So Long, Tomatoes

The grand total came out to 45 quarts of tomato sauce. I haven’t decided what to do with the other ten bags of tomatoes in the freezer. If we need the space for pork, I may end up giving them to the chickens. If not, I’ll leave them and make salsa next month. I don’t have time for any more canning until the end of October.

Some of this week’s production waiting to be labeled and filed in the pantry:

I inherited Margaret’s collection of canning jars when she moved from Montana to Indiana. (Bless you, Margaret.) Every so often a really nice vintage one comes through the rotation. I’m pulling and saving those when I see them. The difference in quality between old and new canning jars is huge—and sad.

If anyone needs or wants extra tomatoes, let me know. You can have the ones from the freezer. The turkeys are eating the tomatoes that are left in the garden, although I pop out there every couple of days for cherry tomatoes for our salads. I still have to bring in all the butternut squash and the pumpkins but I am waiting for a frost. I can’t believe I am saying that on September 23, although the mountains got a dusting of snow this week.

I cleaned yesterday. The amount of fine, gritty ash that comes in with these forest fires is staggering, and if I don’t stay ahead of it, it will just circulate through the house all winter. I worked on our bedroom. That is the only room that has windows open during the summer—I keep the insulated shades on the upstairs windows all year now to help keep the upstairs cooler—so it needed cleaning the most. I stripped the bedding, took down the curtains, moved all the furniture, and vacuumed and wiped down all the surfaces. I emptied the tank of the Dyson vacuum twice. The air scrubber was running the entire time. It looks and feels much cleaner in there now. At some point, I’ll have to do the same thing to the living room and kitchen. I did them earlier in the summer but they need it again.

As part of yesterday’s cleaning festival, I worked on purging some stuff out of my closet. I am keeping my Liz Claiborne pieces, of course, but my goal is that everything else be made by me. My wardrobe is a lot more colorful now. No more muddy earth tones, and black is reserved for a few key pieces.

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I’ve got a pants class in Spokane on the schedule for November. I haven’t decided if I want to teach the Jalie Renee pants or another pants pattern. I scheduled it right after the Lark Tee class in Missoula. I wasn’t kidding when I said I was going to arrange periodic teaching circuits around the Pacific Northwest. If I am already in Missoula, I might as well drive to Spokane. I was hoping to squeeze the Farm and Food Symposium in between the Lark Tee class—which is on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning—and the pants class, which is scheduled for Friday, but the symposium is on Wednesday and Thursday. I may see if I can take some a la carte seminars at the symposium on Thursday. If not, I can find plenty of ways to entertain myself in Spokane.

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I’m teaching a serger apron class today at the quilt store north of town. We have had a lot of trouble filling classes at this store. I expected to have to cancel the class because no one had signed up as of Monday, but when I called the store yesterday to check, the staffperson said a couple of people had signed up at the last minute. I don’t like to cancel classes, so I will teach this one.

I Know Knot What Top

It’s a technical sewing blog post today.

I traced both the Burda knot top pattern and the Sinclair Patterns Linda twist top this week. The construction methods for each top are quite different, even though the end result is similar. The Burda top has five—five—pattern pieces just for the front, and the neckline is finished with a facing. Those Germans, LOL. They overengineer everything. The Linda top has three pattern pieces total—fronts, back, and sleeves—and the pattern says, ‘Finish the neckline with binding.”

I am going to split some hairs here, although technically, I don’t think this distinction is incorrect. If you specify “binding” in a pattern, I am going to assume that you are referring to a strip of fabric that folds over to enclose a raw edge, like the binding on a quilt. The binding is visible on both front and back. If, on the other hand, you specify a “facing,” I am going to assume you mean a separate piece of fabric sewn to one side of the piece, then turned to the other side where it may or may not be sewn down. That piece of fabric won’t be visible from the public side of the garment. A subtle distinction, perhaps, but they are not the same.

I see a lot of patterns where those terms are used interchangeably. The Linda twist top is one, although Sinclair Patterns is based in Australia, so maybe the convention is different there. Who knows. I saw “binding” as I read through the pattern and thought to myself, “Hey, this would be a great time to try out the binding attachments for my coverstitch machine!” And then I took a little detour.

I’ve had those binding attachments for almost as long as I have had that Janome 3000 coverstitch machine, which will be two years in November. Have I used them? No. In order to be willing to bushwhack my way through a new set of skills, I either have to be in the right mood or it has to be an emergency. (I have been known to schedule a class on a technique just to force myself to learn it.) I haven’t had a good reason to make anything with binding.

