Pumpkins and Peppers

I never made it to the apples yesterday because I was distracted by gardening tasks. I pulled up all the cucumber vines and stacked them to compost. That section of the garden is in a little swale, and I think that cold air tends to settle in that spot. Some of the squash there looks like it’s been hit by a frost already, but we are still in the 40s and 50s overnight. I found half a dozen overripe cantaloupe hiding underneath some of the pumpkin vines. Those went to the pigs.

I have at least four of these. What are they? Who knows.

I think this plant came from the plant sale. These things are huge. (Regular pumpkin in the background for scale.) The tag is still there at the base of the plant, but, unfortunately, I can’t get to it.

I loaded up another wagon full of tomatoes—some ripe, some to finish ripening inside—and cleaned off the tomatillo plants again. I have enough tomatoes in the freezer for the amount of sauce I planned to make. I continue to tell friends and neighbors they are welcome to what is left but no one has taken me up on my offer. With no frost in sight, those plants are going to continue producing.

I cut two of the largest cabbages and left the rest to get a bit bigger. The corn stalks had another dozen ears which I brought in to blanch and freeze. A huge volunteer tomato plant came up next to the corn—that’s where the tomatoes were planted last summer—with some kind of long paste tomato on it. I need to check with Susan, because I think that one came from her. I might save those seeds. Anything that persists in my garden for more than one season without assistance is worth keeping.

Only one of my pepper plants—from Sarah—produced actual peppers:

I have a hard time growing peppers and onions. The Carolina Amethyst pepper I grew last year did really well, but all the seed was sold out this year.

I pulled up the Jacob’s Cattle Bean plants and laid the pods out in the greenhouse to finish drying. They were already mostly dry on the plants. There are still two rows of beans out there that have just started to dry out. This is a tricky dance, because I would prefer that the pods dry on the plants, but if we get too much rain, they will start to get moldy. It looks like we will be in the 70s and dry toward the end of the week, so I am leaving them until next weekend.

This has been a good gardening season. I am satisfied.

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We took the kids out for dinner last night. Kalispell has a newish restaurant called Mercantile Steak. The husband and I went there for our anniversary in May and again a few weeks ago. The menu is not extensive—and gluten-free options are few and far between—but the food is always excellent.

My friend Susan’s daughter and SIL are building a house. The husband poured the foundation at the end of June, and SIL and his dad have been working on the framing since then. They are building a straw bale house, so they invited friends and family to come this weekend to help them stack bales. We’re going to go up today to help and to visit. It’s a modern version of an Amish barn raising.

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My class proposals for Sew Expo 2024 have been submitted. I submitted classes on knitting, not sewing, because I don’t feel like I am at the level where I can teach sewing there yet. That event attracts a lot of sewing teachers with way more knowledge and experience than I have.

Now we wait. I’m also visiting with the owners of the store in Missoula about scheduling classes there. They said they have quite a few people asking for garment classes. The husband asked me last night when he can retire. LOL. As if he would. He loves making money.

I confess to being a bit befuddled by how this all seems to be coming together. Between the stores here, in Missoula, and in Spokane, I likely can teach as much as I want to. Who knew? All because I was replaced by a computer. I would have been content to continue working as a medical transcriptionist. Life is funny.

Happy Meteorological Fall

I make no secret of the fact that I don’t enjoy summer. I wilt in the heat—even a dry heat—and I dislike the fact that so much activity gets crammed into a three-month period. The arrival of fall is a welcome relief. Looking at the long-range forecast, I am wondering if it’s going to be a rainy one. That happened a few years ago; it rained most of the month of September. Susan tells me that’s not ideal for apple trees as they start to go dormant in September and too much rain confuses them.

Thanks to the recent rain, all the fire restrictions have been lifted.

Our kids arrived yesterday for a long weekend visit. DD#1 and DSIL flew down to Seattle from Alaska on Thursday. DD#2 and her boyfriend picked them up at the airport and the four of them drove to Spokane. They stayed there Thursday night and got to Kalispell just after noon yesterday. The husband is taking the four of them hiking today in Jewel Basin, which is a beautiful wilderness area in the mountains just across from our house. To be honest, it’s too hard to get into Glacier National Park these days, and the views are almost as spectacular up in Jewel Basin.

This is a pic of the husband and me on Mount Aeneas in 2014.

This will be my view today (those kinds of hikes are a bit much for me now):

I am going to clean off the Red Wealthy and Honeycrisp trees today while that group is hiking. I don’t want a bear to do the job for me. I’ll also do as much garden cleanup as I can.

[The husband told me not to fall off the orchard ladder. I said that I would be in the front yard, so if I ended up lying on the ground under the trees, someone driving by would see me and stop.]

I am pretty much ignoring any other demands on my time until after the kids leave because I want to enjoy every minute of having them here.

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I stopped in at the quilt store south of town yesterday morning. A couple of women who have been in my serger classes were there sewing. The store makes the classroom area available for open sewing when it’s not being used for classes, and for some people, that’s a good place to work on larger projects. These two women have embraced the joys of the Walmart remnant rack. We joked that maybe we need to start a support group—”You can be the chairman, Janet”—because we will text each other if one of us sees that the remnant rack has been restocked. One of the women even had a couple of pieces of fabric with her, so we talked about possible projects. I’m so happy to see my students making their own clothes.

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Some things are going to be changing with my schedule. (The Word of the Year for 2023 is still NO.) Now that I have some clarity about when and where I will be teaching classes, sewing is going to be my priority, especially going into 2024. The secret project is wrapped up in this, too. I still plan to be involved in a few volunteer activities, but those are no longer going to be the tail wagging the dog when it comes to my schedule.

I’m feeling more than a bit annoyed with how self-centered and selfish most of society seems these days. I’ve stopped counting how many people run red lights and stop signs in town. Aggressive driving seems to be the norm. “Me first” is rampant here, when it never used to be like that. People want “community” as long as someone else is doing most of the work. We’re in the process of a surveying the community about the future of our local homestead foundation. Respondents have a lot of ideas of what they want, but when asked if they would be willing to volunteer and help out to make those ideas happen, more than a few say they are “just too busy.” Aren’t we all.

I know, this is a sermon I preach frequently. And maybe we have to get to a certain point where things fall apart before we can start putting them back together. I really need to make getting to sewing on Thursdays a priority. That group of women pitches in and gets things done. One of the most enjoyable parts of those Thursday get-togethers is Show and Tell—the amount of appreciation and support for each other’s work is as wonderful as it is unusual. I need more of that in my life.

RIP Woodpecker Tree

I slept through the arrival of the cold front Tuesday night, although I woke up around 10 pm and heard the generator running. I came downstairs to see what was going on. The husband was in the kitchen. “Your woodpecker tree blew down,” he said. “I was out there cutting it up with a chainsaw.”

The woodpecker tree was so named because it was a favorite perch of the pileated woodpeckers. It was a tall tree, but it’s been dead for 20+ years. The husband has been wanting to cut it down for a long time—“There are other dead trees out there for the woodpeckers, Janet”—but I protected that tree with all the zeal of an environmental activist. Now the woodpeckers will have to find another tree.

