Garden Cleanup Day

The husband and I worked outside yesterday. I raked up dead vegetation in the garden and made piles to burn. He stacked firewood—courtesy of two trees that blew down—and burned three slash piles in the pig pasture. He also mucked out the pig palace; all that lovely pig manure will go over to the garden. He’ll make sure the fencing is secure and we’ll be ready for piglets.

I pruned raspberries and grapes and cut back the lavender hedges. He got out the rototiller and tilled the section where we’re going to plant potatoes this afternoon. I grow using no-till methods everywhere else, but tilling does make planting potatoes easier, and this year’s spot has had a lot of soil amendments added over the past couple of years. The dirt is looking really nice.

The rhubarb is up, as well as a clump of Egyptian walking onions I got from Sarah. I forgot to take pictures. You’ll have to take my word for it.

I am feeling it some this morning, but happy to be getting out and moving around again.

Unfortunately, I also found a couple of fresh ground squirrel holes. 🤬 It’s time to make sure we have enough ammo on hand.

I am not sure what is going on with my seeds this year. The germination rate has been surprisingly poor. I planted eighteen pots of a pumpkin variety last week—at the same time I planted melons and cucumbers, which popped right up—and of those eighteen pots, only six germinated. No rodents dug up the seeds in the other pots. They just didn’t germinate. The same thing happened with a couple of tomato varieties. And what does come up is growing slowly.

I’ve been getting seeds from the same company for over 10 years now. A couple of years ago, they moved from Oregon to Texas and ever since, I’ve had issues. I may have to find a new seed supplier.

The husband and I were supposed to have dinner last night with some friends of ours who live up the road, but they had a llama emergency and had to cancel. (They have about two dozen llamas and several of them are pregnant.) We ended up having dinner on our own and then checked out the new Barnes and Noble store in Kalispell. It’s not a large store—it went into the former Pier One building—and it’s heavy on hardbacks, gifts, and kids’ books, but it was fun to look around for a bit. When the girls were little, we used to go out to dinner and then to Borders for our family outings.

**********

Obviously, there has not been any sewing. I look longingly at my cutting table as I pass by. I’m also trying to decide what to do about the podcast. It’s doing very well—almost too well, lol. I passed five thousand downloads about a week ago. Clearly, there seems to be an audience for people wanting to hear about sewing and not cats.

[I have nothing against cats—we love the feral one who manages the mouse population around our chicken coop—but the cat thing has almost become a cliché. I was talking to someone last week who made the comment (unsolicited by me) that she likes to listen to podcasts until people start talking about their cats instead of the podcast topic.]

In hindsight, I wonder if I should have started with a podcast every other week rather than weekly, although finding and creating content hasn’t been too onerous. I have episodes scheduled through mid-May. I still need to get the social media end of things under control, though, if I can find time.

I have thoughts about all of this. I just need to organize them.

And I have a favor to ask. I found this piece of sweater knit on the Walmart remnant rack in Missoula.

Unfortunately, it is only a two-yard cut. (They seem to be leaning toward selling two-yard cuts, which is annoying to me as sometimes I need more.) Our Walmart has several pieces in this same pattern/fabric, but not in green. If you see it at your local store, would you let me know? I’d love to have another two-yard chunk. Two yards probably is enough for a Toaster sweater, especially if I use solid black for the collar and cuffs, but with four yards, I’d consider making a sweater dress. Thank you!

Photos and a Book Review

I’ve created a photo album for the visit to the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives for the Sew Butte exhibit. If I can figure out how to add captions, I’ll do so, but for now, enjoy the photos. And if you are anywhere within a day’s drive, I highly recommend visiting the exhibit in person.

I have a book review for you today. This novel is part of a series that ranks right up there with the Darkover novels by Marion Zimmer Bradley as one of my favorites. The author is Sara Donati—the pen name of Rosina Lippi—and the title is The Sweet Blue Distance.

These novels follow members of the same family over a span of almost 100 years, from the late 1700s to the late 1800s. The original series—dubbed the “Wilderness” series because it begins with the book Into the Wilderness—details the story of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Bonner and their home in upstate New York. If you really want to sink your teeth into these books, start with that one. (I will warn you, however, that the second book in the Wilderness series, Dawn on a Distant Shore, is the weakest of the entire lot and best consumed as quickly as possible so that you may continue on with the rest of the novels.)

[Apple trees figure prominently in one of the later novels in the Wilderness series, which is why I have a Westfield Seek-No-Futher in my orchard. That was one of the varieties mentioned by name in the book. Susan found the scion wood for it and grafted two for me. One died, but one is still solidering on in the orchard in front of our house.]