One of the benefits of procrastination, though, is that if you wait long enough (like two years or so), other people will have blazed a trail and left signs in the form of YouTube videos and blog posts. Coverstitch machines are fairly new to the domestic market compared to sewing machines and sergers and it has taken some time for the collective body of knowledge to accumulate. I pulled out all my binding attachments. I have three. One does single-fold binding and the other two will do double-fold binding. They differ in what width of finished binding they create—either 9mm, 12mm, or 15mm.

This is what a binding attachment looks like on the machine:

There is a base plate that screws down to the bed, and each specific attachment is screwed down to the base plate. The binding—a narrow strip of fabric usually cut on the crosswise grain—feeds through that gate on the right-hand side and into the triangular-shaped tube, where it is folded into shape. Just in front of the needle, the binding makes a right-hand turn and gets sewn to the main fabric, which is fed in between the layers of binding.

[I bought the $30 binding attachments off Amazon. The Janome-branded attachment (singular) is over $200. I can report that this one works just fine.]

I read several blog posts and watched a couple of YouTube videos. I grabbed some rayon spandex tissue knit that was sitting on my cutting table and cut a strip 1-1/8” wide. That wasn’t necessarily the best choice for my first attempt. A more stable cotton knit would have worked better, but I was curious to see what would happen.

First pass through the machine:

Hmmm. Not bad. It sort of looks like underwear, and indeed, the concept is similar. I needed to dial the differential way down, though, to eliminate that gathering. Also, the strip of rayon fabric needs very little tension on it as it feeds through the binder. I accidentally fed it through so the purl side of the binding was facing out, but I left it that way.

The second attempt was better, although eventually, I dialed down to the lowest differential setting:

And this is what the reverse side looks like:

On single-fold binding, the reverse side isn’t folded like it is on the front. The coverstitches are supposed to cover (get it?) the raw edge. You can see that there is some raw edge sticking out past the line of coverstitches. I think that can be addressed by adjusting the position of the binding as it feeds into the machine.

So back to that Linda top . . . I looked at the pattern more closely. The “neckline binding” is actually a 1” strip of fabric sewn/serged to the right side of the neckline, then turned to the wrong side, the raw edge folded under, and the fabric sewn down, either with machine or coverstitch. Again, I am probably splitting hairs here, but I would call that a facing.

In any case, I think I will start by making the Linda top, as it looks a bit easier. I will play around with the double-fold binding attachments on my machine. I’ve had a few requests to teach a class on coverstitch binding attachments, and this would be a good time to schedule one. I already have first quarter 2024 classes on the calendar. Teachers who submitted proposals for Sew Expo are supposed to be notified by mid-October at the latest.

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I canned 28 quarts of tomato sauce over the past two days. I have another 11-12 quarts ready to can—maybe this afternoon—and there are still a dozen gallon bags of tomatoes in the freezer. I might make salsa with those. Next week is full up, though. Our craft co-op market is next Friday and Saturday. Set-up is on Thursday. I pulled out all my inventory for market yesterday. It’s in piles in the living room waiting to be priced. I also finished a stack of potholders.

I’ll be at market on Friday but I’m teaching a class on Saturday. I didn’t intend to double-book myself, but Saturday class slots are scarcer than hens’ teeth and I took that spot when it was offered to me.

Knot Tops Fascinate Me

The next podcast episode should be posted some time this morning.

I picked up this Burda pattern yesterday when I was in town:

I love knot tops. I just like the way they look and fit. I took the instructions out of the pattern envelope and puzzled over them, but I suspect I’ll have to make the top to understand how things go together. (Also, Burda instructions tend to be—ahem—brief.) This pattern is new, so there aren’t yet any reviews on the PatternReview.com website.

We’ll see if I can squeeze out some time this week to make this.

I also stopped at the blueprint copy shop and had them print out some patterns for me. I went on a bit of a pattern-buying spree last week. I bought the Sinclair Skye Shorts and Skort, the Juno zip-up jacket, and the Linda twist-front top. The Linda top and the Burda top look similar, but the construction appears to be quite different.

I also had the copy shop print the Declic top from Atelier Scammit and the Summer Caye pattern from Love Notions. The Declic top is a free pattern. Karina, at the Lifting Pins and Needles YouTube channel, did a review of this pattern last week. Karina and I have the same fitting issues—she is 5’8” tall—and we like the same clothing styles, so when she recommends a pattern, I tend to listen. I bought the Summer Caye pattern on her recommendation, as well, because she gave instructions on how she adjusted the rise on those pants to fit her. I suspect I’ll have to make a similar adjustment.