It rained all day yesterday. I am not sure we ever broke 60 degrees. I had a meeting in the morning (here) and spent the afternoon making another 14 quarts of apple pie filling. I plan to do seven more this morning and will call it good.

We finally got the pigs sorted. The husband talked to one of the mixer drivers last week who used to raise pigs. This guy recommended a processing facility in a town an hour and a half northwest of here. Even better, he is going to haul our pigs up to that processor next week in exchange for a whole hog. I consider that an excellent trade. We will be glad to have that crossed off the list.

I don’t think we’re going to raise pigs next year. If we do, we might only do two or three. Until the processing bottleneck locally gets resolved, it’s simply too much of a hassle. The processors want growers to make reservations a year in advance, which only works if you know when you’re going to get weaners. I asked for weaners around June 1 and we ended up getting them a month earlier because that was when the supplier had them.

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I had one student in my serger class on Tuesday. She came with an early-generation Brother, inherited from a cousin who upgraded. This poor student was so nervous when she got there because she didn’t know what to expect. I assured her that the machine was fine. It was in good shape and probably the easiest serger I’ve ever threaded. After she relaxed a bit, she was able to thread and re-thread it herself. I think she’ll do fine; in fact, I told her that she might well outgrow that machine before long. And she registered for a class I’m teaching in October.

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And what about the secret project? It is still coming along, but you won’t hear more about it until the middle of the month. The next 10 days are full up on my schedule.

I also don’t see much sewing time in the near future. I’ve got to get beans into the greenhouse to dry, cut all the cabbage, collect the butternut squash and pumpkins—I’ll probably can some pumpkin, too, for pies—and finish off this year’s batch of tomato sauce.

The pattern companies are releasing their fall collections, but I haven’t seen much to inspire me. I might pick up this one the next time Joanns has a sale:

I think pants sewing will be a focus this winter because I also have a top-down, center-out trouser pattern I’d like to try.

Apple Pies for the Husband

I am so much more productive now that it’s not oppressively hot. A strong cold front is supposed to come through today and tomorrow will be even cooler. I am ready for sweater weather.

I ran errands yesterday morning, stopped by a friend’s house for a short meeting, then came home and made apple pie filling. I did two batches, for a total of 14 quarts:

I still have plenty of apples. I will do at least another 14 quarts and I really ought to do twice that much. Forty-two quarts of apple pie filling is not an unreasonable amount to have on hand. I’ll see how much I can get done tomorrow and Thursday.

I also made a pass through the tomato patch yesterday and brought in the ripe and almost-ripe ones. Five bags of ripe ones went into the freezer to be dealt with later, and that was after I told one of our employees to go through and take what he wanted so he and his mom could make salsa. I put two bags of tomatillos into the freezer, too.

Pole beans are about ready to harvest. The dry beans have started to dry out. I opened a pod the other day to see how they were coming along (sorry it’s blurry):

I think these are Jacob’s Cattle beans (?) but I will have to check the tag. Beans are so magical. One bean seed grows into a plant that produces 50-100 more beans.

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I have a serger class this morning. Only one student signed up, but I am teaching the class anyway. We have had trouble filling classes at that store this year and I don’t want to cancel a class unless no one signs up.

I am resigning myself to the fact that I may not get that log cabin quilt finished before the craft co-op sale. That was bad schedule management on my part. I need to remember that pretty much nothing but food preservation happens in August and September. I can’t do it all and I am not going to beat myself up about it. We have to eat. I do need to work on class samples for some upcoming classes, though.

The part for the BMW came yesterday—our UPS driver is a young guy with a family. He also has a big garden. He has to drive past my garden to deliver packages to the neighbors, so sometimes he asks questions about what I’m growing. Yesterday, he wanted to chat about grapes. He planted some in the spring. Mine didn’t produce anything this year because they were so slow to leaf out.

I was doing laundry yesterday when the washer started making a weird noise. The husband took the front off of it after dinner and listened to it. He sprayed some silicone lubricant on something and that seemed to help. It’s a Speed Queen heavy duty washer and I love it, but even a heavy duty washer is going to balk, eventually, at having to wash the husband’s concrete-encrusted clothing. I am glad I am married to someone handy. He’s glad he’s married to someone who puts up 42 quarts of apple pie filling. It all works out.

Fabric Shopping in Spokane

I did buy a bit of fabric on this trip. Not much, because I need to use what’s in the stash, but a few pieces here and there. The Walmart remnant racks in Spokane were a disappointment. I was surprised, as ours here in Kalispell has been kept stocked most of the summer. The Walmart in Spokane Valley, which has a large remnant rack, was full of icky polyester knits. I wondered to myself, as I looked through it, if the store was being punished for something.

The one remnant I bought was a brushed knit, enough for a Harper Cardigan.

I really do need to get started on my class samples.

At the Quilting Bee—the large quilt store—I bought a couple of yards of Essex Linen in a beautiful acid green. I scored another couple of yards at the Hobby Lobby nearby, which had a bolt of red Essex Linen on clearance. Those will probably end up as dresses next summer.

All I bought at Joann Fabrics was enough black cotton poplin on clearance to start experimenting with some pants patterns. I feel like I need to move on from jeans and save them for wearing around here.

I bought two beautiful rayon batiks at the quilt store where I taught:

Black and hot pink? Yes, please. These likely will end up as blouses for next summer, too.

On Friday morning, before class, my sister texted me with the screenshot of a conversation that looked like it came from a local Charlotte, NC social media group. (That’s where she lives.) One of the participants in the conversation had been asked to leave her Joann store while shopping because the store was having staffing issues and had to close for the day. I tucked that little piece of information away, but when I got back to the Airbnb after class, I went down some Reddit rabbit holes reading about what is happening with Joann Fabrics. The staffing issues are not unique to our Kalispell store, apparently. I found story after story about HR issues, pay cuts, unrealistic staffing expectations, and warehouse/inventory problems. Everything I read lined up with what I’ve been seeing here.

Either Joann Fabrics is seeing the effects from years of gross financial mismanagement or a private equity firm came in and is gutting it. (I think that was what happened to Hancock Fabrics.) Whatever the explanation, I have resigned myself to the fact that Joanns is not long for this world. I won’t be the least bit surprised if the company declares bankruptcy before the end of 2023.

Which leaves us with a problem. Who is going to sell apparel fabric if Joanns goes under? Or, more accurately, who is going to sell apparel fabric in brick-and-mortar stores so that sewists can see and touch before buying?

Quilt stores can take up some of the slack—most of the major quilting fabric companies also manufacture apparel fabric, although that fact isn’t well known. Moda has some lovely rayons. Art Gallery, Robert Kaufman, and QT Fabrics all carry very nice knits. Getting those fabrics would be easy for quilt stores, but quilt stores are understandably reluctant to tie up a lot of money in inventory that might not move. I’ve also found that most quilt stores, when they do order apparel fabric, tend to stick to the safe neutrals and muddy earth tones. I was very surprised to see those bright rayons at the store where I taught.

