One More Apron

I had some time before leaving for church yesterday, so I block fused* interfacing to some of the leftover apron canvas pieces in preparation for making a couple of bags. The first is the Norwalk Pouch from Sotak Patterns:

This is not something I would carry or use, necessarily, but I’m experimenting with a few items to see how they do at the co-op sale.

*Block fusing is the process of fusing interfacing to a piece of fabric before cutting out the pattern pieces. I’m doing it that way for these bags because I always seem to have a problem with the interfacing shrinking or distorting when I try to fuse individual pieces, especially small ones. Block fusing went quickly on my steam press and now I am ready to cut pattern pieces.

I also have this design, the Petunia Pouch, from Sotak Patterns:

She has lots of really cute designs and they appear to be well written and illustrated.

After lunch, I finished the last canvas apron:

I also sewed the rest of the log cabin quilt blocks into four-patch blocks. I started with sixty-four 12-1/2” individual blocks and now have 16 very large four-patch blocks. Those 16 four-patch blocks need to be sewn into a king-sized quilt top. This is where it gets a bit hairy. I’ll have to set up my small folding table behind my sewing machine to hold all the fabric as I am assembling it. I’m also going to have to take the backing, batting, and quilt top up to the church and baste it together on the (carpeted) floor of the fellowship hall because I don’t have a space big enough to do that here.

The plan is to get that log cabin top quilted and bound before the end of July. At some point, I need to get out all of the inventory I have for the sale and start making a list.

The rain and cool temps have kept me out of the garden for a few days. It appears that we will be in this cooler-than-normal pattern for another week. The peas, cabbages, and broccoli love this weather. The tomatoes and squash are holding their own. They got a nice head start and can tolerate a bit of discomfort. The tomatoes are already two feet tall.

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I’ve casually started looking for a new car. The Diva is nine years old and has almost 140,000 miles on it, although it’s a diesel and I could, conceivably, drive it for another 140,000 miles. I have my own BMW mechanic, after all. I don’t really want to give it up. I enjoy driving it and it gets 40 miles to the gallon. Of course, I cannot replace it with another diesel station wagon and that annoys me to no end. I don’t want an electric vehicle. I don’t even want a hybrid. I don’t want one loaded with a million potentially breakable pieces of technology. I also have to factor in the husband’s preferences as he knows more about what models are reliable and easier to maintain. (He is no fan of Subarus, so those are completely off the list.) I am looking for a unicorn. He checked the Mercedes dealer in Missoula yesterday morning and said he found a vehicle that met all my requirements for only $87,000. That’s insane. I am not spending that kind of money on a car.

We’ll see. I am not in a hurry. I might take some test drives the next time I am in Seattle.

I moved all my Monday errands to tomorrow as I need to stop by the bank and they are closed today. I will keep myself glued to my office chair this morning until I get all the paperwork handled.

A Good Day for Serging

My serger class yesterday went very well. I had four students, all with Bernina L890 sergers. I was supposed to have had five students, but one lady—who takes every class I offer—had company and had to cancel. Two students were new, a mother and daughter.

Like a dingbat, I left my phone at home, plugged in and charging. Sue, one of the students in my class, works at the store and does their Facebook posts. She almost always remembers to take photos in class, so I am going to borrow a picture of her bag:

Sue teaches bag-making classes at the store and has a wonderful sense of design. She left with more fabric and plans to make a second, larger version of this bag that will be big enough to hold a tablet.

The mom and daughter signed up for my July class. I think they were pleased to have learned so much about the capabilities of their machines. We tried out several different feet in the course of making this bag, including the piping foot.

I realized at the end of the day that it was a good thing I had to teach that class, because it provided some much-needed inspiration. It’s time for me to start getting some fall classes on the schedule. I love teaching, but the prep work is a grind. Sarah and I talk about this often. Our favorite classes are when we simply ask the students what they want to learn and teach on the fly. Stores tend to want more structure, though. And this group of serger students keeps pushing the limits. They want to learn everything they can.

The husband worked around the property yesterday. He also shot another ground squirrel last night. Our neighbor got one a few days ago.