I have plenty to keep me busy this winter. And that doesn’t even include the quilt patterns I want to try. I really want to make a curvy log cabin quilt using the Creative Grids ruler.

Joann Fabrics was a mess yesterday. It sounds like many of the stores are down to skeleton crews of two or three employees, all while being expected to carry the workload of twice that many. I felt bad for the young woman at the checkout counter; she was trying to accommodate a customer who was unhappy about a pricing issue, and there were six of us waiting in line. The only other employee in the store was at the cutting table, and that line had several people in it, too. These corporate decisions to cut staff but attempt to provide the same level of service are idiotic.

Our fire department also had to respond to a terrible fatality accident yesterday. A cyclist was hit and killed, and when I got home, the husband told me he had been one of the first firefighters on the scene. (He just happened to be driving that way to get to a job.) The way people drive around here is maddening.

I follow Dave Collum, the Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry at Cornell, on Twitter/X, and yesterday, he posted this:

I have this terrible feeling that we are witnessing the early stages of the Fourth Turning and somehow many of us thought we could watch it from outside the splash zone: "Oh. It will be bad but I will be OK." That's not what Fourth Turnings do.

The husband teases me about thinking that I am going to watch the apocalypse on TV in real time from the comfort of our living room, but I think that’s my coping mechanism when things start to feel like they are spiraling out of control.

Speaking of the TV—we ditched Dish Network last year because all we have been watching is YouTube Premium. We also bought a new TV to replace the one we got in 2008. We have an antenna on top of the house, but it never was able to pick up more than a couple of channels. On a whim, I scanned the channels from the antenna with the new TV and lo and behold!—it picked up over a dozen digital broadcasts, including the networks from Spokane! I doubt we will watch much network TV at this point, but the husband was able to watch the Steelers play the Browns last night. I went to bed and read a book. I am done with the Browns.

I will like having the option to watch some of the Spokane channels, however, especially during football season.

The Zoo Eats Breakfast

The deer and the turkeys had breakfast in our yard Saturday morning. The bunny was probably out there somewhere, too. And a small toad that one of our employees found.

All that rain we got in the last few weeks made the grass grow again. I’ve even seen people out mowing their lawns, which is unusual for this time of year.

I did get out to the garden, finally. I pulled all the bean plants and stripped the pods. The pods are drying in the greenhouse. I missed the green beans by about two weeks. They were too tough to can, so they went to the chickens. I may not do green beans again. They are easy enough to source from neighbors, and I am happy to trade for tomatoes or squash. Our neighbor, Anna, gifted us a huge bag of salad greens because she got extra from one of her suppliers. We’ve been feasting on salads all week.

I’m waiting for the squash vines to die back completely. I have probably 50 or 60 butternut squash out there. (!!!!) I’ll take some to church, but the excess will go to the food bank.

The garden is really ugly right now. It always looks bad this time of year. Once we get a frost and everything dies back, I’ll pull plants, make compost piles, stack tomato cages, and collect hoses. The last item on the list will be digging the potatoes. The husband will help me with that because it goes faster with two people.

Still no frost in the forecast, although I saw something about snow above 6000’. We are at 3250’ elevation, so no worries for us, but I expect to see snow on the tops of the mountains this week. Winter is coming.

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My mother alerted me to this article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Hudson-based Joann Fabrics confirms layoffs but won’t say how many employees were let go

The company laid off employees at its corporate headquarters. Joanns’ stock price has plummeted from a high of $4.62 a share earlier in the year to $0.90 a share now. That seems to be an indication that they are circling the drain. Whoever is making decisions at the corporate level is either clueless or deliberately wants to gut the company. I understand that labor is a huge expense for companies—we have four employees—but no one is going to shop at their brick-and-mortar locations if they are understaffed or only open for business six hours a day. Again, that makes me wonder if this is controlled demolition. Perhaps the plan is to close all their stores and move to an online-only business model. If they do that, however, I think they can kiss their fabric business goodbye. Online buying might have worked during the pandemic, but it is not the preferred way to shop for fabric.

I’m still betting on a bankruptcy filing before the end of the year.

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Spotify and Podcast Addict both say that they have The Straight Stitch listed in their directories, but I can’t find the podcast on Spotify. Google Podcasts also says they have it listed. I am waiting to hear from Apple about it being on iTunes.

I bought a handheld digital recorder so I can do some interviews on the fly. I am hoping to try that out this week.

Canning the rest of the tomato sauce is on the schedule for this week, and possibly canning pumpkin depending on how things go. I am slowly changing my closet over to cooler-weather clothing and making a list of holes that need to be filled. I still need blouses. I never seem to have the kind I need in the color(s) I need.