The Endless Forest, the last book in the Wilderness series, was published in 2010, and we all thought that would be the end of the story. Rosina Lippi said it was unlikely there would be additional books. However, in 2015, I was walking through a Barnes and Noble in Spokane Valley and spotted The Gilded Hour. I am quite positive I let out an audible squeak of joy. The Gilded Hour picks up the story with one of Elizabeth and Nathaniel Bonner’s grandchildren, Anna Savard, now a physician in New York City. It is part of what Rosina Lippi refers to as “the Waverly Place series.” It was followed up by the second Waverly Place book entitled Where the Light Enters.

[I have every single one of these books in hardback, because they are that good.]

The Sweet Blue Distance bridges the gap between the Wilderness series and the Waverly Place series. Carrie Ballentyne, another of Nathaniel and Elizabeth’s grandchildren—but older than Anna Savard of The Gilded Hour—is a midwife in New York City. Through family and professional connections, she learns of a position available in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In May of 1857, she begins the journey across the country with her brother, Nathan. There is so much more to the story, but for me to explain it would spoil the joy of reading it.

Lippi is a master storyteller. Once I start one of her novels, I know I won’t be able to put it down until I finish it. She is skilled at weaving subordinate mysteries through the primary tale—mysteries that don’t resolve until the last few pages of the book. Her research is thorough and detailed, with a deep understanding of the cultural undercurrents of the period. She sugarcoats nothing, which can be devastating when one develops an emotional connection to a character who gets killed off as part of the story. (She once said, in her blog, that she rolls dice to decide who lives and who dies.) The character development is superb, which is why it is easy to find that kind of connection.

I cannot give this series enough praise. If you enjoy historical fiction with a dash of mystery, you’ll love these books as much as I do.

***********

I am still chipping away at the to-do list. It looks like we have one more cold day—temps in the 40s—before we warm up. I think we will be planting potatoes this weekend. I got German Butterballs again; they were so good last year. I also got Clearwater Russet and Umatilla Russet. I am quite fond of russets.

My Teal Emerald

I finished the Emerald dress yesterday and I am quite happy with it. I know this will get a lot of wear this summer.

Besides lengthening it—which I am very glad I did—I made a few minor changes. The instructions were somewhat vague about the topstitching. The pattern cover shows topstitching along the front and back seams, but I skipped that. I also topstitched close to the garment edge, rather than along the edges of the facings (about 2" in from the edge). I prefer more subtle topstitching that doesn’t emphasize the facings.

I love the bias drape. A YouTube sewist I follow says that she has yet to see a bias-cut garment that isn’t flattering on all bodies, and I agree. The V-neckline is perfection. I am undecided about the uneven hem; I think I would prefer a straight one. That Brussels Washer Linen is a dream to work with.

I did not like the sleeve facings and will change them if I make this again. I cannot for the life of me figure out why they were done they way they were. The facings are a crescent shape attached to the sleeve openings before the side seams are sewn. I had to do a lot of monkeying around to get them correct, and to me, they look amateurish and spoil the clean lines of the inside of the garment. I would extend the ends of the sleeve facings enough to sew them together into a full circle around the armhole opening. I suppose that because this is a grown-on sleeve, the designer was trying to minimize bulk at the base of the armhole opening, but I don’t think that extending the facing into a complete circle will make that opening uncomfortable, and it certainly will improve the appearance of the inside of the garment.

I’m still undecided on this pattern as a class. Making it took much longer than expected; I usually multiply my construction time by three to get a sense of how long a class would take, and that puts this one up around two full days. I’ll take the dress to the store and show the owner and talk to her about it.

I plan to shorten this to a tunic length and make a few tops. I’d be hesitant to make this pattern in a rayon challis or even a rayon twill, because cutting and sewing a fabric like that on the bias likely would drive me around the bend. Even with this relatively stable linen fabric, as soon as I cut each pattern piece for this dress, I took it straight to the serger and finished the edges so they wouldn’t stretch out. This dress can also be made by cutting the pattern pieces on the straight of grain, although there is less drape that way.

**********

I made a nice dent in the to-do list yesterday, but I need to attack the rest of it today. The indoor lettuce system needs to be cleaned out. I planted a tray of fresh rooting plugs with lettuce seeds and took the tray out to the greenhouse. By the time I get the current system cleaned out and washed, the seeds should have germinated and the plugs will be ready to move back inside.

We are supposed to be back into the 60s next week, and hopefully done with winter for good. This is Montana, though, and one never knows.