This was waiting for me when I got home:

The Juki 1541 came with a plain throat plate. Shortly into the first grocery bag, I decided that not having measurement markings was going to drive me nuts. (Why isn’t that standard?) I have some stickers I bought from the now-defunct Sew-Classic.com (I miss them), so I put one on the throat plate that came with the machine while I waited for this one to arrive. This came from SewingGold.com. It must be their design and manufacture because their name is stamped on it. I also ordered a narrow presser foot from them. Narrow presser feet used to be standard on vintage non-zigzag sewing machines and I find that I like them better than a wider foot.

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I am currently in software hell—Intuit is forcing people away from the desktop version of QuickBooks and into their online “software as a subscription” model. I’ve resisted as long as possible, but I’ve had to capitulate. Unfortunately, the desktop app associated with the online version doesn’t work on my computer, and I think it’s because my operating system is out of date. My operating system is out of date because of some goofy glitch that Apple has yet to fix, and it is beyond me to hunt down and resolve the incompatibility. I am going to have to take the computer in and have an expert fix it and update the operating system. I can use the online version of QB in my browser, but I HATE THE LAYOUT. (Yes, I am yelling.) It doesn’t look anything like the old layout and every 10 seconds, some screen pops up to ask me a question.

Arrggghh. When I was checking out at Costco yesterday, the cashier asked me if I was enrolled in their auto-renew program and I said, “No, I would prefer to be in charge of when I renew my membership.” She muttered something about Costco eventually forcing everyone to sigh up for auto-renew and I thought to myself that when that day comes, they will lose me as a customer.

I am annoyed by this constant intrusion into my life and privacy. I don’t need computers to take care of my every need.

Somewhere, recently, I saw the results of a random survey that indicated that something like 66% of GenXers would prefer to go back to the time before the internet. I guess our demographic has reached the point of longing for the good old days. Truly, though, some of this is getting ridiculous. I managed just fine without my phone for eight hours yesterday.

The myth of progress. Everything new is not, by definition, improved.

Apron Factory

I planted myself in my office chair yesterday morning and stayed there until I got some work done. I didn’t get as far as I would have liked, but I took a chunk off the list. I’ll finish up Monday. Today is a serger class. Tomorrow is church and a dinner our congregation is hosting for a traveling high school group.

A ground squirrel is back in the garden and wreaking havoc again. The plants are big enough now to survive a bit of nibbling, I think, but we’ll dispatch the ground squirrel if we see it.

The pigs are doing nicely. They have a network of trails through the tall grass in the pasture and come running as soon as they hear me call:

We still have four whole hogs/eight halves for sale. I’m going to put an ad in the Mountain Trader this week.

I finished two aprons yesterday afternoon. (I would have done more sewing, but the husband came home early—German Friday—and distracted me.) These were cut out a while ago and stashed with the canvas fabric. I’m glad to have them done and in the rotation. The first is from some fabric I got at Joanns. I made an apron for Elysian from this same fabric. She wears it at the plant sale and always gets comments on it.

This is one fabric I desperately wish I had purchased by the bolt, and of course, Joanns doesn’t have it any longer. In fact, I didn’t even have enough left to make pockets on mine, so I improvised with a different canvas print.

The second is from some fabric I picked up as a remnant from The Confident Stitch in Missoula.

This is a print from Anna Graham’s (Noodlehead) Quarry Trail line by Robert Kaufman.

I’ve got a third that just needs the straps, in a Cotton + Steel print from our quilt store. Of all the apron designs I’ve made, this is the style I like best for myself.

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I put in another order with Wawak at the beginning of the week and it arrived yesterday. The husband saw that I had ordered a bulk pack of 10 seam rippers—why can’t I ever find one when I need it?—and three thread snips. He asked if he could have a seam ripper and one of the snips. We are a couple of tool junkies. I ordered a rivet press yesterday that both of us will be able to use. I’ve been setting all my hardware by hand on the anvil in his shop, but a press is going to make that much easier.

I told him last week that my father would approve of our tool budget if he were still here. My father was a bit of a tool junkie, too, so I come by it honestly.

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I’ve got five students for today’s class. It’s raining again, so it should be a good day to stay in and sew. I expect the store to be busy. The forecast is for periodic showers through the end of June. The plants are loving it, but so are the weeds. I’ve been trying to do half an hour of weeding every day, which mostly keeps the weeds down to a dull roar.

