Work Expands to Fill the Time

Amy Dingmann did a podcast on Tuesday that has been stuck in my brain for days. In it, she talked about Parkinson’s Law, or the axiom that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” If you have two hours to make a canvas grocery bag, you get it done in two hours. If you have two days to make a canvas grocery bag, somehow that task takes two days.

I like to be busy. I don’t like to sit. However, after two solid months of putting pedal to the metal on a fire department auction, seed starting/plant babysitting, a trip to Ohio and Tennessee, preparing for a pie social, running a fundraising plant sale, and getting the garden in, I looked at my calendar for the first three weeks of June and saw an opportunity to slow down (finally!) and take a breath. Also, I had a new sewing machine waiting for me.

So, I slowed down. I said to the husband last night that it’s almost like I’ve been on vacation.

[Let’s just ponder for a moment the fact that me finally having a chance to focus on my stuff for a couple of weeks feels like a vacation to me.]

This vacation, though, is wearing out its welcome. I am not getting things done. I have been puttering a lot. I am procrastinating on simple tasks, which is not like me at all. My brain still thinks it takes an entire day to cut the grass. (It did when I used the push mower.) It takes 90 minutes on the riding mower.

My assignment for this week is to find a happy medium between being so overscheduled that it wears me out—even if I am super productive under deadlines—and being underscheduled to the point that I become lazy. Notably, though, that does not mean allowing my calendar to be filled with tasks and deadlines assigned to me by others. I will sit this afternoon with some paper and my favorite pen and make some lists. I will assign arbitrary, binding deadlines for myself if necessary. And I will get things done this week. I’d like to start quilting that log cabin top and that means sewing the rest of the blocks together.

Speaking of bags, I am trying, without success, to find fabric for something like this:

This is a bag I picked up at a Waitrose grocery store in London in 2019. It folds up into that little drawstring bag at the bottom. I’d like to make a few more because it is so handy. I have a pattern for something similar, but it’s the fabric that has me stymied. This is about the weight of ripstop nylon—maybe a bit lighter—but without the ripstop gridding. I could use ripstop, but I’d like to find the same fabric as what was used in this bag. None of my Google searches have yielded anything except a list of places selling ripstop nylon. I searched on “nylon taffeta,” as well, but that brings up mostly garment lining fabric and I think that will be too light.

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My sister and her fiancé flew to Seattle last week and met my mother there, who flew in from Cleveland. On Friday, the three of them, along with DD#2, flew to Ketchikan to visit DD#1 and DSIL for the weekend. DD#2 texted me a picture yesterday of her and my sister in DSIL’s fishing boat:

I am glad they are having nice weather.

We are supposed to be back to cool, showery weather by the middle of this week. (“Cool” is mid- to high-60s, which is just lovely.) I am so happy with how the garden looks this year.

Bags, Bags, and More Bags

Yesterday was delightfully cool and showery—perfect planting weather—so I put out the rest of the plants. I was beginning to worry a bit about the lack of precipitation, because our little spot in the valley seemed to be in some kind of rain shadow. All week, I watched the sky and the radar as rainclouds and storms formed to the north, south, east, and west, but never over us. I would rather not have to start watering just yet.

The showers continue this morning. I will probably stay in and sew. The first batch of canvas grocery bags is done.

These are made with two colors of 10 oz duck canvas and a quilting cotton lining. The size is roughly the same as a paper grocery sack. I’m still using the ones I made almost 10 years ago. They are strong and durable and I always get comments on them at the grocery store. (They are so strong and durable that the baggers sometimes overload them.) And I get to have fun going through my stash to find fun linings.

I still need to fine tune a few settings on the 1541, but it’s a pleasure to use. It is out in the garage, and while that is a good spot for it, I am going to set up my spare iron and ironing board out there as well as put a dedicated set of snips, pins, and other notions nearby. The walk back to the house is short, but I won’t want to keep running back and forth in January.

I’ll finish what’s left of the bags today and move on to some other projects. I am feeling comfortable enough with the machine that it’s probably time to tackle some generator covers. And I also have that raincoat pattern in the queue for later this summer or fall.

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We are still being plagued by a ground squirrel in the garden. The husband closed up the tunnel openings by the grapes, but the raspberry canes are now tall enough to provide cover. I suspect the ground squirrel is getting into the garden via the raspberry patch. Those canes may have to be thinned out a bit more.

The garter snake is hanging around the outside of the chicken coop. I see it almost every day when I go out to do chicken chores. I concluded that it is feasting on mice and is probably mighty irritated that the Farmer Lady removed it from the all-you-can-eat buffet inside the coop. All that protein is likely the reason it’s such a big specimen, too.

The bunnies—definitely plural—spend most of their time in the backyard. They seem to be quite fond of dandelion stems, and heaven knows we have plenty of those.

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This was a tough week dealing with other people, communication-wise. I blame the full moon. I get particularly frustrated by the Facebook serger group I belong to. For some reason, that is the only group where the discussions really torque me, and I think it’s because so much bad information gets posted there. A few weeks ago, someone asked about using decorative threads in her serger and half a dozen people chimed in and said, “Decorative threads are only for use in the loopers, not the needles.” That is completely false, but people make these statements with authority even though they have no idea what they are talking about.

This week, someone asked for input about choosing a new serger. She said she was retiring and wanted to do more sewing and had the budget for a very nice machine. She was looking at the Bernina L860 or a high-end BabyLock. Of course, several people jumped right in and said they thought spending so much money on a serger was ridiculous. You know what? It’s none of your business what other people spend their money on. Those kinds of value judgments—in both directions, because I can’t stand it when people criticize others for knitting with acrylic yarn, either—are unkind and unnecessary.

Elaine and I are supposed to attend the annual meeting of our denominational conference in Portland this month. We discovered, however, that what is usually a two- or three-day meeting has been abbreviated to one day, and not even really a full day, either. That has caused us to rethink our travel plans. I believe it is important to attend the meeting, but the assumption that people should be willing to travel 10 hours for a six-hour meeting has stirred up in me some feelings of resentment. Our conference has a lot of churches in Oregon, a few in Washington, a few in Idaho, one in Alaska, and one in Montana. Those of us out in the far-flung hinterlands have long felt that the conference tends to be a bit Oregon-centric. Furthermore, there will be a gathering on Friday, but it is limited to credentialed leaders. It was explained to us that the credentialed leaders felt it was important to have a gathering where they could get together and talk about the issues that are important to those serving in ministry. I get it. However, I think that a parallel gathering or service project could have been planned for those of us coming to the meeting who aren’t invited to the Friday gathering. It just feels a bit ungracious to me.

I’ll get over my disappointment. I still think it is worth attending the meeting, but we might decide to split up the trip into two days and take our time getting to Portland.

Sewing and Strawberries

I worked on a curtain project yesterday morning. Our neighbor has two areas in his house that he wants to be able to curtain off for guests. The curtains he purchased were too long and needed to be hemmed. One of the areas has a textured stone floor, and he asked if I could also reinforce the bottoms of the curtains to keep the hems from fraying. I went over there last week and we pinned the curtains to the proper length. Yesterday morning, I cut the excess off each panel and ran the bottom edge through the Bernina serger before folding a 2” wide piece of twill tape over it and sewing it down on the 1541. (I found 2” wide dark brown twill tape on Etsy to match the curtains.) The twill tape will keep the bottom edges from fraying and also add some weight. The whole project went quickly and smoothly and I was able to return the curtains to him yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday’s mail brought a lovely thank-you note from Robin’s granddaughter.

