Another Tried and True

The Sew & Sew 5513 raglan blouse pattern has been added to the tried and true pile. Here it is made up in some drapey Moda rayon purchased at the quilt store north of town:

I may go down one more size as I had to take in each side by an inch. The pleats in the neckline—and another at the back—provide enough room to move easily, but that means the lower half of the top is quite voluminous. I’ve gotten reasonably good at being able to nail my sizing in Big 4 patterns, but the See & Sew patterns seem to be drafted on the roomier side. The length is absolutely perfect. After I removed the excess fabric at the sides and hemmed the top, I was delighted with how it fits and looks. If I can figure out how to raise the neckline a bit, I’d like to make a long-sleeve version for cooler weather. There is a cowl version, too, but it adds another 3/4 of a yard to the fabric requirements as it is cut on the bias.

I have Simplicity 8568 on order:

I like these “base patterns” with hacking ideas. This one has a keyhole opening in the back and the neckline is more in line with what I would wear in the winter. I’d alter those sleeves, though, as I don’t like elastic around my wrists. We’ll see how this one works up. I might have to add a front pleat or some bust darts.

I am hoping to get that Burda raglan pattern cut out and sewn up today, but I’ve got a couple of other items on the to-do list so it may not happen.

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I cut lettuce for a salad last night from our growing system in the basement. The night before, I finished up a salad made with Costco spring mix. (We would have to devote half the basement to growing lettuce in order to have enough for the amount of salad the husband consumes, so I still have to buy some occasionally.) I said to the husband that commercial greens have gone the way of commercial tomatoes. They taste like cardboard compared to what we’re growing here.

I need to call and reserve piglets soon. And I am a bit concerned about the availability of chicks this spring given that everyone and his brother seems to be jumping on the backyard chicken bandwagon again. This happened in the spring of 2020 and I had to incubate eggs to get enough replacement chicks that year. I don’t mind doing that—it’s actually kind of fun—but it means we get an excess of roosters that have to be dealt with later on. Dave, my current rooster, came from that hatch, so it wasn’t all bad. He is a stellar rooster. He keeps the hens happy and we’re still getting over a dozen eggs a day.

The little deer comes every day for an apple or some sweet feed. Sometimes she stands out in the front yard and stares into my office window until I notice her.

Revisiting the Raglan

The serger presser foot class on Wednesday evening went reasonably well. The first time I teach a new class is always a bit nervewracking because something inevitably goes sideways. The store machine wasn’t working properly, so I couldn’t use it to demonstrate the techniques. Several of the students had brought their machines, but only a couple of them had all the feet. I had nine students, which was a goodly number. Despite the hiccups, we had a good time and they all left having learned more about their machines and the presser feet.

I was supposed to have a serger apron class this Saturday, but as of yesterday I had no students, so I cancelled it. That’s fine. I’ve got other things I need to take care of this weekend. January is a weird month for classes. After the frenzy of making stuff for the holidays, some people just want a break.

I don’t have any more classes scheduled until February.

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Before class, I stopped at one of the thrift stores in town. That store has a well-stocked craft section and I scored quite a few goodies. I picked up some Aida cloth for DD#2’s cross-stitch projects, and I snagged this rolling pin for DD#1:

I need to check with DSIL’s mom—she is a much more experienced (and much better) baker than I am—but I think this is a German springerle rolling pin. It looks vintage and well used.

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I prepped a couple of patterns yesterday. One was that long out-of-print See & Sew pattern for a raglan blouse; I had made a couple of muslins out of it last year, then set it aside. I am still woefully short on dressy tops, so I dug a lovely rayon print out of the stash and cut a new one. And this Burda pattern arrived in the mail:

I seem to be stuck on raglans at the moment, probably because I like how they fit. I don’t feel confident enough to draft my own, though, so I am collecting commercial patterns for future frankenpatterning. I like the Sew House Seven Toaster Sweater but want to alter the neckline on that one and make it more like the turtleneck in view D of this Burda pattern. I traced this pattern yesterday. I’ll pull some Walmart mystery fabric out of the stash and test it out.

I was expecting to be much further along by this time in 2023, but those two weeks without internet at Christmas wrecked the schedule. I think I am just about caught up. I have two homestead foundation tasks to finish up today and tomorrow and then they will be off my plate. Class prep for my February classes is already done. I’m getting there.