June to October

The high never made it past 45 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday—after a high of 85 on Monday—with a cold, steady rain much of the day. It felt like we went from summer to fall overnight. I am glad for the precipitation, but a few of the plants in the garden, like the beans, are looking a bit shell-shocked. I would not be surprised to see snow on top of the mountains this morning. I know that snow was forecast for the higher elevations of Glacier Park.

I had a meeting in the morning that lasted until just after lunch. The rain gave me the perfect excuse to stay inside and sew, but I’m at an impasse with the Forever Shopper and now the last two aprons. I made more binding while listening to Ryan Hall’s weather livestream on YouTube. He’s so much better than The Weather Channel and there are no commercials.

I’ll get the supplies I need for the Shopper and the aprons when I am in town today. I’m teaching a serger class on Saturday and will also check with the store to see how many students I have. This class is one that Bernina designs for stores, so I didn’t have to do any prep other than to make up the sample. I don’t have a picture of the sample—it’s a small bag—but I used some of this ribbon that Cathy gifted me:

The colors of the bag are black, pink, yellow, and purple, which I picked up from the ribbon colors. I’ll get a photo of the bag because it’s very cute.

I neglected to note that Tuesday was National Sewing Machine Day, probably because I didn’t do a blog post that day. We all know how much I love my sewing machines. 😇

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I am not doing so well with my to-do list. I really need to buckle down and get back on track. The meeting yesterday morning took place here in my office, so I spent a couple of hours tidying up the house beforehand. I tend to slack on the housework. If I wanted to keep my house looking magazine-worthy, I’d have to spend all my waking hours cleaning and that just isn’t going to happen. I am satisfied if we’re not drowning in clutter and the floors are relatively clean. I like to walk around barefoot in the summer, so dirty floors drive me nuts. I vacuum the main level at least once a day.

I’m going to start a big roaster pan of ham stock this afternoon. I’ll let it simmer overnight and can it tomorrow.

The husband also asked me to research dash cams. There are enough stupid people on the roads these days—and we’ve already encountered two of them at close range—that he wants to have video evidence if something happens. We’ll start with his work trucks, but I’ll see what’s available for my car, too.

I was out getting the mail the other day when some kid in a truck came roaring around the corner at the north end of our property. He flew down the down the road, flipping me off as he passed me because I was yelling at him to slow down. This is why we don’t have dogs anymore. The amount of traffic here is insane. The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route includes our road—I watch cyclists pass our house from my office window—and I worry that someone is going to get hit or killed by one of these idiots who thinks that Foothill Road is his own personal drag strip.

Baby Birds Fly

The baby robins left the nest this week. When we had dogs, this used to be a horribly nervewracking experience for me. I think that is why I got so good at listening for the specific call that mama robins use to coax babies out of the nest. More than once, I had to make sure a dog was out of the vicinity when the baby birds flew. They are a bit wobbly at first and don’t always end up where they intend to.

This one spent a few hours on our windowsill yesterday:

After dinner, I heard it crying again and found it sitting on top of the lawnmower. Then it flew over to the woodshed.

At one point yesterday, we had the baby robin on the porch, the bunnies out in the yard, and a male turkey attempting to impress a hen near the chicken coop where the garter snake hangs out eating mice. Welcome to my petting zoo.

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The husband and I didn’t see much of each other for a couple of days. He left early Monday morning for a job about 30 miles south of here and didn’t get home until after I had left to go to the homestead foundation board meeting. Our department got called to a structure fire Monday evening, and he was at the fire until about 10:30 pm. I was asleep when he got home. He was up early again yesterday morning to go back to the job, so we didn’t get to check in with each other until dinner.

I mowed the perimeter of the garden yesterday morning and sprinkled sulfur out around the beans. We got a nice soaking rain overnight, which should help to activate it. We are still feasting on strawberries, too. The pigs were very chatty while I was out in the garden yesterday. They like to come and stand by the fence and watch me.

