There May be Hope Yet . . .

. . . for Joann Fabrics. Ours, at least, has started to get in some new fabrics, and I am seeing brighter colors and fewer muddy earth tones and sad pastels. They’ve also inked some kind of deal with Eddie Bauer to carry fabrics with that label. Wonder of wonders, I found blue thermal knit Eddie Bauer microfleece in the fleece section. I’m not normally a fan of fleece, but I need some for a serger class this fall and the EB fabric is perfect. I also bought two yards of a brushed sweater knit in a bright sage green—bright enough that I can get away with wearing it, I think. (It isn’t quite as yellow as it appears in the photo, although I do like acid green.)

I’ll be able to make a better assessment once I see what the larger Joann stores in Spokane and Seattle have on their shelves, but this is promising.

I also picked up this pattern for $1.99:

It’s dead simple. I might try mashing it up with the top of the Toaster Sweater. Butterick just released a whole slew of vintage designs, too, under a “Retro” label. I have hope that perhaps some of these companies are listening to customer feedback instead of just shoving products at us.

I think I am done with canvas grocery bags for a while. I did a few with some printed canvas, including this herb-themed one:

Although most of these are destined for the co-op sale, I may put some up for sale in my online store.

The husband asked the employees if they wanted to work today or have the day off, and they elected to work. I’ll be spending a quiet day at home by myself. I plan to make a batch of class samples for an upcoming serger class. He bolted my rivet press to the workbench in the old garage for me, too, so I will practice setting rivets.

I am getting a ton of work done now that I have time to focus on my own stuff. We had scheduled a fundraiser for the homestead foundation for the beginning of August, but the other organizer and I decided to cancel it because the ticket sales were not what we had hoped. The idea is sound, but the execution needs some retooling for next year. We’ve been subjected to a fair bit of Monday morning quarterbacking regarding that decision. My response to some of that criticism has been less than charitable, no doubt, but the work I’ve been doing on behalf of that organization was starting to resemble a part-time unpaid job. Boundaries are important, and I am not willing to continue to shove my own projects aside. The word of the year is “No,” after all.

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We were running low on shotgun shells because of all of these rodents. I bought a case of shells when I was in town yesterday. We may have stemmed the tide for a while, but ground squirrels have a nasty habit of reproducing.

I am getting such a kick out of the crows/ravens. (I know there is a difference, but I am too lazy to look it up.) I think they have learned to listen for gunshots—everyone in the neighborhood is shooting these stupid ground squirrels—and then go in that direction in search of free meals. Two of them were circling overhead yesterday afternoon, cawing to each other, and I said to the husband that it looked like they wanted to know what time the all-you-can-eat dinner buffet opened for business.

Worse than a Plague of Locusts

The ground squirrels just keep coming. I spotted one in the cabbage patch as I walked out to the garden after dinner, so I texted the husband. He came out with the shotgun. Unfortunately, the little pest disappeared into a hole and wouldn’t come back out. He shot two later in the evening—one in the front yard and one in the back yard. Hopefully the one I saw in the garden was one of the two he got.

The ecosystem is badly out of whack. We need more coyotes.

My hollyhocks are blooming:

I thought these were the black variety I started last year for the plant sale, but I might be misremembering. No matter—this color is still very pretty. Of course, an intense dark red could be considered “black,” and it’s possible this is one that reverted to a less intense red.

When the husband replaced the plastic on the greenhouse this year, he also got shade cloth to go over it. He put the shade cloth back on yesterday.

Hopefully, this will keep the greenhouse from getting oven-like in the heat of the summer. I think it lowers the temperature inside by a good 10-15 degrees. It is still plenty warm in there for the tray of lettuce to grow, but not so hot that the seedlings bake to death.

The injured hen has left the chicken hospital and gone to the rehab facility inside the chicken coop. She can see the other chickens but they can’t get to her. The pullets are big enough to hold their own against the other hens and all the chickens are together. I’m still waiting on chicks. One of the Buff Orpingtons moved around enough that I was able to count four eggs under her.

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This week’s to-do list is full of niggling little detail stuff that needs followup and resolution. I have to pester the copier company in Missoula AGAIN about getting a new fuser for my copier. The IRS cannot seem to keep our address or the name of the construction company straight, so I’ve got forms and a letter to send to them to correct that. Quilt stores need photos for classes. We decided to cancel our summer fundraiser for the Homestead Foundation and the six tickets we did sell will have to be refunded.

[Truly, I am not too busted up about canceling that fundraiser; it frees up a lot of time in my schedule that can be devoted to my own projects.]

