementary school. We tromped through miles of woods in drenching downpours over the course of those years.

When the husband gets into work mode, he barks orders. Sometimes I have to remind him that he is not the boss and I am not an employee. We do a lot of negotiating, LOL.

We started out by planting the rest of the strawberry bed. I moved the bed to a spot between the raspberries and the lavender hedge, so now all the berries are in the same part of the garden. I have three 30’ rows of strawberries planted on black plastic. I have mixed feelings about black plastic, but it does cut down on the weeding, and the weeds here are relentless. The strawberries I planted a few weeks ago look great, and now the whole bed is in.

Once that was done, he got out the rototiller and tilled up the section where the strawberries used to be. That area has been sitting under a billboard tarp for the past two years. I would like to make that into a new herb garden. He brought home a pallet of landscape edging from the auction in April and thought I could use it out there, although we had to have a discussion about our differing visions for how that would happen. We laid out the landscape fabric and then he moved the rock over there.

[We also have different ideas about the meaning of the phrase “to garden.” I am not sure he understands the concept of puttering. Gardening, to him, is making a list of all the things that need to be done and attacking them with a vengeance. I had to remind him that the herb garden was not going to get planted yesterday; the herb garden is a season-long project that will evolve as it goes along.]

We came in and ate lunch. I got 20 minutes to inhale my meal, which is 10 minutes more than he usually gives his employees, but as he pointed out, “We’re not out there to have a picnic.”

We saw a mama deer and a tiny, tiny little fawn yesterday. I’ve never seen a fawn that small. It looked to be just a day or two old.

After lunch, we mulched the potatoes with what was left of a round bale of straw that’s been sitting at the edge of the garden for a couple of years. It’s nice and rotted and makes fabulous cover to control weeds, and at the end of the season, it adds to the organic matter. The last time we had potatoes in this spot, we had a bumper crop. He hauled the straw over with the wheelbarrow and I crawled around and spread it out in the rows and between the plants.

By the time we finished, it was 3 o’clock and I was hashed. I went in for my second shower and third change of clothes.

I am so pleased with how the garden looks. We haven’t had a June this wet for several years. I’d still like to get beans in, but the ones in the greenhouse are taking their sweet time germinating—it’s just too cold and we won’t heat the greenhouse for two trays of beans—but I hesitate to put seeds in the ground because I think they might rot. Despite the cool weather, the tomatoes look fabulous. They do like the black plastic. Some animal got a few of my cucumber and melon plants and I may have to replant those. The two peach trees we planted at the beginning of April look great. The grapes are leafing out. The currant bushes are loaded. We’ll have a ton of lettuce, Swiss chard, and collard greens.

Every year is different. We’ll have food from the garden, just maybe not the same food we had last year.

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I am teaching a serger apron class tomorrow at the quilt store north of town. The Renee pants class is on the schedule for August 5 at the other quilt store, and the Serger 101 class is on the schedule for August 13 in Spokane. My cousin’s daughter and her husband are coming for a visit at the end of August. Another cousin is getting married in Seattle in September and the Szabo side of the family will be there for that. This year will be over before we know it.

Here, Bear, and Everywhere

We’ve had a nuisance black bear roaming the neighborhood for a few weeks. Fish, Wildlife, and Parks has a trap set up just down the road. Unfortunately, I don’t think this one is going to be relocated. I think it’s either going to get shot by a homeowner or euthanized. At least we don’t have pigs this year.

And my friend Cathy, who lives north of Kalispell, posted on social media the other day that she heard a commotion on her porch mid-morning. When she opened the door, a little black bear dropped out of a tree right in front of her. Her dog chased it off. I know the bears are hungry; perhaps this cold spring has limited their food supplies more than usual.

Dave is on patrol:

He might not be as good an alarm as the dogs were, but I’ll know something’s up if he starts hustling the hens into the coop.

Speaking of roosters, the husband mentioned yesterday that he thinks we got a rooster chick with the batch of pullets in April. I think he’s right. This guy looks like he’s about to hit puberty:

Now I have a dilemma. I wouldn’t mind having two roosters, but Dave doesn’t like competition. I will have to see if I can find a good home for this one. In the meantime, he’s going to enroll in Janet’s Finishing School for Baby Roosters. Now when I go into the coop, I make a point of touching him or picking him up so that he knows who is in charge. He will learn a lot by watching Dave, too. Dave really is a stellar rooster.

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I got the yardwork done yesterday, which is great because we’re supposed to get more rain for the next couple of days. Seattle is under another one of those atmospheric rivers—unusual for this late in the season—and it is heading our way. I mowed our yard and around the garden and then trimmed with the weedeater. Once that was done, I weeded peas and two rows of potatoes. Things are looking good out there and the extra rain certainly isn’t going to hurt.

