Time for Some Frankenpatterning

I bought the Olympia Dress pattern from Love Notions and looked at the instructions. I also watched Karina’s video for that pattern at Lifting Pins and Needles, as well as Love Notions’ own video. The method of making the neckline in the Olympia Dress results in a much nicer finish on the inside. The Olympia Dress also has set-in sleeves. The one feature of the Olympia that I don’t care for is that the skirt and bodice are seamed at the waist.

I know that trying to get the seam to lie at the right place on my body would give me fits, so I am going to frankenpattern the Olympia dress with the Miramar dress. The Miramar dress is cut in one piece for the bodice and skirt.

I’ll probably start with a top or tunic. The idea is the same, though. We shall see what happens.

I’ve added Lifting Pins and Needles to my regular YouTube viewing, along with Crumpets, Tea, and Sewing, and the videos from Minerva, a UK fabric supplier. I also love Inside the Hem, which is produced by a young woman who does the most wonderful critiques of new pattern releases from the Big 4/5 pattern companies. She is not shy about sharing her opinions and some of her comments are hilarious.

[Do not, under any circumstances, look at Minerva’s website or you will be stuck in a rabbit hole for hours. OH MY GOODNESS. The colors! The prints!]

I finished quilting the sashing on the red Churn Dash top yesterday afternoon. The next step is to begin quilting each individual block. I have some ideas. I think I’m going to wait on starting those, though—my college roommate’s top just needs to be basted with batting and backing and I can start working on that one.

I am halfway through the cream-and-white Log Cabin quilt. I have 32 of 64 squares finished. That one will be a king size quilt when it’s done. I am thinking it will be destined for the craft co-op sale in September. We don’t often have larger quilts in that sale.

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I am committed to dropping off tax stuff at the accountant’s office on Friday. I’m going to call and reserve piglets this morning. Hopefully we can get them from the same supplier. The seed order is just about ready. I’ll need to order trays, too. We have plenty of pots, but those trays are over 10 years old and have seen better days.

I am not unhappy to see the backside of January. It is usually one of my favorite months, but this year, it felt like a slog. Those two weeks without internet at Christmas totally wrecked my daily rhythm and I am only now starting to feel like I have it back.

I follow Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, on Twitter. This morning, he linked back to a piece he wrote for The Atlantic back in May of 2022: Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid. The title alone sums up how I feel most days. There is much to chew on his piece, though, and I’ll probably read it several times over the next while.

I’ve spent some time looking over some of my health reports, especially the ones having to do with that MTHFR gene mutation. My particular methylation profile is represented in only 7% of the population. DD#1 is interested in the topic, too, as it relates to her pediatric OT work. I think it’s helpful to revisit this stuff periodically, because results that didn’t make sense five years ago make a lot more sense today in light of new information. One of those reports had to do with dietary guidelines and I wanted to see how the food sensitivity results compared. (Not well.) I’ve added in a few recommended supplements and I am curious to see if they make a difference. Most practitioners will suggest methylfolate as a supplement for people with an MTHFR mutation, but I’ve tried that and it hasn’t gone well. Readily-available folic acid supplements are synthetic and are even worse. I try to get folate from beans and leafy greens, but I am going to try adding in some folinic acid (calcium folinate) to see if I can tolerate that form.

This is probably the most complicated medical problem I’ve ever encountered. I may not get it figured out in my lifetime, but I know more than I did 30 years ago.

I Am Undecided

I will get back to quilting soon. I am feeling the pull, but I need get this clothing stuff out of my system. And these tops don’t take long to make. It is hard to resist the dopamine hit of some instant-gratification projects.

The Laundry Day Tee does indeed fit better if I use the standard front pattern piece and add a boob bump as opposed to using the full bust pattern piece. This fits more like a swing top now and less like a tent.

The fabric is a very stretchy rayon jersey. I think this came from Stylemaker? Last spring, maybe? I’m trying hard to avoid black and white when I buy fabric, because I have so much of it in my closet, but I liked this print.