Hobby Lobby might also pick up some slack. They already carry some apparel fabrics, although I’d like to suggest to them that fewer muddy earth tones and more bright colors would not go amiss. (I sound like a broken record.) And who knows—Walmart might expand their apparel remnant rack to carrying actual stock in their stores.

[The Walmart.com website has extensive fabric listings, as does Amazon.com. Neither of them, however, has a search engine that even comes close to what Fabric.com had, which allowed searchers to drill down and find exactly what they were searching for.]

Disruption brings opportunity. I think the market is there—witness all the online apparel fabric retailers—but not being able to see and feel fabric in person before buying is a problem. I am curious to see what happens.

Making T-Shirts in Spokane

I taught the Lark Tee class in Spokane on Friday and Saturday. Four students had enrolled in the class, but one had to cancel at the last minute due to a death in the family.

From my standpoint, as the teacher, I thought the class went extremely well, even though only one student went home with a T-shirt that fit her right off the bat with no alterations to the pattern. That may sound like a paradox, but it’s not, really, because I tried to stress—repeatedly—that very few people can make something that fits perfectly straight out of the envelope. And I had three students with three very different body shapes. One was petite and a bit busty. The second matched the description on the envelope: “This pattern has been designed for a woman who is 5’5” tall and wears a B cup.” The third woman was about my age and height; she was in my class last August, but had lost 30 pounds in the year since. She had to adjust for wider hips.

[I’ll let you guess whose T-shirt fit the best.]

The petite student was a bit disappointed in her shirt, even though she acknowledged that she has a lot of trouble finding clothes that fit. I said that even the process of making something that doesn’t fit provides a great deal of useful information, because it points to the places that need to be addressed. Had we had more time, we probably could have made the necessary adjustments to the pattern, but she needed so many adjustments that it would have ended up being a private fitting class. She was also new to serging and needed some guidance on using her machine. She didn’t quite understand seam allowances and made hers wider than the 1/4” specified in the pattern, which contributed to her T-shirt being too small.

During Friday’s session, where we covered measuring and fitting information, I tried to drop some very broad hints about using clearance fabric or fabric from the Walmart remnant rack for making muslins. (The students would have had time between Friday and Saturday’s classes to get some, and I hoped they would.) Ironically. the woman who used clearance fabric for her first T-shirt was the one whose shirt fit her perfectly. The other two used fabric purchased at the store.

My assessment, after it was over, was that the entire class served as a textbook illustration of the issues inherent in fitting and making clothing. And I crammed a ton of information into six hours.

All three of them, as well as the store owner, asked if I would come back and teach again. They would like to have a session on making pants, so we’re going to see about scheduling a Jalie Renee pants class.

On my way over to Spokane on Thursday, I stopped at Becky’s Sewing Center in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. This is the store that is hosting the Amanda Murphy ruler class in December. I mentioned to them that I teach serger classes and left my information. I’ll follow up this week. If I am going to make the trip over to Spokane to teach, it would be lovely to schedule classes at multiple stores.

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Back in July, a group of us got together for dinner with Nicole Sauce—host of the Living Free in Tennessee podcast—when she was passing through Spokane. We said that we would like to make it a regular occurrence, so I organized a dinner Thursday evening. Nicole, of course, wasn’t there, but there were five of us for dinner including one newcomer who is in the process of moving to Idaho from Tacoma. We enjoyed a meal together and I think we will continue to try to get together periodically when I’m in Spokane.

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While I was shopping on Thursday, I stopped at Barnes And Noble and found this:

Sarah Veblen teaches online fitting classes, so I was familiar with her name. I think this will be a great resource. I’ve only given it a quick perusal, but it has a ton of great information.

This is a busy week. I have a serger class scheduled for Tuesday, although I need to check with the store to see if anyone signed up. I have a meeting on Wednesday. And the kids are coming on Friday for the long weekend.

We Plough The Fields and Scatter

Gardening season is winding down. I pulled all the zucchini plants. The cucumbers are done and the other squash vines are looking a bit peaked. We will be buried under a mountain of butternut squash, I think. Last year, I didn’t get any because they just didn’t ripen in time. I love to make soups with butternut squash and pumpkin, so having a good number of them won’t be a hardship.

I got about a dozen nice ears of corn. I blanched those yesterday and cut the kernels off and froze them. Next year, I will do a bigger patch of corn. I’ve had mixed success with corn over the years. This variety was Fisher’s Early. Starting the corn and beans in the greenhouse after the plant sale worked exceptionally well and I will stick to that schedule next year.

I canned up another eight quarts of tomato sauce. I still haven’t gotten to the pie filling, but the apples are in the garage where it is cool and they will keep. I have one eye on the Red Wealthy and Honeycrisp trees. They will need to be cleaned off before long.

We’ve dug up and eaten some of the volunteer potatoes around the garden. We won’t dig the big patch of potatoes until everything else has been cleared out. I cut lettuce from the tray in the greenhouse and made a big salad to go with last night’s meal of spaghetti.

I brought in one large cabbage and there are half a dozen others waiting.

I am happy with this year’s harvest. I would have liked to have had some broccoli and cauliflower, but the ground squirrels won that battle. I’ll figure out a plan for next year.

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My college roommate got me a gift certificate to Spoonflower as part of her thank-you to me for finishing the Sunbonnet Sue quilt. I’ve been dithering on how I want to spend it. I chose this design, called Botanical Green Water Garden, and had it printed on their Modern Jersey substrate, a 95% polyester/5% spandex blend. (The photo doesn’t do the fabric justice—it is more greenish-blue and less yellow.)

I thought it might be a double-brushed poly but it’s not. The hand of the fabric is lovely, though, and I got enough to make a dress.

We’ve come a long way since the polyester double knits of the 1970s.

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I happened to catch Amanda Murphy’s livestream last week. She was going over her fall teaching schedule and mentioned that she was going to be in Idaho, at Becky’s Sewing Center in Coeur d’Alene. I love Amanda Murphy’s quilting rulers and would love to take a class from her, but her classes always fill up quickly. Wonder of wonders, I was able to get a spot in the class on December 4.

The November processing date for the pigs is the week of Thanksgiving, so if we keep that date, I won’t be able to take my annual birthday trip. (This year, my birthday is the day after Thanksgiving.) The Amanda Murphy class will be a nice consolation prize.

Maybe You Should Learn

I had Susan’s two grandsons here for a few hours yesterday. They are 2 and 4. We spent the whole morning playing with trucks, coloring, and reading books. When the sun came out, we went outside for a while. They climbed on the tractor and played on the big trucks. I let them sit in the skidsteer. The older boy asked me if I could drive the two of them around in it. When I said that I didn’t know how to drive it, he said, “Maybe you should learn.”

Maybe I should, LOL.

We hitched up the wagon to the golf cart. They loaded some overgrown zucchinis into the wagon and we drove over to the chicken coop to feed the chickens. I love having those ATV tires on the golf cart.

