Leftover Christmas

Despite my grumblings about the class and pattern, I am happy with the way the Christmas stocking turned out.

I might make another one later in the year, closer to Christmas. I’d still like to try some of the coverstitch techniques. Now that I can see and examine an actual stocking and the placement of the fabrics, threads, and ribbons, I will be better able to plan the layout of the next one.

One of the other projects I finished during the forced hiatus from internet service was this fabric wreath:

I think I got this idea from Pinterest. When I cut strips with my die cutter, sometimes I have leftovers that are only an inch wide or so. I can’t bear to toss them. I picked up the smallest wreath frame at Hobby Lobby—I didn’t want to get discouraged halfway into the project—and tied 6” lengths of fabric strips onto it. The finished wreath measures about 12” across. I need to add some kind of ribbon and hanger to it.

[I would be happy to donate my bag of skinny strips to anyone who would like to try this.]

I am ready to move on. I cut out this pattern yesterday using some stash fabric:

This is a dead simple round-necked blouse with a keyhole opening in the back. The pattern comes in cup sizes so I’m trying it out to see how it fits. I have had reasonably good success with Butterick patterns. If it fits, it will be a useful basic that can be frankenpatterned into other styles. I am still woefully short on dressy tops. I have plenty of fabric in the stash; the tops just need to be sewn up.

I got the pieces cut and the facings interfaced yesterday afternoon before the husband and I made a trip into town. We bought a new TV for the living room. (Our children will be shocked.) I said to him that we are officially old people now, having bought ourselves new recliners and a new TV.

We try to get our money’s worth out of our purchases. His old recliner was so worn out that the seams were coming apart and he had worn a hole in the leather with the back of his head. I did some calculating on the age of the TV and figured out that we’ve had it since 2006. DD#1 was a freshman in high school (she’s 30 now) and I had saved up my substitute teacher pay to buy it. My mother came for Christmas that year, though, and she bought it as our Christmas present. It was a 34” HP flat-screen TV and it stopped working shortly before the warranty expired. Best Buy actually sent out some techs to replace the motherboard. The TV has worked perfectly since then. The husband is going to put it out in his shop.

Registration for the Sew Expo in Puyallup, WA, opens Wednesday morning. Tera and I have been comparing notes about what we want to take. Gail Yellen is not teaching there this year, sadly, but the class sessions include quite a few serger and pattern drafting classes. I hope we can get into our first choices. The classes tend to sell out quickly. I found us an Airbnb about 10 minutes from the venue.

And Robin and I have tentative plans to go to Spokane in February depending on weather conditions. This is the November trip we had to postpone, but coordinating our schedules has been tough. She subs at one of the local elementary schools and I’ve got various classes and meetings already scheduled. If we don’t do the trip in February, it will have to wait until later in the spring.

You Might Not Like the Answer

The phone rang yesterday afternoon. My naturopath was on the other end. When he calls me personally, I know it’s important. He and I have batted around the idea of doing some food allergy testing on me, but he warned me that I might not like the answer, so I hadn’t proceeded. DD#2 has an ongoing problem with eczema, though, and asked me if she could get testing done through his office to see if she could identify some potential triggers. I decided that because she was having the testing done, so would I. We both had blood tests just before Christmas. The results will be mailed to us, but my naturopath already had a copy of mine and wanted to chat.

Cutting wheat out of my diet about 10 years ago made such a difference that I believed I had eliminated everything that didn’t agree with me. I also don’t touch soy, high fructose corn syrup, or seed oils. I can tell when one of those sneaks in because my joints will start to hurt. I haven’t drunk milk since I was a toddler, at which time my mother says I stood in my crib and threw my bottle on the floor. I do, however, love cheese.

Guess what showed up as allergens on my testing? Eggs and dairy. I can’t even have duck eggs. (Sometimes those can be a substitute for people with a chicken egg sensitivity.)

I pointed out to my naturopath that I feel just fine eating cheese. It doesn’t precipitate the same kind of joint pain or intestinal distress that wheat does. I also know that these tests can have a high rate of false positives. Still, this is worth exploring. I agreed to cut both eggs and dairy out of my diet for six weeks just to see what happens. He said I might feel so much better that I won’t want to eat them ever again. (Doubtful, but okay.)

I said to the husband that I will be down to nothing but rice cakes and peanut butter at this rate. My naturopath suggested I look at the list and see what I can eat and concentrate on those foods. Beans were also mildly reactive, which would be a big problem for me as they are the primary means of getting folate into my diet—the MTHFR mutation I carry means I need folate, but I cannot tolerate methylfolate supplements—and I eat a lot of those, too. He said he thought they were reacting secondarily to the egg and dairy sensitivity and would probably resolve with the absence of those triggers.

Our friend Anna is a vegan and I know that she will be happy to help me navigate through this. I just have to approach this as being somewhat vegan with chicken, fish, and pork added. I do feel like I’ve given up so much, though. I shouldn’t have to eliminate so many foods from my diet, especially given that I cook almost entirely from scratch. Part of me still wonders if some of these issues aren’t the result of decades of corrupting the food supply in this country.

DD#2 hasn’t gotten her results yet, but he warned me that hers may be similar.

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I worked on the Gail Yellen serger Christmas stocking project yesterday. I did not get as far as I hoped. This is a very challenging project even for me, and I am far from a rank newbie. Her designs are very involved. She did a similar decorative stitch placemat pattern a few years ago. I never tackled that one because one placemat looked like it would take six hours to construct and who has time for that? I also abandoned the idea of making the coverstitch version of this stocking or trying to teach this as a class.

I’ve got the body pieces constructed for both front and back.

I still have to put them together, make the ruffle, and sew the front and back halves together. Now that I see it, I am not crazy about having added the red thread or ribbon, but it’s too late and I am not taking it out.

Part of what I found challenging was that her Zoom class did not go through the stocking construction sequentially. She bounced around the pattern because she wanted to highlight specific techniques. The stocking pieces need to be assembled in a specific order, however, if for no other reason than to minimize thread and stitch changes in the machine. And while her patterns are thorough and well-illustrated, she really needs someone to tech edit them for her. Several places within the pattern left me scratching my head. She knows what she means, but she needs to phrase the directions in such a way that they are understandable to someone who has never made this pattern before.

Oh, well. I will finish this and it will become a useful class sample for decorative serger thread techniques. However, I think I am going to have to design some of my own (simpler) patterns to use when I teach those techniques. I have some ideas.

Today’s to-do list includes making a master to-do list for January. I don’t want tasks, especially time-sensitive ones, falling through the cracks like they did when we were without internet. I’ve got three serger classes this month. Next Wednesday is a Bernina serger mastery class. The week after that I have a class on speciality serger feet and an apron class using some of the same decorative stitch techniques that were in the stocking pattern. (The apron is a BabyLock pattern.) The apron is made but I have to create the class samples and handout for the specialty feet class. We’ll be trying out the gathering foot, the elasticator foot, and the piping foot.

Last year’s red churn dash quilt—the blocks I found at a thrift store—is currently on the Q20:

I started it just after Christmas. This is not a quick project, although it’s moving along at a steady clip. I had to do a lot of ditch quilting in the sashing to stabilize the overall design, and now I am quilting the larger red sashing pieces. Once those are done, I’ll go in and ditch quilt around every church dash motif (25 blocks), then free motion something (pebbles?) in the white areas around them. I can work on this in small blocks of time here and there.

Fraying at the Edges

I don’t talk politics here on the blog, for several reasons. First of all, I am not tribal. I have a wide variety of friends, with diverse personalities and interests, and their political beliefs are the least interesting thing about them. Secondly, I have no desire to have someone else control my life and call the shots. A bureaucrat thousands of miles away has no idea what is best for me. Why should I cede that power to someone? Lastly, I think the majority of politicians are crooks and robbers, and that includes members on both sides of the aisle. One team is no holier than the other one.

Despite the fact that I would prefer smaller, more localized government and much less central planning, I am forced to acknowledge the reality of our current situation. Do not take any of what I say next as some kind of endorsement or approval of that reality.

