I Am An 8

Another iteration of the knot top:

The length is good, but the top does not look as good on my body as it does on the dress form. There are issues around my waist and hips. That sent me on a safari through my fitting books for help.

The husband is baffled by my obsession with clothing. He gets up every morning, puts on shirts and pants that do not match, in the same size he has worn since college, and goes out the door. Clothing, for him, is entirely utilitarian. I am obsessed because this is a puzzle. This is a code I am determined to crack. I want to be able to make clothing that fits me well and looks good, and if I am going to teach fitting classes, I want to be able to transfer that knowledge to other people—people who are shaped differently than me.

After looking through all of my fitting books, I determined that I have a high hip curve. (I remember Ryliss talking about this when I took my private class in Tacoma in November.) That means that the widest portion of my hips is up near my waistline. My hips flare out and then go straight down, as opposed to someone who has a more gentle angle from the waist that ends in wider hips 7-9" below the waist. A lot of people with high hip curves also have “hip dips,” although I don’t. A hip dip is where you have a little divot in the side between your hips and thighs.

Once I had that piece of information about hip curves, I went to Pinterest. This, I think, is where Pinterest shines as a research tool. I searched “high hip curve fitting” followed by “high hip curve drafting,” and all sorts of interesting stuff started popping up.

If you spend any time in the deep end of the fashion/style pool, you are bound to run across articles about body shapes. Are you an apple or a pear? An inverted triangle or a rectangle? If you don’t want to be categorized as fruit or a geometric shape, perhaps the Kibbe body type system is for you. You’ll be a Dramatic or a Romantic or something else that sounds like it came out of a gothic novel.

I ran across an article that mentioned the “8” body shape. This is a subcategory of the hourglass that includes people like me with high hip curves. If you’ve ever put on a dress with a belt and been told (as I have) that you look like a “sausage tied in the middle,” you might be an 8. When Ryliss pronounced me a “rectangle,” I was a bit baffled as I do have a well-defined waist.

This also explains why I love love love high-waisted pants. The 8 body shape also tends to have a longer rise. Hey, that’s me! And if you put mid-rise or low-rise pants on an 8, with a defined waist but straight hips, there is nothing to anchor them in place. High rise pants that fit around my waist keep my pants from falling down.

This is where things get into the weeds. I started looking at some style advice for 8’s and it was all over the map. Some articles recommended peplums. I look like an idiot in peplums. Other articles recommended wearing tops and dresses nipped in at the waist. That only works if your waist is in the same location as ready-to-wear clothing, not 2" below it. Some articles said 8’s should never wear tunics. Other articles said tunics and tops that skim past the waist area are the best choice for 8’s.

[There is a metaphor for life in there somewhere.]

I thought about the tops I like to wear and realized that I very rarely wear anything with a defined waistline. My favorite pieces of clothing are the tunics and tops that skim past the waist, although I have to be careful that they don’t look too much like maternity wear. Those are the silhouettes that I find most flattering.

So. I have arrived at the next station on this fitting journey. The first stop was realizing how long my torso is compared to RTW industry standards, which means dropping the waistline by at least 2" on any pattern I make. The second stop is where I’ve figured out that even though I now know where to put the waistline on the clothing I make, having a defined waistline may not be the most flattering choice.

[I have fantasies of living on a planet where I am not an outlier—a planet where clothing fits me, people are ruled by common sense, and I can buy a diesel station wagon that gets 40 mpg (or better) because that’s what I want to drive.]

I’m going to go through all my patterns today. I want to take a hard look at what works and what doesn’t, and I think that by the time I make the next iteration of this knot top, I may have cracked this part of the code—for me, at least.

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For my Mennonite friends who may be reading this blog (if you made it this far), I have a favor to ask. Our minister retired in October of 2022. We hired a dynamic young woman to be our transitional pastor, with the shared understanding that she would be with us for about 18 months while we undertook a search for a settled pastor. (The Mennonite church prefers to use the word “settled” rather than “permanent.”) She comes from a different faith background, but that hasn’t been an issue.

Nothing about this process—neither the part about hiring a transitional pastor nor the part about searching for a settled pastor—has gone according to plan. (Obviously, because we have a former Presbyterian minister serving our congregation.) Some of us are chafing at the rules that we are being asked to follow, because it’s obvious that God is following a different set of rules. That points up the folly, I think, of attempting to put God into any kind of box, but that’s a sermon for another day.

We have a listing for our pastoral opening on the MCUSA website. It’s been up for two months with not so much as a nibble. We are aware that this process could take a while, but we’re also aware that the traditional channels may not work for us. If any of you out there know of anyone considering a pastoral position, would you send them our way? Northwest Montana is a beautiful place to live—occasional -40F days notwithstanding—and we have a wonderful, supportive congregation. Thank you!

King of the Coop

I meant to post this picture a few days ago when it was so cold. This is Dave, my rooster.

Dave was in this spot every time one of us went into the coop. As the husband noted, “Dave’s not stupid.”

I’m going to have to incubate a few eggs this spring to try to get a baby rooster. Dave will be four years old in March and that’s getting up there for a rooster. When I get an exceptional rooster, I like to keep his genetics going. Dave’s father was a Buff Orpington and his mother was a New Hampshire Red, so any baby isn’t going to be a purebred by any stretch of the imagination, but I want one with Dave’s personality.

We ended up with about 10" of new snow, but somehow managed to avoid the blizzard. The wind blew a little bit, but nothing like those windstorms we often get. I see that by the end of January, our temps are supposed to be up close to 40F. The husband really wants to get back to work. He is not enjoying his enforced vacation.

I did not sew yesterday. I spent most of the day sorting and organizing paperwork and other stuff. I still have a few things to update in QuickBooks but the bulk of that work is done.

While I was working, I watched one of the Special Operations Equipment build videos. Special Operations Equipment makes tactical gear in Camden, Tennessee, and their facility is where the Self-Reliance Festival is held. SOE is owned by John and Amanda Willis, and John has a thriving YouTube channel. The video I watched yesterday was of him making a dog leash. I couldn’t see the front of the machine, but I am pretty sure he was sewing on a Consew 206. I like watching his build videos because he’s is a great teacher and explains everything he is doing and why. Also, he does dumb things and says bad words just like I do, and that makes me feel better. (His videos are a bit salty. You’ve been warned.) I always pick up some useful tip from watching him sew. When I was there in October, Amanda had just acquired a beautiful Singer Red Eye treadle.

It’s time to order seeds for the garden and plant sale. I found last year’s order while sorting paperwork. Thinking about the garden is not easy when there is so much snow out there, but we have our first planning meeting for the plant sale this week, so I’ve got to have some idea of what I’m going to grow. We’re also resurrecting our fundraising garden tour in July, and I really need to get started on the herb garden plan. I have the luxury of being able to spend some money on infrastructure for both gardens this year. The herb garden will get raised beds, and both gardens need a comprehensive watering system instead of something cobbled together.

The husband says that a tree fell down in the pig pasture in last week’s storm and took out part of the garden fence. He’ll be able to fix the fence once the snow melts. I am thinking of hiking out there to take a look (and maybe a photo).

This is also the time of year that Susan orders scion wood for grafting apple trees. She always finds the most interesting varieties. Of course, everything sounds delicious in January.

I think today is going to be devoted to trying to get that knot top pattern squared away. I might also start the Oxbow Tote, finally. I have no desire to go anywhere—running errands in town on Tuesday was a slog. I’m driving the Acura until the husband figures out what is going on with the BMW. The Acura does okay in the snow—it has snow tires—but it’s not ideal.

Knot Top Rescue

I had enough Walmart remnant fabric left over to re-cut the tops and make the front bodice piece again, and this time, I was careful about where the print landed:

The knot portion of this top is perfect. I like that it is a V-neck but it’s not so low that it exposes my bra. I am still not 100% happy with the length—the top feels too short—so I am going to play around with that some more. Interestingly, it’s the same length as the original top, which has short sleeves, and I wear that one frequently. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that this is a winter top with long sleeves.