I stopped at the blueprint copy shop on my way home from town yesterday and had them print the Miramar pattern for me. It’s literally only two pattern pieces. The back is cut on the fold and the front is cut in two pieces and seamed. It took me 15 minutes to trace the pattern, another 15 minutes to cut the fabric, and half an hour to assemble it. I used some leftover Joann Fabrics double-brushed poly, of which I had just enough to make the short-sleeve tunic version:

This is a muslin, so it’s not hemmed.

I like the fit and the silhouette very much. The V-neck is very flattering and the depth is customizable. The scale of this print isn’t really appropriate for the design because of that front seam, but I it was a leftover, so I used it. I don’t even mind the grown-on sleeves, because they are tight to the arm, not floppy dolmans. I’d be inclined to redraft that bodice for set-in sleeves, though, especially if I were making a long-sleeve version.

The “eh” part of this top is that collar. It is cut as one with the fronts and seamed at the back neck. When the back is sewn to the fronts—the fronts are seamed last—the collar folds under. However, the only place where the folded-under part is secured to the rest of the bodice is for about 2” at the back of the neck. (The pattern warns against sewing it down any further than that as it can cause wrinkles on the front of the V.) The collar stays put once the top is on my body, but it requires a bit of fussing to get the front of the neck situated. I dislike fussing with my clothing.

I examined the T-shirt in my closet, the one that has the same kind of neckline. That top has a lined yoke on the back, put together in such a way that the collar is anchored neatly within the shoulder seam. And now my brain is obsessed with figuring out how to do something similar with this pattern.

Seamwork just released a video on the burrito method of making yokes. I suspect that if I concentrated on this problem enough—and watch the video several times—the answer will come to me. I am not sure I want to devote the time to it, however. I might need to park this in the back of my brain and let my subconscious wrestle with it. Perhaps I’ll have an epiphany at 2:00 am. If I had known I would like that top so much, I would have bought two of them last summer and deconstructed one.

[The Love Notions Olympia Dress and the Itch to Stitch Sovana Dress have similar necklines. Karina, at Lifting Pins and Needles, did a YouTube video about the Olympia Dress, and that neckline appears that it is constructed more like the one on my T-shirt.]

Further research is in order. At the very least, I would figure out how to topstitch that collar neatly so it stays in place.

I cut the tunic length for this muslin because it was obvious from some of the model photos that the T-shirt length would be too short. Indeed, I folded the hem up to see how much I would have to remove for this to be a good T-shirt length on me and it was only about 3”.

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I stopped in at the quilt store yesterday morning to pick up two new serger feet. Bernina released a shirring foot, a curve foot—it is shorter, to maneuver curves more easily—and a piping foot for bulky piping. The piping foot hasn’t come in yet, but I brought home the other two. I am eager to play around with them.

And I discovered that Spoonflower carries Bernina-designed fabric with the L890 serger in an allover pattern. Go look. I am so tempted to buy some and make myself a top to wear when I teach.

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We had our first plant sale planning meeting last night and decided who is going to grow what plants and what varieties. Last year, we had way too many tomatoes of too many varieties and I think we just confused people. We whittled the list down to about a dozen—a couple of cherry varieties, a couple of beefsteaks, some paste tomatoes, and a few yellow, green, and black ones. We also ran out of cukes and zucchini last year, so we’re planting more of those. I’ll need to get my seed order in this week. I am not ready for spring, but we’ll be planting seeds in the greenhouse in only six more weeks.

New Patterns and a Long Island Cheese Pumpkin

Did I quilt yesterday? No, I did not. My eyes were really bothering me. The air is very dry here and I stirred up a bunch of dust the other day while cleaning. The cotton batting also tends to irritate my eyes when I am quilting. I used some moisturizing eye drops and my eyes feel better today.

I spent several hours yesterday morning catching up on paperwork. The husband organized receipts for me to include with what I take to the accountant because we will get a tax credit for installing the wood boiler. That was his project and he is great about keeping records.

After lunch, I sorted through and organized my garment fabrics. I have a rough idea of what is in the stash, but every so often, it helps to make sure everything is where I can find it.