I drove to Missoula yesterday for an appointment at the IdentoGo office for my TSA Pre-Check interview. I don’t fly often, but when I do, it’s usually out of Seattle, and Sea-Tac has had major problems lately with security line backups. This was a two-hour drive for what was supposed to be a five-minute process. I arrived about ten minutes early for my 1:20 pm appointment and was met by a very flustered receptionist who informed me that I “might have to wait” because their system was malfunctioning. She pointed me in the direction of a waiting area and I took a seat.

After about 40 minutes, during which time it became clear that none of the half-dozen people ahead of me in line had moved, several of us went back to the window and asked for an update. The two employees admitted that they probably weren’t going to get the system up and running soon, and I had a two-hour drive back to Kalispell. I chose to leave and have rescheduled the appointment for the end of January.

Two weeks ago, the wholesale supplier of electricity to our local electric co-op shut down incoming power to protect the grid in Washington state during a deep freeze. That, in turn, damaged internet service for a section of the valley. We all know what happened after that.

Has your mail been arriving in a timely manner? Have any packages gone astray? Some years ago, in the interest of “efficiency,” all of Kalispell’s mail started going to Missoula to be processed before coming back here to be delivered. Unless I drive my Kalispell-addressed mail to the main post office and deposit it in the local delivery box, it will travel from here to Missoula and back before being delivered. I thought we were worried about climate change? Surely using all that fuel to transport mail 240 miles round trip is contributing to climate change? No?

Did your travel—especially air travel—go well over the Christmas holiday? Were you treated as a valued customer or were you crammed into a flying cattle car with your fellow passengers? Yes, weather is a factor in travel delays, but so are outdated scheduling systems, lack of staffing, and other issues.

When was the last time you went to a business and didn’t have to wait for help? Were you shocked at last month’s grocery bill? Did you die in the ER waiting to be seen? (That happened to someone we knew a few weeks ago.)

Appliances that used to last 25+ years now have trouble reaching their third birthday without failing. The Diva’s transmission blew up at 70,000 miles. I’ve now made it to 129,000 miles—with a few thousand dollars of additional repairs—and the side mirrors are malfunctioning. They will move, randomly, such that I find myself driving down the road looking at the sky in them instead of the road behind me. The husband says this is a known problem and the mirror motor contacts need to be cleaned, which he will do this weekend. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have their own BMW mechanic, however, and I am determined to get a couple hundred thousand miles out of that car, at least. I like that it gets 40 miles to the gallon and it’s fun to drive when it’s working.

Thomas Massie, Congressional representative from Kentucky, pointed out that the aid package to Ukraine worked out to be approximately $200 million dollars per congressional district in the United States. Ask yourself: What could my congressional district have done with $200 million dollars? Made the roads and bridges safer? Bolstered the electrical grid so it could withstand periodic increases in power requirements? (How on earth are we ever going to power electrical vehicles with such a fragile grid?) I am not opposed to helping others. I am opposed to helping others if it means hollowing out our own country in the process. I’m also not convinced that sending aid to Ukraine isn’t ultimately some kind of money-laundering operation designed to assist members of Congress in becoming multi-millionaires on $170K a year salaries.

Last spring, this article appeared on the Lew Rockwell website. I was pulled in by the title—”Americans Brought Down to the Level of Slovaks”—because my great-grandmothers came to the US from Slovakia in the early 1900s. This piece speaks to much of what we are experiencing. I expect to become a grandmother at some point, but I have no desire to become the kind of Slovak grandmother caricatured in that editorial. It is a daily battle, however.

[I will say here that if you want to plop a conspiracy-theorist hat on my head, feel free. I am not going to protest. I see things, and I have a long enough track record of being right about so much of this stuff that I trust myself first and the husband second. Everyone else comes in a distant third.]

Look around you. Turn off the TV. Talk to your neighbors. Don’t let politicians and pundits tell you what to believe. Don’t treat “getting to know conservatives” (or progressives) as some kind of cultural-exchange exercise. Don’t accept what is happening as normal. And for heaven’s sake, don’t help it along.

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On the way down to Missoula, I listened to the recent podcast interview between David Collum and James Howard Kunstler. David Collum is the Betty R Miller Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University—no lightweight there—who writes an in-depth Year In Review every December. He takes everything apart, analyzes it nines ways to Sunday, and puts it back together. It is not a quick read, but it’s informative and entertaining. He admits when he misses the mark, but that doesn’t happen often.

And I will recommend again the Living Free in Tennessee podcast, which sits at the top of my list of favorites. Nicole Sauce has years of experience as a corporate trainer and in the first podcast of 2023, she explains “how to use the #my3things method to become more successful, productive and to build the life you choose on your terms.”

The trip to Missoula was not a total bust. I stopped in at a store there to get a new Amanda Murphy hexagon ruler and as the owner was ringing up my purchase, he mentioned that they are moving to a much larger store in the same strip mall in a few months. I had talked to them previously about doing classes, but they grew so quickly in their current small space that they had no room. The new space will have a large classroom area and he is very interested in having me come teach serger classes there. I do have to be realistic about my teaching schedule, though. I would probably teach quarterly in Spokane, monthly in Missoula (at most), and most frequently here in Kalispell.

I also checked out the mystery fabric remnant racks at three Wal-Mart stores—one on the way down and two in Missoula. The selection was either meager or full of fabrics in colors I don’t wear. I came home with a two-yard chunk of a lightweight sweater knit in hot pink and that was it.

I am home today with a full to-do list. After I get all my paperwork squared away, I am going to work on this:

This is the serger Christmas stocking from the Gail Yellen class in early December. I prepped it last week when we didn’t have internet. I bought a small (24”) TV to put in DD#2’s bedroom, where the cutting table and serger reside. We have a TV in our bedroom, but I’m often working in the cutting room and want to be able to watch YouTube videos at the same time. I’ll queue up the Gail Yellen video so I can watch her class and make the stocking. I am starting with the serger-only version. Ideally, though, I’d like to make the coverstitch version, too. If she releases the stocking as a standalone pattern, I might want to teach it next fall.

It Took Two Entire Weeks . . .

. . . for CenturyLink to restore our internet service. That was inexcusable. I have lots of thoughts about the past two weeks and you will hear them in future blog posts, trust me.

Lack of internet was not just a matter of not being able to check social media and stream Netflix. If that was the extent of what we lost during those two weeks, that would be one thing, but we—and several of our neighbors—are trying to run businesses or work from home. Functioning internet is not a luxury for us.

I had earmarked the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s for working on various websites, particularly the one for our local homestead foundation. None of that happened. I had no access to any of the Adobe Creative Suite apps because they are all in the cloud. I was successful at using my cell phone as a hotspot exactly twice. (On Christmas Day, we had emergency service only on all our cell phones because the towers were overloaded.) I could not access the Bernina website for my serger class materials. DD#2, who had hoped to work while she was here, left a day earlier than planned after Christmas to go back to Seattle so she didn’t have to take any additional time off. Everything required one clunky workaround after another.

I do not have a laptop. I could not pick up my entire desktop system and transport it to a location that had internet. Thank goodness I refuse to use Quickbooks Online; I insist on the desktop version for this very reason. I had no access to online banking, which was difficult, but at least I could still prepare and send out invoices and do payroll.

I am starting 2023 weeks behind where I had hoped to be. All of those homestead foundation tasks I had hoped to accomplish now have to be fit in around other, already-scheduled projects.

We are looking forward to getting Starlink and being able to tell CenturyLink to go pound sand. I hope to have nothing to do with them in the future. I do understand that part of this outage was due to issues (somewhat) beyond their control. Apparently, some components inside the service box on the corner got fried when Bonneville Power shut off the electricity coming in during that cold snap and Flathead Electric had to move electrical loads around this side of the valley. That explains why the internet went out a few hours before we lost power. However, part of it is also due to their stupidity in putting the service box on a corner where it gets hit, repeatedly, and in not repairing the line properly after it does get hit. They also have abysmal customer service and did nothing to keep customers informed about what was happening. Most of the information we got came from someone in the neighborhood who stopped and chatted with the techs while they were working.

Honestly, we had more reliable internet service 20 years ago. Starlink will be more expensive, but as the husband pointed out, no one is going to run their car over a satellite and take out internet to the whole neighborhood.