A Fuzzy Harper Cardigan

I did not get out to the garden yesterday as planned. We bought a new-to-us diesel generator to replace the existing gas one and the electrician needed to come and do some wiring. I didn’t want to be on the other side of the property in case he needed something while he was here. I stayed inside and made another Harper Cardigan.

[Do I need all these cardigans? No, but I am rationalizing this by noting that making cardigans is giving me the opportunity to sew many different kinds of sweater knits, and that is important. I need to be familiar with how these fabrics behave so I can troubleshoot for students in class. Also, cardigans can be used as class samples or given away if I find I have too many. Sometimes, it’s about the process, not the product.]

I used another chunk of fabric from the Walmart remnant rack. It is fuzzy:

I dithered for the longest time about using the purl side of this fabric as the right side of the cardigan. There is a shiny turquoise rayon thread running through the purl side and I thought it looked interesting, almost holographic. In the end, though, I used the stockinette side as the outside:

This serged up quickly with no issues, although I did have to adjust the differential feed—the rate at which the fabric feeds into the machine—to keep the seams from becoming wavy.

I saw a hawk swooping around while I was working yesterday. My cutting table looks out over the driveway. We don’t often see hawks here because we have so many trees. I couldn’t tell what it was hunting, but I hope it didn’t get the bunny that lives under our porch.

I recorded another podcast episode yesterday afternoon. Yes, this is going to end up being a weekly podcast because I have a lot to say. Release days will be Tuesdays, I think. It seems to work well if I record late in the week and edit/write shows notes over the weekend. I got a little bit spicy in this one, too, although I keep the language clean. I have very little tolerance for people whose main goal in life seems to be sucking the joy out of others’ lives.

Today, I need to buckle down and work in the garden. I went out there yesterday afternoon to assess what needs to be done. And I spent some time shelling the beans that had dried out in the greenhouse:

These are Jacob’s Cattle Beans. This row of beans didn’t do as well as the others. I only got enough to can up about a dozen pints, but that’s a dozen pints I didn’t have before and I grew these. Beans are magical.

I’ll pull the rest of the bean plants and leave the pods in the greenhouse to finish drying out. More rows of beans are on the list for next season.

I have a completely empty week on the calendar next week. While I’d love to spend it sewing, I’ll be finishing up all of the canning. I have to get tomatoes out of the freezer and free up space for the pork that is coming in a few weeks. At least one of those huge, warty pumpkins will get processed so I have pumpkin for pies. And I might do a few more pints of green beans because the plants in my garden finally produced. We’ll see.

Harper Cardigans and the Walmart Remnant Rack

The Harper Cardigan class on Wednesday was great fun. One of the three students had to cancel, so I only had two, both of whom I’ve had in class before. We proceeded at a leisurely pace.

I love teaching in this classroom. It’s huge. The store owner designed it as an addition a few years after moving into the new building. Students have plenty of room to spread out and work.

Yesterday morning, I had a meeting with our pastor and Elaine, then dashed up to Whitefish (about 40 minutes away) for a blood test. I have one of my twice-yearly checkups with my naturopath in two weeks, and he likes to have the bloodwork in time for my visit. I have lousy veins due to all the blood sticks I had before my central line was put in for getting chemo 30 years ago. Sometimes the phlebotomists have trouble getting blood. This phlebotomist was terrific, though, and I didn’t even have a bruise afterward.

On the way back, I stopped at the bank to deposit some checks. The bank is close to Walmart, so I dashed in to see what was on the remnant rack. We had talked about the remnant rack in class on Wednesday because both students used remnant rack fabric for their Harper Cardigans.

The remnant rack had just been restocked:

I texted this pic to another friend. I knew she would tell both of my students from Wednesday’s class because all three of them were at Thursday open sew at the quilt store. A few minutes later, I got a text:

“On our way!”

About 30 minutes later, I got this:

LOL. I see pajama pants and Harper Cardigans in that cart.

I was good and bought only that turquoise fabric on the right side of the middle rack. It has chickens on it!

We’re hoping that Walmart corporate is getting the message that the remnant rack is a huge hit—at least here in Kalispell, Montana—and continues to restock fabric. I did not have “Walmart Remnant Rack” on my bingo card for 2023, that’s for sure.

My last stop on the way home was at our community center to check in with the sewing group. I visited for a bit and had some exceptionally delicious Key Lime trifle. Susan came over with her grandsons, and within a few minutes, I found myself on a couch in the library reading books to them. Susan opined a few days ago that two little boys have Auntie Janet wrapped around their little fingers, but I don’t mind a bit. I appreciate her sharing them with me.