My afternoon project was playing with thread. I got half a dozen samples from WonderFil a few weeks ago—threads I haven’t been able to source locally—and I want some kind of record of how each of them looks stitched up. I designed a record sheet that I could use for myself and hand out to my students. It has a place to write down all the pertinent information and attach a sample stitch-out.

Each page will go into a page protector and stored in a notebook. That way, when I want to use a specific thread, I’ll know if I changed or adjusted any settings.

I started with a thread called D-Twist, which is a 20wt rayon. I haven’t tried this one before. It’s a very subtle decorative thread. The 8wt and 12wt threads are great when you want a lot of bling, but this one is in between those and a 40wt and it adds just enough. I’ll have to see what kind of class project I can design with it.

A Pair of Hot Pink Pants

At our Bernina Mystery Make class at the end of April, the instructor, Sandra, wore a pair of knit ponte pants she had made from the Renee pants pattern by Jalie. The store ordered copies for the students that wanted one and I picked mine up a few weeks ago. After tracing my size—no mean feat given that there are 20+ sizes on the pattern—I set the pattern pieces aside with some hot pink knit ponte from the clearance bin at Joann Fabrics. It is their Casa Collection ponte consisting of 95% nylon/5% spandex. Ponte is a hefty knit fabric that is very stable and easy to sew.

I had planned to cut the grass yesterday, but it never got much above 50 degrees with intermittent showers. I gave up on mowing and decided to tackle the Renee pants, instead. The quilt store south of town would like to offer this as a class, so if I am going to teach it, I need to be familiar with the pattern.

Truly, the hardest part of this project was tracing the pattern, and that was already done. There are only three pattern pieces—front, back, and front inset—each of which is cut from two layers. This design does not have pockets, but it does have a faux pocket inset. I am not one of those women obsessed with pockets and prefer not to have them in close-fitting clothing, but if you require pockets in your pants, you might want a different pattern.

The faux pockets are attached to each front piece. Although the directions did not specify to do so, I topstitched mine down:

Ponte has a tendency to be “spongy” and not lie flat, and I thought the topstitching was a nice detail.

[I follow Sandra on Instagram, and she posted a picture a few days ago of a pair of Renee pants where she had done some machine embroidery on the inset piece.]

From there, it was a matter of making two tubes (one for each leg), putting one inside the other, and sewing the crotch seam. I was curious to see if I would need to lengthen the crotch seam on these. The pattern is advertised as being “high waisted,” but my definition of high waisted and other people’s definition of high waisted don’t always jive.

I had just enough 1-1/2” wide elastic in my stash to make the waistband, which is made by sewing the elastic to the inside of the pants, folding it down, and tacking it in place at the front, back, and side seams. I did two quick hems on the bottom and tried them on.

They fit snugly, as they are intended to, but not uncomfortably so, and anything with spandex is going to stretch with wearing. The pattern suggests choosing a size based on the wearer’s full hip measurement, which I did, and I made the waistband corresponding to the same size. I would not change either of them. I don’t think I will have to adjust the crotch length, either, as these do come up to my natural waist and stay there. What a pleasant surprise after years of pants not staying put.

When I was in Seattle in April, I bought a flowy rayon top in a navy, hot pink, and white geometric print, and it coordinates perfectly with the pants. I probably will wear that outfit to church on Sunday to see if I can stand the pants for longer than a few minutes. I’m not much of a leggings person because the spandex tends to irritate my skin. And I don’t know yet how much this ponte will stretch.

The quilt store has some Robert Kaufman ponte on order—the same fabric that Sandra used for her pants—which is a rayon/nylon/poly/spandex blend. I want to make another pair of these using that fabric when it comes in. I am not crazy about this waistband style, but that’s about the only thing I would change and even that is minor.

I made these using the Bernina serger for the seams, the Janome 6600P for the topstitching and the darts, and the Janome coverstitch for the hems. These could be made quite easily with just a sewing machine, however.

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I have had some requests to resurrect the husband’s blog on his website. I’m going to try to do that in the next few weeks, although I won’t post there as regularly as I do here. It’s not all that easy to ghost write a blog for someone else even though I never pretended to be him. I stopped updating it simply because it got to be a logistical nightmare. He has an Android phone. Getting the photos from his phone to my iMac is a Google-designed nightmare consisting of half a dozen needlessly-complicated steps. He had to remember to take the pictures, remember to transfer them to my computer (or remind me to do so), then give me a quick recap of the project and the pertinent details so I could sound reasonably intelligent when writing about them. When you come home after a 14-hour day of pouring concrete, helping your wife to blog about your adventures is not a high priority task. I did get some pictures of the slab and wall pours at Elysian’s, though, so I might do a post about that project.