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We were not unproductive during this time, but we did have to shift our energies to projects that could be done without internet. The husband worked in his shop and moved a lot of snow around. I pulled a bunch of UFOs and either finished them or moved them along in the queue. I finished quilting one top and started quilting another. I worked on embroidery projects. I bound a few table runners. I made the class sample for the Bernina serger event. That class was great fun. You know a class is successful when even the teacher has a great time.

I cooked down ham bones and vegetables into stock and canned 17 pints. I did some cleaning and reorganizing. I prepped a whole stack of projects and got them into the queue to be worked on in the next couple of months. I cut scrap fabric into usable pieces for future quilts. I feel like I accomplished quite a bit, but I did not like having my entire workflow upended. The two hours between getting up and making breakfast are some of the most productive hours of my day, but they are all done on the computer. I especially missed writing blog posts.

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The little deer is still hanging around. She is getting a bit bolder, too. The other day, I looked out the kitchen door and saw this:

She follows me around in the afternoon when I am doing chicken chores.

We also have two cats arguing about whose house and property this is. I was lying in bed the other morning when I heard a strange hissing noise. At first, I thought something was wrong with the husband, so I checked to see if he was breathing, but then I heard snarling. I came downstairs and found Sylvester—the feral cat that catches mice around our chicken coop—and another cat fighting on the front porch. They actually pulled out the plug to my porch lights in the midst of their tussling and left bunches of cat fur strewn about the porch. I’ve had to yell at them a couple of times since. I think Sylvester doesn’t want other cats poaching in his territory, although it’s not like we have a shortage of rodents around here.

I suppose I should be grateful it was a couple of cats and not two mountain lions.

The Great Disconnect

I woke up Thursday morning and discovered we had no internet service. When I came downstairs to get coffee, I checked the temperature:

That reads MINUS 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and that is the air temp, not the wind chill.

I got my cup of coffee and went back upstairs to bed. I was reading, on my iPad, when the power went out.

I woke up the husband. We got dressed and went outside. I held the flashlight for him while he tried to start the generator. He runs the generator regularly and keeps it full of gas, but getting it going in that kind of weather required starter fluid, the battery-powered heat gun and—from me—lots of fervent prayers. After about 20 minutes of messing around, the engine caught and it started up.

Getting the generator started was one problem; keeping it running was another. Under normal weather conditions, it will power the house and shop. At those temps, though, the husband had to minimize the load on the generator by taking the shop off generator power and turning off the hot water heater. We had only a few lights on in the house. I could sew, but I couldn’t use my iron.

As the morning went on, information trickled in about the cause of the outage. We didn’t lose power because of lines being down. We lost power because our electric co-op gets its power from Bonneville Power, in Washington state, and BPA shut down the flow of electricity into western Montana. I assume they were trying to protect the grid in WA state. Our electric co-op had to scramble to redistribute the load over the grid here as a result.

We got power back mid-morning. The rest of the east side of the valley had it back by Thursday evening. I blessed the husband a thousand times over for having installed that wood boiler this fall. We were plenty warm inside, and because he ran the ductwork in such a way that the wood boiler also heats water, we had plenty of hot water even though the water heater was off.

I have lots of thoughts about this. Most of them may have to wait for a future blog post. We still don’t have internet service and am using my cell phone as a hotspot to post this. I am signing us up for Starlink as soon as I can. CenturyLink is a joke. They cannot, or will not, maintain their service lines, and every time our internet goes out, it is out for days. DD#2 couldn’t work on Thursday.

And because Mother Nature thinks she is funny, the forecast for Monday is 40F and rain.

The mountains were so pretty this week, though:

You take the bad with the good. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Snowflakes of All Kinds

DD#2 made it here late last night; her flight was delayed by half an hour, but she got out of Seattle and that was my big worry. They were about to get walloped with a winter storm that is heading in our direction. We’re under a winter storm warning from 11 am this morning until 5 pm tomorrow night. After the storm leaves here, it’s heading east, and one of the long-range forecasts I saw suggested that northeast Ohio, where my mother lives, might be dealing with something big on Friday.

The husband is not working this week because of the cold. The parts came for the ground heater and I think he’ll be getting that up and running. We should be fine, although I warned DD#2 that if the power goes out, so will the internet. She is hoping to work while she is here this week.

DD#1 checked in by phone yesterday. She and DSIL are staying in Ketchikan for Christmas, but they have a good network of friends there.

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I made the class sample for next week’s Serge of Creativity class at the quilt store. The process was a bit convoluted as there are no written instructions. I had to work from the Power Point slide show that Bernina provides. Let’s just say that it’s good that this project is going to have a teacher to lead it.

[I find that all Bernina instructions are like Burda instructions. They tend to be light on details. I also highlighted some inconsistencies in the instructions, because the last thing I want to do is confuse my students.]

In any case, I like the way the project turned out. I can’t show you a picture because it’s a Bernina class, but I will say that it gave me a bit more experience using the chain stitch feature on my coverstitch machine. That was fun.

One of the jobs on the list for January is to get the industrial serger up and running again. That is a five-thread machine—a three-thread serger edge/chainstitch combo—and I need to make some samples using it. That is also the machine I used to make canvas grocery bags and I have gotten a few requests for more of those.

I might use the downtime this week to cut fabric. The scrap bag is full and those leftovers need to be cut into usable pieces. I am also going to get this Accuquilt snowflake die the next time I’m at the quilt store:

My friend Ginger, who does the visuals at church, has an idea for some banners with snowflakes. I showed her the die and she thought it would be perfect.

When Robin gets home after Christmas, we’re going to have a cutting marathon. She came and cut tumblers using my dies back in August, then made some lovely table runners for the the craft co-op sale. I still have my original Accuquilt Go! cutter as well as the Studio cutter, so the two of us should be able to crank out a whole pile of tumblers.

Postcard From Siberia

I finished quilting the center of that Blue Thistle quilt yesterday afternoon. DD#2 sets up a workstation in my office when she visits and I needed to get that project out of the way. (The Bernina Q20 is in here.) I’m thinking about how I want to quilt the borders. Those should go quickly, and then I can move the next project up to the top of the list.

The weather forecast gets more interesting every day. The high on Thursday will be -9F.

And then we get that bizarre warmup next week. Nothing like a bit of weather whiplash to keep us on our toes.

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Our latest project here has been eliminating seed oils from our diet. The Great Diet Cleanup started some years ago when I stopped buying foods containing high fructose corn syrup. Wheat and gluten went out the window after that, followed by soy. The cleaner we went, though, the more I noticed problems when eating out or eating processed foods. (Traveling can be a nightmare, which is why I prefer Airbnbs where I can cook my own breakfasts.) I can tell when I have ingested something I shouldn’t have, because my hip and knee joints will start to hurt.

Ironically, most of the food in “health food” stores is loaded with soy, seed oils, and other truly awful ingredients. I cook mostly from scratch—with lard, butter, and olive oil—but there are times when I would like to have some convenience foods. Salad dressings have been a problem. Yes, I could make my own, but either I never seem to have the time or I don’t have the ingredients. I do not like vinaigrettes, either, unless they are made by my chef friend, Anna.

I’ve been buying the Primal Kitchen brand of dressings recently. Costco carries the mayonnaise, which is made with avocado oil instead of soy. (Even the ones claiming to be made with olive oil have some soy or canola oil in them.) The Primal Kitchen dressings are made with avocado oil only. I love the Green Goddess and the Cilantro Lime. The husband likes the Italian ones.

I still miss a few foods I used to eat. Pizza is one, although I am quite fond of pizza crusts made with cauliflower and they are getting easier to find. (The problem with “gluten free” is that those products are loaded with tapioca and rice flours, which are pretty high on the carb scale.) Costco is now carrying cauliflower sandwich rounds. I bought a package of those last week. I was able to find grape jelly sans HFCS and peanut butter containing only peanuts, so I’ve been indulging in the occasional peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They are not quite the PB&J sandwiches of my childhood, but they are close enough. And they don’t make my joints hurt.