Animal Antics

Today, I get to pause and breathe after the recent whirlwind of activity. I am grateful for a few days of cold weather—we got a skiff of snow overnight—that will give me a reason to stay inside. The heater is on in the greenhouse and the seedlings will be okay until temps warm up again this weekend. The chicks are snug in their brooder box, and we have no shortage of animal entertainments in the yard.

This gentleman has been wooing a small flock of hens for the past week, without much success:

He spends a lot of time out by the chicken coop, too, and that makes Dave nervous. Dave doesn’t like competition.

The robins decided which porch rafter bay they liked best and finished building a nest. This is right outside my kitchen window, so I’ll have a front row seat when babies are born:

We have not seen any bear sign yet, although I know they are out of hibernation.

We decided to raise pigs this summer after all. We’ve had several inquiries from customers about reserving pork for the fall. Our pig supplier texted me on Sunday and asked if we wanted any this year. I suspect Cassie might have mentioned us, because this lady also provides the 4-H kids with their livestock, and Cassie was heading to her farm right after the wedding shower. I called the processor yesterday and made sure we had a date reserved, then texted the supplier and said we’d take five piglets some time in the next couple of weeks.

I’m going to put a roast into the crockpot after breakfast, then tackle the to-do list.

********

I need to comment here about unreasonable expectations. I checked my e-mail when I got to the hotel Sunday evening and noticed that I had received an order that afternoon for several back issues of Twists and Turns through the Big Sky Knitting Designs website. Those are delivered to the customer via digital download. I noted the arrival of the order and moved on to the next e-mail.

When I got home Monday evening, the husband mentioned that there was a message on the answering machine from a customer about a pattern. It was after business hours (and I was tired), so I made a note to myself to deal with the problem first thing Tuesday morning. However, I came down in the morning to discover that the customer had filed a dispute with PayPal for non-fulfillment of the order.

1. I suspect the files are in the customer’s spam folder. I very rarely get complaints about files not being delivered. When I do, I send the files directly to the customer via e-mail and follow up to make sure they have been received.

2. I don’t even argue about these types of problems anymore. A dispute filing is a black mark against my seller rating, so I immediately refund the customer’s payment. I did the same with this customer.

3. I included a message to the effect that I was sorry the customer felt the need to file the dispute and explained that I had been traveling. I also said that I would have e-mailed the missing files immediately had I been given the opportunity to resolve the problem.

This is one of the unfortunate side effects of the culture in which we’re living. People have developed incredibly unrealistic expectations about almost everything. I am a one-person operation and occasionally, I am away from home. I don’t put my cell phone number on the website because I am careful about who has that number and because I do not believe it is necessary for everyone to have instant access to me. I do think my knitting patterns are worth purchasing, certainly, but they aren’t so important that the customer can’t wait 24 hours for an answer to a question. However, people have been trained to expect an immediate response for everything, no matter how trivial.

I’m old enough to remember when we had to send away via snail mail for items, and the terms and conditions almost always stated, “Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery.” If some of these people had to wait 6-8 weeks for delivery these days, they might die of impatience. 🧐

Sew Butte!

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives had an exhibit on vintage sewing machines from the collection of Virgil “Sarge” Sargent. I contacted the archives and asked about the possibility of doing a podcast episode about the exhibit. That led to a discussion with Laura Sargent, Virgil’s widow, and an invitation to come down and view the machines in person. We decided on a date and I made plans. I left after church Sunday afternoon and enjoyed a lovely 3-1/2 hour drive down to Missoula and across I-90 to Butte. I needed to run away by myself for a while.

I’ve been through Butte a number of times, but I am ashamed to say that I have lived in Montana for 30 years and never been to Butte, except for the time I stopped at the Walmart there on the way back from Boise to get a battery for the BMW’s key fob. I checked in to the hotel Sunday evening, got a good night’s sleep, and arrived at the Archives yesterday morning at our appointed meeting time of 9 am.

My native Montana friends are welcome to weigh in on this opinion as they know more than I do, but Butte and Great Falls and Helena feel more like real Montana to me. Kalispell sometimes doesn’t even feel like part of Montana. Those cities seem to have a much better sense of—and are better caretakers of—their history. We have a historical society here in Kalispell, but not like the one in Butte. For whatever reason, I rarely hear about the history of Kalispell with the same level of detail. Perhaps it is because Butte’s history is so inextricably tied to the mining industry, and Great Falls’ to that of Lewis and Clark.