I have to spend today (and possibly tomorrow) out in the garden. I have neglected it sorely for over a week. Most everything is going to come in, although I might leave the tomatoes until we get an actual frost. I still don’t see freezing temps in the forecast. The high by the middle of next week is only going to be in the high 50s, however.

Onward

Thank you all for the enthusiasm and support for the podcast. It may end up being a weekly podcast sooner rather than later, because I am very excited about recording additional content.

In the meantime, I still have other work to do. I was going to clean off the apple trees yesterday. I didn’t get it done when the kids were here. Sunnie caught a grizzly bear on the game cam in her orchard a few days ago, so I thought it was time. Just as I was getting ready to go out, though, it started raining. Arggghhhh.

My plan for the afternoon was to make more class samples. I flipped the schedule and made the class samples in the morning. I am teaching a class next month on making socks on the serger and the store wants some to display. I took a similar class at Sew Expo last spring, but I wanted to refine the design and create a handout. To do that, I needed to go through the process of measuring and cutting and sewing. In that Sew Expo class, we used a flatlock stitch. That’s a great stitch when you don’t want seams rubbing against skin, but it’s also a bit tricky. We’re going to make socks with a three-thread narrow seam using wooly nylon/wooly polyester. I hate wearing uncomfortable clothing, but the seams in the socks I made don’t bother me.

Socks require some very stretchy material. I had a length of swimwear fabric on hand so I used that:

I am going to try making some in other fabrics, like microfleece, but the store will have these for display.

The morning rain showers gave way to sunshine, so after lunch, I went out to clean off apple trees. The Red Wealthy apples were ready. They look really nice. I ought to make some applesauce with them. I don’t have a lot of pest pressure on my apple trees despite not treating them with anything. I don’t treat mostly because I am lazy and never get around to spraying them. I was in a seminar about five years ago on preventing insect damage to fruit trees, and I asked if not having insect damage was normal. Everyone assured me that the bugs just hadn’t found the trees yet. Part of me thinks, though, that treating fruit trees is like treating with antibiotics—it runs the risk of creating bugs that are resistant.

I do what works, and until my system no longer works, I’ll leave the trees alone.

I have two Honeycrisp trees, but the apples are just this side of ripe. (I tasted one.) I’d like to leave them for a few more days. The husband likes those for snacking, but so do bears.

I’m teaching my Harper Cardigan class today. I think I’m going to wear the same outfit I wore for church on Sunday. After making socks yesterday, I pulled out a couple of sweater knits and stacked them near the cutting table. They’ll become cardigans in the near future.

[Let’s all take a moment to appreciate the irony of a former knitting designer sewing socks and cardigans, shall we?]

Oh, it feels good to be sewing again!

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The processor called yesterday to get my cutting instructions for the pork. I think we may use this processor again in the future. The guy I talked to was friendly and professional and they offer several options we hadn’t had before. I chose to have half the sausage made plain and half as garlic and pepper. He said the garlic and pepper was their most popular sausage.

The Spokane Conservation District opened registration this week for their annual Farm and Food Expo. I’ve been to a couple of those in the past—one with Elysian—and thought they were well done. The pandemic seemed to have thrown SCD off its stride, though, and they’ve had a bit of trouble getting back on track. I was considering attending this conference, but it’s not going to fit into the schedule. It is November 15 and 16 (Wednesday and Thursday) and I am scheduled to teach the Lark Tee in Missoula on the 14th and 15th. I had thought that if they scheduled the farm expo on Thursday and Friday, I would just travel from Missoula to Spokane. I may do that anyway if I can schedule another serger class in Spokane for those days.

Introducing The Straight Stitch

The secret project is a podcast! I probably need my head examined, but I am having such fun with this.

On the afternoon of August 21—the day we took the pigs to the processor who wasn’t there and had to bring them back—I went into town to run errands. As I drove into town, I listened to Nicole Sauce’s podcast episode 784 entitled “Failing Homesteaders From the Internet.” Wow, did that resonate. I felt like a failing homesteader.

The weird thing was that the podcast wasn’t really about failing homesteaders. It was about content creators who think they are failing because they can’t keep up with everything—when, in fact, they are kicking ass at being homesteaders AND content creators AND all the other things they do. The podcast wasn’t about failing. It was about showing up consistently and producing something of value.

And my brain went to a very weird place. As I pulled into the Walmart parking lot, listening to Nicole’s words of wisdom, the thought popped into my head that I needed to start a podcast.