And then I spent a couple of hours tracing and re-tracing patterns:

1. I did not realize that the “full bust” Love Notions pattern pieces included additional ease at the waist and hips in addition to the FBA. I think I heard Whitney mention that in one of her videos. I also remembered that one of my blog readers—I am sorry I cannot remember your name!—saying that her preference was to use the standard pattern piece without the FBA but to add a boob bump. I have been meaning to get out the Laundry Day Tee pattern and re-trace my size using the standard pattern piece with a boob bump to see if I like the top better that way. The ones I made last summer fit well in the upper bodice, but they are voluminous below the bust. I pulled all the pattern pieces and compared the full bust piece to the standard piece. The full bust piece does, indeed, have several inches of extra ease below the bust. I don’t need that, so I’ll make one up with the standard pattern piece.

2. I am trying something with the Butterick 6754 basic blouse pattern. The one I made fits reasonably well, although it could have a bit more ease in the shoulders. I have broad shoulders and that is always a place I have trouble. (That may be why I like raglans.) The muslin I made a few weeks ago used the D-cup pattern piece. Knowing that bras have “sister sizes”—a 36C bra can be similar in fit to a 38B—I am going to make another muslin going up a size but using the C-cup pattern piece. That should give me the additional room I need in the shoulders without making the bust any bigger. I might still have to tweak the pattern a bit, but I won’t know until I try.

3. I traced the New Look 6990 raglan blouse pattern to make up at some point.

I bought a top last summer that I would like to recreate, but I haven’t seen a pattern for a similar style until recently and I’ve been too lazy to reverse engineer mine. The Scroop Patterns Miramar Dress and Top is what I need.

I bought and downloaded the pattern and will take it to the copyshop this week to have it printed on their large format printer.

[In addition to raglans, I am trying to add more V-necks to my wardrobe. DD#2 has long maintained that they are flattering on me—and they probably are—but most of the time, they dip way too low for my comfort.]

I’ve been working on Squash Squad block #2 in the evenings. This is the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin.

I’m not following the pattern exactly. I don’t have thousands of dollars’ worth of Sue Spargo threads in my stash, so I am using what I have on hand. This has been a great learning experience, though, as each block incorporates many different stitches. I am not quite sure why my pumpkin is listing to the right, but oh, well. It’s an embroidered vegetable. It’s supposed to have some personality.

I’m close to being done with the embroidery kit that Tera gifted to me, too. That one is a Primitive Gatherings pattern. It consists of twelve 5” blocks. They’ll be appliquéd onto a flannel background.

Snow and a Bit of Wind

The big storm we were supposed to get didn’t materialize. We got a lot of snow yesterday, and the wind had picked up by the time the husband came to bed, but we’ve had much worse back door cold fronts than this one. The wind has mostly died down. We lost power, briefly, around dinner time last night. It is a bit nippy out, at 13F.

The piano has been tuned and sounds much better. I should not have let it go four extra months.

I made the Simple-Elegant Tee yesterday:

I have a lot of trouble with this designer’s patterns despite the simple construction. Parts of the Little Somethin’ Jacket threw me, too. I know I tend to be critical of other designers’ patterns, but being able to put into writing how to tie one’s shoelaces is an important skill. Not everyone can do it. This took a lot longer to make than I think it should have because of the way the instructions are written. The body—including the sleeves—is cut in one piece with no shoulder seam. The trickiest part, by far, was the neck binding. I’d be inclined to change that to a facing. I don’t think that this is going to make a good serger class because literally only the side seams are serged. Everything else is done on the sewing machine.

I do like the V neckline, and although the top looks long enough on the dress form, I’d add a couple of inches. “Tunic length” on other people is not necessarily tunic length on me.

I have enough of that rayon batik to make another top. I traced New Look 6225 yesterday, which I picked up in Spokane:

This is another raglan, although meant for wovens, with bust darts.

I’ll run it up soon and see what I think. I’m planning to make the longer length with the neckline from view A/B.

First, though, is some quilting. I’m going to see if I can finish quilting the sashing on the red Churn Dash quilt today. I want to move that one off the machine for a while so I can get the Sunbonnet Sue quilt finished and back to my college roommate. I’m aiming to have it done by the end of February. February is mostly empty at the moment and I’d like to keep it that way because all hell will break loose in March and April, as it does every year.