The Archives are housed in the old firehouse, which has a series of wonderful quotes about Butte engraved on the outside of the building:

Waiting outside the building when I arrived were three women, who introduced themselves as Laura Sargent, Leslie Doyle, and Rose Brock. Leslie and her partner moved to Butte some years ago and ended up working for Laura’s husband, Virgil, at the antique store he owned. (Laura has recently retired from a position with the county.) Sadly, both Virgil and Leslie’s partner died within a few months of each other, leaving behind an antique store and a warehouse full of merchandise.

To help deal with their grief, Leslie and Laura decided to do something with the sewing machines, and approached the Archives about an exhibit. They enlisted Rose’s help as a member of the Butte Chateau Quilt Guild to provide antique quilts as part of the display.

Laura walked me around the exhibit, which was set up to tell a story in chronological order. All of the machines came from somewhere in Butte-Silver Bow County. That alone blew my mind, as some of the machines were quite esoteric, like this Lewis industrial machine that was used to sew blind hems in draperies.

Butte had quite the fur garment industry, too, as one would expect in a cold climate and also in a place where some people were very, very wealthy.

The first floor showcased machines through the mid-1900s. Upstairs, the exhibit continued with more modern machines and one very early serger (Laura’s own). I was quite tickled by this Rocketeer that resides in a retrofitted treadle parlor cabinet.

I will try to make up an album of all the photos I took.

After touring the exhibit, the four of us sat down in the conference room for a conversation and podcast episode. We concluded the visit with lunch at a local restaurant, where I had the most amazing Reuben sandwich of my life. I was back on the road by 1 pm and home just before dinnertime.

Rose and Laura both asked if I would come back to teach a serger class, so I expect I’ll be making a few more trips to Butte in the future if we can make suitable arrangements. I’m only sorry it took me 30 years to get there. I do love Montana.

***********

The greenhouse is beginning to look very green, indeed. All of my seedlings have popped up, and on Sunday, just before I left, Sarah brought over half a dozen flats of plants she started at home. Susan and Elysian are also planning to bring over some of their seedlings. Every year, we try to have more inventory for the plant sale.

I’ve got another busy day today, but I’m hoping to be able to catch my breath tomorrow and finish that Emerald dress.

New Look Pattern Haul

Hobby Lobby will no longer be carrying New Look patterns. On my way to a wedding shower brunch yesterday morning, I stopped in at our store and looked through the clearance rack to see what I could find. All of the New Look patterns were $0.99.

I have plenty of patterns, so I confined myself to just a few—mostly dresses, a couple of hoodies, and one baby pattern that features a technique I might want to use to develop a serger class.

I am not sure what is going on with this clearance. I hope this doesn’t signal a trend by Hobby Lobby to downsize its fabric department, especially not in the face of the Joann Fabrics bankruptcy. I have had good luck with New Look patterns, although their size range is limited and I’m at the upper end of it.

The wedding shower was lovely. The bride is a member of the large family that helped found our church, and even though her immediate family worships elsewhere in the valley, she is getting married in our church’s sanctuary. I am supposed to be the pianist. I’ve known this young woman since she was about three years old, because she and DD#2 took dance lessons together.

The bride is on the left, DD#2 is on the right. Hard to believe this was more than 20 years ago.

I had fun visiting with my friend, Cassie, at the shower. She’s also part of that large family and lives up by our church with her husband, five kids and pigs, cows, and chickens. We have no shortage of homesteading topics to discuss. Her kids are in 4-H. I gave them a Singer Spartan sewing machine last year and Cassie said they have gotten a ton of use from it.

I came home after the shower and spent an hour puttering around the greenhouse and garden. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous lately. I moved hoses around and the husband and I walked the perimeter to see where the fencing needs to be repaired. The cucumbers and melons seeds I planted a few days ago have popped up. Unfortunately, a system is supposed to drop down from Canada on Tuesday and put us back down into the 40s for a few days before warming up again. I need to get seed potatoes this week. Planting those is on the schedule for next Saturday.

And I worked on the Emerald dress for a few hours before dinner. Despite the simple design, it’s a bit fiddly. I am not sure it will make a good class unless we do the top version. It would be difficult to have students cutting out large pattern pieces on the bias. There is a lot of staystitching, understitching, and edge finishing. (I finished the edges on the serger and sewed the seams on the machine.) I’ve gotten as far as attaching the neck facing and one armhole facing. I still have the second armhole facing and hem facing to finish. That probably won’t happen until mid-week, because today, tomorrow, and Tuesday are full, but I’ll be able to take advantage of the crummy weather to stay inside and sew.

When I say “fiddly,” I’m comparing construction of woven garments to construction of knit ones. I can whip out a knit top consisting of five seams and a hem in a couple of hours, so I forget that clothing made from wovens takes longer to complete. I think I’m going to like the dress, though. The Brussels Washer Linen has been a dream to work with.