My living room halfway through the morning:

Susan came and got the boys around noon. The three of them were headed up to watch the crane set trusses on the house that the boys’ dad is building for them.

If you aren’t having fun at Auntie Janet’s Summer Camp, you’re not trying very hard.

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A friend of ours is going on a hiking trip with her dogs this week. She asked if I could repair/modify one of the dog packs, so I did that yesterday afternoon. I sewed the straps with the 1541 and then used the rivet press to set snaps:

Wow, is that slick. I can see why Bedazzlers were so popular a few decades ago, because now I want to put snaps and rivets on everything. I bought all the adapters and dies I thought we might need. The husband has to put suspender buttons on all his work pants, and now he’ll be able to do that with the press instead of using his anvil.

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Mouse season has arrived. I spotted one running across the kitchen floor last week. I think we may have caught it—there was a dead one in the trap in my office this morning. Of course, it probably has relatives.

We got another round of soaking rain last night. The fires won’t go out completely until it snows, but this precipitation is helping. One of the rural fire departments was called to a rogue campfire again yesterday afternoon. I was listening to the call on the scanner in my office. The responding fire member radioed in to dispatch that he was clearing the call, and said, “Homeowner was counseled not to put any more wood on the fire until October.”—because, apparently, some people have to be told the obvious.

I made great strides yesterday toward getting the new project up and running. This idea came completely out of the blue, but I have a good feeling about it and I always trust my gut. I know I’m teasing all of you, but I think the wait—perhaps 2-3 more weeks—will be worth it.

Pig Processor Problems

The pigs went to the processor yesterday. And then they came back, because the processor wasn’t there.

I’m so angry about this. Our original processing date was August 14. I called the week before to verify, only to be told that they couldn’t accommodate us that day and could we come on August 21st instead? I said that worked well for us. The processor said, “Have them there as early as possible,” and when I said, “How early is early?” he replied that 7 am would be good.

Loading the pigs went relatively well this year. We weren’t loading them in a snowstorm, for one thing, and this group of pigs was willing to follow the trail of treats into the trailer. By 7 pm Sunday night, we had all eight loaded into the trailer, where they spent the night.

We were up early and on the road by 5:45 am. We pulled into the processing facility at 7:01 am. No one was around. I knocked on the door. No answer. We waited. And waited. I called and left a message. After an hour of waiting for someone to show up, the husband said, “We need to get these pigs home and back into the pasture.” Pigs get stressed easily—by heat, travel, and a thousand other things. As we were leaving, I decided to look at the voicemail messages on my phone.

[I rarely get voicemail messages. I am not in the habit of looking at them regularly and my phone wasn’t set up to notify me. Also, I had my phone on silent Saturday morning because I was in a meeting.]

The processor had left a voicemail on my cellphone Saturday morning saying he wouldn’t be there on Monday and we should bring the pigs Tuesday.

Should I have checked my voicemail? Probably, but I am not going to own this one. If you, the processor, have changed the date twice in two weeks on a customer who is hauling eight pigs 80 miles to your facility, it is incumbent upon you to get verbal confirmation that the customer is aware of any changes to the schedule. Leaving a voicemail as your only communication is unacceptable. A text message would have been helpful because at least I would have seen that.

We cannot take the pigs to the processor today. I doubt we could have convinced them to get into the trailer again last night. Even if we had managed that feat, the husband has a concrete pour scheduled. We are done with that processor. We still have a processing date in November at another facility. I was hedging my bets with that later date in case the pigs weren’t ready by mid-August. We could keep them another three months, although that raises our feed costs and we have to make sure they don’t gain too much weight. Elysian gave me a lead on someone else who has started processing, so I have a call in to them.

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The good news is that it’s raining. It was rainy and cool most of yesterday, which was wonderful. After we got home and got the pigs sorted, I made a quick trip to town to run errands and to pick up more pig feed. After lunch, I set a small batch of tomato sauce to cook down. I have much more energy and motivation when it’s not 97 degrees outside.

The BMW needs a new belt pulley. The husband says that it is a relatively easy repair; he was halfway there just diagnosing the problem, but he had to order the part. I will take the Acura to Spokane. I don’t like driving it in Seattle because of the hills—it’s a manual—but I can avoid any hills in Spokane.

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I am kicking around an idea for something new. I am not quite ready to reveal it yet, because I want to do a bit more research. I ran it past the husband last night and he said,”Is this the point where I am supposed to hit you upside the head with a 2 x 4?” (He knows me so well.) I said, “Yes, probably, but I might go ahead with this project anyway.” Stay tuned.

Blooming Alfalfa

I noticed this plant growing in Susan’s orchard the other day and asked her what it was.

It’s alfalfa. When it’s grown as a fodder crop, it gets cut before it ever has a chance to bloom. Susan grows in her orchard and uses it—dried—as mulch in her garden. I think it’s so pretty. I may pick up some seed and broadcast it into the pig pasture this fall.

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DD#1 sent this picture to the family group text last night:

That is a mama bear and two cubs walking along the beach in front of their house in Alaska. She took the photo from the safety of their living room. She grew up in Montana and respects wildlife, unlike people who try to pet the fluffy cows in Yellowstone.

The smoke was so awful last night when I went to bed that I closed all the windows and ran the air scrubber in our bedroom. (I have to leave the windows open or it just gets too hot upstairs.) The husband said it sounded like we were on the deck of an aircraft carrier, but the scrubber did the job. Around midnight, we started getting winds from the east that blew most of the smoke out of the area, so I opened the windows a crack and let in some fresh air.

We’re not burning here, though, and for that I am grateful. I have been watching coverage of that fire just west of Spokane and it is horrific—something like 10,000 acres burned and almost 200 houses completely destroyed. The fire is 0% contained. I-90 is still closed in that area.

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The husband borrowed the stock trailer from our friend, Smokey, and got it into position by the pasture gate yesterday. He moved the pig feed into the trailer. Theoretically, when the pigs get hungry, they will go looking for the food and get used to moving in and out of the trailer. Some years, that plan works better than others. We see what happens today. The pigs will need to spend tonight in the trailer because we have to be ready to leave around 5:30 tomorrow morning. I have three bags of marshmallows on hand to help entice them into the trailer—pigs love marshmallows—and Smokey and some other friends of ours said they would come over and help.

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I am driving the Acura again. I was getting ready to leave for a meeting yesterday morning and the husband happened to hear the BMW running. He didn’t like the sound it was making and thinks a belt is bad. One of our employees was here yesterday working on his truck, so the husband couldn’t get the Diva into the shop too look at it. He may not have time this week, either. I can drive the Acura to Spokane. And I think I am going to have to make a decision soon about replacing my car.

Finish Something

I was at Susan’s by 8 am yesterday morning and she and I cleaned off most of her Duchess of Oldenburg tree. A few things have shifted on the calendar, so making pie filling is on the schedule for the beginning of the week. I brought home enough apples for about 30 quarts of filling, as well as two boxes of deadfall apples for the pigs. I love seeing Susan’s garden and her orchard. We walked around and talked about all the different apple varieties. She knows so much.