I’m going to be letting go of some volunteer activities as the year goes on. I’ve already given notice that this will be the last year that the husband and I will be in charge of the equipment sale at the fire department auction. We will be training our replacements. The young woman who worked with us last year is going to take the lead this year and I’ll be her assistant. She’s a sharp cookie. The husband has some ideas about who can take over his part of the job. I will see out my responsibilities with the homestead foundation through the end of the year, but I can’t continue to juggle the newsletter, website, and chairing the fundraising committee. I’m no longer willing to fit paying gigs and other things I want to do around my volunteer activities rather than vice-versa.

I’ll have some embroidery updates in the next few days. I’ve been working on those projects in the evening and they are coming along nicely.

Keeping the Car and the Sewing Machine Happy

I made a trip over to Spokane this week so the dealer there could do some recall work on the BMW. The recall came out almost a year ago, but at the time it was issued, the replacement part was not available. The car threw a code two weeks ago, and when I called Kevin, he reminded me about the recall. They had the part in stock. He said it was slow in the service department, so I made an appointment for Wednesday morning.

I also called the big quilt store and made an appointment to drop off my Janome 6600P for service. I usually have it serviced every June. I’m a few months late. The store will do one-day service for out-of-town customers and that is usually where I take my machine. I don’t trust the dealer here.

I managed to get over to Spokane and back in a clear three-day stretch of weather. It is snowing right now and we’re under a winter storm warning for this afternoon and overnight. The past three days were precipitation-free—although overcast—and the roads were bare and dry. I arrived in Spokane just after noon on Tuesday, dropped the machine off at the quilt store, then did some running around. I checked all the of the Walmart mystery remnant racks in Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls, and Spokane Valley and picked up a couple of nice T-shirt knits. I also went to see the owner of the small quilt store where I taught a serger class last August. She wants me to teach again but we were waiting to find out if she was going to be moving her store. She was hoping to move into the old Boyd-Walker sewing machine store downtown. Alas, that has fallen through. She is staying put at her current location. I’m a bit bummed about this because that location just doesn’t have sufficient classroom space. I can teach six students there, but everyone is crammed in cheek to jowl.

We scheduled a date in March anyway. I said I would teach a Serger 101 class and also a class on the Simple-Elegant Tee:

This is by the same designer of the Little Somethin’ Jacket that I taught at the quilt store here in November. I still have to decide how to structure the class—I am thinking an afternoon session on fitting followed by a morning session on making the top—but I’ll know better after I make the pattern myself. This is not a pattern I would have picked out for myself based on the cover photo, but the pattern has several variations. I am going to make the tunic-length, V-neck top with cap sleeves. I bought some rayon batik at the store so I would have a class sample made from a fabric she carries. (She comped me the pattern and all the stores I teach for give me a nice discount on fabric and supplies.)

I dropped the car off bright and early Wednesday morning. Kevin arranged for a loaner so I wouldn’t have to sit for six hours and wait. I had moved my TSA pre-check appointment from Missoula to Spokane because the location in Spokane looked like it was being run much more efficiently. That was a good decision. I arrived about ten minutes early for my 8:50 am appointment and I was out of there within twenty minutes.

I went back to the quilt store and picked up the sewing machine, stopped at a few thrift stores, and before I knew it, Kevin was texting me that the car was done.

As the Crow Flies is a darling store north of Spokane that specializes in embroidery, particularly wool embroidery. Unfortunately, it’s only open for a few hours on certain days. I was in luck because Wednesday afternoon was one of those days, so I drove up to see what goodies I could find. I could go nuts in there. I confined myself to a couple of chicken-themed patterns and a new pair of embroidery scissors because I had given my embroidery scissors to DD#2 when she was here at Christmas.