I also ran up another Burda 6315:

I didn’t have enough of this fabric for a Toaster Sweater or a Nathalie, so I made the shorter version of Burda 6315. This fabric is a French terry from Knitfabric.com. I adore the print.

I am getting a better sense of what lengths work with my proportions, although “cropped” is not ever going to be one of those lengths.

It’s amazing how a slight change or two can alter the look of a top. The New Look 6555 keyhole top is a great example. That’s this one:

The first one I made was view B, with the handkerchief hem, because on me, longer is always better, right?

Nope. That version never looked good on me. The proportions were off. We were making that pattern in a class one day and one of my students tried on that version, too, and she had the same problem. (She’s about my height.) I walked over to her and folded up the bottom so that it looked like view C and voila!—much better. Now, when I make this pattern, I make view C and I am much happier with it.

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I ran across an interesting comment on a sewing-related YouTube video the other day. The commenter complained that content creators who sew hundreds of garments a year for their YouTube channels are no better than people who indulge in “fast fashion” and buy tons of cheap clothing just because it’s cheap.

Let us first acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of unhappy people in the world who take to social media to vent their spleens. It took me forever to get my Twitter feed curated so that I see posts from clothing historians and fiber artists instead of wackos looking for opportunities to argue about politics. The world is also full of a lot of people who aren’t doing anything productive with their time but who take joy in criticizing people who are.

I find it fascinating that people search out opportunities to consume sewing content while at the same time complaining that content creators are creating too much content.

[I know I said I thought that the Vlogmas videos were oversaturating the YouTube sewing channels, but I was more curious about how daily posting affected their analytics than anything else. It’s important to be consistent, but I find that when I post too much on the blog, traffic decreases.]

Once again, it’s time to point out that if you don’t like a channel/blog/podcast, don’t watch/read/listen to it. That goes for this blog, too. I’m not forcing anyone to come here and read what I write.

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We are still under a winter storm warning here as of 5 am. The husband has resigned himself to spending the day moving snow. The worst of it is supposed to come this afternoon. We shall see what materializes. I am planning to spend the day organizing tax paperwork. I don’t have to do as much data compilation as I used to now that our accountant can get into our QuickBooks account, but I still need to organize the paperwork for storage. I used to try to do this in real time—I carefully filed each invoice and receipt into labeled file folders—but a few years ago I just started chucking all the paperwork into a box. That means that I have to spend much of one day in January sorting and filing, but I am willing to do that in order to avoid daily filing tasks.

If I have time this afternoon, I’ll see what trouble I can get into in my sewing room.

Move Those Flowers

I pulled out a Walmart remnant and my reverse-engineered knot top pattern yesterday afternoon, just to make something quick. I cut the pieces, carefully followed the order of operations I had written down, sewed the center seam together, then opened the front bodice piece and laid it out on my cutting table:

Oh, what an unfortunate arrangement of the print. The only thing more unfortunate would have been to have those flowers separated by about four inches.

Note to self (also written on pattern pieces): For large-scale prints, cut each front piece separately and check the placement of the design.

I have to see if I have enough fabric left over to recut the front pattern pieces. If not, this may just get chalked up as a learning experience.

I think it’s important to show failures as well as successes. Our lives can’t be—and aren’t, if we are being honest—an Instagram parade of perfection.

[Speaking of Instagram, which I am beginning to hate as much as I hate QuickBooks Online, it won’t let me into my account unless I pass its Captcha verification every single time. It keeps telling me it has detected unusual activity in my account, which is weird because I hardly ever post to IG. The whole thing is getting extremely tedious. The issue seems to have started when I opened a second IG account for the podcast.]

I might not sew today. I need to edit a couple of podcast episodes and prepare show notes. I did pull a combination of fabrics over the weekend for the Oxbow Tote and could work on that. We’re under another winter storm watch for Tuesday night into Thursday morning and today is a holiday, so I’ll run all my errands tomorrow.

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I cleaned out the lettuce-growing system last week and replanted it:

The one part of this system that I’d like to change is the need for these rooting plugs.

The rooting plugs are a one-use item. They are not hideously expensive—about $18 for a bag of 50—but I don’t like that they can’t be used more than once. One or two bags will get us through the winter; once the lettuce plants are established, I can cut them and let them regrow 3-4 times before they exhaust themselves. Some people use rockwool, I think, but I don’t know if that can be reused, either.

When it’s up and running and I have it on a succession planting schedule, this system provides us with a lot of lettuce. And the difference in taste between what we grow and what comes in those plastic containers from the grocery store is huge.

We Are Montanans!

It’s only -18F this morning. We are supposed to warm up to 12F by Tuesday, and then into the high 30s a week later. No doubt we’ll all be running around in T-shirts and flip-flops by then.

This was part of a text conversation amongst our worship leader group yesterday:

I laughed. And even if only the worship leaders are there in person, we will be able to provide a worship service for everyone on Zoom. I’m ready to get out of the house anyway.

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I quilted some yesterday, but most of the day was spent going through my patterns and re-tracing and refining the ones I love most. The Toaster Sweater pattern had to be lengthened. I need two versions of Burda 6315—one shorter, one tunic length—and I want the dress length version of Simplicity 9018, although not as long as the one in the pattern.

While I worked, I watched Michael Snyder and some of his buddies livestream from Vista House, which is east of Portland along I-84, up above the Columbia River. They were clocking winds of 90+ mph. At one point, the hood of the car of another storm chaser up there blew off the car. That was wild. Portland (and points south) got hammered by that storm off the Pacific. I hope my friends who live there are doing okay.

I also caught up on Gail Yellen serger videos. YouTube algorithms annoy me. I am subscribed to a number of channels, but I have to go searching for their content because YT keeps wanting to show me things it thinks might interest me. You know what interests me? The channels to which I have subscribed. Apparently, Gail Yellen released a new product last fall (October) called Thread Fusion, which is a multi-spool thread stand that fits sergers and sewing machines and allows for the use of multiple spools of thread for thread blending.

Let’s say you want to use four strands of embroidery thread in the upper looper. There is no place to put those extra spools. This thread stand slips over the spool pin and voila!—four spool pins instead of just one.

I totally missed this product launch. I’ll be ordering one of these.

[Yes, I am aware that I can hit the notification button on a channel. However, I tend not to want to do that because I get way too many notifications as it is. Also, I usually watch YouTube on the TV in my cutting room, and notifications don’t show up there like they do on my computer.]

Gail Yellen also has a new YouTube series called Serger Savvy. The first episode was released last week. I’ll probably watch that one this afternoon.

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The husband and I had a conversation yesterday morning in which he made a comment that I’ve been chewing on since. He makes no bones about the fact that he thinks I self-censor myself too much on the blog. He said—I am paraphrasing here—that I have a platform and he believes there are a lot of people who want to hear what I think and that I should stop holding back.

Some of you are thinking, “She is one of the most opinionated people I know!” but you would be surprised what I don’t say. Part of that is because I have a lot of friends on the left-leaning side of the social and political spectrum. I may not agree with them, but I respect their right to their opinions. I don’t always get that same respect in return, so sometimes it’s easier not to say anything.

Part of it is because I have caused minor anxiety attacks in a few people to whom I have expressed my opinion. (That sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s not.) I don’t see the benefit in attempting to black pill my friends if it causes them discomfort.

And finally, I don’t enjoy conflict or drama. I don’t enjoy people attacking me because they disagree with me. (See comment about respecting other people’s opinions, above.) Civil discourse has gone extinct in this country.

You can let me know what you think, either in the comments or via e-mail. I can’t promise that I am going to let everything hang out, but maybe I’ll be a bit more open about certain topics.

Brrrrrr

I feel like this week has been a repeat of the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I don’t know what day it is, the daily routine has been upended, no one is working, and we’re all just waiting for things to get back to normal.

As promised, a photo of the thermometer on the porch at 4 am:

Kalispell broke its previous low temperature record for January 12 (and probably will for January 13, as well).