Robin asked me last month if I could repair her granddaughter’s dress. This young lady had paid for half of it with her own money, but they first time she wore it, the dress caught on something and ripped. She was heartbroken. The dress had a tiered skirt and I was able to shorten one of the tiers and remove the torn area.

I am not interested in opening an alterations and repair service, but I don’t mind doing small projects for friends.

I also worked on grocery bags. In another day or two, I’ll have a respectable stack to sell at the co-op sale in September. And I am plowing through the fabric stash, which is also great. The bags are canvas with a quilt cotton lining.

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I just looked at the camera roll on my phone. The last half-dozen pictures are all of forest animals. I snapped this one yesterday morning:

I think Mr. and Mrs. Bunny Foo-Foo—we’ve seen two of them—are living under our porch. I hear thumping noises under there every so often, usually followed by one or the other of them making an appearance in the yard. They are welcome to live here as long as long as they stay out of the garden.

I also spotted another ground squirrel in the front yard. Hopefully it is the last of that group and we can dispatch it soon.

I did not see any snakes in the chicken coop yesterday.

These have been part of my breakfast every morning:

I just have to make sure I get out to the strawberry patch before the rest of the wildlife wakes up. I’m not a big fruit eater but I do love strawberries.

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The insurance adjuster is scheduled to stop by this morning to take a look at the BMW. The at-fault driver’s insurance company had my cell phone number in their system with a wrong last digit. I was able to call and make an appointment with him. I’d like to get that taken care of, although we’ve had such a rash of serious car accidents here in the Flathead recently—some with fatalities—that I am sure it’s only a matter of time before someone runs into me again. I’m at the point where I’m reluctant to go out on the roads both because of all the tourists and because of the way people are driving. Most of these accidents have involved out-of-state vehicles and drivers.

No Mercy

This is the reason I shoot ground squirrels:

Until Monday afternoon, this was a lovely, thriving row of broccoli starts. Some time between Monday noon and evening, an animal helped itself to the salad bar. (I was at a meeting.) I will not tolerate this. I am willing to tithe a small amount of my produce to the wildlife—the robins have eaten a few strawberries this week—but this kind of damage cannot stand. We weren’t able to find the perpetrator.

I was home all day yesterday. While I waited for the CenturyLink tech to show up, I worked on grocery bags. The 1541 and I are getting to know each other. As I walked back to the house for lunch—the 1541 lives in the garage with my car—I spotted a ground squirrel sitting next to the pile of wood that is going to feed the wood burner next winter. Unfortunately, the ground squirrel also spotted me and ran off.

The CenturyLink tech showed up after lunch. He concluded that the problem wasn’t in the line but in the programming. I had suspected that was the problem because we lost long-distance service after they disconnected the internet, although the representative I spoke with last week overrode my objections and insisted on sending a tech out anyway. This tech was very nice. He tried several times to call the customer support line on my behalf and even he couldn’t get through. I thanked him and sent him off and said I would wrestle with CenturyLink again. After spending 20 minutes in phone menu hell, I got a live person on the phone who was able to resolve the problem.

Eventually, the ground squirrel came out again. I headed to the upstairs bathroom, where I quietly removed the screen from the window. This bathroom overlooks the back yard and works nicely as a tree stand. The husband once shot a deer from this same window. (“Work smarter, not harder,” he told me afterward.) I could have shot from the porch, but it was safer for me to shoot down toward the ground.

I won’t post the picture that I texted to the husband, so you’ll have to believe me that I shot and killed it. I threw the carcass out into the woods. The ravens have been helpful in cleaning up the remains. I don’t know for sure that it was the same ground squirrel that was in the garden, but it won’t have any future opportunities to ravage my seedlings.

By then, it was time for chicken chores. I went out to gather eggs and refill the waterer and found this:

Sigh.

That is the same garter snake that I admonished to stay away from the chickens. Did it listen? Of course not. I can’t decide if it went into the coop for warmth or to eat eggs, although I don’t think garter snakes eat eggs. Black rat snakes eat eggs, maybe, but not garter snakes.

I tried to coax it into the five-gallon bucket I was carrying but it was having none of that. It scooted away from me and out the door into the chicken yard. I thought for sure the chickens were going to get it because I heard a lot of excited clucking as I raced out of the coop. The snake somehow managed to escape the chicken yard and disappeared under the billboard tarp, with me (once again) yelling at it to stay away from the chickens. Will it listen? We shall find out.

[I need to catch it and move it to the garden as a ground squirrel deterrent. It is not as big as the racer snake I’ve had out there, but it is not small, either.]

Not all of the wildlife is so annoying. I saw this moth on the door to the garage:

A hawk moth? If anyone has better intel, drop a comment.

And the mama robin who snagged the most desirable piece of porch rafter real estate is feeding three babies now:

Every spring, just like clockwork.

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Was it a productive day? It didn’t feel like it. I didn’t get as far with the canvas grocery bags as I wanted to, but I am further ahead than I was on Monday. Hopefully, CenturyLink is now done wasting my time (and that of their techs). I chipped away at the ground squirrel population. I also got to enjoy some beautiful wildlife that wasn’t bent on making my life difficult. And I had peppermint stick ice cream with hot fudge sauce for dinner just because I’m an adult and I can do that. On balance, it was not a bad day.

Open Season on Rodents

I walked out to the garden yesterday morning to check on vegetables. Something had munched on a few pea shoots but did not get very far—scared off by the solar light? Then I heard chirping. I know that sound. I turned around to see a ground squirrel standing up at the entrance to its tunnel, right next to the fake owl.

Bad words were said.

I marched back to the house for munitions. The husband got the 20-gauge shotgun and came out with me. The ground squirrel in the garden had disappeared, but we saw several of them in the woods next to the house. (I am pretty sure there is a highway system of tunnels from the woods to the garden.) By the time I left for church, he had shot four. He got another three while I was gone and a few more after dinner. Thankfully, the neighbors all know what we’re doing—these things are everywhere—although one of our neighbors said it sounded like WWIII over here yesterday morning.

I doubt we’ve even put a dent in the total population, but maybe they’ve got the fear of God in them now. My work in the garden is not intended to keep their tummies full. And they are doing a lot of damage in the yard:

I need some practice with the shotgun so I can take over rodent control from the husband. I am pretty good with my .22 but the shotgun is more effective.

“How much do you hate ground squirrels?” the husband asked me yesterday morning. I hate them a lot. Where are the coyotes?

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I’ve got a stack of about two dozen grocery bags ready to feed through the 1541. Our friend, Tommy, came by yesterday afternoon. He was out riding his new motorcycle and stopped by to deliver an invitation to a memorial service for a mutual friend of ours who died over the winter. Tommy does auto upholstery and has the Singer 78-1 that I borrowed from time to time. I showed him the 1541 and he sat down and sewed a bit on it.

I am hoping my needle order and the brown twill tape order arrive today. I’d like to get the curtains hemmed and back to my neighbor.