[I have learned, in all my years on this earth, that when the universe tells me something, I probably ought to listen.]

I knew I didn’t want to start a homesteading podcast. That market is rather saturated. Everybody and his brother who has a chicken coop in their backyard with three chickens in it thinks they are homesteading. I thought about a question I had seen on Facebook a few weeks ago: “What topic could you speak about for 30 minutes without any preparation or notes?”

[My first thought was, “Only 30 minutes?” I’ve always said that if you put a microphone in front of me, I will talk.]

Good sewing podcasts are few and far between. I used to listen to the Sewing Out Loud podcast, but their last episode was almost a year ago. The Whipstitch podcast is also good—although her intro music is jarring and her audio editing needs some work—but the episodes come out infrequently. I stopped listening to the Love to Sew podcast when they went sideways into social justice topics. I also have a lot of trouble listening to podcasts with multiple hosts or hosts who spend the first 10 minutes talking about their cats. (Yes, I am picky, but my time is valuable.) Right now, I’m down to the Sew and So podcast (Bernina), the Threads podcast, and the Seamwork Radio podcast.

And thus, The Straight Stitch was born. I want my sewing podcast to be informative, fun, and on topic. I do plan to have interviews—I need to purchase a few more pieces of equipment, first—because I know some very interesting people. The biggest hurdle was getting the first few episodes recorded. I bought a mic and had to learn how to use Garageband for audio editing.

Another hurdle has been trying to organize my websites and social media presence. That part is still in progress. I didn’t want to have Yet Another Website, but I had no good way to preserve what I already had built while adding something new. I have been with Squarespace for close to 15 years, and for the most part, I’m satisfied. However, my websites are built in version 7.0. A new website would have to be built in version 7.1, which has a different layout editor, and this blog wouldn’t transfer. (The same thing happened when I went from Squarespace 5 to Squarespace 7.) I would have been paying a lot of money every year to keep this blog available in its current form, with nothing else on this website because I’ve decided to shut down Buttercup Made for the moment.

This part is important if you want to keep reading the blog: My solution was to purchase all the domain names—domains are cheaper than websites—but continue to use this website under the domain name JanetSzabo.com. I created a “landing page” that points to the Big Sky Knitting Designs website, this blog, and the podcast page. I suggest you bookmark the new URL for the blog and the podcast. Click on the links on that landing page and new windows should open.

At some point, I may have to suck it up and create a website solely for the podcast, but I will try this as a stopgap measure. Also, I am still trying to figure out how to submit my podcast to all the podcast sites, but if I waited until all the pieces were in place to release some episodes, we’d all be waiting another year or two. In our homesteading chat group, we call that the “toolbox fallacy”, or the habit of waiting to do something until you have all the tools you need. Sometimes you just have to set the foundation and build the walls and the roof as you go along.

The first two episodes—an intro and a longer episode—can be found here. At some point, they will be on iTunes (and hopefully Spotify and a few other places). I’d love it if you’d listen. If you enjoy the podcast, I’d really love it if you’d share the link, tell your friends, and leave a review on iTunes when it shows up there. And feel free to leave show ideas and comments either here or on the episodes page. In Squarespace, podcasts are set up much like blog posts, with a place to comment on each episode. I’ve got a list of ideas, as well as three interviews lined up, but I welcome suggestions. The addition of “and other fiber arts” was done deliberately so I could venture off into topics like spinning or embroidery.

I have no plans to abandon the blog. The podcast is just a longer-form way for me to pontificate on sewing topics. I will do at least one episode a month, but I think it will soon settle into a twice-a-month or once-a-week schedule.

The Pie is Always Delicious

The Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation hosted its fall pie social last evening. I don’t have numbers yet, but it seemed to be a success. We had more families with small children in attendance, which was wonderful. I served pulled pork sandwiches. Sarah was in charge of the pie table.

She makes the most fabulous pies, all with gluten-free crusts. I had a slice of raspberry tomatillo. She also made an apple tomatillo pie with some of the yellow tomatillo variety, so I need to check my plant today to see if I have enough for one of those. I have apples to use up.

We couldn’t have asked for a nicer evening, weather-wise. September is one of my favorite months in Montana. Mornings are cool, days are still up into the 70s, and the air holds just a hint of fall. We moved here the first week of September, 1993—exactly 30 years ago. I took a few moments to sit down last night and look around at our community. I am pleased with the life that the husband and I have created here.

We have a potluck today after church and then an all-church discussion on a topic that has caused some ripples. I do like the fact that our congregation tries to meet these kinds of issues head on instead of sweeping them under the rug, but I’m feeling a bit drained and I’ll be glad when it’s over.