I have a theory that the reason people are flocking to special diets like keto and carnivore isn’t because those diets are necessarily better for humans—I’m not convinced they are, although I don’t deny they work for some—but because those diets are strict enough that they allow people to avoid things like soy, seed oils, gluten, and other problematic ingredients.

DD#2 and I have an appointment at my naturopath’s office on Friday to get blood tests for food sensitivities. She has an ongoing problem with eczema and I want to see if there is anything else I need to avoid. This should be interesting.

Adopted By a Deer

I was coming out of the chicken coop Friday afternoon when the little deer spotted me and came walking in my direction. I gave it a handful of scratch grains.

After dinner, we heard the driveway alarm go off, so I stuck my head out the kitchen door to see if someone had pulled in. The little deer was standing in the driveway. When it saw me, it came trotting over onto the porch. I walked out and we had a short conversation about how it wasn’t allowed to come into the house. It hung around the porch for a bit and eventually wandered off.

[By the way, the husband has been feeding it, too. He throws the apple cores from his lunch box out for it.]

The husband came in from chores yesterday morning and commented to me about the animal tracks in the driveway, so I went out to take pictures.

Sylvester tracks:

Sylvester is the cat who hangs out around our chicken coop and catches mice. He looks just like the cartoon Sylvester; hence, the name. We’re not sure if he is feral or belongs to someone.

Deer tracks:

Human tracks (me in my muck boots with ice cleats on them)

Coyote tracks:

I stood up and turned around after taking that last picture, and the little deer was standing behind me. (Scared me half to death.) Apparently, it has decided I am a good hooman. I went and got it a carrot for breakfast:

I expect to come down some morning and find it sleeping on the dog bed on the porch.

The 2022 salsa production run ended with a total of 53 quarts. I am going to buy myself another 20-quart stock pot; I manage with the collection of pots I’ve got, but I do a lot of transferring from one to another as the tomatoes cook down. A second large stock pot would make the process more efficient. Otherwise, my kitchen is designed very well for canning. The gas stove is in an island and I have access to all sides.

I also had 12 quarts of sauce left over that didn’t get turned into salsa. I ran that canner load before leaving for my meeting yesterday morning. The kitchen still needs a good cleaning.

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I went straight from my meeting to town (ugh—so many people) and ran some errands before my serger class at 1 pm. As it turned out, I had two students. One signed up at the last minute. That worked well, though. The two students had similar machines, so I sat between them and walked them through everything I wanted them to learn. Each of them was serging confidently by the time class was over.

I also got the instructions for the Serge of Creativity class I’m teaching next Friday. I will try to get that sample made before Wednesday so the owner can feature it in the weekly Facebook Live video. That class is filling up; one of yesterday’s students signed up before she left. I think it will be a fun class.

We’re heading for a deep freeze this week. The low on Thursday morning may be close to -20F, with the high only getting to zero degrees F.

The Word of the Year is No

I’ve made 41 quarts of salsa. I am tempted to stop there, but one of the freezers still contains about 20 gallon zip bags of tomatoes. Christmas is breathing down my neck, however. DD#2 arrives Monday night and I need to have her room cleaned before she gets here. That means folding up the cutting table and moving it to one of the other rooms. Anything I need to cut has to be done before she gets here. The kitchen is a disaster area—it always gets that way when I’m canning—and also needs a thorough cleaning. I’ve got a worship team meeting tomorrow morning, a serger class tomorrow afternoon, and church on Sunday morning. I am skipping Christmas caroling this year, which is scheduled for Sunday afternoon. As much as I enjoy caroling, I could not shoehorn one more thing in this weekend. I’ve also got to practice for the Christmas Eve service, and put the order of worship with the songs into a notebook so I don’t have to keep switching books at the piano.

Our homesteading chat group has a tradition of picking a “word of the year,” inspired by Nicole Sauce at the Living Free in Tennessee podcast. We were discussing everyone’s choices last week and I said that I thought my word of the year for 2023 was going to be NO. That was only partially a tongue-in-cheek comment. I plan to be very clear about what I am and am not willing to commit to in 2023. My schedule and my activities are going to get priority.

This has been an ongoing struggle for 20 years now. People assume that if you don’t have a “real job,” you must be sitting around doing nothing. Ha. I get more done before lunchtime than most people do all day. And I do have a “real job.” It just happens to be located at my house. Not only am I canning up a year’s supply of salsa, I grew all the ingredients, too. That didn’t happen magically.

[Amy Dingmann of a Farmish Kind of Life had a wonderful podcast episode about this on Tuesday. It’s about 30 minutes long and definitely worth a listen.]

I’m also aware that mission creep is a real thing when it comes to volunteer activities. Four of us at church were asked to be on the committee to find an interim pastor. That was our mandate: find and recommend an interim pastor to serve for 12-18 months after our current pastor’s retirement. As time went on, we found ourselves being referred to as the “transition team,” and the next thing I knew, everyone assumed that we were also going to be managing the period of time between our pastor’s retirement and the start of the interim pastor’s term. (It was unclear how long that period of time would be, and, depending on which candidate we hired, it could have been as long as four months.) I pointed out that we had not signed up for that job. I watch carefully for situations where others assume that if I am doing this, then I must also be willing to be responsible for that, because that is related to this.

And some things are just going to stop happening. Those of us around a certain age (get off my lawn) talk about this all the time. Younger people do not seem to have the commitment to volunteer activities that most of us were raised to have. Everyone wants the benefits with none of the work. Our fire chief has served tirelessly for close to four decades, and none of that came with a paycheck. That’s simply what you do when you belong to a community. If no one is going to step up, though, to replace those who are getting older, some things just won’t happen anymore.

Here endeth my sermon. I’ve got serger classes on the schedule for at least the first half of 2023 and other activities will be fit in as I have time.

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This is one of my favorite seasons of the year. I love the hush in the late afternoon when I go out to do the chicken chores. The light is much more subdued. Some people call it gloomy. I call it restful.

The mountains were gorgeous the other afternoon. This is the view from our front porch.

I’m off to finish the salsa project.

The Ghost Of Stretch & Sew

Yesterday was a sloppy mess, weather-wise. I had an appointment in town at 9 am and planned to run errands afterward. The snow had started overnight. This is Montana. We get snow. (News flash.) If I weren’t willing to drive in the snow, I’d never go anywhere, so I deal with it. What makes winter driving annoying, though, are the people who a) don’t know how to drive in snow; b) think that four-wheel drive makes them invincible; c) don’t have the proper tires on their car; or d) some combination of the above. The errands that should have taken me an hour or two took almost four hours. Stupid drivers were doing stupid things. The only plow I saw was on the state highway. I have no idea what our county road department does. I don’t think they know, either.

I cancelled my serger class for last night. I had zero desire to drive back into town after dark in that mess. I had only one student signed up, so she and I rescheduled for Saturday afternoon.

I thought that was going to be my last class for 2022, but the owner of the Quilt Gallery asked if I would be willing to teach the Bernina “Serge of Creativity” special event scheduled for Friday, December 30. This is what Bernina calls a “pop-up event,” and it’s a three-hour class intended to give people an opportunity to try the L860/890 sergers by making a small project. I have the kit and need to make up the sample. The project is a tea towel and I think this will be a fun class to teach. In yesterday’s Facebook Live video, the store owner bestowed upon me the title of “in-house serger specialist.” LOL. I would say that 2022 definitely turned out to be the year of the serger. I learned more about serging this year than I ever expected to, and made a new wardrobe for myself in the process. Who knew.

[I still do love quilting—oh, who am I kidding, I love anything having to do with textiles—but quilting is a highly saturated market. Serger specialists are much rarer.]

I came home from town, put away the groceries, and started cooking down the next batch of tomatoes. While I worked, I listened to call after call after call on the scanner for MVAs, slide-offs, and rollovers. The rural fire departments and Highway Patrol had a busy afternoon. One would think that by the middle of December, people would have brushed up on their winter driving skills. We have a long way to go before spring gets here.

Speaking of snow, Seattle is supposed to get some next week, which is unusual. DD#2 rescheduled her flight home for a day earlier because she doesn’t want to get stuck there for Christmas. If I have to, I will drive over and get her. I’ve done it before.