The husband has been collecting eggs every few hours because otherwise they freeze. The chickens seem to be doing okay. We have two heat lamps in the coop and the flock congregates underneath them. He told me that Dave claimed the prime real estate underneath one of them, which is good. His comb and wattle could get frostbittten otherwise.

We don’t warm up above 0F until almost mid-week. That will feel like a heat wave.

I made another Nathalie yesterday:

The fabric is a Minerva cotton/lycra French terry in the Celestial Motion colorway. It was very easy to work with. For this version, I made the body a bit longer and hemmed it instead of adding a band. This hits me about mid-thigh. I might run up another one today that is closer to dress length, or a length I’d be comfortable wearing with leggings or tights and a pair of boots.

This is such a customizable pattern, a point I plan to emphasize when I teach this class. It can be banded or hemmed (both sleeves and bottom), lengthened, shortened, made with long sleeves or short sleeves, with drawstrings in the cowl or without. Although I like that cowl very much, I would also like to try scaling it back a bit so that it crosses over but doesn’t fold down. I’ve got a couple of tops (from Kohls) with necklines like that.

I might also start an Oxbow Tote. Anna Graham, of Noodlehead, is running a sewalong for that pattern. I watched the first video yesterday. I’m having trouble deciding what fabric to use, though. She shows several different combinations in the video. Should I use a cotton print quilted to batting/foam? A canvas print? Waxed canvas? I am casually shopping my stash to see if anything leaps out at me.

Situations like this are why I have a large stash. I can work on any project I want to and not have to stop mid-creativity because I’m missing some key component.

I pulled a pair of yoga pants out of my closet yesterday that need to be hemmed. I know it’s a trend to wear them long and let them pool around your ankles, but that’s a recipe for tripping and falling. (Also, it shreds the fabric!) I unzipped the original coverstitch hem and cut 2" off the length. I’ll re-hem them the next time I have black thread in the coverstitch machine.

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I joined the Washington State Quilter’s Guild Spokane chapter and I also joined Artists and Craftsmen of the Flathead, which is a local group. WSG has a lot of interesting programs in Spokane. ACF is also very active. I think it’s important to support these groups even if I am not participating regularly.

My podcast interview on Thursday was with two of the organizers involved with Sew Expo, where I am teaching in March. That will air this Tuesday, which is also the day that registration opens for Sew Expo. The interview I did on Wednesday will air the following week.

Things They Don't Show You on TV

It’s -20F right now. I am waiting until tomorrow morning to take a picture of the thermometer because it is supposed to be even colder then. That’s air temp, not wind chill.

Yesterday was kind of a wild ride. It wasn’t the worst winter storm I can remember, but it had some teeth nonetheless. I think it was worse down in the valley, judging by the reports and pictures I saw on our local Facebook group. At one point, the county asked people to stay home and off the roads. The snow started coming down early in the morning, and the winds started not long after. Amazingly, we never lost power. A small tree did come down in the yard.

Someone in that local Facebook group posted a picture of the predicted cold temps across the state of Montana, with the caption, “The exodus should start about now. John Dutton didn’t warn them about this.” 😂 (That’s a reference to the TV show “Yellowstone,” for those of you who have never seen the series.)

[During the winter of 1996-97, we got a ridiculous amount of snow. We had so much snow that our dogs were up walking around on the roof of the garage. It started snowing on October 15 and the last of the snow didn’t melt until the end of May. And there was not a U-Haul to be found that spring, because so many people were fleeing northwest Montana.]

I wondered if our annual firefighter dinner, scheduled for last night, would be canceled. Our fire department trustees host a catered meal every winter as a thank-you to the firefighters. The husband checked his e-mail in the afternoon and said, “They are planning to serve dinner at 6:30, so we should be there by 6:00.”

This is Montana. We don’t pass up a prime rib dinner because of a silly little snowstorm (or because the county asks us to stay off the roads). I donned my long johns, a pair of my me-made ponte pants, one of my Burda 6315 tops, wool socks, my pashmina scarf, a pair of gloves, and my grandmother’s wool coat and hopped into the plow truck with the husband. By the time we left, the winds had died down a bit but the temperature had dropped to -10F.

[My maternal grandmother had a beautiful black wool coat with Persian lamb trim that she wore to church every Sunday. I admired it for many years and joked that she should leave it to me in her will. After she died, my mother sent it to me. It is the heaviest and warmest coat I own and I wear it when the weather is frightful.]

This was my view from the passenger’s seat as we traveled down our road:

Our plow truck is my old 1999 Dodge 2500. The husband said that he is reminded that it is 25 years old every time he drives it and then gets back into one of his new trucks. He has it equipped with chains for extra traction. Although a bit on the rustic side, it does a good job when we need it. The county plows had been out, but there were quite a few places where the roads had drifted shut to one lane.

The 50 or so of us who braved the weather enjoyed a delicious dinner and some visiting. The husband and I were back home by 8:30. Pretty much everything is shut down today because of the extreme cold, so we’ll be staying here.

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My sew-jo seems to have gone on vacation; I’ve been spending my time this week cleaning, organizing, and prepping projects. I’ve been working on the paisley quilting for an hour or two every day. I also basted the baby quilt with batting and backing, cut more scraps into 5" squares for Pat, who is making comforter tops, and pressed fabric. I’ve got another Nathalie ready to cut out. We have a class for that pattern scheduled for March 20 and the store needs a display sample.

I think we got the class registration issue straightened out. Having been a teacher at national fiber events, I have certain expectations about class etiquette. Things at the local level tend to be a bit less formal, but less formal still needs to be respectful of the teacher’s time.

I am going to finish up paperwork this morning and then get started on that Nathalie top.

So Much For That Forecast

No wind, no additional snow beyond what we got Monday night. Everything seems to have tracked south of here. Oh, well. This just trains people to ignore doom-and-gloom forecasts, and then we’ll get hit with something big and no one will be prepared.

The winter weather advisory expires this morning. A winter storm watch starts tonight and extends through Friday morning. I may try to dash into town mid-day and finish the errands I didn’t get done on Monday. I did get heat lamp bulbs. The low Friday night is supposed to be -30F (air temp), and I don’t want Dave to get frostbite.

We rescheduled yesterday’s canceled serger class for two weeks from today. The class coordinator is helping me work out some issues I am having with class registrations—or, in this case, non-registrations. I decide whether or not to hold a class based on who has signed up and is in the computer. I canceled yesterday’s class because as of Monday, no one was registered, only to find out later that a couple of people were told they could just “show up.” I find that very disrespectful of my time and effort as a teacher. I need to know who is coming to class so I can prepare properly. A few times, students have just “shown up” without a pattern or any needed supplies because they didn’t register and thus didn’t get the supply list. I also get paid by who has registered for the class, so having people come to class who aren’t registered means that I have to do extra administrative work to make sure the class list is accurate.

We will get it sorted, but that has been a disappointing start to 2024.

I prepped pattern pieces for the Oxbow Tote yesterday.

I have no idea if or when I’ll get to this, but at least it’s ready to go if the urge strikes. There are two sizes, so I prepped both.

I’ve got a podcast interview today and another one tomorrow. I said to the husband that my goal is to get the podcast to a point where people are asking me if they can be on the podcast. I’m excited about today’s interview. It’s with a young woman I’ve known since she was about 12 years old, and she has a very successful sewing-based business here in Montana. I’m not as interested in interviewing celebrity sewists as much as I want to talk to regular people who are doing fascinating things with their sewing.

I also worked on the blue quilt yesterday. Quilting that paisley pattern is very relaxing. It’s going to take a couple of weeks, but I am enjoying the process.

And I need to prep for my sewing classes on Saturday. I have nine students signed up—four in the morning and five in the afternoon—and we will be making pillowcases. I’m thinking I’ll offer that class again in a couple of months, and I also want to do one on canning. I’ll schedule that one for later in the summer when we can set up a propane stove outside and make pickles. The kitchen in our community center is small and mostly used for storage, so it’s not a good spot for canning classes.

What Will Be the Weather?