I also hit all three Joann Fabrics stores in Spokane, although I bought only two patterns. It is disheartening to see the decline of that company. Whoever is in charge at the corporate level seems determined to run it into the ground. The stores in Spokane have cut their hours, too, and are fast becoming glorified Dollar Stores filled with plastic crap from China. I received an e-mail survey from them a couple of weeks ago asking me to evaluate some new “craft supplies” they were thinking of carrying. I didn’t even finish the survey because the items in question were garbage and nothing I was interested in purchasing.

Perhaps it is time to send some feedback. They need to know that there are people like me out here with classes full of students who want to make clothing but can’t find decent fabrics. I am buying deadstock at Walmart, for heaven’s sake. What does that tell you? Quilt stores are having to pick up the slack by carrying garment fabrics. Most are willing to do so, but it is a risky investment for them.

And I came this close to buying a sewing machine at one of the thrift stores. I found a Bernina Activa 130 in great condition for $40, but I have sworn off acquiring any more machines. I hope I don’t regret not getting it. It’s at the Union Gospel Mission store on Boone if anyone wants to go pick it up.

I arrived home yesterday mid-afternoon. The piano tuner is coming this morning to tune the baby grand—I am late on that service, too—and I think I’ll try to knock out that Simple-Elegant Tee while he’s here. And we’ll wait to see if this storm knocks out power and internet and for how long.

Winter is for Hibernating

I should be a bear. We had a potluck lunch after church yesterday but I decided not to stay because I am peopled-out at the moment. And I am being selfish with my time. I wanted to come home and sew. I like spending time by myself. (The husband was out in his shop working on a project because he likes spending time by himself, too.) I also like silence. I have enough going on inside my head to keep me entertained.

I pulled some Walmart mystery fabric out of the stash and ran up the Burda 6990 raglan pattern. I am very happy with it:

The fabric is a heathered interlock. Interlock knits are not my favorites—at least 100% cotton ones—because they don’t have a lot of recovery. This one must have some spandex in it, though. The hand of the fabric is quite nice and it bounces back after stretching.

I made one size larger than I normally make in Burda patterns. The pattern, as drafted, was intended to fit closely. I wanted something with less negative ease and not quite as clingy. I don’t often wear more than one layer of clothing because the wood boiler is keeping our house toasty warm.

This top is long enough and hits at mid-hip. I will have to shorten the raglan seamline on the pattern pieces. Other sewists on the PatternReview.com website noted the raglan seams as an issue, too. The length of the seam causes a fold of excess fabric above the armpit. I’m going to redraft the pattern pieces to shorten that seam. I will also narrow the sleeves a bit at the wrist to make them fit more closely.

This one will lend itself well to frankenpatterning. I’m going to modify the Toaster Sweater pattern to have this turtleneck rather than the funnel neck on the original. The funnel neck is a nice design feature, but it requires a beefy fabric so that it doesn’t collapse. I could also see this top lengthened into a tunic or even a simple black jersey dress. And it only took about 90 minutes to cut it out and run it up on the serger.

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These instant gratification projects are all well and good, but I have been hankering for something I can sink my teeth into. I thought about starting a bag pattern until this new Simplicity release came across my radar:

Other women like shoes; I like coats. I don’t know why. I have lots of coats and I rotate through them. This looks like it would be a fun, challenging sew. The hardest part, I suspect, is going to be sourcing a suitable fabric. I’m not going to find it locally, that’s for sure. Maybe Seattle Fabrics or Pacific Fabrics has something.

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I was checking the obituaries on the local newspaper website yesterday to see if one had been posted for my girls’ first-grade teacher. Sadly, I found an obituary for another friend of mine. She was one of the first people I met when we moved here to Kalispell because her husband and mine were working together as framing carpenters. She homeschooled their three daughters. At one time, they also belonged to the Mennonite church I attend. When I was diagnosed with leukemia and had to leave suddenly for treatment in Cleveland, she stepped up and offered to keep DD#1—who was not quite 2 at the time—while the husband went to work. We stayed friends as the girls got older, although I saw less of her as the years went by. She got divorced and eventually moved south of Missoula to be close to her oldest daughter. I am not sure what happened, but she died in early January.

I suppose this is a side effect of getting older. I don’t like the fact that checking the obituary page is getting to be part of my daily routine, though.

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.