Sewing More Sweaters

I finished sorting paperwork yesterday morning and rewarded myself by playing around with an idea. Whitney, at TomKat Stitchery, mentioned in a recent video that she had sewn up a lightweight sweater knit using a favorite T-shirt pattern. I have quite a few sweater knits in the stash that I’d like to sew into something other than cardigans. I pulled out one of the Walmart mystery remnants from my travels at Thanksgiving and the Lark Tee pattern and got to work. Two hours later, I had this:

The yarn is navy blue with multi-colored flecks. The fiber content is a mystery, although I am pretty sure it has some rayon in it. The gauge is loose, making the top somewhat translucent. I did not think the loose gauge would play well with the coverstitch machine, so instead of hemming the cuffs and bottom, I self-banded them. I cut the sleeves a few inches longer, folded them up to make three layers, then serged around them. Voila!—instant cuffs. (That’s a technique I’ve used on the bottom of baby leggings, too.) The top stretched a bit and was longer than it would have been in a stable jersey, so I did the same thing at the bottom. The shoulders are stabilized with 1/4” organza ribbon.

I also used the purl side of the fabric as the public side.

The stockinette side had more of a matte finish and I didn’t like it as much.

I think this will pair nicely with my Liz Claiborne wide leg jeans. I have a few more lightweight sweater knits in the stash that may end up the same way.

I have started a list of classes I’d like to teach later in the year. I think a class on sewing sweater knits would be fun to do, maybe in August or September. Bernina is also coming out with several new presser feet for their line of sergers. I’ll see how tonight’s class goes and if there is interest in learning about the other presser feet.

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Having two days at home to work with no interruptions (and functioning internet) has been wonderful. I know I get twitchy when the schedule gets fractured into a thousand pieces. I’ve made significant headway on several large projects, too, and that feels good.

I’m going to have to order seeds soon, although gardening season is several months away yet. We have a planning meeting at the end of the month for the plant sale. We’d like to be more deliberate about how many and what kinds of plants we want to offer. Last year, we ran out of cucumbers and zucchini starts. We also had about a thousand tomato plants. (Not really, but close.) Some of what we sell depends on what those of us who grow extra plants for the sale are putting in our own gardens.

The lettuce is doing well in the indoor system in the basement. It doesn’t provide everything we need—the husband would have salad every night if he could—but every little bit helps.

I had the husband look and see what mounting hardware we’re going to need for the Starlink equipment so I could order it. We talked to some neighbors at our fire department dinner last week who have Starlink now and love it. Starlink hasn’t given us a shipping date yet, but the husband won’t be able to install the equipment until the snow melts anyway. The receiver is going to go up on the top of the house. We’ll need the forklift to get it there.

Out of My Way

I had such a productive day yesterday. I worked on the homestead foundation website for a few hours and added some features designed to bring in additional revenue. Once I run those changes past a couple of people, we’ll be able to start using that function.

I called Kevin and we talked about The Diva. The husband thought the part that is throwing the fault code had been replaced under recall. Kevin looked up the repair history and reminded me that they hadn’t done the repair because at the time the recall was issued, the replacement part wasn’t available. He has the part now. I am looking at the schedule—and the weather forecast, because it means a trip to Spokane—to see how soon I can get that done. The engine, theoretically, could catch on fire, and given the way 2023 has started out, I am not sure I want to wait.

I worked on the red churn dash quilt a bit more. It is coming along.

After lunch, I tackled the annual January project. I confess that I am terrible at filing. I have only a small filing drawer in my desk, so as I do paperwork—both for the construction company and our personal finances—I make a pile on my desk. When the pile gets to a certain height, I put those papers into a box. When it comes time to do tax prep in January, I sort the papers into their respective categories. One pass divides company from personal. The next couple of passes funnel everything into specific file folders.

Could I save time by filing as I go? Most certainly. I’ve tried. I’ve tried and failed so many times that I’ve given up and use the system that works for me. (If you are one of those people who waits until the last possible second to do your taxes, you’re hardly in a position to criticize my methods.) By dinnertime, all the construction company files were sorted, organized by date, and ready for me to finish up a few details in Quickbooks before handing the information off to the accountant. I’ll do our personal files today.

I did the sorting on my cutting table, which provided extra incentive to get the job done.