The wind started blowing just after lunch, right on schedule. We are okay, but there is a new fire start in Paradise, Montana, that closed the road I take to Spokane. A fire northwest of here prompted evacuations. Spokane is getting hammered. A fire started in Medical Lake, west of the city, that forced the evacuation of the entire town and destroyed a number of structures. Another fire is burning near Elk, north of Spokane. Friends of mine used to live in that area and their home is in the evacuation zone.

Luckily for us, at least, the remnants of Hilary are supposed to being some much-needed rain on Monday and Tuesday.

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I’ve got the sewing equivalent of writer’s block. When that happens, I look around and see what needs to be done and choose something to finish. I might not be able to spark any creativity, but at least I move something over to the done pile.

I finished a New Look 6555 top yesterday afternoon:

This has been sitting, in pieces, since I taught the class in May. I had cut the front in class in order to demonstrate making the keyhole opening. I brought everything home and let it languish, which is dumb because I could have been wearing it all summer. I’m going to take it to Spokane with me and wear it on one of my class days. Wearing something I’ve made when I teach is one of my personal rules.

I didn’t like the handkerchief hem on the first iteration of this top (view B). Something about the proportions didn’t work for me. One of my students, Nancy, is about my size and shape, and we decided in class that the straight hem (view C) looked better on her than the handkerchief hem. I did the straight hem on this version, as well, and will do so if I make it again. I’m not madly in love with this pattern, but it’s a quick and easy way to use up pretty rayon wovens.

The quilt store south of town is having a pajama party tomorrow. People are welcome to bring their machines—sewing or serger—to the store to spend the day making PJs. It sounds like great fun, but Sundays are a day of work for me so I’ll have to pass.

I’m talking with a store in Missoula about teaching for them this fall. They recently moved to a larger space and have room for classes now. I’d like to arrange my teaching schedule so that I’m making a circuit around Kalispell, Missoula, and Spokane periodically, but I’ll have to see how that works out. I’ve got a good roster of classes already prepped and I’m always looking for a reason to take a road trip.

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I need to start cleaning up the garden soon. The pea vines can come out and I am finished with cukes and zucchini for this year. I am waiting for the beans—not the pole beans, but the other kind—to start dying back so I can bring the pods into the greenhouse to dry completely. I should have a nice harvest of navy beans and other varieties to use this winter. Starting those bean plants in the greenhouse after the plant sale worked so well that I will stick to that practice from now on. The tomatoes should keep producing as long as we keep them protected from frost.

This is Our Crew

We have a good group of guys working for us right now. They are all kids in their early 20s and they adore the husband. Their ringleader—the one who has been working for us the longest—reminds me so much of the husband at that age. He has ambition and ingenuity and has started doing small concrete jobs on the side. The husband lends him tools. This kid also buys and fixes up Dodge diesel pickups and resells them. The only thing he is missing is a 22-year-old version of me to go with him.

Yesterday, they asked if I would take a photo of all five of them, wearing their toolbelts, in front of the husband’s truck (he’s in the middle).

They want to get custom T-shirts made, too. I heard all their ideas yesterday. The boys make me laugh and I have to be careful when they are here working that I am not out there being a distraction. I try to keep cookies on hand for them. The tall one—he’s even taller than the 6’4” husband—likes to grow things. He works at the farmer’s market one evening a week and I gave him a flat of vegetable starts back in the spring.

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I made a muslin of this blouse pattern yesterday morning and I am extremely happy with it.

The pattern came from this Etsy shop. The pattern is solid. There was a small issue with the bust darts not being rendered correctly, but I had to move them down half an inch anyway so that problem was easily corrected. This is the first pattern I’ve made with back shoulder darts, and I do think they improve the fit. The sleeve cap was drafted well and went into the armscye without issues. This one and Simplicity 9469 will now be my two hackable blouse patterns.

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Today should be the last day of really hot weather. The high on Saturday is only supposed to be 80. I do hope this is the end of it because I am miserable and losing productive working time. Unfortunately, we’re supposed to get gusty winds this afternoon. We had another fire department call for a rogue campfire last night. People are idiots.

Susan says her Duchess of Oldenburg apples are just about ready. I think I am going to go up there early tomorrow and fill a couple of crates. One of the problems with canning is that food needs to be processed when it is ready, and that doesn’t always line up with free days in my schedule. If I don’t do apple pie filling this weekend, it’s going to be another ten days before I can get to it and I don’t want to wait that long.

I’m excited about my T-shirt class in Spokane next week. The group of us who got together for dinner with Nicole Sauce when she was passing through in July are getting together again while I am there (sans Nicole, who is back in Tennessee).

All Legos, All Day

I had Ali’s little guy here for the day yesterday. His dad and stepmom were on the way back from Colorado and Ali had to be in Missoula for the day, so he got to enjoy a visit to Auntie Janet’s Summer Camp. He and his mom had just returned the night before from a busy weekend trip to California, including a trip to Legoland. I had had a busy weekend and a busy Monday. Yesterday was sunny and hot. Except for processing beans and a trip out to the garden in the golf cart to get tomatoes, the two of us spent the day in the living room in our respective recliners binge-watching Ninjago Legos on YouTube. (The little boys love to sit in the husband’s recliner.) He had pizza for lunch and three cookies for dessert.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I know more about animated Legos than I need to. I was reminded of one summer when the girls were little—6 and 11, maybe?—when we played Lara Croft: Tomb Raider on my computer every afternoon. It was my job to shoot the dinosaurs and the bad guys. DD#1 still has a fondness for video games.

The beans didn’t take long. I set up my green bean frencher in the living room:

It’s an odd setup, but it works.

And I got seven pints of beans to add to the pantry:

I need to check the corn today. It is close to being ready and I don’t want to miss it.

Late in the afternoon, we saw a big smoke plume over the mountains:

There is a fire burning on Forest Service land. We aren’t in danger from it, but the smoke is impressive.

What we are in danger from is idiots like the ones who lit a campfire back in the woods across the road from our house. [I know that is not charitable of me, but if the shoe fits…] Our fire department was dispatched last night to deal with said idiots. We are under stage 2 restrictions—no campfires. All it takes is one spark on a hot day (or night) with a little bit of wind and the forest goes up in smoke.

I’ll be so happy when it snows. Two more days of high 90s and then temps are supposed to cool off.

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DD#2 sent me an interesting opinion piece from the New York Times entitled “Your Clothes Were Never Meant to Fit You,” (If you aren’t subscribed, you can set up a free account to read it.) The author, Elizabeth Endicott, is a writer and textile artist. She notes the wide variation in women’s bodies and the inability of the clothing industry to establish consistency in sizing from one brand to another. She found satisfaction in making her own clothing and notes, “My guess is that once women discover how much better it feels—and fits—when they make clothes for their own bodies, they won’t be coming back to the standardized, one-size-fits-some options available in stores.”

You don’t say.

I have some paperwork to take care of this morning and then I might sew. I’ve been a bit sloppy with my diet lately—I may also have had some pizza—and I’m feeling it. It’s time to get back on track.