The neckband and hem are all that are left to finish on the Lark Tee that I made as a class sample for the store in Missoula. One of our homestead foundation board members also sews and took my needle class at the beginning of August. She and I chatted last night about the Harper Cardigan class. She thought she might sign up but had no idea where to get fabric, so I shared with her the wonders of the Walmart remnant rack.

I am not going to apologize for shopping the Walmart remnant rack. I know that the quilt stores would prefer not to tie up money in clothing fabric inventory, and we don’t have an apparel fabric store here. (Missoula has The Confident Stitch.) When a student is first learning to sew clothes, buying fabric online adds one more layer of complexity. I will always suggest sourcing fabric locally if possible. Here, that means Walmart.

[I’ve given up shopping at Joann Fabrics, although I am keeping an eye on their investor page. I might need DD#2’s help to interpret some of this information—she is fluent in that language—but my first pass through the most recent press release detailing their second quarter results makes me think that all is not quite as rosy as they’d like to paint it. And what appears on the balance sheet does not always reflect the reality of the marketplace. We shall see what happens.]

I will stop in at the quilt store tomorrow when I’m in town to see how many students are signed up for the cardigan class.

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Margaret sent a picture of her latest project, a hexie wallhanging:

I want to be Margaret when I grow up. She is well into her 90s and still quilting. This wallhanging will be donated to Mennonite Disaster Service. MDS gifts the homeowners that it helps with wallhangings made by Mennonite quilters all over the country.

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Speaking of gluten-free, I thought I would share that I’ve been taking the Seed probiotic now for about three months. DD#1 suggested it to her sister and me. I’ve taken probiotics for several years, but after three months of Seed, I’ve started to notice a difference in my gluten tolerance. I will never go back to eating wheat products with abandon, but I can have occasional amounts without it causing the same kind of digestive issues I used to get. I have a lot less bloating now, too. Not affiliated, just passing on some (hopefully) useful information.

A Floral Harper Cardigan

I sewed yesterday, for the first time in probably a month. I am teaching a Harper Cardigan class on Wednesday and I needed to go through the pattern again and make notes. The easiest way to do that was to run up another one. I like cardigans, and this pattern fits particularly well. It also goes together quickly.

I adore this fabric. I don’t care if I look like I am wearing curtains. This “reads” as a color I can wear (blue), but incorporates colors I can’t (yellow). The fabric is a rayon sweater knit from the Walmart remnant rack in Spokane—one of the few chunks of fabric I found there two weeks ago when I was teaching.

Looking at my closet these days gives me great pleasure. I see lots of bright colors and very few muddy earth tones.

I also cut out a Lark Tee to make up a class sample for the store in Missoula. That fabric was another Walmart remnant rack find. It’s a creamy rayon slub knit—not a color I would wear—and I think it will do nicely.

This has been a difficult couple of days. People in my life tend to use me as their “answer person” and expect that I will know things. Every so often, I get a stretch of days when it seems like every person in my contact list needs something from me. Of course, none of them knows that five other people also have texted me for help in the last two hours. And just for fun, we had an audit of our work comp policy this week by the State of Montana, which required me to pull together a bunch of numbers and documentation.

Elysian took over a task for me at the pie social scheduled for this afternoon. She’s going to host the information table. She worked as a recruiter for many years and is exceptionally good at engaging people. I am going to serve pulled pork sandwiches. That is a low-stress job that doesn’t require me to talk to anyone, and right now, I am peopled out.

I am sure someone will write in the comments that I should just ignore my phone. Yes. For certain things, I should, and I try to. A few of the questions I get, though, are important and time-sensitive, like the ones having to do with our pastor search process. Making myself less available is a process, and I am working on it. Enforcing boundaries is exhausting.

[Here, carry this device with you that enables people to have instant access to you, but don’t allow people to have instant access to you. Okay.]

The next couple of weeks are clear except for teaching a couple of classes and prepping for the co-op sale, and I am going to do my level best to keep them that way. We had our co-op meeting Thursday afternoon and I think this year’s sale is going to be another winner.

I am just about ready to reveal the secret project. I am waiting for a time when my attention is not scattered in fifteen different directions, though, because I know that despite my attempts to dot all i’s and cross all t’s, I will have missed something.

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Despite rain not being in the forecast, it has rained almost every afternoon this week. Every time I think things have dried out enough in the garden, it rains again. Last night, the husband and I were watching YouTube videos and all of a sudden, there was a huge boom out of nowhere that made me jump in my chair. I thought someone had run a car into the side of the garage. It was thunder.