I have been enjoying Lindsey’s recent pattern review videos at Inside the Hem. She calls them as she sees them and I appreciate her honesty. The Big 4 pattern companies—although Lindsey notes that maybe they should be called the Big 7 (?) now because Simplicity, McCall’s, Butterick, Vogue, Know Me, New Look, and Burda Style are now under the umbrella of one website—have released their spring and summer pattern collections. In these videos, Lindsey goes through each new design and evaluates it from both fashion and construction standpoints.

[Shorts are big this summer. I prefer skirts in hot weather and will continue to wear them.]

A lot of Lindsey’s criticisms have to do with poor design, although she admits that the test garments weren’t made for each specific fit model, so some garments don’t fit perfectly. Still, she calls it out when she sees wonkiness. One of my major complaints (and hers) about pattern grading is that a lot of manufacturers make garments proprtionally larger all over as the size range goes up, which is not how to grade properly. The shoulders should not increase at the same rate as the bust, for example. Pattern companies seem to be as prone to this as ready-to-wear.

My sense is that a lot of the indie pattern designers got it right, and the Big 4/7 are now trying to catch up with their sizing and grading. We shall see.

Beans and Beasties and Gas Tanks

Some of the bean starts are now big enough to put out, so yesterday morning I planted the pole beans around a bamboo teepee and transplanted a row of dry beans. The husband and I ate the first three ripe strawberries and he grudgingly admitted that maybe the red rocks were working. I weeded a bit more in the potato patch, serenaded by the low hum of bees on the plants that are blooming. Everything is looking really good.

The husband spent the day on a car repair project. Ali has a friend named Sarah who stays with her occasionally. Sarah lives in NYC but works with an outdoors-related company, so when she is out in this part of the country, she uses Ali’s place as a home base. We’ve known her for a couple of years. Sarah has a GMC Yukon that was leaking gas, so the husband said he would work on it. (He seems to have begun his car repair business fixing vehicles for people named Sarah.) Sarah brought the car over around 9 am. She had asked if she could help and learn along the way. It took two hours for them to get the tank off the Yukon before they could even replace the part.

I like to watch the husband work, and Sarah is a lot of fun to talk to, so I kept popping in and out of the shop between other tasks. That dark circle in the middle of the tank is the top of a pump, badly corroded by road salt, and that is where the leak was. Sarah brought a replacement pump with her, but the auto parts store had given her the wrong one. She called them and did some sweet talking and they agreed to drive out the correct part and exchange it. “We normally only do this for commercial mechanics,” they told her. I would argue that the husband has reached that level.

Replacing the pump was relatively straightforward, but then they had to get the tank back onto the Yukon. That took a bit of wrestling.

The Yukon was running again by dinnertime. The husband set Sarah up with the sprayer that he uses to spray lanolin on the underside of his trucks to keep them from rusting from the road salt. Hopefully that will help to slow down any further damage.

I worked on my stack of canvas grocery bags on the 1541. I successfully wound some bobbins, threaded the machine, and got the bobbin case seated correctly. Thank goodness for those Juki Junkies videos. Literally all the manual says is “Be sure you put the bobbin case back in correctly,” accompanied by a very poor line drawing. The video points out markings on the flywheel—not mentioned anywhere in the manual—and indicates how to line them up so the bobbin case clicks into place.

I sewed for about an hour and felt much more comfortable with the machine by the end of that time. It is still a Beastie, but a friendly one. And it feels good to have some of these projects moving through the queue. Those grocery bags have always been very popular—I still get requests for them.

The schedule is open for the next couple of weeks. As long as I stay on top of weeding and watering, I should have plenty of time to knock some of these sewing projects off the list. It’s amazing how much I can get done when I’m not distracted by other stuff. The word “no” has been very useful this year.

Am I Sewing Anything?

I still haven’t sewn anything on the 1541. I’m not afraid of it; rather, it is more that I don’t want to learn by making stupid, avoidable mistakes. I am watching lots of YouTube videos. Jess, at the Jess OklaRoots channel, makes bags on a 1541 and her videos have been helpful. She calls her machine “Beasty” which is the perfect name for it.

I also decided to organize and reacquaint myself with the utility fabrics section of my stash. I took all of those bins out of the closet. One of them contained parts of canvas grocery bags—abandoned halfway through the assembly process—so I spent some time cutting more duck canvas and making a stack to finish.

I don’t like half-finished projects. They weigh on me. I want to finish my Ravenwood Messenger bag, too. The outside shell is done:

I have to finish the lining and sew it in. (The color is a bit more green and less yellow.)

My thread order from Wawak arrived yesterday. Their service is amazing. I placed that order Monday afternoon. I ordered needles from Cutex and they are supposed to arrive Monday. That’s assuming we don’t have a substitute mail carrier who decides to quit and go home even though all of the mail hasn’t been delivered, which happened this week. I made a quick trip into town yesterday afternoon to look for more duck canvas at Joanns and to pick up some concrete supplies for the husband. I left Joanns empty-handed, which seems to be the way of things lately. I don’t think I have bought anything there for almost two months. They had no black or navy duck canvas. I went to Hobby Lobby instead. I also stopped at the sew and vac place in town hoping they would have some industrial needles, which they did, so I picked up a few more packs. I have an irrational fear of running out of needles.

I have to plant beans this morning and get some hose lines laid out, but after lunch, I am hoping (finally) to sew on the 1541. I’ve got plenty of projects stacked up. I have thread. I have needles. I understand the basic operation of the machine. I am out of excuses.

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The CenturyLink saga continues. They disconnected our internet per my request, but then our long-distance phone service stopped working. I contacted them to find out what was going on. The customer service rep said they would have to send out a tech to check the line. She said that if the problem was inside our house, we would be responsible for the repairs. Would I like to add “inside line insurance” to our account for $15 a month? I declined, saying that I was pretty sure the problem was on their end. In the meantime, I’ve gotten a barrage of e-mails from CenturyLink asking “How Can We Make it Right?” Apparently they have never heard (or heeded) the advice that it is easier to keep an existing customer than to woo back one who has left.

I don’t know how some of these companies stay in business. And I know that I am starting to sound like a broken record but really, some of this nonsense is getting ridiculous.

My complaint to the insurance commissioner of Montana yielded stunning results. Not only did Liberty Mutual issue the check they had been promising for six months, they sent a second check for interest AND they responded formally by letter to the insurance commissioner. The letter acknowledged that they had failed to process the claim properly and that upon further review, they concluded that they owed us another several hundred dollars in interest and would be sending a check for that amount. It pays to be a squeaky wheel.

Prepping Projects for the 1541

My Wawak thread order is on the way. I ordered 2” wide twill tape from an Etsy seller for a curtain hemming project for my neighbor and that’s been shipped. I ordered some yardage of polyester Ottertex waterproof canvas because I want to see how it behaves compared to waxed canvas. And I am about to put in an order for some 1680 Denier Traveler nylon from Seattle Fabrics because that is the fabric I used for the first generator cover. I made that generator cover in 2016 and it’s still going strong. The second one hasn’t held up quite so well—it was made from a lighter-weight Cordura—so the husband has asked for a replacement made from the Traveler nylon. I also have to make a cover for the Miller welder/generator that powers the house when we’re off the grid. Its cover is beginning to disintegrate. This is my sketch for that one:

My drawing skills are nonexistent. I know what all those lines and measurements mean, though, and that is what is important.