Trading Vegetables

All things considered, this hasn’t been an overly hot summer here in northwest Montana. Two years ago, we had weeks of 90+ degree weather—June was especially bad—and I had to rig up a misting system for the chickens. Still, I have a lot of trouble with the heat. It totally saps my energy. I’m good until about noon and then I become a slug. We have three days of forecast high 90s this week, after which we are supposed to cool off and (hopefully) get more rain.

Our friends, Tom and Marcie, gave me a bag of green beans yesterday. Their garden always produces a ton of them:

I like these wide ones. I will run them through the green bean frencher that Elysian gifted me a few years ago and can them up today.

Tom and Marcie know they are welcome to tomatoes from my garden. I love that we all share the bounty around the neighborhood.

Speaking of tomatoes, I am tickled by the lovely colors this year:

The green-and-orange Zebra Ezels are fun. At the top is a Black Strawberry. That one looks almost glassy to me. And the yellow is another Atomic Sunset.

The first Paul Robeson is almost ready to taste. Sarah said she really liked that one. Its appearance is nothing special, but sometimes the most unassuming tomatoes have the best flavor.

Anna got the last three zucchini from my garden. I think I am going to pull up those plants soon. They are done producing and the vining squash are running over them.

I’ve been watering the apple trees every couple of days. We have great water pressure, but I have to water 20 trees and that takes about 45 minutes. The Lodi apple tree I bought at Costco in March is still struggling. That tree took forever to leaf out and now it just looks pathetic.

I am sure we can replace it next year with something else. Susan has at least a dozen grafted trees started for me. She showed me the list after church a couple of weeks ago. One is a Sweet Sixteen. I had a Sweet Sixteen (from Costco), but it succumbed over the winter a few years after we put it in. I will be happy to have another one.

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According to my calendar, fall is going to be busy. I’m teaching quite a few classes and taking another trip to Tennessee (October). Things don’t really ease up until after Thanksgiving, although December could be busy, too, depending on what Christmas activities we plan at church. I’m okay with this schedule, because having so much already on the calendar makes it easy to say no to additional requests.

I am still looking for my sew-jo. I am stuck in that place where it would be nice to have some additional T-shirts and dresses for hot weather, but I’d like to start sewing for the cooler months to come. Nothing really excites me and that’s the problem. I have four yards of a sweater knit that might become a duster-length Harper Cardigan. I am teaching that class next month and it would be good to have another class sample, or a cardigan to wear to class, depending on the weather.

I suspect my energy and motivation will come roaring back once this hot weather eases up.

Another Winner, Mostly

Burda 6329 is a solid pattern and will go into the T&T pile. It is definitely a quick sew. For this wearable muslin, I used some lightweight rayon/spandex from the WalMart remnant rack:

This fabric is better suited to a Laundry Day Tee, I think, but I only had two yards. ( I probably should have given this top a light press, but oh well.) The fabric is soft, which meant that getting those pleats to stay in place long enough to attach the neckband took some doing. I wanted to machine baste them in place, but my Janome 6600P is just not handling knit fabric the way I think it should. I’ve had trouble with everything from tissue knits to ponte. After working on a serger that takes whatever I throw at it without complaint, moving to a sewing machine that balks at simple basting stitches is frustrating. I need to fiddle with it a bit and see if I can figure out what is happening. The neckline is not as wonky as it looks on the dress form.

When I make this again, I will change those sleeves. They have a shoulder dart, which is appropriate in raglan patterns for wovens but probably unnecessary for knits. Also, the dart was cut open on the pattern rather than being sewn and folded toward the back, so the seam allowance of the dart makes the fabric stick up at my shoulders. Better to eliminate the darts completely.

I have another two yards of this fabric in green. I am going to make this top again but will remove the shoulder darts and gather the front neckline instead of pleating it. This pattern has the potential to be useful year-round by changing the length of the sleeves and playing around with the neckline, so I expect to make a few more.

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Yesterday was a busy day. We had a visit from my mother-in-law’s college roommate, Susie, and her family. I think the last time we saw them was at my sister-in-law’s wedding in 1997, but Susie’s daughter, Renee, and I are Facebook friends. Renee contacted me last year and said they were planning a trip to Montana and could they stop and see us? We showed them around the property and sat and visited for a bit. Susie and my MIL were very close. We sent her off with one of my MIL’s watercolor paintings and a photo from the husband’s parents’ wedding. (Susie was a bridesmaid.) The family had just spent a few days at Glacier Park and was heading to Yellowstone.

I also made a pan of scalloped potatoes and ham for a dinner at church. Our Executive Conference Minister is visiting our church this weekend and he wanted to meet with our pastor search committee. I am the chairman of that committee. We organized a dinner meeting and he laid out a timeline for us. Finding another pastor for our church is going to be a challenge, for a variety of reasons.

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The cucumber vines are just about spent, thank goodness. So are the zucchini plants. I started one last batch of pickles to ferment. I think the corn will be ready this week and I’m bringing in a bucket of tomatoes every day. The husband and I split the first Minnesota Midget melon a few days ago.

I’m not much for fruit, but I do like strawberries and cantaloupe.

I’ve got four students enrolled in my class at the small quilt store in Spokane at the end of the month. That store only has room for six students, in any case, so four will be fine. We will be making the Lark Tee by Grainline Studio. The Friday afternoon session will cover choosing a size and making alterations. The students will go home and cut out their patterns, and we will put them together Saturday morning. I’ll have to drive back to Montana Saturday afternoon so I can play at church on Sunday.

Need a Needle? Which One?

I taught a class on machine needles to five students Wednesday evening. I think it went well. I came prepared with a selection of fabrics from my stash. The students were given a 10-pack of assorted needles (Schmetz) and they sewed using needles on different fabrics to see what worked and what didn’t. Gone are the days when needles came in two flavors: red band for wovens and yellow band (ball point) for knits. Now there are Microtex, universal, embroidery, quilting, metallic, jeans, vinyl, jersey and stretch. (Yes, there is a difference between jersey and stretch—stretch needles are specially designed for fabrics containing spandex.)

The store owner’s son—who is the machine tech—was one of the students. I love having him in class because he asks such great questions. He doesn’t sew much, although we told him we need to change that.

The one downside to teaching classes locally is that I feel like I am constantly prepping new classes, and that takes a fair bit of work. When I taught for Stitches and TKGA, I could develop a class and teach it half a dozen times over the following year or two. With the exception of the Jalie Renee pants, which I’ve taught three times, each store class is new and usually taught only once.

I will be teaching the Sinclair Patterns Harper Cardigan and the Love Notions Laundry Day Tee in September and October. I contacted both companies for permission and both were very gracious about giving it.

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Every August, I meet with our accountant to do a quick review of the year to date. That helps to avoid any end-of-the-year surprises. We met yesterday morning. I will say that the one benefit of having to use QuickBooks Online is that now he has immediate access to our records. I gave him the login information so he could make the general journal entries for 2022. I also told him he was welcome to clean up whatever messes he saw in there. He said I do an amazing job for not having any formal bookkeeper training, but I know there are things that could be tightened up.