I may have to bring things into the greenhouse and let them dry out there. I’m glad we’re getting the rain, but I would have preferred it in July and August.

Some Changes Are Afoot

In order to assimilate this secret project into my online presence, I have to change parts of the website. I am working diligently to mitigate the amount of disruption—to my blog readers, at least, because this is a disruption to me no matter how I go about it—but it probably will require bookmarking some new pages. I can tell you that the URL www.JanetSzabo.com will get you to this blog one way or another. (Try it now if you’d like.)

Here is a picture of an antique Necchi treadle machine in Italy, just for fun:

I am running into some issues inherent in having several different businesses. For tax purposes, everything is run through Big Sky Knitting Designs, LLC. When I teach, I provide a W-9 and ask to have the checks made out to the business name rather than to me personally. I did that even when I was working as a transcriptionist, because I was an independent contractor. Apparently, the IRS doesn’t care (much) what entity files the tax return as long as they get their money.

However, things get a bit sticky when it comes to websites. My websites are done with Squarespace. I have been with them since Squarespace 5—close to 20 years now?—and the last thing I want to do is move. I also don’t want to have to pay for a different website for each aspect of what I do, like teaching, blogging, homesteading, etc., but finding a coherent way to integrate all those pieces has required some thought.

The Big Sky Knitting Designs website will stay the way it is, as a separate website with a store. That website is complex enough that I don’t want to mess with it. Everything else, however, is going to be under the umbrella of JanetSzabo.com.

I appreciate everyone’s patience as I get all this sorted.

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We have a craft co-op meeting today at 2 pm to discuss the upcoming sale. The sale is scheduled for September 29 and 30 at the Mennonite Church in Creston. We will set up on Thursday, the 28th and I will be there on the 29th. I won’t be there on the 30th, though, because I am teaching the Laundry Day Tee class that day. I knew that would be a conflict, but that Saturday was open on the class schedule at the quilt store—a rare occurrence, as most Saturdays are filled—so I took it. I’ll teach the class and come by the sale afterward to help clean up.

At the moment, it feels to me as if I’ve tossed all the pieces of my life up into the air and am running around trying to get them to come down into the new pattern I want going forward. Thank goodness for the husband, who has always managed to keep me anchored when I get these wild ideas.

More Classes on the Schedule

Between the holiday weekend and the kids being here, I have no idea what day it is. I have to keep looking at my calendar. Perhaps by next Monday I’ll be back on track.

We had such a good time with the four of them. They hiked to the top of a mountain with dad:

DD#2 told me that her dad could see his shop from the summit (with binoculars). I am not surprised.

On Sunday, we went up the side of another mountain to visit with Susan’s daughter and her husband who are building a straw bale house:

Half our church was there helping over the weekend.

DD#2 and her boyfriend left Monday morning to drive back to Seattle because each of them had to be at work yesterday. DD#1 and DSIL and I went up to Whitefish and walked around. Yesterday morning, I drove them down to Missoula. Flying in and out of Montana is ridiculously expensive, although it’s slightly less ridiculously expensive out of Missoula. We had lunch and I dropped them off at the airport for their flight back to Seattle and then Alaska.

I stopped in at A Clean Stitch and visited for an hour with one of the owners. This is the Bernina and Janome dealer in Missoula. They started out in a tiny store in a strip mall, which they quickly outgrew, and moved to their current location in the same mall this spring. The new store is much larger and has classroom space. When Robin and I were there last month, I asked about teaching and left my contact information, and last week, they e-mailed and said they’d love to have me do some classes.

The owner said they have lots of customers asking about clothing classes. We got four sessions on the calendar, starting with a Bernina serger mastery class at the end of October. I’m teaching the Lark Tee in November, the Harper Cardigan in December, and a decorative thread class in January. The store is a Wonderfil retailer and the owner was thrilled that I was a Wonderfil educator.

I anticipate being down there once or twice a month from now on. And I have a lot to do. Stores want class samples to display, and I would prefer not to use pieces from my closet that I want to wear myself. I visited the remnant rack at the Walmart in Missoula to get up some knits in colors I don’t like or wear. (The remnant rack has no shortage of muddy earth tone fabrics.) Those will become my class samples.

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The pigs went to the processor yesterday, so that is finally all sorted. The garden needs to dry out a bit from the rain we got over the weekend but I should be able to get everything harvested and cleaned up by the end of September. We also need to get chicken processing on the schedule in October.

I’ve already put standing commitments on the calendar through May of 2024. I think the word of the year for 2024 may be SCHEDULE or something similar, because I will need to keep a tight rein on my time.

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.