After dinner, I finished binding the quilt. I can’t get a good picture until the weather improves and I can hang the quilt outside, but here is a teaser:

I might go back and quilt something in that narrow blue border. I am undecided.

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I have given up on the dietary changes suggested by the food sensitivity testing. I made an attempt but messed up my system in the process. I’m going to stick with foods I like that make me feel good, and that includes eggs and cheese. I find it very suspicious that every single food I tested sensitive to was something I had eaten in the few days prior to the test.

Feeding ourselves would be a lot easier if the food system in this country weren’t so corrupted with garbage. I’m happy that I only have to visit the grocery store twice a month.

Evenings in the Living Room

I love our winter routine. The husband squeezes every ounce of daylight out of his workday, so when the sun doesn’t set until 9 pm, I don’t see much of him. During the cold, dark months of winter, our evenings are spent relaxing in our respective recliners watching YouTube videos.

I keep a stack of projects next to my chair to work on—either English paper piecing, embroidery, or binding. I am almost done binding this quilt:

This is the quilt I made originally in greens and purples, only to discover that I had used two different Kona whites (Bone and Snow) for the background. I liked the effect of the two different whites, although it wasn’t random enough to look like a design element. I remade it in blues and used some Moda Grunge for the background, which gave it that mottled look I wanted.

We were watching tool repair videos last night. One of the Youtubers the husband follows bought a Miller welder at an auction and has been working on getting it up and running again. These videos are worse than soap operas. They always end with some kind of cliffhanger. Last week, the guy was waiting on replacement parts to be delivered. He installed those and discovered another problem. Now we’re waiting to find out if he can get an aftermarket circuit board to replace one that got fried, which is likely why this welder ended up in the auction in the first place.

The suspense is killing me. (That is not sarcasm. I get emotionally invested in these projects.)

We also watched a video interview with Kaffe Fassett on Bernina’s YouTube channel. The husband wanted to know who Kaffe Fassett was, so I launched into a ten-minute explanation of everything Kaffe Fassett has contributed to the world of textiles. (No muddy earth tones!) His latest project is a collaboration with Bernina to produce Kaffe-designed sewing machines:

I don’t need another sewing machine, but these are lovely. The quilt store in town has them on display.

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I am tying myself to my computer this morning to knock out as much website work as I can stand. That to-do list is hanging over my head and I would like it done and out of the way.

I’ve also got to call Kevin, at the BMW dealer in Spokane. We haven’t chatted in a while. The Diva is throwing a fault code for the EGR cooler that they replaced under a recall. I need to talk to Kevin to find out what’s going on. The husband keeps threatening to set the car on fire and mail the ashes to the EPA, because almost everything that has gone wrong on that car has to do with the EPA-mandated emissions system.

“The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, 'See, if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk.”―Harry Browne

I’m starting to feel like I’m close to getting the schedule back under control, although saying that out loud is an invitation to the universe to lob yet another wrench into the works.

If I get a chunk of website stuff out of the way this morning, I plan to reward myself by working on the red churn dash quilt this afternoon. I need to keep moving that one along so I can get the Sunbonnet Sue quilt done before things start ramping up in the spring.

Students as Guinea Pigs

I spent three hours at the Verizon store Friday afternoon getting my phone replaced. Something went awry with one of the pieces of paperwork and it disappeared into the ether, never to be seen again, which then held up the rest of the process. The young man helping me was very apologetic, although it was hardly his fault. I ran errands at nearby stores while he untangled things.

I am thus far unimpressed with 2023.

The new phone is nice and I think the improvement in photo quality will be apparent. I went from a refurbished iPhone 8 to a new iPhone 14 only because they took my old phone on significant trade-in and gave me a loyalty discount.

I finished my class prep yesterday. I tend to go a bit overboard, but I would rather have too much material than too little. I also want to have a few things in my back pocket to pull out if it looks like students are getting frustrated. When that happens, it helps to have something to give them a quick win and get them back on track.

Honestly, I have enough material prepped that I probably could teach a three-hour class on each different presser foot, but we’re going to try to cram 3-4 feet into one three-hour session. I also made up kits for each student. I rarely do that, but for this class, it was appropriate. Some of the techniques require very specific materials and I want to make sure each student has the right ones. I’ve mentioned previously the student who came to one of my cable knitting classes—featuring a very fiddly technique—with navy blue sock yarn and size 2 needles for making samples. This class will go more smoothly if everyone has the same supplies provided by me. After I’ve taught it once, I can be more specific with the supply list.