[I may not have any formal training, but I have a pathological need to track everything down to the last penny, so I learned what I had to in order to do that.]

The husband and I planned, at the beginning of 2023, for him to get another new work truck this year. The 2014 truck was totaled in the accident in February 2022 and was mostly replaced by the insurance payout. His backup truck is a 2008. He ordered a new cab-and-chassis truck in March—it had to be built at the factory in Mexico—and we were notified in June that it was being shipped to the dealer in Tacoma. Once it gets to the dealer, it will be an additional few weeks of waiting while the racks and toolboxes are installed.

The truck is stuck on a rail car, apparently, somewhere between Mexico and Tacoma, with no firm delivery date.

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One of my rituals is to spend a bit of time on Pinterest on my iPad before going to sleep. I have this strange belief that doing so primes the creative pump in my brain. Last night, this pattern popped up in my feed:

I bought a top at the Soft Surroundings store in Seattle last year that I’d love to copy. I could reverse engineer it, but this pattern is for an almost-identical top. I’d be delighted not to have to reinvent the wheel.

I read a blog post yesterday where the sewist talked about spending so much time drafting and altering patterns that she didn’t feel like sewing. I am bogged down in the midst of that, too. I am burning through Pellon Easy-Pattern tracing paper at an alarming rate. Even some of my T&T patterns from last year have been re-traced, mostly to drop the waistline down where it should be according to my bodice sloper. I keep telling myself that all of this is adding to my store of knowledge, but it would be nice to turn some of these chunks of fabric into things I can wear. Hopefully the sew-jo comes back from walkabout soon.

Our lovely cooler weather is coming to an end. Temps will be up in the 90s again by the beginning of next week. We have visitors coming tomorrow, which gives me a great excuse to spend the day cleaning. This is a busy weekend for church activities, too.

Enjoying the Abundance

I inventoried the pantry yesterday and rotated stock. Some years ago, I heard an interview with Joel Salatin in which he said his wife puts up two years’ worth of food every canning season. That way, if there is a crop failure, they have extra to see them through. I try to follow that system, too, but it means being careful to use the older food first.

[Joel Salatin will be the keynote speaker at Self-Reliance Festival, where I am teaching in October. I will try not to be too much of a fangirl upon meeting him, but I am excited.]

We didn’t need as much salsa as I anticipated. I based my production last year on a quart a week. I think it averaged out to three quarts a month. I may make salsa again this year, but a smaller amount. And not as much tomato sauce. We are down to just a few jars of peaches and a few of apple pie filling. Those definitely have to be replenished. I’m waiting for Susan’s Duchess of Oldenburg tree to be ready to harvest, and I’ll check at Glacier Produce tomorrow to see if peaches have come in.

I’m thinking hard about how much garden space we need next year. Honestly, we probably don’t need four zucchini plants, seven cucumber vines, and 35 tomato plants, although I am happy to share the excess. WS came over last night to get zucchini for his farmstand. I give away produce at church, Anna buys some for her catering business, and the pigs and chickens are happy to hoover up their share. Ground squirrels aside, growing food is not difficult. The difficult part is dealing with it when it all ripens at once.

The far third of the garden is fallow this year. I am considering leaving it permanently fallow. That section has never produced much other than potatoes. The soil there needs more amending, It has had several layers of rotted straw tilled into it, but it could benefit from a couple of loads of chicken manure. That area would be a good spot for an asparagus bed if I could get the soil prepped.

We’ll see. I have all winter to think about it.

I am enjoying watching the tomatoes ripen. This one is a variety called Black Strawberry.

I need to locate the Aunt Ruby tomato plant in that jungle. Those tomatoes stay green even when they are ripe and I don’t want to miss them.

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I drove The Diva on Monday without incident. I am hoping that whatever the husband did solved the problem, although I did question if it had something to do with hot weather. I noticed the shifting problem most on those days when we were well up into the 90s. In any case, if it happens again, I can switch to driving the car in manual mode.

Our friend, Smokey, stopped by yesterday for a visit. We sold our stock trailer last year after the truck accident because it had a gooseneck hitch and we no longer had a truck that could pull it. Smokey offered us the use of his stock trailer this year. He has been a great help with our pigs in the past and will get pork in return for his neighborliness. He and I sat on the porch for a bit, talking and watching a storm roll in from the west. I saw a sudden flash of light and then heard a very loud crack of thunder right over our heads.

I don’t know where that lightning bolt landed. It did rain for about half an hour—not enough, but we’ll take what we can get.

I called the processor yesterday to confirm our appointment for next Monday, the 14th. We don’t want to arrive with a trailer load of pigs only to be told they can’t accommodate us. And it is good that I called, because they asked if we could wait an additional week. The pigs will go in on Monday the 21st, instead.

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A fourth of the log cabin top has been quilted. Two hours of wrestling is about all I can manage in one sitting, so I am not hurrying.

Burda patterns are on sale this weekend at Joanns. I plan to get a few, including this one:

I was going to make up a few more Laundry Day Tees with some of my Walmart remnant rack fabric, but those pieces are two-yard cuts and two yards isn’t enough. The LDT is a swing top and requires an extra half-yard to have enough for the sleeves. This Burda pattern should do nicely.

I’ve noticed that Walmart has had mostly two-yard cuts in their remnant bin lately. I hope this is not a trend. Two yards is not enough for a dress or a long (enough for me) cardigan with sleeves. Four yards is almost too much, but three yards would cover just about everything I’d want to make.

All the Songs We Sing

Today’s post is for the musical geeks among you.

Elaine presented the message during our church service yesterday. She spoke about the history of the hymnals used by our congregation. Mennonite Church USA released a new hymnal, Voices Together, about three years ago. New hymnals tend to evoke emotional reactions—both good and bad—and this one is no exception. In September, we plan to have a Zoom meeting with the head of the hymnal committee, to hear from him about the process of vetting and choosing the music that went into this current hymnal. It is no small tome; there are close to 800 songs and hymns included.

I love hymnals. I have about 50 in my collection, from all denominations. I have one with my father’s name embossed on the cover, because I think that back in the day, young people in Missouri Synod churches used to receive a copy of The Lutheran Hymnal as part of their confirmation. That hymnal also contains one of the few songs to which I know the Slovak words (Čas Radosti) although the words in the hymnal are in English. DD#1’s mother-in-law gifted me the ELCA Lutheran hymnal a few years ago, and that one is a favorite.

[DD#1 and DSIL both went to Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) colleges—St. Olaf (SIL) and Pacific Lutheran (DD#1). They both love to sing. I used to fill in as pianist for one of the ELCA Lutheran churches here in the valley. I seem to have one toe forever stuck in that denomination.]

Some people get very tied up in the theology of hymns. My criticism of hymnals tends to be from a musical standpoint. Are the songs singable? Does the accompaniment support the singing or fight with it? (The new hymnal contains one song where the congregation is singing in two but the accompaniment is in triplets, and trying to keep everyone together is a major undertaking.) As the pianist, I am there to be part of the musical ensemble, not a soloist. Congregational accompaniment is a whole field of study unto itself.