I am going to try to do two canner loads of salsa today, which would put me at 42 quarts. I’m down to one freezer with tomatoes. I could wait until January to make the tomato sauce. I also need to keep a couple of bags of tomatoes on hand to throw in when I make stock.

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Facebook is so obliging these days. I get all sorts of clothing ads in my feed, which provide plenty of inspiration for things I want to make. This Coldwater Creek tunic is especially pretty:

Whitney at TomKat Stitchery does occasional “sew the look” videos where she pairs up RTW clothing ideas with patterns to make them. Lo and behold!—Stretch and Sew 640 is a saddle shoulder raglan sweater pattern, now on its way to me.

Ah, Stretch & Sew. The universe has a bizarre sense of humor. My mother took Stretch and Sew classes in the 1970s. I’ll start here and see if I can frankenpattern this into something resembling the Coldwater Creek tunic. I think I just need to lengthen it and add princess seams. I’ll probably leave off the kangaroo pocket, though. I haven’t done much color blocking, but I have chunks of yardage left over from previous projects and it would be nice to use them up.

I still make myself laugh when I think that I’ve gone from knitting sweaters to sewing them. I should have done this 20 years ago.

Salsa Resupply, Part 1

The first batch of salsa is done.

My pressure canner holds 14 quarts. I did one run yesterday but decided against cooking down the next batch of tomatoes. Today’s schedule is such that I won’t have time to turn them into salsa and I didn’t want them to sit for two days.

I also worked on the quilt and made up all my coverstitch samples to drop off at the quilt store today. The furniture store delivered the replacement recliner and took the other one.

We were sitting in our respective recliners the other night, discussing the day’s events, when the husband said, “Do you want to hear a funny story?”

“Sure,” I said. The husband’s funny stories are rare, but worth waiting for.

He’s been in conversation all week with the guy at the tool supplier who sold him the ground heater. The tool supplier feels bad about what happened and told the husband to send them an invoice for the cost of the repairs. After the husband explained how he chased down and identified the problem, this guy said to him, “I could use you down here in Colorado to work on my wife’s BMW.”

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

This guy’s wife also has a diesel BMW, although a different model. That comment, naturally, led to a discussion about all the problems the husband has had to fix on The Diva. Munich should just send him an official BMW tech certificate and be done with it.

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DD#2 is coming home for a week. She said she would help me assess my sewing areas and brainstorm about how to arrange them. I’ve taken over most of the other three bedrooms, but all three still have beds in them. We only get houseguests once or twice a year, so it seems silly to keep all those bedrooms set up. When our renters move into their own place—they are working toward that—we would not rent that house again but keep it as a place for guests to stay.

I’m tempted to start by moving the bed out of the spare bedroom. That would free up a lot of space. She suggested putting shelving units in there to consolidate some of my supplies. We’ll see what we can design for that room.

Salsa Production and Quilted Daisies

It’s amazing how much I can accomplish when my schedule isn’t being fractured into a thousand pieces. I started on the tomatoes yesterday. The husband goes through a quart of salsa a week. He puts it on his eggs every morning. I made 52 quarts last fall and we are almost out.

Every freezer we own contains frozen tomatoes. I pulled the ones out of the freezers here in the house, first, and dunked each tomato into hot water, which makes the skins slip right off. The tomatoes went into big pots on the stove to cook down.

I have a friend who has a very specific salsa recipe, right down to the varieties of tomatoes he uses. I am not that particular. My tomato sauce and salsa consist of whatever varieties of tomatoes were in the garden that year, although I do try to go heavy on the paste tomatoes. This year’s batch contains Oregon Star, Purple Russian, and Amish Paste tomatoes along with Cherokee Purple, Aunt Ruby's green, Weisnicht's Ukrainian, Abe Lincoln, Dirty Girl, some unknown orange ones, and Dr. Wyche's Yellow.

While the tomatoes were cooking, I worked on a quilt. This is one I started quilting last spring, so it took me a while to figure out where I was in the process and what I was doing. If I ever get back to publishing quilt patterns (who knows), this will be the next release. I’m keeping the quilt for myself in any case, so I am not being too fussy about the quilting. The design is a hook swirl surrounded by a flower made with Amanda Murphy’s Every Daisy set:

Those daisies are not easy to quilt. The template is only about 2” across and hard to hold onto while also moving the quilt sandwich. I like the overall look, though, and the quilting is going relatively quickly. The center of the top should only require another couple of hours to complete. I haven’t decided how to quilt the borders yet.

I let the tomatoes cook down until mid-afternoon, then turned off the stove so I could run up to the church for a meeting with our transitional pastor. She has been working on the Christmas Eve service and I agreed to help her. I love what she has sketched out so far. She is very creative and isn’t afraid to suggest new ideas. My job is mostly to help her sort out the details.

By the time I got back, the tomatoes had cooled off enough that I could consolidate them into the roaster. Sometimes I will put the pots outside on the porch overnight, but it was supposed to get down to 15 degrees last night and I didn’t want to deal with frozen blocks of cooked tomatoes this morning. They stayed warm in the roaster overnight. I haven’t decided yet if I am going to run them through the food mill or not. The tomatoes disintegrated pretty well while cooking down. Either way, I’ll chop the onions, peppers, and garlic and doctor up the salsa to taste, then fill the jars and process them. And while I do that, I’ll probably have another batch of tomatoes cooking down.

This is only the beginning. I still have two freezers full of tomatoes out in the garage. I’ll do 50 quarts of salsa and make the rest of the tomatoes into plain sauce. If all goes according to plan, I should be done by the end of the week.

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Some time today, I also need to make a coverstitch sampler to have on display at the quilt store for my class in February. That sampler will require several changes of thread and needles to demonstrate all the coverstitch options. I’m still trying to chase down specifics on coverstitch needles. Most manufacturers specify ELx705 needles. However, several serger teachers whose opinions I respect have said that they don’t think that is a hard-and-fast rule. Also, I just discovered recently that there are two types of ELx705 needles. The ELx705 needles with the SUK designation are supposed to be more suitable for knits, although there is nothing in my coverstitch manual about using one versus the other. The manual only specifies ELx705. I am going to get some of the SUK needles and see if they make a difference.

Coverstitch machines are by far the most finicky of the machines I’ve used. They are relative newcomers to the domestic market, which partially explains the lack of accumulated knowledge on how to use them.

Too Much Partying

The husband thinks he has isolated the issue with the ground heater, but he has to wait for parts. He worked on it yesterday until it was time for us to go to the party. I ended up not wearing my sparkly green top; I put it on and wasn’t feeling the love. I think I might need to lengthen that Toaster sweater pattern after all. I wore a Burda 6315 tunic made from some Joanns rayon sweatshirt fleece in a bright grape color paired with my plain black Renee pants. Part of the reason was that I was chilly and that outfit was cozy, but I’m also trying to pay attention to what clothes I reach for over and over and why. I love the way that Burda pattern fits my upper body. Those tops settle nicely on my shoulders and I am not constantly tugging at and adjusting them. The armscye and sleeve cap fit well together and there is no excess fabric in my armpit.

[I’d like to find a better term than “sweatshirt fleece,” because that makes it sound casual and sloppy. Rayon sweatshirt fleece fabrics tend to be more polished. This one certainly was dressy enough for a party, albeit a party in Montana and not Seattle.]

We enjoyed ourselves at the party. The food was amazing. One of the mixer drivers is from the Philippines and he brought homemade egg rolls and some adobo chicken that was delicious. (I asked—he said the chicken was his mother’s secret recipe.) I am trying to be careful about what I eat, but after two Christmas parties in three days, my digestive system is complaining a bit. I might have to stick to salads for dinner this week.

I went back to the furniture store yesterday morning and found a plain vanilla La-Z-Boy recliner in dark brown leather. The store is sending a delivery truck on Tuesday to bring that one and pick up the electronic recliner. We have bought quite a bit of furniture at this store over the years and it’s because they are local and the service is excellent.

So, I am looking at my calendar for the week. With the exception of two meetings tomorrow and a possible Serger 101 class Wednesday night—although no one has yet signed up—I have nothing on the schedule. I am going to try my utmost to keep it that way. I plan to hole up here, avoid people, and attempt to move some of my projects forward. Maybe I will even get the tomatoes processed, two months late. We’re running out of salsa, so I’m feeling the need to get that done.