I got the construction company records moved over to QuickBooks Online—the end of the month was an excellent time to do that—but the whole concept of having that financial information in the cloud makes me very nervous. About the only positive is that our accountant can now access our information directly instead of me bringing the file to him on a thumb drive. He and I have an appointment set up in early August for our annual mid-year checkup.

I have about had my fill of making canvas grocery bags. I think it might be time to move on to another kind of sewing project. I will get that log cabin quilt top put together and start quilting it. And I will order the supplies for the generator covers this week. Seattle Fabrics is still not allowing walk-in traffic, so even though I drove by the store last week, I couldn’t shop in person.

I have an appointment to get the body work done on the BMW. The body shop is so busy that the earliest they could get me in is at the end of October. At least I’m on the schedule.

The Garden in July

I am caught up in the garden after weeding Friday morning. There are a few spots in the garden—the strawberry patch is one—where bindweed is a problem. If I don’t stay on top of it, it will choke out the plants I want growing there. I also weeded the beans, the brassicas, and the potatoes. I mowed the garden perimeter and connected all the hoses. I think our rainy season has ended. It is time to start the supplemental watering.

I am a bit worried about my grapes:

The vines are still alive—there is some growth—but they should have leafed out fully by now. I did prune lightly in early May. I wonder if the roots are being damaged by the ground squirrel highway running underneath. In any case, I doubt we will get grapes this year. I’ll be happy if the vines survive.

The tomatoes look fabulous. Several of them have set fruit already:

We still have two ground squirrels in the front yard. The husband is watching for an opportunity to dispatch them.

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I’ve been meaning to share this photo:

This is the finished Blue Thistle quilt. I made this quilt twice, because I accidentally used two different shades of “white” Kona for the background on the original. I liked the effect, so on this version, I used a cream Grunge for the background. I could get around to offering the pattern for sale if there is interest.

This quilt has been donated to a fundraising auction for a friend of mine, Jenni, who is battling leukemia. She has a slightly different type of leukemia than I had, but hers has turned out to be fairly aggressive. Jenni has also had a run of bad luck not of her making over the past couple of years. The leukemia diagnosis was the icing on the cake. To make matters worse, she started her treatment only to have it postponed because she developed a heart problem. She is having a hard time of it and the community has come together to help her out.

If you would like to take a look at the auction items, or even bid on this quilt, the link is here. In addition, Nicole Sauce of Living Free in Tennessee will be hosting an online live event tonight. The auction features lots of fine items, including some that are handmade, so check it out.

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The husband and I have been working on getting seed oils out of our diet. Clean eating has been a years-long process that started with eliminating high fructose corn syrup (and sugar in general), moved on to wheat, and is focusing now on seed oils. DD#2 texted me the other day that she also is trying to eliminate seed oils from her diet. When I related that conversation to the husband, he said, “Congratulations—our children have turned out just like you.” I took that as the compliment that was intended.

Seed oils are things like canola, soybean, safflower, etc. Interestingly, those all started out as industrial lubricants. That right there should tell you that they don’t belong in our food. I cook with lard, butter, olive oil, and avocado oil, but soybean oil is sneaky. (Soy in general.) It finds its way into everything, including 90% of the food sold at “health food” stores. That “olive oil” mayonnaise at the grocery store is still mostly soybean or canola oil. I can tell when I’ve eaten something with soybean oil in it because my joints will start to hurt, especially my hips.

[Canola is a big crop here; in fact, the canola fields are just starting to bloom with brilliant yellow flowers.]

DD#1 has also done a lot of research into gut microbiomes in conjunction with her work as an pediatric occupational therapist. Some of her clients are children on the autism spectrum. She’s been taking a probiotic called Seed, and she got her sister interested in it. I ordered some, too, and started it this week. I haven’t noticed anything dramatic, but I’ll try it for a month and see what I think.

The Zucchini Tsunami is Upon Us

The warm weather we had in May gave most of the veggies a headstart—those that weren’t being nibbled on by rodents, at least—and I came home to find these:

June is early for zucchini. These became a batch of zucchini fritters yesterday. I ate five in one sitting because they tasted so good.

The garden is still being plagued by ground squirrels, although the husband shot another one while I was gone. If I get any broccoli, cabbage, or cauliflower this year, it will be a minor miracle. Enough pea plants escaped damage that I will get some peas. I am going to grow lettuce in the greenhouse. There is no point in putting any out in the garden. I still have a couple of trays of greens growing in the basement, too.