In our congregation, the song leader chooses the hymns for each Sunday’s service and runs them past me. A few months ago, Elaine asked me about a song in our previous blue hymnal. She thought the text was perfect for that Sunday’s service. I had such a visceral response to the tune, though, that we are still laughing about my comments back to her, and she included them in her message yesterday. While I was growing up, our Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) congregation used The Lutheran Hymnal, published in 1942. That book is full of old German chorales. Some time in the late 1970s, the denomination decided it was time for a new hymnal, and Lutheran Worship came out in 1982. That hymnal is so awful I don’t even own a copy. The hymns were arranged in lower keys, making them almost impossible to sing in parts. What’s worse, the arrangements have those chord progressions that are so characteristic of 1970s music. I don’t know how to explain it other than the hymns ended up sounding like Martin Luther meets Peter, Paul, and Mary. The song Elaine asked me about sounded like it could have come straight from that hymnal. Interestingly, that hymnal never received wide acceptance among LCMS churches (really?), many of which continued to use The Lutheran Hymnal. The denomination eventually saw the error of its ways and released the Lutheran Service Book in 2006. I do own a copy of that one, and it is much better than its predecessor, although I still prefer the ELCA hymnal.

So there you go. I think Voices Together is a good hymnal; it achieved the goals set out for it, the primary one of which is to be a hymnal for a culturally and theologically diverse denomination. And unlike a lot of other congregations, we keep all of our old hymnals and rotate through them so that everyone has a chance to sing old favorites.

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That batch of tomatoes yielded 10 quarts of sauce, which is 10 quarts more than we had a few days ago. I need to inventory what is left of both sauce and salsa in order to know how much I have to make this year.

This is a lovely, rich, tangy sauce.

I am going to drive the BMW to town today. The husband worked on it all weekend and then drove the car around for about 45 minutes last evening. He could not get the problem to reappear. Hopefully, whatever he did solved the issue. We shall find out.

Domestic Disaster Area

The house is a mess. It isn’t magazine-worthy even on its best days, but during canning season, it looks like a tornado went through here.

I hauled in a wagon load of zucchini yesterday and shredded enough to fill two gallon zip bags. Someone has been hoovering down zucchini fritters. I think we’ll get about another week’s worth off those plants and then they might be done. I took a peek at the jungle of squash growing on that nuclear waste site—the spot where the load of pig manure ended up before planting—and there are squash in there that I cannot identify. And a lot of them.

One of the cabbages that survived the ground squirrel attack is about ready to harvest. That one is a variety called Early Dutch. I should have some red cabbages before long, too.

I started working on tomato sauce. We’re going to need freezer space for pork in a few weeks and one of the chest freezers still had about a dozen bags from last year’s harvest. I am mixing those with what I brought in from the garden this week. The tomatoes are simmering in the roaster. I’ll process and can them this afternoon.

Sarah has helped to expand my gardening horizons this year. She started quite a few dwarf tomato varieties and a few of them ended up in my garden. (I did Dwarf Chocolate Mocha last year.) This is Atomic Sunset:

The tomato patch is extra colorful this season.

We had pork for dinner last night. I put it in the crock pot with some salsa verde yesterday morning and let it cook all day.

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The husband is determined to figure out what is wrong with the BMW. He spent a few hours on it yesterday afternoon and evening but it’s still shifting erratically. I am not sure that turning cars into computers on wheels was such a good idea. Repairing or replacing mechanical parts is one thing. Bad computer modules are another story. He could replace the part he thinks is bad, but the module has to be programmed. With BMW’s proprietary software.

I have no doubt he can solve this problem—as stubborn as I am, he outshines me—but I also told him that he needs to decide when he longer wants this particular albatross around his neck.

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I took in the sides of that black ponte dress so that it fits better. I may tweak the sleeves a bit because I’m not entirely happy with them. Overall, though, the dress fits well and that pattern will go into the tried-and-true pile.

That Jan Minott fitting book has a great section on reading wrinkles in clothing. Wrinkles can point to fitting issues. However, solving those fitting issues isn’t always as straightforward as one might like. Take the problem of a gaping front armhole. When the sleeve is attached, that extra fabric causes a fold at the side of the bust. That issue could be addressed by shortening the front bodice, making the bust dart larger, slanting the front shoulder line, or some combination of all three. (The wrinkles section of that book reads like a flow chart.) See this blog post for a good example of this problem, and the solution.

I still feel like I am stumbling around blindly, but I’m getting better at fitting my own clothes, at least.

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Yesterday was overcast and we never got above 75 degrees. It felt wonderful. As I write this post, it’s raining—drizzling, really—but at least that’s something. Unfortunately, such a tiny amount of rain won’t help put out fires. And the number of calls our rural fire departments are having to make to homeowners to extinguish campfires is astonishing to me. We are now under stage II fire restrictions, there are fires burning all around us, but some people still think they can roast hot dogs in their backyard.

I Love Tomatillos

I think tomatillos are my new favorite thing to grow. (Thank you, Sarah.) I love the smell and the taste. Yesterday, I canned up eight pints of salsa verde:

So pretty. That was the first batch; the tomatillos are just coming on, so I expect to do a few more batches before the end of the season.

I used the recipe from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, which is my guide when I haven’t made something before. My only quibble about that book—and other people in the homesteading chat group said they have had the same experience—is that the yields given are wildly inaccurate. This recipe said it yielded two pints. I carefully doubled the recipe, because I don’t freelance when it comes to canning, and ended up with eight pints. Someone’s math is off.

I’ve become a fermented pickle evangelist, mostly due to a lack of space in our fridge. My friend, Anna, bought some cukes from me the other day for her catering business. As she was leaving, I handed her a quart jar of pickles for her husband. Yesterday, I gave four jars to our employees. I might make dill relish today.

I only wish that everything didn’t ripen all at once. Oh, well, the chickens are happy to get a daily ration of cukes to munch on.

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I made a black ponte sheath dress yesterday afternoon. I am using the Pamela’s Patterns Classic T-shirt dress pattern, slightly modified. The fit in the bodice is just about perfect—hooray! I need to take in the dress at the hips, though. That dress was drafted for more apple-like figures—which is noted in the pattern—and I should have graded down at least one size from the waistline down to the hem. That issue is easily fixed. When it came time to understitch the neckline facing, I did as Pamela suggests in one of her videos and used a triple-stitch zig-zag there. That worked beautifully.

Once hemmed, I’ll have a basic black dress in the wardrobe. I’ve got some Robert Kaufman bright pink sparkle ponte in the stash, too, and that may end up being my Christmas dress this year. Why not?

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I am hoping we get the promised cool-down this week. Right now, the forecast indicates temps in the 70s with some rain. That would be wonderful. Michael Snyder, who does the Pacific Northwest Weather Watch channel on YouTube, says that models are showing that after this system moves through, a ridge will build that will bring us (and Seattle) hot weather again—possibly hotter than what we’ve already have. Ugh.