The best way for me to get comfortable with the new machine is with a smaller project. I pulled some waxed canvas out of the stash for a Forever Shopper by Spencer Ogg patterns:

This is a no-fuss shopping tote with French seams. The pattern has both a large and small size. I prefer patterns that have cutting instructions by width and height rather than ones with pattern pieces that have to be taped together and cut or traced. This pattern had to be taped and traced, but I was willing to do that because it has some interesting shaping at the bottom. I prepped the pattern yesterday. I’m going to make the smaller size to start.

I also organized my bag patterns. I have a lot of bag patterns. Some women love shoes; I love bags. I’ve got every pattern that Anna Graham at Noodlehead has put out, because her stuff is so good. I’ve also got a lot of byAnnie patterns.

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I finished trimming the yard with the push mower yesterday morning. Full bags of grass clippings get emptied into the chicken yard for the clucks. I thought I could empty the first bag without turning off the electric fence, but I managed to shock myself on the wiring along the door. The jolt is enough to make one utter a few bad words.

After that, I took the push mower out to the garden and mowed the perimeter. Those grass clippings get dumped onto the potato patch for mulch. However, I slipped on the grass clippings I had put down the last time I mowed and fell down—very gracefully, I must say—onto my right hip. I have plenty of padding there and my fall was cushioned by another pile of grass clippings. I’m not feeling sore this morning, which is good.

I was already down on the ground, LOL, so I worked on weeding the potato patch until it started to rain. It did occur to me that perhaps I just ought to sit in a chair and read a book for the rest of the day so I didn’t injure myself further.

The beans I started last week are up in the greenhouse and almost ready to transplant, as is the corn, and those will be the last crops to go in. I am going to start some trays of lettuce in the greenhouse next, and I’ll also clean out and restart the lettuce-growing system in the basement. Theoretically, I can keep lettuce growing in that system indefinitely, but the jars get covered with algae and have to be cleaned every couple of months. The lettuce I grow is so superior to store-bought in terms of taste and texture, though, that it is worth the extra effort.

Competing Interests

This is a bad time of year to get a new sewing machine. I have too many activities vying for my attention, some of which—like growing food—are time sensitive and cannot be put off. I did oil the 1541 and run it, without needle or thread, for about 10 minutes on Monday. That machine came installed with a servo motor, which is supposed to be easier to operate than a clutch motor. The speed of the servo motor can be adjusted. I might slow this motor down a touch, but I didn’t feel like the machine was running away from me.

I also cleaned, oiled, and re-threaded the industrial Juki serger. That machine lives in the basement. Right now I have it set up for a three-thread overlock stitch. Getting the tension dialed in took a bit of fiddling as the tension knobs have no numbers on them. I backed all three of them all the way out, then adjusted them one at a time. I was getting a goofy wave stitch, though, where the tension on the lower looper alternated between tight and loose, thus making the upper looper “wave” back and forth across the seam. Fun fact: BabyLock has a proprietary Wave Stitch setting/dial on some of their higher-end sergers. Second fun fact: The manual for my domestic Juki serger gives instructions on how to create a wave stitch (lowercase) manually.

Because I know how this stitch is created, I examined the threading path for the lower looper to see if it was getting hung up somewhere. (The wave pattern was regular and repetitive.) Sure enough, I noticed that the thread had gotten twisted around one of the thread guides twice. I untwisted it, serged another sample, and the stitch was perfect.

I have to decide if I want to add the left needle and the chain looper to make a five-thread stitch. (This machine cannot do a four-thread stitch, only three- and five-thread stitches.) Adding the left needle and chain looper makes a chain stitch about a quarter of an inch away from the serged seam. Do you have on a pair of jeans? Look at one of the leg seams. You should see a straight line of stitching—the chain stitch—as well as serger stitches.

The chain stitch adds a second seam for durability. It is the same kind of stitch found on feed bags and dog food bags, and will “unzip” from the bottom to the top.

Threading the chain looper on this machine requires that I stand on my head and whisper softly to it as I attempt to feed the thread through the correct guides. I’ve done it before but I’m not sure I want to do it again. Some of it depends on how I plan to use that serger. Will I be seaming or just finishing edges? Will I be working with light fabric or heavy fabric? While I was making up my Wawak order, I added a new-to-me serger thread. I think I’ll try the new serger thread and then decide how many threads I want to use.

[The number of different threads I have for all these machines is mind boggling.]

Interestingly, the industrial serger has an old-fashioned clutch motor on it. To hear people talk, clutch motors are the spawn of Satan. I don’t find them that objectionable, perhaps because I am used to driving manual transmissions. The serger’s clutch motor is smooth and quiet and I don’t feel the need to replace it with a servo motor.

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I’ve been meaning to mention how much I like the finger stiletto I picked up on one of my Seattle trips last year. This little gadget has come in very handy when assembling those log cabin blocks because of all the seams:

The stiletto can be worn a couple of different ways; this is the way I like to use it. It keeps the seams from flipping back as they go through the machine. I have a long, pointed needle stiletto, too, but I prefer the control I have with this one.

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The rain stopped and I was able to cut the grass yesterday. I’ll finish the trimming this morning. I said to the husband that perhaps it is my imagination, but it feels to me like the ground underwent a lot of frost heaving over the winter. Our yard has never been level, but riding that mower around yesterday was like four-wheeling in Baja. And it isn’t just in our yard; I noticed the same thing out in the garden.

I have not yet—fingers crossed—seen any rodent damage in the garden. I have a motion-detector solar light pointed at the row of peas and I keep moving the fake owl around near the spot where the ground squirrel tunnels come out. The turkeys have steered clear of the garden, and I suspect it is because they are scared of the pigs.

I have a new friend:

It was in the path between the herb garden and the chicken yard when I went out to feed the clucks. I delivered a stern lecture on staying out of the chicken yard lest it get eaten by a flock of fluffy velociraptors. I haven’t seen any snakes out in the big garden yet, but I keep watching.

Learning to Sew (Again)

I am chatty this week, with everything that is going on.

I have not yet sewn on the 1541—you would think I’d be itching to get started, but I want to get my ducks in a row, first. I can quote chapter and verse on needles and thread for domestic machines—I am teaching a three-hour class in August on nothing but needles—but industrials are a whole ‘nother field of study. Thread weights are labeled differently. Needles are much larger (the 160/23 needle in the machine looks like a spear) and come with specialty points for leather and vinyl. I reached out to my friend Cristina, who owns Bumbleroot Design, and she provided helpful guidance on her favorite thread and needles. I do have some thread on hand already, but it’s thinner than what I am probably going to need for some projects. I’m doing my research, first, and putting together a shopping list at Wawak.com.

The 1541’s big selling feature is its triple-feed system—this foot is what allows it to sew through the heaviest materials like butter:

Like a domestic machine, it has feed dogs that grip and move material. It also has a walking foot that feeds both pieces of fabric at the same rate. Many domestic machines have an integrated walking foot or can be fitted with one. A walking foot is what allows sewists to match stripes and plaids more easily without fabric shifting.

But wait, there’s more! The 1541 also has a “needle-feed” system. Vintage sewing machine enthusiasts know needle-feed from machines like the Singer 78, which is the machine I’ve borrowed occasionally from my friend, Tommy. Needle-feed works just like its name—the needle advances with each stitch and helps to feed the material through the machine.

If you’re curious about what this machine can sew through, watch this video and prepare to have your head explode.