I’m still on the paperwork train, although the new year is starting to settle into a routine. I am such a creature of habit. Enjoying my 4 am cup of coffee alone in my office sets the tone for my day. I get a bit discombobulated on those rare occasions when the husband is up at the same time because he has to pour concrete at 6 am.

He’s not pouring concrete at 6 am today. We’re waiting to see what this winter storm does. It seems to have petered out somewhere between Spokane and here, although we got an inch of snow overnight and it’s snowing as I write this. It actually warmed up enough in Spokane that what started there as snow changed over to rain. The big question is how much wind we will get today.

I think the weather forecasters really have no idea what is going on until they look out the window.

And once again, Snoqualmie Pass was closed last night due to spinouts and collisions. The pass is currently under a blizzard warning—”additional snow accumulations of 8 to 24 inches with winds gusting as high as 65 miles per hour,” but I am sure there are people still trying to drive through there who are completely unprepared for those conditions.

I ran errands yesterday so I wouldn’t have to be out and about today. I also canceled today’s serger mastery class because no one had registered. Unfortunately, I had to cut my errand-running short because the BMW is having issues again. The check engine light isn’t on, but the engine is doing this weird hitching/hesitation at road speeds above 50 mph. I had this same problem over the summer. Back then, the husband waved his hands and said a few incantations over the car and the problem went away, but now it’s back.

[I am only half-joking. That about sums up what he did.]

I am trying to resign myself to the fact that I may have to get a new vehicle. I am just so annoyed by the fact that I will have to give up a car that gets 40 mpg for one that gets half that. That makes no sense.

Okay, enough griping. I did start quilting a top yesterday:

It took me forever to decide how to quilt this. I couldn’t settle on a good ruler pattern. Defaulting to loops would have been too easy. In the end, I decided on paisleys, which I love. I am using 50wt Wonderfil Konfetti in both the top and bottom. A 40wt thread would have been too heavy with this much quilting. Paisleys will take a bit longer than loops, but I got into the rhythm easily yesterday and quilted for about an hour. This was the right choice.

I got the backing for the baby quilt, so I’ll get that put together next.

This came in yesterday’s mail:

It’s our annual box of cookies. DD#1 had the good sense to marry a man whose mother is a phenomenal cook and baker, and she sends us a batch of cookies every year. I love getting them in January rather than before Christmas, because by now, all the Christmas cookies have been eaten.

This week’s podcast is up. Listeners get to hear me talk about sewing machine needles for half an hour. I’ve got some fun interviews coming up in the next couple of weeks.

I'm Teaching at Sew Expo

We got our Sew Expo teacher information on Friday, along with badges to use on social media.

The class catalog is live on the site, and registration opens on January 16. I am teaching three classes:

• Make Holes in Your Knitting: The Basics of Lace

• What Do All These Symbols Mean? How to Read a Knitting Chart

and, of course,

• Twisting and Turning: Basic Cable Stitches for Texture and Design

These are all classes I’ve taught before in some way, shape, or form, and I am excited to be teaching knitting again. Pass the word around!

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I put together the baby quilt top yesterday and I basted another quilt top with batting and backing. I don’t think it’s my imagination that quilt batting is getting thinner. (This was Warm Company Warm and Natural.) Like everything else, the quality is going downhill.

I love my rotating cutting mat:

This made trimming the hourglass units a breeze. The baby quilt pattern called for eight different pink fabrics and a yard(ish) of white background. That was supposed to make 64 hourglass units. When I got all the units up the design wall—a queen-size white flannel sheet tacked to the wall next to my sewing machine—I discovered I was missing one unit. I got a ninth pink fabric and made four more units and swapped those out with four original ones, just so things wouldn’t be quite so matchy-matchy.

I found the missing unit under something else after the top was sewn together. Oh, well.

I also put a border on the baby quilt. The pattern didn’t call for it, but I decided the quilt needed a border. I used a 10th fabric for that. I have to get a backing for it before I can quilt it, but I’d like to have it done before the end of January.

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Watching the weather forecasts for this coming week has been very entertaining. We got roughly 6" of new snow yesterday, but there is a much larger storm coming in off the Pacific on Tuesday. (The phrase “bomb cyclone” is being tossed around, which sounds ominous but is a legitimate weather term.) I said to the husband that I suspect the Tuesday storm may bring us a windstorm. We get these “back door” cold fronts that come down the mountains from the east, and they’re usually accompanied by a pressure gradient that causes a lot of wind. We’re about due for one. And the storm on Tuesday will be followed by a drop in temperatures. The high on Friday is forecast to be -9F. THAT IS AIR TEMP, NOT WIND CHILL. The low is forecast to be -23F. I need to make sure we have enough heat lamp bulbs for the chicken coop. Hopefully, this cold weather won’t bring a string of house fires.

Of course, I-90 over Snoqualmie Pass was closed again last night due to people in AWD vehicles thinking they are invincible. I continue to be amazed that no one has been killed.

I am mostly caught up from the week of being under the weather. If you haven’t noticed, the podcast did get moved to its own website. That has made keeping track of things on my end much simpler. I’ve still got a thousand little details to track down, but at least now each activity has its own home.

A Fabric Delivery by Royal Mail

Minerva had a sale at the end of 2023, so I took that opportunity to order some fabric. I bought a couple of yards of this luscious green Meet Milk Ottoman Rib fabric:

That looks to me like a machine-knit tuck stitch. That doesn’t clear up the mystery of the handknit version of Ottoman Rib, but it gave me an excuse to buy this fabric. I think it will end up as a cardigan of some sort.

I also bought two yards of the Minerva loop back French terry in the Celestial Motion colorway. (I also have their crushed velvet in this colorway.)

The fabric is a cotton/lycra blend but has such a wonderful hand that I thought at first it had some rayon in it. I’d like to make a Nathalie from this.

It’s a good thing I don’t live in the UK because I’d want to buy everything that Minerva sells.

While I was in town yesterday, I stopped in at Joann Fabrics. Interfacing was 50% off, so I replenished my supply of knit interfacing. I relieved the remnant rack of half a dozen pieces of quilting cotton at 75% off. And Simplicity patterns are $1.99 this weekend, so I bought two.

This is S9707, an oversized buttoned shirt:

And S9467, a buttoned shirt with some gathers and ruffles:

I am not a gathers and ruffles kind of girl, and I tend to avoid buttoned shirts because it’s hard to get them to fit properly, but both patterns would be suitable for that Kaffe cotton sateen. And I can make things as samples even if I don’t wear them. Sometimes it’s about the process, not the product.

I have all my pink baby quilt units sewn together, but now I need to cut them apart, mix them up, and sew them back together. I think I’ll be working on that project today. I ran errands yesterday and will try to avoid going to town again until next Tuesday, when I am scheduled to teach a serger mastery class. It’s snowing every day, the roads aren’t great, and I have seen way too many near-miss accidents from people driving like idiots. I’ll stay home and sew, thank you.

All the Pinks

I am enjoying having some time to quilt again, and the break from making clothing is nice, too. I started a couple of baby quilts yesterday. What a delight to pull out the bin of pink fabrics and see what plays well together

I’ve have a pattern for another project, but I haven’t pulled the fabric for that one yet. That quilt could be done with 16 fat quarters, so I may use the Tilda bundles that I bought for myself with my birthday money. Or not. We’ll see.

I also cut apart the quilted potholder sandwich, prepped a table runner for quilting on the Q20, and pressed the backing fabric for a quilt. That top may get basted with batting today. I embroidered a bit after dinner last night. Forward progress, little by little.

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I parked myself at my desk yesterday morning and did computer stuff until I couldn’t stand it anymore. A big chunk of what I’m dealing with is related to the homestead foundation and has to be done before our board meeting Monday night. I am also moving my podcast to its own website. Thankfully, I was able to clone this website. The podcast website will look different, but at least I didn’t have to load all the files again.

I have built enough websites in Squarespace that I am considered a “professional” and have access to a special set of perks. Oh, the irony. I would not call myself a website professional. I certainly wouldn’t want to do website design 24/7. I am proud of the one I did for the homestead foundation. That website, more than anything, allowed us to level up our game because now we can offer online registration for events and and take donations.