I have to get this clothing manufacturing itch under control, though. The ability to make clothing that fits me well is heady stuff. I made a pile of the projects I want to prioritize. Each fabric has a pattern paired with it:

That sweater knit on top is another Walmart mystery fabric. It is destined to be a Harper cardigan, although I want to make one of the longer versions. I think that was a three-yard piece, so I have plenty.

I’ll have a marathon cutting session and set the projects aside to work on as I have time. I’ve also got another Liz Claiborne top I want to deconstruct. That one has a lovely pleat detail at the neckline, but I don’t wear it often because it is too short. I’m going to take it apart and make a pattern from it. Better to put it to use that way than to let it languish unworn.

I need to stop going through the stash and fondling fabric, because all that does is generate more frankenpatterning ideas.

And So We Punt

This has been a rather frustrating week for both the husband and me. We’re so used to having carefully-planned schedules that when things go sideways, we get cranky.

I managed to rescue my week, mostly, although the way it started out yesterday made me wonder if I should just give up sewing. I cut another (yet another) pair of Jalee Renee pants from the Robert Kaufman black sparkle ponte and thought they would be a quick win. And then I sewed a leg seam the wrong way. (There is no right or wrong side to this fabric.) I had to undo the whole serger seam and re-sew it. I ran out of bobbin thread halfway down a topstitched seam. I didn’t have enough elastic for the waistband and had to sew together three shorter pieces. It was one thing after another.

I persevered. They are done and ready to wear (apologies for the lousy photo):

I am all about the sparkle this week, apparently.

I also tackled one of the pattern alteration projects on my list. I love the Easton cowl, but I don’t like either the length or how it fits me in the hips. It just looks weird to me. I have been wanting to frankenpattern it with the Lark Tee, because I like the way that one fits me and the length is perfect. I laid the two patterns down on the cutting table and matched them up at the underarm, then traced a new pattern consisting of the top of the Easton cowl and the bottom of the Lark Tee. That added about 3” to the length of the Easton cowl pattern and put the hip shaping where I needed it.

For the fabric, I pulled out a rayon crepe jersey from—of all places—the Walmart remnant rack. I wish I knew where they were getting these remnants. This is a lovely piece of fabric.

[Here is your spinning lesson for today: A crepe yarn is made by taking a two-ply yarn and plying it with a single strand of yarn. I’m leaving out some technical details (sorry, Sarah), but the result is a textured, rather bubbly strand of yarn.]

I was planning to use the purl side of the fabric as the right side because of the interesting texture, but the fabric is black and a very fine jersey and I sewed the first seam with the knit side as the right side. I was not going to take out that seam and re-sew it.

I am delighted with how the top turned out, however.

Both the length and silhouette are perfect and that rayon crepe jersey is luxurious. I’d take two yards in every jewel tone if I could find more.

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The husband has been on the hunt for a ground heater, a piece of equipment that would allow him to thaw out frozen ground so that he could continue to pour concrete through the winter. The local tool rental place has one that they rent for $1500 a day and it’s booked solid. He finally found one for sale by a tool supplier in Colorado. The seller had it freighted up here and the husband picked it up yesterday morning. Unfortunately, it has a problem. The burner doesn’t stay on, although the seller said he ran it for several hours with no problem to make sure it was working. The husband spent all day yesterday trying to get it to work here, with no success. He was not happy last night.

And the recliners were delivered yesterday, but we’re going to send his back for a different one. The one I bought has electronic controls, which is fine for a person who gets into the recliner and stays there for hours at a time, but the husband is in and out of his recliner multiple times over the course of an evening, and having to push a button and wait for the recliner to close up is just too frustrating. He wants one with a manual lever. I did not consider that when I was shopping. He really needs to go and find one for himself. The store has a seven-day return policy, so I will talk to them today. We put his old one back in the living room.

I do like mine, though:

I like that it rocks—my previous chair did not—and it is much more comfortable for my back.

The little deer has figured out that I do chicken chores around 4 o’clock every afternoon, so it shows up and stands near me until I give it some corn. I guess I have a pet deer now.

Partying With the Crafters

We had such a good time yesterday at our sewing group Christmas party. This is the group that meets every Thursday at our Community Center and also puts on the craft co-op sale every September. I think there were 18 of us. We started out with visiting and a potluck lunch and oh, did we eat well! I was sitting between Robin and Sarah, with Susan on the other side of Sarah. We stuffed ourselves silly.

The party includes an optional gift exchange. If you bring a gift, it gets a number taped to it. At the beginning of the gift exchange, the people who brought gifts pull numbers from a bag and then the “elves” hand out the numbered bag that corresponds to the number each person pulled. We start at #1 and open the gifts in turn, and the gifter is revealed.

One of the women made crocheted “popcorn strings.” Such a clever idea and the string made a great necklace for Bonnie.

When we got to my number, Judy, the woman who had brought that gift said, “You can exchange that one if you like,” and I knew immediately what my gift was. I said, “Why on earth would I want to do that?” as I pulled this out of the wrapping:

Judy is well known for making Poppins bags (Aunties Two patterns) that are in great demand at the co-op sale. She also gifts a small one each year at the Christmas party. She said that she knew I had made some, which is why she offered to exchange it. I pointed out that quilters rarely get quilts as gifts—why gift something the recipient can make?—and that hers were nicer than mine. 🙂

[We do not do the stealing portion of the gift exchange, so I had no worries that someone would take this from me.]

Robin brought my birthday gift, too, which was a box of tea, some comfy socks, and a candle. She said she thought I needed a care package after all the running around I did in November. The candle smells like snickerdoodles. She suggested I burn it and make the husband think I had baked cookies. (My friends know me so well.)

After the gift exchange, Arlene led us in a game of bingo. Much hilarity ensued. We played until everyone won a prize—we drew a small wrapped gift from a bigger bag—and opened those when the game was over. I love that all the gifts revolved around sewing supplies, beauty products, and chocolate. We are so easy to please.

I came home, made myself a cup of the tea Robin had given me (coconut—yum), put on my comfy socks, and sat down to read for a bit. I had brought home leftovers from the party for the husband, including two pieces of Sarah’s raspberry/blueberry cheesecake. Those didn’t last long.

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Did I get any quilting done this week? Not much. I have got to get a handle on the schedule and keep it from being hijacked. Susan and I have been discussing Christmas caroling—we usually get a group together from church and go the Saturday or Sunday before Christmas—but I told her yesterday that I am just not feeling it. We will be down several male voices this year, and caroling doesn’t work as well with a tiny group. I also feel like a lot of stuff got dumped on me this fall that I wasn’t expecting and I am tired of being responsible for keeping wheels from falling off buses. When the volunteer activities begin to take up so much time that they keep me from getting my stuff done, that’s a signal that something is wrong.

I am going to be home all day today, hopefully with no interruptions. The recliners are being delivered this afternoon. I may not quilt; I may just cut out a few more clothing patterns and leave the quilting for next week. Robin and I looked at our schedules yesterday. We’re going to aim for a trip to Spokane some time in late January. We usually get a nice thaw around then.

That little deer that was on the porch last week has been hanging around the yard. I tossed out some corn and an apple for it yesterday. I asked the husband if he minded me adopting a pet deer and he said that was fine as long as it didn’t end up in the house. It isn’t full grown yet and I am not sure why it’s alone.

A Sparkly Toaster Sweater

I am not one of those people who only buys supplies for a project when I need them. If I lived in a large metropolitan area with lots of brick-and-mortar suppliers, I might be, but I live in a rural area with few choices. I will admit that that has led to some hoarding tendencies, or as DD#2 describes them, “apocalypse preparedness buying habits.”

[One of our college friends commented, back in the spring of 2020, that I was the only person she knew who actually was prepared for a pandemic and lockdowns.]

When I get hit with a creative urge, the last thing I want to do is spend hours and hours searching for the supplies I need, either in town or online. I want to be able to pull some remnants out of the stash, put together a quilt sandwich, and produce a stack of potholders.