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I am also trying to stay ahead of weeds in the garden. The black plastic helps a lot, but the weeds still manage to get a foothold. The potato patch needs some work. And with all the rain we’ve gotten, the grass keeps growing and needs to be cut. We should have strawberries soon.

The billboard tarps are down in the herb garden:

They will stay here until next spring. In the meantime, I will dream of the possibilities of a kitchen/medicinal herb garden that doesn’t look like barely-controlled chaos.

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Susan’s daughter came over yesterday afternoon with her husband and two little boys, who will be 4 and 2 this summer. The boys wanted to see the piggies, and the older one is especially fascinated with construction equipment. (Do not tell me that little boys and little girls are not inherently different, because I have eyes as well as common sense.) Susan’s daughter and SIL are building a house and they would like the husband to do the foundation. While the adults talked, the little boys played with the set of wooden trucks my father made when I was pregnant with DD#1. (He was hoping for a grandson, obviously.) The set includes a loader, a grader, a bulldozer, a tractor-trailer, a scooper, a lowboy, and a few other pieces. I keep them in a box in the living room. They have provided hours of entertainment for Ali and Elysian’s boys. When the adults were finished talking, we went out and let the kids climb up and sit in the forklift, the backhoe, the track loader, my tractor, and the golf cart. Their mom said to me, “Your place is a paradise for little boys,” and I laughed and said, “It’s a paradise for big boys, too.”

A Productive Day on the Homestead

I was out in the garden bright and early yesterday morning and got the broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage starts planted. It looks like I am growing enough food for a family of eight, but the piggies on the other side of the fence will be happy to eat any excess.

Just as I finished planting, it started to rain. Wonderful timing! The husband had gone to check on one of his jobs, so I headed to the garage to finish putting the 1541 together. It is quite the beast:

Thank goodness for the Juki Junkies video or I would have been lost. The machine did not come with a manual, for some odd reason. I downloaded one off the Juki website. I tried to print it but our printer choked on it because the manual is 96 pages in five languages. I have to get a couple of sewing patterns printed at Kalispell Copy this week, so I’ll just have them print me a copy of the PDF at the same time.

I’m hoping to fire up the machine and try it out this afternoon. I need to catalog the supplies I have on hand—I do have needles and some thread—and make a list of what I have to order. The factory makes sure the machine can sew before it is shipped, and it arrived with a piece of heavy vinyl under the presser foot with some stitching on it.

The husband returned from the jobsite, got the tote that we use for pig feed, and headed to a local farm to have them fill it. We buy a thousand pounds of feed at a time and the farm loads it right from the grain bin into the tote. When he got back, he unloaded the tote from his truck with the forklift and hauled it over to the other property to drop it off by the pig pasture.

I had remembered that there was a currant bush still in the old herb garden, so I dug it out and moved it over to the big garden with the rest of the currants. I did some weeding around the berry bushes and put down new cardboard from a stack I had saved in the greenhouse. The cardboard is great for keeping weeds down around the bushes and the previous layer had almost completely disintegrated.

After lunch, the husband tackled the herb garden demolition. We put that garden in when we built the house in 1996. A few years later, the husband doubled the size of it with a second, separate garden for vegetables. The veggie garden had raised beds. Over the years, everything rotted and disintegrated and the plants took over—herbs on one side and quackgrass on the other.

I asked him to take down the fencing between the two gardens to make one big garden. The whole area needed to be leveled, too, as there was more dirt on one side from the raised beds.

He brought in the track loader and started the demolition.

I love to watch him work. He went back and forth, pulverizing the vegetation and leveling the ground.

When he finished with the track loader, he rototilled the whole garden. “Now you have a blank slate,” he said. We will put down billboard tarp for this summer to kill whatever is left underneath and I will redesign and replant it next spring. I plan to put down new weed barrier, new gravel, and install new beds.

By then, it was time to clean up for date night. We have a stack of gift cards to local restaurants courtesy of some of his customers who like to show their appreciation for his work. I made reservations at a place in town called Mercantile Steak. This is a newish business, in a location where several restaurants have been before it.

We will go back, definitely, although their menu is not friendly to people who don’t eat wheat. I just need to remember that and plan accordingly. Our meal started out with a popover hot from the oven, with chive butter to spread on it. The husband wanted to order the onion ring appetizer until our server mentioned that they were fried in a cilantro batter and I had to remind him that he thinks cilantro tastes like soap. (I, on the other hand, love cilantro.) We got mushroom toast, instead, which was fabulous—sautéed mushrooms and roasted garlic on crostini. He ordered the smoked prime rib for his entree. I am not a huge fan of red meat, so I opted for the blackened halibut. It was done to perfection and served on a bed of farro risotto. Farro is a kind of wheat, so I didn’t eat that. We finished off the meal with dessert. He had cheesecake and I had the peanut butter and chocolate mousse. I was stuffed by the time we rolled out of there, but the entire meal was excellent. A storm was rolling in, so we opted not to go to Lowes or Home Depot and headed home instead.

The 1541 is Here

In between rain showers yesterday, I dug some plants out of the old herb garden, mostly lavenders and one columbine that I particularly liked. The husband now has free rein to go in there and tear things up. I also swept out the old garage and made a space for the 1541.

All 64 blocks for the quilt are done. After lunch, I organized them into groups of four and started sewing huge four-patch blocks together. I’ve done 8 of 16 so far. I’ll have to get a backing for the quilt—probably a wideback so I don’t have to mess with piecing one—and I’ve started thinking about how I want to quilt it. This top might be a good candidate for the Amanda Murphy Baptist Fan ruler set. I want a certain density to the stitching but I don’t want the quilt to stand up by itself.

Around 2:30 pm, the freight company truck pulled into the driveway and the driver unloaded my machine:

We still have a bit of work to do before I can sew on it. After dinner, I got as far as taking off the shrink wrap and putting casters on two of the table legs. The store I purchased from has some great YouTube videos on putting the machine together. The oil pan has to be attached to the table and a few other pieces have to be assembled. I could do it, but it will go faster with the husband helping.

I got an e-mail yesterday that Sew Expo has opened submissions for class proposals for next year’s event. Proposals have to be submitted before September 15, 2023. I’m going to make a list of at least half a dozen classes I could teach and start working on those. I will concentrate mostly on knitting classes. For all that I haven’t knitted much in the past 10 years, I’ve got a solid background in that area. (Yes, it’s called Sew Expo but they offer classes in other textile arts, too.) We’ll see. I might be able to come up with some sewing/serging classes.

[Tera, you have been warned. We’re going to Sew Expo again next March.]

It feels good to be settling into the summer routine—gardening in the morning and sewing in the afternoon.

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We lost a friend of ours on the fire department this week. Billy was always quick with a smile or a hug—the first time he saw me after my week-long vacation in the ICU, he said to me, “Hey, I came to see you in the hospital, do you remember?” and I laughed and said, “No, Billy, I was unconscious.” And he said, “Well, you look a lot better now than you did then.” (Our EMS friends were able to get into the ICU so several of them stopped by my room.) In addition to being a volunteer firefighter, Billy worked with Dream Adaptive, a local organization that provides recreation opportunities to people with disabilities. He was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. I last saw him at the Auction in April when he sat and visited with Amanda and me for a bit in the equipment sale trailer. He will be missed.