The piping foot is one of the feet I am covering in class. I had already decided to whip up one of these tissue holders as a class sample. It features piping along each edge of the opening.

I followed the instructions from this video, if you’d like to try making one yourself. Each one only takes about 10 minutes. The fact that the pattern repeat lined up so perfectly was a total fluke, by the way, just in case you were thinking I was some kind of sewing genius.

As I was preparing to get started yesterday, I discovered that Gail Yellen had just posted a new video for a freebie serger project. She designed a padded hanger that featured zipper insertion using—you guessed it—the piping foot. I whipped up one of those, too, to have as a class sample:

Mine doesn’t look quite right because I didn’t have enough bubble wrap for the padding, but it illustrates the zipper insertion nicely.

I have to make a few tweaks to the class handout; otherwise, this one is all ready to go. Class prep takes an investment of time, but once it is done, it’s done. I’ve got quite an impressive list of serger classes I can teach. And I really appreciate that these students who sign up for my serger classes are letting me use them as guinea pigs.

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Nicole Sauce mentioned, on her Friday podcast livestream, that I am going to be a presenter at her Spring Workshop. She noted that this spring workshop will feature sessions on “homestead skills, including some of the feminine ones,” which made me laugh. She has a point, though. So many of these homesteading/prepper events are geared toward men, with a heavy emphasis on self-defense and outdoor skills. We haven’t settled on specific topics yet, but she has a list of what I’m willing to teach.

I started listening to her podcast because I was griping to the husband one day about how most of the homesteading podcasts hosted by men were full of testosterone and chest thumping. A few days later, he said to me, “I found you a homesteading podcast hosted by some woman in Tennessee. I think you’ll like it.” I listened to a couple of episodes, including the infamous squash episode, and was hooked.

Serger Playtime

I am still working on wrestling this new year into submission. Day-to-day activities are an uphill battle. Stuff continues to malfunction and break. It appears I am going to have to replace my cell phone as apps either won’t load or they shut down unexpectedly. And yesterday, we found out that our girls’ first-grade teacher passed away earlier this week. She was a sweet, kind woman and a beloved member of our community.

I am trying to concentrate on the bright spots. My Bernina serger mastery class on Wednesday was great fun. I had four students and all of them did well. After class, I came home and registered for Sew Expo and was able to get into all the classes I want to take. The competition for classes is so great that prospective students are allowed 20 minutes to register—you need to know ahead of time exactly what classes you want to take on which day—and every time you select a new class, you have to complete a verification screen to prove you aren’t a robot. Tera was able to get her classes, too, so now we are all set for our big adventure.

Joann Fabrics is back to shortened hours, which annoys me to no end. I was in town yesterday morning and planned to stop at Joanns on my way home. I had a shopping list for a few specific items. I arrived shortly after 10 am only to find that, once again, they are not opening until 11 am. (Over the holidays, they opened an hour earlier.) I did not want to sit and wait or find other things to do. Had I known they were going back to pre-holiday hours, I would have picked up what I needed at Hobby Lobby.

I came home and spent the afternoon working on class samples for my serger feet class next week. Class prep takes a fair bit of time, but once it is done, it’s done. This class will cover how to use the gathering foot, the elasticator foot, and the cording/piping feet. The gathering foot samples are done. I’m going to make the elasticator feet samples today. Yesterday was devoted to playing around with the cording foot.

That round opening in the front and a groove underneath ensure that the cord is fed in smoothly and straight.

When I make class samples, I like to have examples of all possible applications, because that helps to spark creativity. Gail Yellen has a video on making wire-edged ribbon, so I followed her tutorial and made one of my own:

I used some strips I had on the cutting table; this would look better with wider strips but it illustrates the technique adequately.

[This is why I keep the equivalent of a Joann Fabrics at my house: Gail recommended 26-gauge wire for making the ribbon, so I went to the craft storage room in the basement and pulled out the jewelry-making supplies. Hey, look at that!—two spools of 26-gauge wire.]

I keep a notebook of serger swatches for each stitch technique and thread combination. Each page has space to write down the machine settings—presser foot, tension, stitch length, differential, etc.—so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time I want to make something. A fabric sample with the stitch gets attached to the page. That book goes to every class with me. My class handouts always include a blank record sheet for students to copy and use to make their own books. Two of the students in Wednesday’s class asked if they could borrow my book for a few days. They planned to begin making their own books during Open Sew at the store yesterday. I am curious to see how far they got.