There are always a thousand niggling little details that come along, though, and have to be dealt with. This is the time of year to do that.

I also e-mailed the accountant and asked him what he needed from me for tax prep. We’re using QuickBooks Online now, so he has access to our files. He e-mailed me back and said to let him know when I had reconciled the bank statements through the end of the year and had compiled some additional information. I responded that I had reconciled the December bank statement at 6 am on New Year’s Day so that was all done. 😇

[I am a bit obsessive about tracking pennies here at Chez Schuster-Szabo, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Also, the accountant appreciates clients who don’t wait until the last minute to do their taxes.]

Easier tax prep may be the only positive thing that came out of moving to QBO this year.

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It looks like we may be making up for our snow deficit soon. There are systems moving into the Pacific Northwest and the forecast includes snow every day for the next week. The end of next week is supposed to be frigid, with low temps in the negative numbers. Winter might finally be here.

Seeds for the New Year

The goal for this week is to catch up on everything I didn’t get done last week while not falling further behind on this week’s tasks. Most of what I need to do is paperwork, so I’m not doing as much sewing.

Our homestead foundation fundraising committee had its monthly meeting last evening. I joined this committee halfway through 2022. At that time, our former pastor was the chairman. When he retired in October 2022, I took over chairing the committee. (The church and the homestead foundation are not connected, but some of us are involved in both.) He had laid an excellent foundation for our formal fundraising efforts. The fundraising goal in 2022 was $15,000, which we met. I kept that same goal for 2023, but thanks to the hard work of a whole lot of people, our fundraising total for 2023 ended up being $24,291.05. We’re hoping to keep that momentum going into 2024.

It’s tempting to judge successful fundraising efforts by the “big” events, but when we break down the totals, the smaller events together often add up to the lion’s share of income. Every little bit helps.

I’ve got two sewing classes scheduled for next Saturday at the community center, which the homestead foundation owns and manages. We will be making pillowcases. There will be a morning session and an afternoon session, and each class has slots for six students. The class fee includes materials and machines and is donated to the foundation. We’ve had other people offer classes the same way. Susan did a pruning class last spring that was wildly successful. We’d like to build up a reputation as a place where community members can come and learn some of these skills.

Spring is rushing up at me already. I am chairman of the annual plant sale, in May, and we have a plant sale planning meeting in a couple of weeks. We have also decided to resurrect the annual summer garden tour hosted by the homestead foundation. That is scheduled for July. I need to start looking at seed catalogs and deciding what I want to grow in my own garden. The husband and I have been discussing infrastructure projects and where I am planning to put certain crops this year. My herb garden will be ready to replant in the spring, too. I know a lot of people think the month of January lasts forever, but it always seems to zoom by for me.

I haven’t been out there recently, but this is probably what the garden looks like at the moment. Maybe not this much snow. This is an old picture and we just haven’t had the precipitation this year because of El Nino. It is supposed to snow this weekend, though, so we might catch up. I’ll be happy if the freezing fog goes away. We have been socked in under inversions for a couple of weeks now.

I did quilt a potholder sandwich yesterday afternoon after running errands in town. I like having these smaller projects stacked up and ready to go when I have some time here and there. I need to get back to my neglected embroidery projects, but I’ve been reading in the evenings lately. I’m about halfway through this book and enjoying it very much:

The author relates stories about her hunt for vintage fabric at auctions and estate sales.

I also got an e-mail from Minerva and note that they have just launched a new (free!) series called Master Your Overlocker. (coughDeanacough) I think their videos are always very well done and I’ll be watching this one because I can always learn something.

Hello 2024

The old year went out with a virus. Whatever I picked up last Tuesday decided to hang around. I would start to feel better, then not, then feel better again, then not. I skipped church yesterday to avoid passing this on to anyone else.

I tried to be good about resting when I needed to, but oh!—that is so hard when I wanted to be up getting things done. And everything that was on my to-do list from last week has been pushed forward. I’m starting 2024 behind the curve and that is not my preferred place to be.

I did manage to get one generator cover made, which was the #1 item on my to-do list for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Thankfully, I had the old one to take apart and use as a pattern:

This was a relatively quick sew once I had it all cut out. Certainly, it was faster and easier than drafting one from scratch. It’s that cylindrical piece on top that is the tricky part.

I still have two smaller covers on the list, but I told the husband that I repaired his pants and made a generator cover for him this week, so he has to go to the end of the line and wait his turn again.

I think my voice has improved enough that I’ll be able to record the podcast today—again, that was something I wanted to have done last week. Ah, well. I’ll just have to do the best I can to get back on track.

The word of the year is CULTIVATE, but sometimes you can’t get into the garden because of the weather.

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One of the pervasive myths in the homesteading community is that to be a “real” homesteader, you have to do everything from scratch yourself. (And document it for your YouTube channel.) Hahahahahaha. It’s worth noting that a lot of those people who champion that viewpoint are wearing Carhartt clothing purchased at the farm store. I want to ask them why they didn’t raise the sheep or grow the flax, then spin the yarn and weave or knit what they’re wearing. THEY ARE NOT REAL HOMESTEADERS. 😱

In this day and age, we have the luxury of choosing our activities. I don’t knit socks because I learned a long time ago that I don’t enjoy knitting socks. I haven’t ever made my own underwear, either, but that’s about to change. I’ve been buying the same style and brand of underwear for years. They fit well and have held up—until recently. The latest batch, purchased about six months ago, is beginning to fall apart. It’s most apparent in the elastic, which is disintegrating.

I have all the supplies for making underwear, so I have no excuse. I can make myself the same supply of underwear for a fraction of what new ones costs, and mine won’t fall apart after six months. I may not get started on that project for a while yet, but underwear is on the list of things I want to make in 2024.

In a nutshell, I choose to spend my time producing things of better quality than what I can buy at the store. At the moment, that includes food, clothing, and generator covers. I want nourishing food that isn’t contaminated with glyphosate, soy, high fructose corn syrup, and seed oils, so I grow it and cook from scratch. I want clothing that fits me well and lasts, so I make it myself. The husband wants generator covers that don’t fall apart in a slight breeze, so I make those, too.

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I have mixed feelings about how 2024 is going to play out. All I can do, though, is control myself and my immediate environment, so that is what I am going to do. I’ll spend today getting as caught up as I possibly can. I’ve got my to-do lists for January all laid out in front of me. It’s time to get started.

Making Peace with Nathalie

I lost an entire day on Thursday. I had a scratchy throat on Tuesday afternoon, but it didn’t get any worse on Wednesday, so I thought that perhaps I had dodged a bullet. No such luck. After breakfast Thursday, I managed to get the collar made for a second Nathalie top (no interfacing in this one) before giving up and curling up under a quilt to drink tea and binge watch mountain climbing disaster videos for the rest of the day. ‘Tis the season.

Tera texted me Thursday evening with a picture of the Nathalie she made. I asked her about the fabric and she said it was a French terry she picked up on a Walmart remnant rack on some recent travels. Tera and I are friends for a reason.

I woke up feeling better yesterday morning, although more than a bit annoyed to have lost a day’s worth of work. My voice sounds like rusty chains being dragged across a concrete slab, so I have to delay recording the podcast for a few days, too.

And while I am still not firing on all cylinders, I managed to make a second Nathalie top yesterday and I am quite happy with it. I think I am going to wear it to church tomorrow.

The fabric is a Joanns luxe fleece bought on clearance. I’ll talk more about the fabric in a moment.

Part of the reason Tera texted me Thursday night was to show me a picture of the Nathalie she made. Hers had a lot of excess fabric at the shoulders. It fit well in the rest of the bodice. I have broad shoulders, so I don’t have that excess fabric there, although the shoulder seam does drop off the shoulder about an inch.

This is an athletic wear design, so that doesn’t surprise me. The sleeve cap is correspondingly shallow; that’s a combination often seen in garment knitting patterns. The intent is to create a relaxed silhouette without it being boxy.