I have another friend—one I only know from online, but she is also a special human being—who has just been diagnosed with leukemia. Her doctors want her to have an autologous stem cell transplant. The bone marrow harvest was scheduled for yesterday but then postponed. This poor woman has had a run of hideous bad luck not of her making, and this diagnosis was just the icing on the cake. I do wonder, sometimes, why the universe decides to throw certain people into the meat grinder. For fun? If you would, please spare a few moments and send good thoughts to Jenni.

Perfect Gardening Weather

I downsized the tomato patch and only planted 32 plants this year. Last year, I put in 40. I reserve the right to add a few more, though, if I run across any others I’d like to try.

Planting required that I get down on the ground, cut an X in the plastic—it’s a new sheet—bend the flaps back, get up, dig the hole, get back down and plant the tomato, get back up and put the tomato cage over the plant, then move to the next spot. It was a lot of moving around, which is good for me, but after 32 plants, I decided I had done enough calisthenics for the day.

[I have been mildly anemic for years—probably because my bone marrow took a beating when I had chemo—and it’s driven my naturopath and me nuts because we couldn’t get my iron levels to budge. I think I’ve finally gotten them up to something resembling normal, though, because I’ve noticed that I have more stamina this spring than I’ve had in a long time. I take an iron supplement called Perque and it seems to be helping.]

Half of the plants are Oregon Star, which is my preferred paste tomato variety. I did stick one Roma in there, too, which came from the kids at the elementary school via the plant sale. We’ll see how those two compare this year. I also put in a couple of Aunt Ruby’s Green, some Dirty Girls, a Weisnicht’s Ukrainian, two Cherokee Purple, a couple of beefsteaks, half a dozen unique varieties that Sarah gifted me, and a cherry tomato called Blue Boar Berries. I don’t usually plant cherry tomatoes, but Elysian grew these last year and gave me a plant. I loved them so much that I put one in again this year.

I went heavy on the paste tomatoes because this is a tomato sauce year. Last year, I did salsa, and we still have plenty. We’re getting low on sauce, though.

The weather has been perfect lately—not too hot, with intermittent rain showers—and it looks like it will continue for at least another week. The strawberries are looking fabulous:

The peas are up and the potatoes also look great. I still need to put up the bamboo teepee and plant the pole beans, and I also have to put in the cauliflower, cabbage, and broccoli. I will plant all of those today if we get a break in the rain. The cucumbers and melons are going to spend a few more days in the warm greenhouse as they are a bit on the small side yet.

The husband is going to run the track loader through the old herb/veggie garden here by the house this weekend. That whole space is terribly overgrown. I am going to take out a few plants I want to save, but then that area will be dug up and covered with a billboard tarp for the summer. If all goes according to plan, I will be able to start over next spring with new beds (on level ground) and new plants. I don’t mind having the vegetable garden on the other property, but it would be nice to have herbs closer to the house to use when I’m cooking.

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The Juki 1541 is supposed to show up today. Let’s hope.

After lunch yesterday, I worked on the scrappy log cabin quilt that is destined for the craft co-op sale. I finished the half-dozen blocks that Robin started for me last week, then began laying out blocks in groups of four to sew together. This project has spanned almost a year, and the blocks from the beginning have completely different fabrics in them than the more recent blocks, so I’m trying to mix things up as I go.

Today is our 33rd wedding anniversary. (Where does the time go?) I think we’re going to have date night tomorrow to celebrate.

What Feeds Your Soul?

Our interim pastor likes to ask this question of people: “What feeds your soul?” I love this. It’s a good way to cut through the chit-chat and get to know someone. Asking this can also help someone who might be struggling to meet other’s expectations instead of their own, or reveal parts of their personality they might not have realized existed.

A few years into working as a medical transcriptionist, I had a conversation with another woman whose child went to our local elementary school. She had just finished the same training course I had taken and wanted to know how I liked working from home. For me, medical transcription was a dream job. To her, it looked more like a nightmare. She was very outgoing and people-oriented. The thought of working alone for eight hours straight was terrifying, and I wondered why she hadn’t considered that outcome before she took the training course. Being stuck at home by herself all day certainly wasn’t going to feed her soul.

Someone snapped this photo at the Bernina Meet and Greet on Monday. I borrowed it from the quilt store’s Facebook page:

I must be pontificating about pillowcases. The lady in yellow was my first student and I probably used her pillowcase as the class sample.

I looked at that picture, and the one Sunnie took of me at the plant sale, and thought how interesting that there were two photos within days of each other in which I was doing something I love. Very different activities, to be sure, but ones that feed my soul. And if I’m going to be thorough about it, I’ll throw this one in, too:

This was taken at the wedding of my friend Susan’s daughter. I am playing Susan’s mother’s piano, which resides in our church. I get to play it every Sunday. Music feeds my soul. So does gardening, and so do sewing, knitting, and other textile arts.

That is your philosophy seminar for today.

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In other news . . .

The husband got a phone call from Liberty Mutual yesterday. Apparently, reporting an insurance company to the state insurance commissioner puts the fear of God into them. Not only are they sending the check for the $6000 they owe us, they are sending another check for the interest that accumulated from them not sending it when they said they would.

And after realizing that no one from the freight company was going to respond to my e-mail or call and ask when I wanted the machine delivered, I called them on Tuesday and set up a delivery for tomorrow. I also let the store I purchased the machine from know about the issues with the freight company so they could let Juki know. (The machine was shipped directly from Juki’s warehouse in New Jersey.) I need to clean the garage before the machine gets here so we have a place to set it up.

I started putting plants into the garden Tuesday morning but had to stop and meet the driver from the Food Bank at our community center. He came out to get the leftover plants from the sale. The Food Bank was delighted to get them and we were delighted to pass them on. It rained hard yesterday morning and I had an appointment in town, so I didn’t work in the garden. I am still ahead of schedule, though, and I should have everything in the garden by the end of the weekend. I have three flats of beans and one flat of corn started in the greenhouse. They won’t take long to germinate and get big enough to plant.

I picked up two solar-powered motion detector lights in town yesterday. These can be mounted low to the ground on stakes. I am going to put them in the garden and aim one at the peas and one at the rows of broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. If the forest animals want to sidle up to the salad bar, they are going to have to do so in full-spectrum spotlights.

Yesterday morning, I said to the husband—only half-jokingly—that I would see him again at the end of the summer. We’ve reached that time of the year when we’re together and awake for about 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening. The poor guy had to pour concrete at 6:30 yesterday morning. It is getting harder and harder to schedule pours because the batch plants are so busy.

Thumbscrews

The husband’s truck accident was in February 2022; his work truck and the dump trailer he was towing were totaled by the insurance company. We received payment for both items from the at-fault driver’s insurance company (Safeco/Liberty Mutual) within about four months. We also had submitted a list of damaged/destroyed tools for compensation. That list got batted around for over a year. We were assigned to claim agent after claim agent—five in total—and each one wanted the list and documentation, sometimes multiple times. Finally, around February, I was told that the claim had been approved and we would be getting a check for $6000.

Then, nothing. I e-mailed the agent, only to be told that we were being assigned to ANOTHER agent. The new one also wanted documentation. (I had all of this scanned into a file on my computer, so re-sending wasn’t a big deal other than the ridiculous repetitive requests.) He hemmed and hawed and delayed, telling me he would follow up on the claim and get back to me.

Around the middle of April, I’d had enough. I e-mailed him back and threatened to report him to the Montana Insurance Commissioner. I got an immediate response via e-mail. Could he call and discuss the claim? I was on my way to Tennessee, so I gave the date when I would be home and said I would expect a call that week.