I’m trying to find a balance. A few weeks ago, on a sewing podcast, the host said, “There will always be more fabric,” although I immediately thought of that period of time during the supply chain disruptions when Kona Black was scarcer than hens’ teeth. I do buy fabric even when I don’t have immediate plans for it, and sometimes that means it marinates in the stash for a while.

About a year ago, I picked up some slinky knit black and emerald green special occasion fabric on clearance at Joanns.

I left it out for a few weeks while I considered potential projects for it. I finally had to admit that it was beyond my skill level at the time—very stretchy and hard to work with—so I stuck it in the stash and forgot about it.

One of my friends at church asked me a while back about the Sew House Seven Toaster Sweater. I said that I hadn’t bought the pattern because it was a very boxy, cropped design and one I didn’t consider flattering on my body. That pattern flitted across my radar screen again recently, and I realized that there are two versions. Toaster Sweater #1 is a raglan design with a wide banded bottom and cuffed sleeves. Toaster Sweater #2 was the one I had passed on.

Now that we are no longer being held hostage by the scourge of low-rise pants, I am willing to consider some shorter sweaters to wear with my high-rise, wide-leg Liz Claiborne jeans. I thought that Toaster Sweater #1 would be a good pattern to try. I bought the pattern that contains both versions and traced off Sweater #1.

The husband and I are going to a Christmas party this weekend hosted by one of the concrete suppliers. I want something dressy to wear, but not over the top. I immediately thought of that slinky black and green fabric. It occurred to me that the Toaster Sweater #1 might be a good fit for it. One of the ways to handle excessively stretchy fabric is to have a garment with a lot of seams to provide structure and control. I needed to make a muslin of the pattern anyway. If my idea worked, I would have a top to wear to the party. If it bombed, I was out two yards of hard-to-work-with clearance fabric. And I like raglans.

I chose to make the size 14 based on the finished measurements given in the pattern. The fabric was a joy to cut (/sarcasm/) because it waned to slide all over the cutting table. Testing serger settings was a must. I had to bump the differential on the serger up to 1.25 to keep the seams from stretching. The garment went together quickly, though—it took me about an hour and a half—and because the bottom and cuffs are banded, it can be made completely on the serger. No coverstitch hems required.

The finished sweater is not much to look at on the dress form, but it fits me perfectly. Even the length is good.

The pattern calls for topstitching the seams. I didn’t think that was necessary, nor would it be fun with that fabric. I will give the seams a light steaming instead. This fabric is not as heavy as what is called for in the pattern—I should have hacked that turtleneck into a cowl—but all those seams do keep the fabric under control. Other than those issues, I think this pattern was a good choice for this fabric.

Toaster Sweater #1 has gone into the tried-and-true pattern pile. I have a few other sweater knits in the stash that will work nicely and plan to make at least one or two more.

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Yes, I realize that I made a top yesterday instead of working on a quilt. I had intended to spend the day with the Q20, but the schedule got hijacked in the morning and I had to adjust. Barring any unforeseen issues, I should be home all day tomorrow. I will quilt while waiting for the recliners to be delivered.

Our sewing group has its Christmas potluck/gift exchange today. I’m making a quiche with bacon, mushrooms, and Swiss cheese. The chickens are cranky because they are stuck in the coop, but they are still laying.

Back In the (Quilting) Saddle

I did quilt yesterday, but I’ll be honest—my brain is stuck on making clothing. The wardrobe still has a few holes yet to be filled—I am woefully short on dressy tops to wear to church—and I have a chunk of black sparkle ponte that wants to be a pair of Renee pants to wear with the turquoise velvet top I bought in Seattle. I will be good and continue to work on my quilts, but I may throw in some clothing projects here and there.

[My current obsession is a YouTube channel called FebelsaDIY. The videos demonstrate how to modify a basic bodice sloper into a variety of knot top and twist-front garments. These videos are going to save me a ton of time re-inventing the wheel.]

Rather than go straight to working on a top, I eased back into quilting by making potholders. I pick up Insul-Bright batting remnants whenever I see them on the remnant rack at Joanns and had two pieces that were each almost a full yard. I layered them with leftover pieces of cotton batting, a top from one of the many food-themed remnants in the stash, and a backing, then quilted the sandwiches on the Q20 with allover meandering loops. A yard of quilted fabric yields a nice assortment of casserole hot pads, potholders, and mug rugs.

These will get stacked up until I have time for a marathon session of machine binding. Some will be gifts. The rest will go into inventory for next year’s craft co-op sale.

While I quilted, I listened to Gail Yellen’s serger Christmas stocking class. The class was held live on Saturday but I have the video recording for as long as I need it. I decided it would be better to preview the class rather than try to sew along live. Also, she had some issues with the pattern and I decided it would be better to wait and see if she worked the bugs out. (She did.) I’ll work on that project here and there, too, because she’s teaching some techniques I can use in upcoming serger classes.

Our transitional pastor and I had a meeting yesterday afternoon. We’re all trying to help her settle in, and she and I are mostly responsible for planning the Christmas Eve service. We’re meeting again next Monday.

And I ran my first meeting last night as chairman of the Homestead Foundation Fundraising Committee. This is a job I inherited from our church’s former pastor, who was also active in the Homestead Foundation. He wanted to resign from all his board commitments when he retired and I agreed to step in. We shall see how this goes. I limited the meeting to one Zoom session of 40 minutes—it’s a free account and cuts off at that point—and kept things moving along. I spend a lot of time in meetings and I don’t have much tolerance for ones that drag on, especially if they drag on past my bedtime. (No one wants to have meetings at 6 am, sadly, which would be my preferred time of day.) We’re at the end of the year and this was mostly a check-in meeting.

I will have to attend the general board meetings now, as well, and report in as head of this committee. I knock out at least half a dozen prayer shawls a year just sitting in meetings. Sometimes I think meetings were invented by extroverts specifically to torture introverts.

I haven’t gotten to canning tomatoes yet, although I did one batch of navy beans the other day and have a pot of red beans soaking to can this afternoon. I made two pumpkin pies for the husband yesterday. He ate half of one for dessert last night. I think I gain weight just watching him eat.

I came out of the garage the other day to find a visitor on the porch:

I am not sure where it was going, but I didn’t really want it in the house.

Can't Lose Me in a Snowbank

I know some people will be upset about this, but my friend Twila, who directs our church choir when we have one, and I have decided not to have a choir for Christmas this year. Our pastor’s retirement at the end of October brought with it some upheaval—not unexpected—and the interim pastor just started on December 1. Twila did a ton of work heading up the gift festival in November. Last month was a meat grinder for me. Christmas Eve is on a Saturday night with church again the following morning. The two of us had a long talk and decided to pass on a choir this year. Honestly, we’re both tired.

If people want to get torqued about this, they are welcome to take over the job of scheduling practices and finding music. And they’ll have to get another pianist (good luck with that) because I am not learning any new music for the rest of the year. Also, we never have enough tenors.

The new recliners are being delivered Friday. Yes, that’s plural. I bought myself a new chair, too. I realized that the one I am currently using is contributing to some back problems and making me less willing to sit and watch TV with the husband in the evenings. I found a recliner for myself in red leather, to match my red living room. The husband’s recliner is a nice rich brown leather.

We watched the Western Truck and Tractor Repair channel on YouTube last night. This is a mechanic in southern Oregon who travels around fixing heavy farm equipment. The husband said that he likes these videos because this guy is even busier than he is, and that’s saying something. I like to watch the videos because the guy is an absolute genius and I enjoy his rants. Half the time I have no idea what he’s doing on these trucks, but it’s like a soap opera with a cliffhanger at the end of every video. Will he be able to fix the truck? On last night’s video, he was calibrating a turbo actuator on a diesel engine. The husband has done this on his trucks, too. (I probably ask a lot of annoying questions and maybe the husband wishes I hadn’t bought myself a new chair, LOL.)

WS came over yesterday afternoon to practice his piano lesson. I do not mind if kids play my piano providing they wash their hands, first, and don’t bang on it. I listened to him practice and stepped in now and then to help him figure things out. I am trying to encourage good practice habits. He’s coming along. After he finished practicing, he spent about 20 minutes flinging himself down the big piles of snow in our yard on his sled. I wanted to join him but I would prefer to avoid a trip to the ER. Our friend Tommy stopped by, too, to buy some eggs and visit for a bit. He was skiing nearby.