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I worked on the Spencer Ogg Forever Shopper tote bag yesterday, which led to an hour of sorting and organizing zippers when I could not find a 16” metal one. (I have 14” and 18” metal zips, but no 16” ones.) Because I couldn’t go any further with that project, I cut out a few more canvas grocery bags and pulled out some canvas aprons that I cut a few months ago and stashed. These are for me, not for the sale, and they are based on my favorite commercial apron. This is one from the Cotton + Steel Under the Apple Tree line:

I like deep pockets that go across the front of the apron. The leftover piece I used for the pocket wasn’t quite wide enough, so I included that bit of selvage. I make my own double-fold bias binding for the edgings out of Kona; it behaves so much better than the polyester-blend packaged binding that I don’t mind spending the time to make a big batch of it. (I cut the bias strips with my Accuquilt cutter.) The binding will go around the body of the apron, and then I’ll use the 2” wide twill tape, folded over, for the straps. I like this style of apron best because it doesn’t tie horizontally around my waist. The ties come down at an angle and thus the waistband of the apron isn’t constantly riding up because the ties are in the wrong spot for me.

I’ve got four of these aprons to finish. My friend, Anna, the caterer, asked for one like the water resistant one I made from Splash fabric. I have enough left to make one for her, so I may go ahead and add that to the queue.

My tolerance for scraps is very low. It’s not that I don’t like scraps—scrap quilts are favorites of mine—it’s that I get overwhelmed by all the scraps I generate. It feels wasteful if I don’t use up every single scrap of every piece of material. Some of these pieces of canvas are still a good size, so now I am looking at cutting them into pieces to make some small zip pouches.

When to Make and When to Buy?

When to make something and when to buy it are tricky questions that trip up a lot of DIYers. I’ve discussed this before on the blog. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that doing it is the best use of your time. I know how to make butter, for instance, but I buy it at the store. I don’t gain much by making it myself.

I made a set of cushions a few years ago for the glider rocker on our porch. The original ones had disintegrated in the wash:

I took out the padding and put it into new cushions that I made. Those lasted an additional four years, but now the padding really needs to be replaced.

Padding is not cheap. I priced everything out at Joanns, and even on sale, it would cost me more to make a new set of cushions than it would to buy a set at Walmart. Of course, that doesn’t take into account the ethical considerations of buying—most likely—products made in China using cheap labor. Also, how long might those purchased cushions last? A season or two?

The husband has a supply of concrete blankets to use when he pours concrete in cold weather. The blankets help to ensure that the concrete cures evenly. They wear out, though, because concrete is very caustic, so this past weekend, he took apart a couple of blankets to see if we could repurpose the padding. The padding is still in decent shape and he hates to throw it in the landfill.

I can find replacement covering fabric. It’s a polyethylene woven similar to landscape fabric. The question is, do I want to sew 20’ x 30’ concrete blankets on my new machine? Is that a good use of my time? (Our time, actually, because I am going to need his help to manage that big a project.) One good reason to make an effort is for custom-sized blankets. The husband says he would like to have some smaller ones for footing pours.

We’ll see. I am still researching. Anyone who sews these days knows that you don’t do it to save money. The metric I use most often is “Can I make something I can’t buy anywhere?”—like T-shirts that are long enough for my body, or generator covers that don’t disintegrate.

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The canvas grocery bags are done, although I have pieces cut for another half-dozen bags. I’m trying to organize the workflow such that I sew whatever items require the color of thread I happen to have in the machine at any given time. The 1541 is not hard to thread, but I don’t like to change colors if I don’t need to. Mostly it’s a topstitching issue as I use a neutral color for construction seams.

I really need to find time to make a few summer dresses. I bought a T-shirt dress last year that I loved and was going to copy, but I can’t find it now. I am not sure what I did with it. (I probably put it somewhere thinking, “I should make a pattern from that dress.”) Theoretically, I should just be able to lengthen a Lark Tee into a dress. I wasn’t thinking about making summer clothing over the winter, but clearly, I do not have time in the spring to make summer clothing, either.

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One of the things on my list to get this morning is some agricultural sulfur. The beans I planted last week have yellow leaves and I suspect an iron deficiency. Why not just add iron? We had our soil tested a few years ago and the pH is very alkaline, most likely due to the alkalinity of our well water. The soil probably has plenty of iron, but the pH of the soil is preventing the plants from using it. We were told to add sulfur after the soil test to lower the pH, which we did, but it’s probably time to add more. I’ll pick up a bag today and spread some of the granules over that area.

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.