Did I get a call? No. And when I tried to contact this agent to set up a phone call, I got an out-of-office reply. I noted the date when he was supposed to be back in the office and tried again. I got another out-of-office reply, so yesterday morning, I filed my complaint with the Montana Insurance Commissioner, e-mailed the backup address given in the automatic reply, and attached a copy of the complaint, helpfully provided in PDF format by the insurance commissioner’s office.

And then I went to town.

The Bernina Meet and Greet Event was great fun. I had listened to an interview with Paul Ashworth, CEO of Bernina, on the Sew & So podcast about a year ago, and yesterday, I got to meet him in person. Literally all I got to do was say hello and shake his hand, because he and the district sales rep were only there for an hour and I was busy demo-ing the L890 serger. The store had set up stations with different machines for customers to try, and put together pillowcase kits so that anyone interested in trying the serger could make one on the machine. I would have chosen a smaller and less complicated project, but I made it work. I got people lined up and churned them through, so that by the time we were done, about a dozen customers had made pillowcases on the serger.

[This was despite being told by one attendee that I was “doing it wrong” when I was showing people how to roll up the pillowcase burrito-style to make an enclosed seam. I am not unfamiliar with this woman; she seems to have a need to parade around the store and show off how much she knows. Her method works, yes, but so does mine, and I’ve made probably a hundred of these things.]

I had something of an epiphany yesterday while watching all these customers make their projects on the serger. There seem to be an awful lot of people who were taught by their sewing teachers to hold their fabric in front of and behind the presser foot and guide the fabric through the machine, except “guiding” sometimes morphs into “pulling,” which makes me very nervous, especially on a serger. Pulling the fabric as it’s going through the machine increases the likelihood of deflecting the needle enough that it will hit the throat plate instead of going down into the hook area, and that increases the likelihood of damaging the timing of the machine. (Judging by the number of chewed-up throat plates I have seen on sewing machines, this happens frequently.) I also had a couple of customers who were pulling on the top layer of fabric—a technique I’ve seen used on the sewing machine to keep the layers even when sewing—but that method isn’t necessary on the serger. My preferred method of serging is to hold the layers of fabric loosely with my right hand and support them with my left hand, allowing the serger to feed the fabric through.

After the event, I ran a few errands and came home. Guess what I found in my e-mail inbox? A response from another agent at Liberty Mutual, apologizing profusely for the delay in processing our claim. He attached a copy of the check for $6000 and said that it would be mailed today.

I also checked the tracking info for the sewing machine—the system sometimes recognizes the tracking number and sometimes not—and found a note that the freight company is holding the machine in Missoula, where it has been since the middle of last week, until they find out when I would like it delivered. Has anyone contacted me to ask? No, they have not. I e-mailed the company and said I would be home all week and that I’d be happy to take a phone call to arrange a delivery time.

The level of incompetence out there stuns me anew every single day.

The blog needs a picture, so here is one of yours truly with Jim, one of our dedicated helpers—he is on the fire department with the husband, too—at the plant sale. Those things on my arms are my Farmer’s Defense UPF sleeves for sun protection. The apron is one I made from fabric I bought at Sew Expo.

I will be planting the garden today as we’re supposed to get periodic showers for the next several days.

Bags and More

The Juki 1541 hasn’t even arrived yet and I am already taking reservations for repair and alteration jobs. One of our volunteer firemen came to the plant sale on Saturday and asked if I could fix a boat cover for him. On the list of jobs this week is cleaning the sewing machine area of the old garage and making a space for the machine. I still don’t know when it will arrive, though, as the freight company hasn’t updated the tracking information.

I also want to make some bags. I’d like to make another stack of canvas grocery bags because I still get requests for them. And I have a stash of waxed canvas begging to be used. I bought this Spencer Ogg pattern last week:

Do I need a pattern for something like this? No, I could figure it out on my own, but I like to support fellow designers and there is something to be said for not having to reinvent the wheel.

I’m thinking ahead to the craft sale and to having items available that other people aren’t making.

I bought a Husky rolling tool crate last fall for hauling my serger supplies to class when I teach. Tera has something similar, and we both took ours to Sew Expo where they worked beautifully. The husband and I were watching a Den of Tools video a few weeks ago where the Tool Bear—he’s out of costume now—mentioned that these tool bags were getting harder to find. I went ahead and ordered the 16” tote that rides on top of the rolling bag:

Now I have additional storage, or a smaller tote to use when I don’t need the large one.

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I did not stay for the potluck and congregational business meeting after church yesterday. I was “peopled out” after the plant sale and needed some alone time. Rain was in the forecast, too, and I wanted to cut the grass before the rain moved in. I mowed the garden perimeter with the push mower and mulched the rest of the potatoes with grass clippings. I then worked on the yard around the house—on my John Deere tractor—which took a bit of maneuvering as my mowing route has been altered by the work the husband has been doing on the property. The stupid ground squirrels have done a lot of damage, too, making new holes and tunnels in the front yard. They won’t be around much longer because the husband is systematically demolishing all the ground squirrel condominiums out in the woods. They live in piles of logs and downed trees, and those are either getting cut up for firewood or burned if rotten.

The yard still needs some trim work but I ran out of juice. It will have to wait. As the husband reminded me, though, we’re not trying to be on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. The woods, where he has been working, are looking great. Our neighbors across the road are having some clearing done on their property, too. We’ll be as ready as we can be for fire season.

A Good Kind of Exhausted

Yesterday was a busy day and I came home fairly worn out. It was a good kind of exhausted, though, because the plant sale went extremely well. We had an exceptional group of volunteers making light work of all the tasks. The weather was stunning. We got to visit with friends, neighbors, and lots and lots of customers. And a preliminary tally of the proceeds shows that we exceeded even my loftiest fundraising goal.

Our volunteers putting plants out:

We displayed plants by variety, with signs that Susan and her grandson made:

Susan, Elysian, and I had a planning meeting early in the year and decided who would grow what. It’s not an exact science, as some plants didn’t germinate or grow well and some did, but it gave us a good selection of most everything. I was pleased to note that many people came looking for heirloom varieties. We were able to tell them that most of our vegetable starts were heirlooms, including many from which we save seed each year. Sarah contributed quite a few unique tomato varieties and said that she will do more next year.

This is the event I most enjoy being in charge of and I plan to chair it again next spring.

Planting my own garden begins in earnest this week. I went ahead and scheduled a massage for a week from Tuesday, because I think I am going to need it by then.

Susan brought me two apple trees on Friday that she grafted for me. She has a Duchess of Oldenburg tree and I love that variety for apple pie filling. Now I will have two of my own grafted from cuttings of her tree. I also bought a Spokane Beauty apple at the plant sale; she is not sure that we will get apples from it as it ripens late in the season, but I said I was willing to try it.

The husband spent the day cleaning up the property and burning slash piles. People comment to me that “He works all the time—does he ever relax?” without understanding that for him, that kind of work IS his form of relaxation. Neither of us relaxes by sitting around doing nothing.

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Our Mennonite conference annual meeting will be held in Portland in June. Elaine and I plan to drive over together. We have rented an Airbnb for two nights and will be joined there by Libbie, who is finishing her term as our Leadership Team chairman. Our interim pastor and her family also plan to attend. Miriam was raised and ordained in the Presbyterian faith, but she is a Mennonite at heart and I think she will find a warm welcome in our conference.