Tera worked on adjusting that shoulder area and texted me another photo yesterday afternoon. I think I am going to frankenpattern the closer-fitting shoulders and sleeves from my favorite Burda 6315 with the Nathalie. I do like the rest of the Nathalie top, especially that cowl. Tera and I want to get together in January to monkey around with the bodice slopers from our class at Sew Expo last March.

So . . . that fabric. I bought this on clearance and had 1-5/8 yards, which was just enough for the shorter version with the band and no pocket. (I did add an inch to the length.) I kicked around the idea of hemming it, but I decided to stay as close to the original pattern as I could. This band is fine because it hangs straight instead of pulling in. I might hem the next one.

The fabric is a “luxe fleece” substrate with a gold pattern printed on it. Interestingly, the issues I ran into were not due to the gold print. (I did have to vacuum my sewing room when I was done, which is par for the course with fleece.) This fleece doesn’t have an obvious nap on the front—or it’s obscured by the print—but it most certainly does on the reverse side. It has such an obvious nap on the reverse side that I had to be very careful to feed the fabric through the machines, both serger and sewing machine, with the nap. If the nap fed against the feed dogs, the fabric would hang up. I figured that out by copious testing on scrap fabric, because I knew I had no room for error.

Also, this is the reason I don’t like patterns that specify 1/4" garment seams:

A 1/4" seam is 6mm wide. I have a 6mm stitch width setting on my serger, but for thick fabrics, like fleece, I use the largest stitch width setting, which is 9mm. You wouldn’t think the extra 3mm would make a difference, but it does, especially on multiple layers. Through testing, I also determined I needed to lengthen the stitch to the longest setting and increase the differential feed. A serger seam made on thick fabrics where the stitch length is too short and the stitch width too narrow has a tendency to pucker. The seam in the photo, above, is nigh on perfect, but it’s a bit wider than 1/4". I understand that pattern companies want to include customers who don’t own sergers. However, 1/4" seams are for quilt tops, not garments. Get off my lawn.

On this Nathalie, I sewed in the collar on the sewing machine using a 3/8" seam allowance, then finished the raw edges with the serger. I see lots of justification in patterns for not finishing edges on knits because they won’t ravel, but I want the inside of my makes to be as attractive as the outside. I attached the cuffs and the bottom band directly on the serger.

I think I have made my peace with this pattern. There will be more Nathalie tops in my future—and maybe a dress?—although hacked and refined to my sensibilities.

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Those of you who have been around for a while may remember that we lost internet service (CenturyLink) for two weeks at Christmas last year due to a couple of problems. The first was a severe cold snap that resulted in Bonneville Power throttling down the amount of electricity they were sending to western Montana so they could serve their Washington state customers first. Our electric co-op had to do some fast maneuvering to redistribute power across our valley, and in the process, some of the components in the CenturyLink box up at the corner were fried. The second issue is that every winter, without fail, someone misses that corner when the road is icy (or they are drunk, or both) and takes out the service box. That happened again recently—this time very thoroughly:

RIP, CenturyLink box. Everyone downstream of that box likely is without internet service again. We still have service because no one runs over a Starlink satellite and destroys it.

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The husband texted his business associates Wednesday morning to let them know that the 2008 work truck was for sale. Within 15 minutes, he had people wanting to come look at it. He ended up selling it to a farmer friend of ours who grows hemp commercially. Everyone who knows the husband knows that he takes excellent care of his vehicles, so I was not surprised at the amount of interest. The proceeds from the sale of this truck will get applied to the loan for the new truck to pay that down.

And I went for almost two whole weeks without the check engine light being on in The Diva, but it is lit up again. The husband checked the code; it’s yet another emissions sensor. I think they will just continue to fail serially until he has replaced all of them.

Nathalie And I Are Not Friends (Yet)

Some projects—even ones made from well-drafted patterns—crash and burn. I worked on the Jalie Nathalie cowl-neck pullover yesterday but failed to make anything wearable. That doesn’t happen very often. Some of the problems were due to user error but some were inherent in the pattern. Jalie patterns tend to be some of the better-drafted patterns out there, so I was a bit surprised by all the problems I encountered.

1. In an effort to conserve space—because patterns are expensive to produce—there is only one bottom bodice pattern piece. The front bodice top and back bodice top are separate pattern pieces, so if you’re going to trace the pattern, as I always do, you have to trace the pieces and either tape them together or trace the bottom half, then slide the tracing paper over and trace the top. There is a suggestion in the pattern to tape both front top and back top to the bottom half of the bodice and simply fold down one or the other when cutting each body piece. Eh. I would have paid a bit more money for a second sheet of paper that had each individual pattern piece laid out in its entirety, but that’s me. I have enough spatial problems that I need well-labeled pattern pieces to ensure I am not cutting the wrong thing at the wrong time.

2. Speaking of cutting the wrong thing, I cut the longer tunic length, because a longer top is always better for me. However, I had it in my head that I was making the shorter version with the narrower bottom band (store sample), so when it came time to sew the kangaroo pocket onto the front bodice, I placed it according to those directions instead of the directions for the tunic length. It would have been okay for me because I have long arms, but someone with shorter arms wouldn’t have been able to use the pocket because it’s too far down the body.

3. If this hadn’t been a potential store sample, I would have left off the pocket. If I teach this as a class, we will be leaving off the pocket because of time constraints. I thought it was interesting that the pattern advised interfacing the (two-layer) collar if using a thinner, drapier fabric but said nothing about stabilizing the pocket. I was using a modal sweatshirt fleece, and it was obvious to me that a single-layer pocket was going to be way too thin. I cut two pocket pieces, seamed them together, then turned the pocket inside out and topstitched the openings. That made a beefier pocket.

4. I did interface the collar. However, I only had a small piece of knit interfacing and wasn’t paying attention to the direction of the stretch. It stretches horizontally but not vertically. Also, there is nothing in the pattern that indicates what kind of interfacing to use. I use knit interfacing on just about everything, even wovens, because I prefer it, but what if you don’t know about or can’t get knit interfacing? We’ll come back to that in a moment.

5. The pattern specifies 1/4" seam allowances. I’m sorry, but that narrow a seam allowance is inappropriate for garments, especially when trying to seam together five layers of sweatshirt fabric. At a minimum, I want a 3/8" seam allowance.

6. As it was, I had to assemble parts of this garment on my sewing machine. That was fine, but taking out a triple-stitch stretch stitch or a lightning stitch is even more miserable than taking out a serger seam. It also occurred to me that I should offer a class on sewing knits on a sewing machine for those people who don’t have sergers and don’t want to buy one.

7. Assembly was going swimmingly until I got to the collar. The sizing was great. Jalie patterns always nail the sizing. The longer tunic length looked good on me (pocket placement notwithstanding). The collar assembly directions were well-illustrated—and I understand there is an accompanying video—although the numbering of the steps in the assembly was bizarre. Each step was set off with a bullet point, and the number of that step appeared in parentheses at the end of the paragraph. [Pattern writers, please be kind to the end user and number each step at the beginning so that it is easy to find, especially when it is referred to in other parts of the pattern!!!!!]

8. I assembled and basted the collar as instructed. The collar was smaller than the neck opening. On a knit garment, that is to be expected, because you stretch the collar as you ease it into the opening. However, because of the interfacing, the collar did not stretch. I would have cut and made a new collar, but I was out of fabric. I tried everything I could think of to make the original collar work. I took out the basting stitches and tried to move the overlapped pieces to make the collar bigger. That didn’t help—because of the collar shaping, I suspect—and every time I went to pin the collar into the neck opening, the neck opening stretched out even a bit more. I tried sewing in the collar on my machine with the neck opening as the bottom layer in hopes that the feed dogs would ease in the extra fabric. Nope. After an hour of frustrated sewing, I had a pullover that was complete except for the collar, and the collar was hanging half in and half out of the opening.