I found the most fabulous piece of fabric on the mystery rack at Walmart yesterday:

This is another chunk of double-brushed poly and you can bet your biscuits I am going to make myself a top from it. I refuse to dress in muddy earth tones and sad pastels when I can fill my closet with stuff like this. You won’t be able to lose me in a snowbank.

And did you see?—Pantone’s color of the year for 2023 is Viva Magenta:

This year’s Color of the Year is powerful and empowering. It is a new animated red that revels in pure joy, encouraging experimentation and self-expression without restraint, an electrifying and a boundaryless shade that is manifesting as a stand-out statement.

Yes, please! I need more pink and red in my wardrobe. I’m a bit heavy on greens and blues right now.

I also bought the pattern for the Sew House Seven Toaster Sweater. When this first came out, I was like, “Eh, that will be too short on me,” but I’ve decided to give it a shot. I like that it is a raglan and I can always lengthen it a bit.

Back to quilting tomorrow. Before I start working on an actual quilt, I am going to put together a big sandwich of fabric, Insul-Bright, and batting and quilt that. I’ll cut it into potholders and bind them. DD#2 has been asking for some and I could use a few more, too.

I Am a Princess

I went to sewing on Thursday but didn’t stay long. I love all of those women, but even being around people I like is too much sometimes.

At home, on the cutting table, was a project I’ve been wanting to tackle for a while: doing a full bust adjustment on a princess seam design. I love princess seams. I think they are very flattering, but I’m hardly ever able to find garments with princess seams that have enough room for me.

I went through the pattern stash the other day and pulled out this one:

I almost didn’t buy this pattern because I was not crazy about any of the designs. For experimenting with an FBA, though, view D was perfect. I traced the pattern pieces before I left for sewing. When I got back, I slashed and spread the side front pattern pieces according to this tutorial.

I also set the coverstitch machine up for chainstitching so I could try basting my pattern pieces together that way. A chainstitch is the same kind of “unzipping” stitch that is found on feed bags. Oh my, is that slick. I was able to baste the pieces together and then take them apart again.

I cut a muslin out of some mystery rack cotton jersey from Walmart. Amazingly, I nailed the FBA on the first try. The princess seams lie exactly where they are supposed to with no pulling or excess. (Yay, me!) I hadn’t taken enough off at the sides, though, so I unzipped the pieces, removed the requisite amount of fabric, then re-sewed them. All of those changes were transferred to the pattern pieces. By the time I got to that point, it was dinnertime and I had to set the project aside.

Before I picked it up again yesterday morning, I finished another LC knockoff top. The serger was already threaded with pink thread and I didn’t want to change it twice.

This is the second top made from the deconstructed-top-turned-pattern. The first was a royal blue and white striped version. (I even matched the stripes at the side seams.) Both fabrics came from the Walmart Mystery Rack. Both are lightweight DBP. It’s a bit too cold outside to wear either of them comfortably right now, although I suspect they will get a lot of wear in the spring. I’ve got one more length of Walmart DBP that is destined to become another one of these.

Back to the princess seams. The muslin body was done, so I put one sleeve into it to test that fit. I’m almost never happy with the way sleeves are drafted on these patterns. They tend to be drafted as slightly (or more than slightly) dropped shoulders, even with shaped sleeve caps, and I think they are sloppy and oversized. I don’t want to be hauling that excess fabric around under my arm. I scooped an inch out of the armscye on both back and front pieces to make them fit closer to the shoulder. I then re-measured the armscye and the length of the sleeve cap and adjusted the sleeve cap accordingly. I think the sleeve could use a bit more tweaking, but I got it to where it was good enough.

The cotton jersey worked for the initial muslin, but this is a tunic that wants a fabric with some weight to it. I pulled a chunk of black cotton interlock out of the stash—another Walmart fabric—and cut a second top using my altered pattern. You’ll have to take my word for it that it fits. I could not get a good picture of me wearing it, and it looks funny on my dress form because the dress form is not as busty as I am. I put the cowl from view B on my version and I like it very much. The top is cozy and the length is perfect, although cotton interlock is probably my least favorite knit fabric. It’s beefy but it has zero recovery. I would like to make this again in a cotton fleece—the Robert Kaufmann Trainers fleece is lovely—or a rayon French terry. I would choose something other than black because my wardrobe is funereal enough as it is. And if this pattern were lengthened into a dress, I think it would be spectacular in a ponte.

Goal achieved. I have a good princess seam bodice pattern that I can hack into other tops and dresses. Having those inexpensive cuts of knit fabric from Walmart in the stash to use for muslins is great.

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The indoor lettuce system is up and running:

I pointed out to the husband, though, that it takes weeks for a tray of lettuce to grow into enough for a salad that he demolishes in one or two meals. The lettuce will grow back at least once after cutting and I have trays going on rotation, but I’d have to have three or four of these systems running to grow enough for him to have a salad every night.

One of my friends said to me once that she buys a rotisserie chicken from Costco and it’s enough to feed her and her husband for several nights. Huh. I wonder what that’s like.

Zombies Begone

The concert last night could not have gone better. The kids played very well and the pianist nailed all of her solos. I did have a moment of panic when I walked in, because the chairs and stands were set up completely differently than they had been for practice. The piano was way in the back, and the conductor and I had to have a quick conversation about whether I had sufficient line of sight to her. (Two of the songs started with piano only before the other musicians came in.) Everything worked out, though.

I bugged out after the concert and before the reception. The reception is for the kids to receive their accolades. Also, during the concert, the conductor introduced me as “the pianist at the Mennonite Church in Creston” and added, “And I have discovered that she is also an accomplished seamstress!” I appreciated that bit of hyperbole, but I didn’t want to go to the reception and give people an opportunity to ask me to hem their pants, LOL.

This latest storm off the Pacific brought snow to Seattle. I-90 over Snoqualmie was closed again yesterday because of accidents. (Some people are slow learners.) Spokane got hammered. We’ve had almost-continuous light snow, but I think we’ve only gotten about 6” so far. I think this will be what my mother-in-law used to refer to as a “snow globe” winter.

And now my overscheduled marathon month is over. Whew.

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Visiting the younger child (DD#2) is always a humbling experience. She does not let her father and me get away with anything, nor is she shy about sharing her opinion of our activities. She did say, as we were driving around last week, that if she still lived at home or nearby, she would start a YouTube channel and monetize the two of us.

[That made me laugh, because I remembered an early Sewing Out Loud podcast where Zede told her daughter, Mallory, that she should write a guide on “How to Monetize Your Mother.”]

I’m not sure if DD#2 thinks that we’re comedy gold or what, but don’t hold your breath. The husband says he has no interest in becoming famous.

The girls have been campaigning for me to get a new recliner for their father. This is his current recliner:

I bought it 22 years ago from a local furniture store. The first night it was here, he fell asleep and spent the whole night in it. This recliner is falling apart. Seams have split and the stuffing is showing. He has had to weld the frame back together in places. Various dogs have chewed on it. The little boys always want to sit in “Tom’s chair” when they come over.

He is adamant that he doesn’t want a new recliner, but I went shopping yesterday before the concert. I went to the same furniture store and tried out all of the recliners until I found one that feels like this one. He’s getting a new recliner as soon as I can arrange for delivery. The store says they will haul the old one away, but I need to check with WS, first, because he told me one time that if the husband ever got a new recliner, he would like the old one.

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Seamwork came out with a very timely article this week: “How to Sew Without Overflowing Your Closet.” This is a conundrum I have been wrestling with in my head. I like sewing. I like making clothes. I love the challenge of fitting patterns. I like seeing garments hanging in my closet that I know will fit me well, flatter my coloring, and last more than one season. I love textiles and fabric. At some point, though, I am going to have enough—although “enough” is relative depending on one’s point of view—and won’t need to make anything else.

I promised to be disciplined, though, and I will hold myself to that. I will cut out a few patterns today and tomorrow, but starting Monday, it’s back to quilting. I enjoy quilting, too. That won’t be a hardship.