Everything else looks wonderful. We should have raspberries soon. The tomatoes are flourishing. The pole beans seem to have appreciated the application of sulfur and have lovely green leaves now instead of anemic yellow ones.

Every year is different. The husband says that next spring, we will have to rig up some kind of cage system over the brassicas and peas, although a truly determined ground squirrel could tunnel up underneath.

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I have a hen in the chicken hospital at the moment. (The chicken hospital consists of a cage on the floor in the laundry room.) The husband was working behind the chicken yard the other day and spotted her being pecked at mercilessly by the other chickens. She had a gaping wound on her back. Dave, the rooster, has a few favorite hens and he is not always gentle in his wooing of them. I suspect this wound started as a result of his attentions. I cleaned it up as best I could and put her in the cage. She is eating and drinking and generally chipper, but I have to figure out what to do with her. I worry that putting her back out there too soon will be an invitation for the other hens to peck at her again. It’s almost time to let the pullets in with the big chickens, which would free up that separate space for her in the coop for another week or two. We’ll see. She is one of the chickens I hatched in 2020 and is destined for freezer camp this fall anyway.

I’ve had a group of broody hens in the corner of the coop on the floor—two Buff Orpingtons and two Black Australorps—for a couple of weeks now. I know they are sitting on a passel of eggs. If any of the eggs were fertilized, we should be seeing chicks soon.

Our neighbor texted last night that he had fresh bear scat in his yard. I know the bears are roaming around but we haven’t seen any.

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Sewing . . . While we were traveling, I checked at several Joann Fabrics stores for black duck canvas and couldn’t find any. Our store has been out of it for a while. It was like searching for black Kona all over again. I finally found some in the Joanns in Spokane on the way home. I’m working my way through another batch of canvas grocery bags.

One of my favorite YouTube channels at the moment is Crumpets, Tea, and Sewing. Tea made a recent video about her five essential sewing patterns. She mentioned Burda 6221, which I picked up just before we left for Portland:

Tea made both a dress and a blouse version of this pattern. I love that ruffled neckline.

I will be stuck on canvas grocery bags for the foreseeable future, although I’d like to get back to making some clothes. I also have to make a couple of generator covers before fall.

A Migratory Bird

Anyone who knows me knows that I get twitchy if I can’t take a road trip every couple of months. The husband says I am a migratory bird, although I prefer wheels to wings. My friend Elaine and I left last Thursday for Portland. This was the temperature that morning:

The butternut squash plants sustained a bit of frostbite, but everything else survived.

The reason for our trip was a church meeting. Our Mennonite denomination is organized into regional conferences, and the Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference—PNMC for short—holds an annual meeting every June. Elaine grew up in Montana but is retired from pastoring a church in the Central Plains conference. She and I traveled to Boise for the 2018 PNMC meeting. No doubt we would have traveled to every meeting since then had the pandemic not forced their cancellation. Elaine is one of my favorite traveling companions, especially to church events.

I don’t take simple vacations. I hatched a plan for this one, too. Elaine’s sister Alice lives in Seattle, so I suggested that after the PNMC meeting, we drive to Seattle and spend a few days there. Initially, we thought the PNMC meeting would take place over two days, as it always has in the past. I made reservations at an Airbnb outside Portland for myself, Elaine, and Libbie, who also planned to join us. (Libbie drove over on Friday.) As it turned out, the organizers planned an abbreviated meeting for Saturday only, which left Elaine and me a bit at loose ends on Friday. She was more than willing to accompany me on a fabric shopping expedition, though.

Elaine knits (and crochets). Our first stop on Friday was at a Joann Fabrics, where she scored a nice haul of yarn on the clearance rack. I bought three packages of purse hardware.

We left Joanns and headed to The Mill End Store.

I’ve been to this store a couple of times and it never disappoints. I came away with a length of red rayon ponte for a pair of Renee pants and a turquoise blue sweater knit for a Toaster Sweater. (Joann Fabrics, are you paying attention?)

JC Briar had suggested that we try lunch at Bob’s Red Mill, whose headquarters is nearby.

We enjoyed some delicious food outside on the patio—the weather was stellar—and I bought a couple of bags of gluten-free granola.

That was enough shopping for the day. We went back to the Airbnb to wait for Libbie and rest up. Elaine’s nephew and his wife live in Portland and had invited us to dinner. We also had a spinning wheel to deliver. Jeff’s wife, Portia, found one in Laurel, Montana, over by Billings, and through the combined efforts of a large extended family, we were able to get it from Billings to Portland. I raided my spinning fiber stash before we left and took a bunch of sample bags of fiber along for Portia to play with. Dinner was delicious and the company delightful.