9. In hindsight, what I should have done was to sew the collar in as a single layer and save sewing down the overlap on the inside until I had most of the collar attached. If the two sides of the collar ended up being not quite even, it wouldn’t matter as much on the inside. That idea, of course, didn’t occur to me until after I had tried everything else, and I was not going to sit there for two hours painstakingly removing those sewing machine stitches. Alternatively—if I ever have to interface a collar for this pattern again—I will avoid putting interfacing on the bottom 1" of the collar piece. Anyone who used woven interfacing on this collar would have run into the same problem.

I may try again today—I have other suitable fabric in the stash—but we’ll see. I might have to do something else, like clean or bake cookies. You know things are bad when I voluntarily bake cookies. (Our employees kept an eye on things here while we were getting the truck, so I promised them each a batch of cookies.)

I consulted with the other Janet, who has made this top twice. Interestingly, she also had problems, although she had different problems than I did. I’m not eliminating this pattern as a class just yet, but I won’t commit until I am able to make one successfully.

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I was watching a YouTube sewing channel yesterday when the sewist apologized for the fact that she makes so many garments. She pointed out that she has a sewing channel, though, so making garments is part and parcel of what she does for a living. Did someone take her to task? Why do we feel we must apologize for making so many clothes? I may not keep everything I make, but I try to make things in such a way that I can donate them to a local thrift store. Those items might be just what someone else wants. And I am learning a lot as I go. Theory only gets you so far.

Also, if you feel the need to criticize a content creator for making content, perhaps you need a hobby. 😐

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It occurred to me that I should describe the topography of the Pacific Northwest for those of you who have never been to this part of the US. Seattle isn’t out in the middle of a piece of open land, like a city in the Midwest. Seattle is situated on the west side of the Cascade range of mountains, and there are only a few routes in and out. You can go west out of the city to the Olympic Peninsula, either by taking a ferry across Puget Sound or by driving down around Tacoma. You can go north to Stevens Pass and then east on Hwy 2 (or keep going north to Canada if you are so inclined). You can go south to Portland. You can go east over Snoqualmie Pass. There are a few other mountain passes, most of which are seasonal. That’s it. I-90 begins at sea level in downtown Seattle and heads east up over Snoqualmie Pass, which is at an elevation of approximately 4700 feet. That elevation gain happens over a distance of about 50 miles. You can see why it took us so long to leave Seattle last Friday, helped along by people who don’t know how to drive in snow.

Things Are Different

I went to town to run errands yesterday and made a few interesting observations along the way. In my experience, the day after Christmas typically has been a big shopping day—people are out getting Christmas supplies on clearance, returning items that don’t fit, etc. Last year, Susan and I made the rounds of Michaels, Joanns, and Hobby Lobby to buy clear plastic and glass ornaments at deep discount. We squirreled them away for the homestead foundation’s annual Christmas gift-making workshop this year.

I tried to do the same thing this year. No one had those ornaments in stock. (Somehow I missed noting that before Christmas.) In fact, the leftover Christmas stock was almost nonexistent in most stores, and I was out and about early. A lady in front of me at Joann Fabrics complained to the cashier that she couldn’t find Christmas ribbon on sale anywhere.

I also noted that few people were out shopping. The atmosphere seemed very subdued.

As far as Joann Fabrics is concerned, they have hired more staff recently and I noticed that their posted hours have expanded. The store has been open 11-5 every day for the past year. Now the sign says 10-7. The store is full of racks of unopened bolts of fabric and a ton of fabric has been moved to clearance. I bought a couple of quilt batts so I can move some of these tops through the queue.

I did a fair bit of damage at the quilt store where I teach. I went in to get a backing for a quilt top that has been languishing far too long. I came out with the backing. I also came out with some Kaffe Fassett cotton sateen. It was in the wideback section, but after touching it, I decided it would make a beautiful garment. Maybe the Itch to Stitch Celeste Dress?

The store had also gotten in a shipment of QT Fabrics’ lovely double-brushed poly, so I bought some for another pleated Burda top, and I succumbed and bought two yards of a deep, saturated blue and purple rayon batik for a keyhole top.

[While I’ve been concentrating on serger classes for the past couple of years, I am thinking that I shouldn’t limit my clothing classes to only those which can be made with knits on a serger. I suspect the demand would be there for other types of classes, too.]

Lest anyone (deliberately) misunderstand me, I am not lamenting the absence of rampant consumerism with these observations. That’s all they are—observations. In fact, I enjoy getting out and running errands in Kalispell when it’s not being overrun by crowds. What I saw yesterday was such a departure from the way things have been for many years, though, that I thought it was worth noting.

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I bought olive green thread while I was out and about, so I’ll try to get that Nathalie top put together today. At my request, the husband brought me the old generator cover. After I wash it, I’m going to take it apart to use as a pattern for the new one.

He and the employees are going back to work today. I enjoy it when he’s around, but I don’t get anything done because he is a Shiny Toy and I want to talk to him. I need to record next week’s podcast—probably tomorrow—and I have a thousand little details to tie up before the end of the year.

Back in Our Workshops

I know I said I was going to take it easy this week, but I lied. I think I am genetically incapable of being inactive. The husband is even worse. By the end of our recent road trip, it was like being around a caged lion. He spent yesterday working on his trucks. We are selling the 2008 work truck, so he was moving tools to the new truck and cleaning out the old one. I puttered around in my sewing room.

A few weeks ago, the class coordinator at the quilt store—whose name is also Janet, which causes no small amount of confusion on occasion—had on a beautiful cowl-neck pullover she had made. I asked her what pattern she used, and she told me it was the Jalie Nathalie:

That was a few days before Robin and I went to Missoula, so when we stopped in at The Confident Stitch, I checked to see if they had the pattern in stock. They carry quite a nice selection of paper patterns. I bought a copy there.

This week, the other Janet sent me an e-mail and said our store had ordered the Nathalie pattern to have on hand and maybe it would make a good class? I agreed. I traced the pattern Sunday afternoon between church services, then cut it out yesterday. I am using some olive green modal sweatshirt knit from Joanns, bought specifically for testing patterns and making class samples because I would not be caught dead wearing olive green.

I could have put the top together yesterday—I think it will be a fairly quick sew once the kangaroo pocket is assembled—but I don’t have any olive green thread. I will get some in town today or tomorrow. I am making the shorter version to test the pattern. The longer version would be nice to wear with leggings.

After lunch, I quilted some big fabric sandwiches on the Q20 and cut out another stack of potholders.

I may keep doing this until I can’t stand it anymore. I need to keep moving stuff through the quilting queue and I have some quilt projects lined up that have to get done. I am keenly aware that I have about two months of quilt production time, because once March rolls around, I’ll have to start working on gardening projects.

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I’m also spending a bit of time in the mornings working on plans and scheduling for the podcast. You may notice, if you look at the footer of these website pages, that I added a Paypal donation link.

No one is under any obligation to send money.

I don’t have ads on my blog for a reason. Frankly, I won’t read a blog if it is littered with ads because it is too difficult for me to find the content. I stopped reading Sherri McConnell’s and Bonnie Hunter’s blogs for this exact reason. I also think ads on a blog looks amateurish. (Yes, I could use an ad blocker but I shouldn’t have to go to that much trouble.) This blog is free for reader enjoyment and will remain so. However, the podcast is a different beast. I probably won’t monetize podcast content for another six months or so, but I am considering adding an option for premium content. Whether that takes the form of subscriber-only podcasts, patterns, or other perks remains to be seen.

So I am starting with a Paypal link. If you want to help defray the costs I incur with the blog website, feel free. The link goes to my Big Sky Knitting Designs Paypal account, which I have had forever and is the same one I use for selling knitting patterns.

Dashing Through the Snow

The husband and I left early Thursday morning for Seattle. We had an uneventful trip over. The weather was clear, traffic was reasonable, and the dashboard in The Diva was free of check engine lights. The plan was to pick up the new work truck on Friday morning and drive back to Montana. We had done all the paperwork in advance so that all we had to do was walk in, get the keys, and leave with a truck.