Sleeve Alterations and Vegan Cheese

I made up the Butterick 6754 blouse. It fits well and will serve as a good jumping-off point for other tops, but it required some adjustment to the sleeves. I’m not sure what it is about sleeves, but I always seem to be making changes to them.

First, the finished top.

It could stand to be lengthened a bit but it’s not bad as is. This is some polyester charmeuse from the Joann Fabrics clearance rack. The fabric frayed a bit as I was working with it but was otherwise well behaved. Inside seams were serged, or sewn and finished with the serger.

I cut the sleeves according to the pattern. When it came time to set them into the armscye, however, I discovered that the sleeve cap was way too tall. The most obvious explanation was that the sleeves were intended to be gathered at the shoulder. I looked at the pattern envelope. It did not include a description of the finished garment. I looked at the photos on the cover. The sleeves did not look gathered to me. I looked at the line art. The drawings did not illustrate a gathered sleeve.

One of the rules of pattern drafting is that the length of the curve of the sleeve cap should be a few inches (1.5-2.5”) longer than the circumference of the armscye. That extra length is eased in when setting in the sleeve. I measured the circumference of the armscye. It measured 19”. I then measured the curve of the sleeve cap in the pattern. It measured 23”. That difference was more than a few inches. Based on the number of YouTube videos out there on altering sleeve caps, I am beginning to think this is a common issue on set-in sleeves. Either this sleeve was intended to have gathers at the shoulder—not reflected in the photos or line art—or something was screwy with the pattern drafting.

I was making the D-cup bodice for my size. I have a hunch that that is where things went sideways, because the pattern piece for the sleeve was the same for every garment size and cup variation. One of the things that happens when adding bust darts for larger cup sizes is that the shape of the armscye changes. The front of the armscye rotates into the armpit in order to keep the armhole opening from gaping. That, in turn, changes the circumference of the armscye. My theory is that drafting the sleeve cap for the smallest cup size without making corresponding changes for the larger cup sizes results in a sleeve cap that is too tall.

[As they say in construction, “Every part of your house is connected to every other part of your house.”]

I redrew the sleeve cap so the curve measured somewhere in the neighborhood of 21”. I cut two new sleeves, serged the seams and hemmed them, then set each sleeve into the sleeve opening. They went in perfectly. The sleeve seam lies smoothly on the body with no puckers or gathers.

And now I have a basic dressy blouse pattern. Hooray.

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DD#2 sent me a copy of her food allergy test results. I still haven’t received my copy, but based on what my naturopath told me, it looks like she and I have very similar test results. I am struggling to make sense of this, however. This was an IgG antibody blood test. The jury seems to be out on whether this kind of test is reliable or not. Is the patient reacting to the food because it isn’t healthy or because it’s something he or she eats regularly? DD#2 reacted strongly to wheat. On my test, apparently it didn’t register, and yet, when I eat wheat, my digestive system goes haywire.

I am having trouble believing, as cleanly as we eat, that I am reacting to eggs and dairy. I don’t ingest foods that make me feel lousy because I don’t want to feel lousy. Eating eggs and cheese doesn’t seem to have a detrimental effect on my day-to-day activities.

Having a vegan friend has been educational. Our friend, Anna, has a catering business and sometimes uses us as her test kitchen for new recipes. While I don’t want to go completely vegan, I am quite fond of vegetables and she makes some really delicious meat-free meals. I spent a few minutes at the health food store yesterday looking at vegan food items. I was curious to see exactly what went into making a vegan cheese product. I could give up yogurt (reluctantly), but cheese is another matter.

I understand that there are people who truly cannot tolerate dairy products but still want to eat cheese, and for them, this offers an alternative. I do not, however, believe this would be healthier for me than eating fermented cow’s milk. For one thing, safflower oil is on the no-eat seed oils list. I know what that would do to my joints.

DD#2 is going to cut out dairy to see what happens. I am still on the fence. I have given up so much already. The thought of totally revamping my diet—AGAIN—and having to make separate meals for the two of us is more than I am willing to do. Quality of life is a consideration and I am getting a bit hedonistic in my old age.

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.