Libbie, Elaine, and I headed to Portland Mennonite Church early on Saturday morning. Our transitional pastor, Miriam, had come to Portland with her family and met us there. I have missed these gatherings so much. I served a four-year term on the board of directors and got to know some of these people very well. Seeing them in person again was wonderful. We made new friends, too. The husband-and-wife pastor team at Menno Mennonite, in Ritzville—where the relief sale is held every October—sat in front of us at the meeting and we had a good time visiting with them.

The meeting ended at 5 and Elaine and I hit the road shortly thereafter. It’s about a three-hour drive from Portland to Seattle. We rolled in around 8:30 pm. Elaine’s sister, Alice, met us at my Airbnb and whisked Elaine off to stay with her until Tuesday morning.

DD#2 and I spent Sunday doing some shopping. She needed a few things from Ikea for her new apartment. I love to wander around Ikea. She had to work Monday, so I spent the day visiting Joanns, Hobby Lobby, Half-Price Books, and the Liz Claiborne department at JC Penney. I desperately needed a few summer dresses and nice pants to wear to church and I scored big on this trip.

Elaine and I left Seattle Tuesday morning and headed home. We stopped at a Joann Fabrics in Spokane where we raided the clearance rack again and bought yarn for a few more prayer shawls. All in all, it was a lovely and uneventful trip.

I dashed into town yesterday morning to retrieve my computer. I took it in the day before we left to have the operating system—woefully five years out of date because of some bizarre incompatibility—updated. I knew what needed to be done and probably could have done it myself, but I preferred to pay an expert to do it in case something went wrong. They had to back it up, wipe the drive, install the new system, and restore the backup, but now I have a zippy and functional computer again.

Too Slow

I was so focused on getting paperwork done yesterday morning that when I finally cleared off my desk and looked at my watch, I was surprised to see it was already noon. I got class information prepared and sent off to the quilt store north of town—now I need to make class samples—and I touched base with the owner of the small quilt store in Spokane. I apologized for being so busy with everything this spring that I didn’t have time to follow up on a class at her store. She said that was fine because she hadn’t had time to follow up, either, due to some health issues. We are trying to put something on the calendar for late August.

I need to get a head shot for some of these class submissions. I dread photos. I tried taking some selfies yesterday in front of my sewing machines. In a couple of them, I looked like I had had a stroke. My left eye does something weird when I smile. The husband said I may just have to suck it up and go have a professional portrait session like I did 20 years ago for my knitting head shot.

After lunch, I made a Petunia Pouch:

I think I can confidently say that no sewing factory is going to hire me to sew on an industrial machine. I am too slow. The husband and I had this discussion over dinner. He finds it amusing that I have no patience with myself when I am learning new skills. (One of the things my serger students tell me is that I have endless patience as a teacher. Oh, the irony.) I’ll get it eventually. The fact that this pouch took me three hours to make had nothing to do with the pattern. It is very well done. It had more to do with the fact that a) I am not good at bag bindings despite being a quilter and b) I am still figuring out the finer points of sewing on that 1541. I had to change out the regular foot for the right and left zipper feet, which took some doing. The feet come in two pieces. One part works in concert with the feed dogs and the other part moves with the needle.

After all that tinkering, though, I was able to install the new needle plate and narrow foot.

I’m not sure this narrow foot would work if I were sewing heavy leather or vinyl, but for the fabrics I’m using, I like it better.

Just before dinner, I popped out to the garden to check on my plants and discovered a ground squirrel standing up at the entrance to its tunnel. Of course, my .22 was back at the house because I am not Annie Oakley and I do not carry it on my person. When the husband got home, I asked him to take the shotgun out and dispatch the little pest. As we walked out and approached the garden, we spotted said ground squirrel standing up in the middle of the cabbage patch. The husband sneaked quietly into the garden and waited for a few minutes for a good shot.

I think that was #12. These things are worse than roaches. If they didn’t start to smell and attract carrion, I would hang the bodies up as a warning to others.

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I have a tomato! It’s only June!

This is the Dwarf Mocha tomato plant. I grew this variety last year and gave a plant to Sarah. She saved seed and started plants in February and gave me one. The plant in her garden has even more tomatoes on it than mine.

The zucchini tsunami should arrive in another week or two. And it looks like our weather will be getting back to something more seasonable by the end of the week.

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.