We were on our way into Red Robin for dinner when the husband’s cell phone rang. It was the fleet manager from Tacoma Dodge. He has been an absolute hero throughout this entire process, so I am sure that it pained him excessively to have to tell the husband that the employee who was given the job of filling the truck with fuel put gasoline in it instead of diesel. Fortunately, this guy did not start the truck. They towed the truck back to the shop and the plan was to drop the tank Friday morning, drain and flush it, and reinstall it. We were told to be there at noon.

[If the employee had started the truck, that process would have been much more involved, to the point where I would have left the husband in Tacoma and headed home by myself.]

It ended up taking a bit longer than expected, so we didn’t actually leave Tacoma until 2 pm. I had been keeping an eye on the webcams over Snoqualmie Pass. We thought we would get over the pass and drive as far as possible before getting a hotel room for the night.

The husband missed a turn leaving Tacoma and we got separated. I had told him that if that happened, I would pull off into a chain-up area just before the pass and wait for him.

This was not my first time over the pass. (It was probably about my 50th.) This was not my first time over the pass in bad weather. I got over into the right-hand lane and took my time. As we went up in elevation, rain changed to sleet and then snow, and I watched, more than mildly horrified, as cars with Washington plates blew past me in the left-hand lanes like it was a sunny day in July. I’ve concluded that people in Seattle think that because they drive in rain for so much of the year, they also believe that qualifies them to drive in the snow. You know—same precip, just white. 🙄

I pulled over into a chain-up area about five miles from the summit to wait for the husband. After a few minutes, traffic started backing up to my location, so I pulled out my cellphone and looked at the WADOT website. They had closed the pass due to spin-outs and collisions, no doubt caused by the idiots I had seen speeding past me.

I called the husband. He was 10 miles behind me and had gotten stuck in North Bend when the state troopers closed I-90 there.

There was a car parked in front of me in the chain-up area. I watched as a young guy in thin pants, sneakers, and a windbreaker got out and attempted to put chains on one of the tires. I have a padded waterproof kneeling pad in my car in case I need to put chains on, so I got out and went over and offered it to him. He thanked me and said he didn’t need it. “My father-in-law gave us these chains and I don’t think they fit these tires.” They did not. They were too small. He gave up and got back into the car.

[WADOT posted a photo to its Twitter account last week of some guy who tried to rig up a too-small set of chains on his tires by connecting them with a USB cord. He gets points for creativity, but that was a dumb idea.]

We sat and waited. It got dark. I was plenty warm in my wool socks, boots, and warm winter coat. I had food and water and a sleeping bag with me.

I look at this picture and honestly, that’s not a lot of snow, not by Montana standards. We drove through 6" of snow on our road as we got back to the house yesterday because it was Saturday and the county road department doesn’t plow on the weekends.

Around 5:30 pm, they opened the pass and traffic started moving. I was going to wait for the husband, but he said there were a thousand people down there waiting to drive over the pass and he thought I should just go ahead and not wait to get stuck in another traffic jam. I said I would get over the pass and pull off somewhere and wait for him. The guy parked in front of me—who had his wife, mother, MIL, and a toddler with him—told me that they were going to go to the next exit and turn around and go back to Seattle.

I am surprised that pass doesn’t get closed more often than it does. The posted speed limit over the summit was 35 mph, more than appropriate for the road conditions. It was snowing but they had gotten the plows out while the pass was closed. I got back on the road, stayed in the right-hand lane traveling 35 mph, and still there were people passing me in the left-hand lanes. Driving fast on poor road conditions doesn’t make you some kind of badass. What it makes you is lucky.

I went as far as the town of Cle Elum (about 30 miles), where I knew there was a Safeway and a hotel. That was where WADOT had closed the westbound lanes, though, and the hotel was full and traffic was backed up. I found a spot in the Safeway parking lot and called the husband to let him know where I was. He arrived half an hour later.

I went into Safeway and got us some dinner. We made ourselves comfy inside the new truck and considered sleeping there for the night. The snow finally stopped around 10 pm, so I called a hotel in Ellensburg, another 25 miles down the road, to make sure there was a room available. We drove there—traffic was very light at that point—and spent the night. We left Ellensburg at 7 am yesterday morning and were home by 3 pm.

I’m not going to Monday morning quarterback this one. If I can avoid bad weather and poor road conditions, I will, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do. I was reluctant to leave the husband to travel alone because I know that route much better than he does. We were under some time constraints and our carefully-planned schedule was upended by a wrench in the works. Waiting until this week wasn’t an option—the weather over the pass is supposed to be just as bad. We were as prepared as we could be, which is more than I can say for some of those travelers. The number of people we saw wearing light jackets and sneakers was appalling.

Today is a busy one for me—I play at church this morning and again for the Christmas Eve service. I plan on taking it easy this week.

The Six-Hour Block

Welcome to the world of the spatially impaired quilter. It took me most of yesterday to make this:

Six hours to produce a quilt block that should have taken a fraction of that time to make. I am not a novice quilter. (Don’t look at that one wonky seam. I was tired when I sewed that.)

I’ve had the Creative Grids Curvy Log Cabin quilt ruler—this is the 8" size—for a while. I also have a couple of overflowing bags of strips. I’m not particularly fascinated by Log Cabin quilts, despite the fact that I seem to make a lot of them. They just happen to be good for using up leftover strips of fabric.

The reason this is “curvy” is because the logs on either side of the center square are different widths. If you could imagine that I had made four of these (correctly) and had sewn them together, you would see that the red logs make a circle on a background of white.

I did make four of these, incorrectly. That is what took most of the first five hours. I didn’t see the problem until I had sewn the four blocks together, and even then, it took me a few minutes of staring at the larger block to figure out what was wrong. I lay my mistake entirely at the feet of the person who wrote the instructions for the Curvy Log Cabin Ruler. The ruler looks like this:

It comes with a front-and-back page of instructions. The instructions are in two-color monochrome (black and red on white). The steps are not numbered. There are “tips” which really ought to be numbered steps. The instructions do not indicate which fabric should be which. Labeling them as Fabric A and Fabric B would have helped, as would calling one of them “background.”

Even after making five of these blocks, I still do not understand what the first “step” in the instructions—called a “tip”—means.

Basically, what happened was that I used red for the starting block instead of white, because I was looking at the monochrome black-and-red instructions and that is what my brain saw. I got a red circle in my completed 16” block, yes, but it was a weird-looking, squared-off circle.

Could I have gone to YouTube and watched a video on how to make this block? Definitely, but I am old-school and of the opinion that if you cannot communicate to the end user how to use your product successfully, something is wrong. We made things before the existence of the internet, you know.

Nicole Sauce talked about this in one of her recent podcasts. She just completed a kitchen renovation and had a difficult time with one of the products because it came with no instructions. She searched high and low and never found any. She commented that the internet used to be a great place to go to get instructions for products, and now manufacturer websites consist mostly of marketing materials. I had the same experience when I bought a Scarlett Solo Box a few months ago for the podcast. I still haven’t used it because it came with no instructions in the box. The manufacturer website is a collection of slick, glossy photos showing people using it, but not explaining HOW they are using it. I set it up once, the way I thought it should go, and the audio was worse than when I just use my Rode microphone plugged into my computer. I don’t know how to adjust the Solo Box because it didn’t come with any instructions.

At this point, I am not sure I want to make any more of these blocks. I may have scratched this particular itch. I do know how to use the ruler now, though. 😐

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I host my podcast audio files at Buzzsprout. I have been quite happy with them so far, probably because they have extensive documentation on how to use their service. Yesterday, they sent me a year-end summary of my podcast downloads. They submit my podcast to the various podcatchers and aggregate the stats for me. I produced 14 episodes in 2023, which I am calling Season 1. The podcast was downloaded in 11 different countries. The US city with the most episode downloads was Seattle. (The husband wondered if DD#2 was making all of her friends listen to her mother’s podcast but I doubt that.) The total number of downloads was 946 and the majority of listeners—over 60%—are using Apple Podcasts.

I’m happy with those numbers, especially considering I just launched this project. I feel like I can go forward in a more deliberate manner now, and I am excited about some of the interviews I have scheduled.