After the conference, Elaine and I head up to Seattle for a couple of days. I will visit DD#2 and Elaine will stay with her sister.

When we made our plans, we did not realize that one of the conference days was set aside for gatherings of credentialed leaders. Elaine could attend those meetings, as she is a credentialed pastor, but I am free for the day. I think I will be doing some fabric shopping. I’d love to go downtown to Powell’s Bookstore and wander around for a few hours, but Portland—and Seattle—are no longer the tourist-friendly cities we used to know.

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I received a very weird blast from the past the other day. This showed up in my e-mail with a note:

TKGA has developed a logo for you to use as you market yourself and/or business. It will officially and visually demonstrate your achievement in earning the status of Master Hand Knitter. Please do not share this logo with anyone else.  It is for your use only!

I’m not sure when or where I would use this now, and truly, I thought TKGA was defunct. Oh, well. I appreciate them sending it to me, for what it is worth.

Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation Plant Sale

Today is our 3rd Annual Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation plant sale. This was Elysian’s brainchild and it has been a consistent fundraiser for us every year. She and I raise the bulk of the plants in my greenhouse:

Susan provides a goodly number of plants, as well, and we get donations from community members who have extras to share. The local elementary school has a plant sale on the two days before our sale and gives whatever plants are left—usually flowers—to us. When our sale is over, we donate whatever plants are left to the local food bank.

Yesterday afternoon, a crew of half a dozen people ferried plants from the greenhouse up to the Community Center, then went to the school and picked up their unsold stock. This morning, we’ll set everything out and wait for customers. The weather is supposed to be fabulous today—about 80 degrees and sunny—which is a far cry from last year’s cold and overcast day. We’ve done a lot of advertising on local social media sites, so I am hoping for good crowds. The first year, we raised $1500. Last year, we raised a little over $2000. We’re getting better at this every year.

The greenhouse looked very empty after we moved the plant sale stock out. The only plants left are the ones going into my garden and Ali’s garden. I’ll be starting more corn and beans for myself and Anna this week. They won’t take long to germinate and should be ready to plant in a week or two. I’ll also start some lettuce to put out in the garden. The indoor lettuce system is still producing well and we’ve been eating those greens this week.

Planting happens this week. It’s supposed to rain Monday, and I’ll be at the Bernina Meet and Greet that day, but Tuesday and Wednesday are forecast to be partly cloudy before more rain moves in. This is perfect planting weather.

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I’m still not sure when my sewing machine will arrive. The freight company—XPO—has a spectacularly awful tracking system. Sometimes I can’t access the tracking information at all because the system tells me it doesn’t recognize the number. Sometimes the tracking information still says the machine will be delivered on May 17. I do know that the machine is in Missoula, but it could sit there for another five days. Once it arrives, it will take the husband and me a few hours to get it set up for sewing. I’m trying to get all the planting done this week so I have time to play with it next weekend.

Visiting with Friends

My friends take good care of me. Robin said she would come over this week to help me with anything I needed because I had mended a dress for her granddaughter on my serger. She showed up mid-morning yesterday bearing lunch. I had already been out in the greenhouse for a few hours labelling and organizing plants for the sale, so I suggested we go in and sew. I pulled out the blocks for the king-size quilt I want to put in the craft co-op sale, dumped the strips of fabric onto the bed, and we got to work. I sat her down at my Janome 6600P—she has the same machine at home—and I sewed on my little Necchi. The two machines sit perpendicular to each other, so we were able to sew and visit at the same time.

When we started, I had 36 of 64 blocks made. When we finished, around 3 pm, we were up to 49 blocks with another half-dozen started. Getting this quilt done for the sale is well within reach now.

She brought the most delicious chicken dish for lunch. It has three ingredients: diced chicken, a jar of jardiniere vegetables, and rice. That’s it. So simple, but so yummy that I had two helpings. I may have to add jardiniere vegetables to my list of things to can up this fall.

After she left, I did chicken chores, tidied up the sewing area, and threw together a meatloaf for the husband for dinner. At 4 pm, I went across the road to my friend Anna’s house and we sat and drank lemon balm tea with lavender honey and caught up with each other. She has a small garden plot in front of her house and wanted some suggestions about what to plant there. We did a bit of brainstorming and I am going to start some beans and corn for her as soon as everything is out of the greenhouse.

I don’t often have a day like that, but in the midst of all this madness, it was a welcome break.

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We are getting the smoke from the Alberta wildfires. The husband called me outside yesterday morning to “look at the orange ball in the sky.”

The picture doesn’t do it justice, although you can see how smoky it is here. This is bizarre for mid-May.

My new sewing machine appears to be stuck in North Dakota. The tracking number goes to a page that still says it was supposed to be delivered on May 17, but its last known scanned location is May 12 in West Fargo, ND. If I don’t get an updated delivery date soon, I’ll call the store and see if they can find out what is going on.

It is supposed to be in the 80s through the weekend before a cold front comes through and drops the temps a bit. Considering that I was wearing my wool peacoat at last year’s plant sale, I’ll take the weather this year.

Watering and Pest Management Systems

I’m in the process of getting the watering system set up in the garden. Our rainy months are May and June, and we’re already behind in rainfall for this month. If June isn’t rainy, we may be in a world of hurt for the rest of the summer. It isn’t uncommon to go through July and August with not a drop of precipitation. There will be moisture in the atmosphere, but it will evaporate before it hits the ground.

The peas went in yesterday morning—finally—and then we got a couple of hours of rain after dinner, so that worked out well. I also filled in the empty spots in the strawberry bed with runners from a few of the more vigorous plants.

We likely will have to resort to shooting at some point, but I am trying to give the rabbits, squirrels, and turkeys an opportunity to see the error of their ways. I am auditioning a variety of pest management systems this year. (Bugs are the least of my worries.) The fake snakes are over by the peas. I bought a fake owl, put crushed walnut shells in it for weight, and set it by the ground squirrel holes:

I am supposed to move it around every couple of days.

I’m also putting decoy strawberries in the strawberry bed to confound the turkeys:

The husband does not believe this will work. We shall see. In any case, painting rocks is very relaxing.

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Knitting peeps, did you hear the sad, sad news that XRX, Inc., has filed for bankruptcy? So many great memories from the days of Knitters magazine and teaching at Stitches events . . .

Yesterday’s mail brought the gift of a pair of lovely spiral cable needles from Mama Sauce (Nicole Sauce’s mother).

I had the great fortune to spend time relaxing and knitting with her at the LFTN Spring Workshop a few weeks ago, and now I am feeling the need to cast on a project so I can try these out.

However, once this plant sale is over and the garden is in, I am devoting a couple of weeks to sewing. It has been almost two months since I have worked on anything substantial. I’ve got inventory to finish for the craft co-op sale—including a quilt—projects I want to make on the new machine, and some clothing patterns I want to try. I have about three currently-not-scheduled weeks on the calendar and I am going to do my level best to keep them clear for sewing. I should be able to get quite a bit done if I put my nose to the grindstone.

I’ll be at the Bernina Meet-and-Greet with Paul Ashworth, CEO of Bernina, next Monday at the Quilt Gallery. I offered to help out as I was planning to be there anyway. I will be assisting customers with the sergers.