Peeps, 2024 Edition

After breakfast yesterday morning, I went back into town to see if the farm store had gotten the shipment of chicks. I heard peeping as soon as I walked in. It is amazing to me how such tiny animals can make such a huge racket. Fifteen minutes later, I walked out with a box containing 12 Buff Orpington chicks, who are now occupying the brooder box in our old garage:

This is a lively bunch. They spent the day hoovering down food and establishing their own little pecking order.

I, of course, am an anxious mama and will be for a few weeks until they are big enough to go out to the coop.

The bunny—turning browner by the day—was out by the porch again:

I spent the rest of the morning working on pastor search stuff. Our congregation is actively seeking a new pastor, but we are at a distinct disadvantage. We are small and cannot currently support a full-time position. We are geographically isolated from other Mennonite congregations—unlike the east coast, where one can swing a cat and hit half a dozen Mennonite churches. And we’re in an area that has become unaffordable for many people. We began our search using the established channels, but that has yielded no candidates. A few weeks ago, I had a great conversation with a friend of mine in Boise whose church is also looking for a pastor. She suggested several ways we could broaden our search. Because I am the chairman of the search committee, I’m the point person for most of this work, although Susan’s daughter—who is also on the committee—did a chunk of research that is making my job easier.

This is a process, and we are aware that it is a process that may take a while. It’s also a situation where the concept of “trusting the process” takes on more weight.

After lunch, I finished tracing the Emerald dress pattern. There are two lengthen/shorten lines on the pattern, one just under the bust and one further down at the hips. The pattern indicates that it was drafted for someone who is 5’6" tall. I added 2" to the length of the dress using the upper line. Dresses that hit just below my knees are more flattering on me than shorter ones. Now it’s on to making the muslin.

Basking in the Solar Rays

I spent a lovely couple of hours (in blessed peace and quiet) out in the greenhouse yesterday. Sometimes I play podcasts while I work, but yesterday I enjoyed the silence. I planted cucumbers—two kinds—butternut squash, and zucchini. I did quite a few of all of these because we never seem to have enough at the plant sale. The trays have covers on them to keep little rodents from digging up the seeds, but I have extra seeds in case that happens.

When the sun is out, the greenhouse warms up nicely. Part of the reason we don’t use the greenhouse in the winter is because we just don’t get enough sun here. Heat is great, but plants won’t grow in a hot, dark greenhouse.

I have started tracing the Emerald dress. I found some fabric in the stash—a four-yard length from Walmart—that will work nicely as a muslin. Cutting the pattern pieces will require me to use our bedroom floor, as they have to be laid out over a large single layer of fabric and positioned on the bias, but once they’re cut, the dress should go together quickly.

I ran across this intriguing pattern a few days ago. This is the Ina Top by Juliana Martejevs.

This top fascinates me from a construction standpoint, although it isn’t something I would wear. The color-blocked sections are joined together with a contrasting serger stitch and stretched to create a lettuce edge.

Late yesterday afternoon, I recorded a podcast interview with a guest—it will be next week’s episode—that I enjoyed very much. Truly, getting to talk to these creative people is the best part of having a podcast.

********

After my blog rant yesterday, the following popped up in my Facebook feed. The husband and I listen to Jordan Peterson occasionally. I don’t agree with everything he says, but he often provides food for thought, and what he said, below, resonated. Before someone comes at me for posting this, I am aware that there are many causes of depression and many effective ways to treat it, but certainly, each of us must take responsibility for our behavior.

Take Your Place In The Hierarchy (Jordan Peterson)

If you want to take your place properly in the hierarchy, part of your goal is to be a good person. We have a very old system in our nervous systems that keeps track of where we are in hierarchies, and it regulates our emotions. If you are not a complete psychopath, then you have a place in a social hierarchy. You are admired, respected, and valued by other people — and the neurochemical system that keeps track of that regulates your other emotions.

If you are low on the totem pole, for whatever the reason happens to be—sometimes you deserve it or sometimes it is accidental—your serotonin levels plummet, and you feel much more negative emotion and much less positive emotion about everything. That is clinical depression. So, it is absolutely crucial that you maintain a tenable position in the hierarchy—not one of power but one of competence. Even if you are not in a position that is tenable, you must be moving upward toward one that is—because that gives you hope.

People hit runs of bad luck and situations that can take them out of life—unfortunate illnesses, betrayal, and so on. There is no shortage of randomness and horror that can wipe you out even if you are doing your best. But you do not have a better plan than to do your best, and it tends to work much better than you think it will. Hierarchies are set up on reciprocity, skill, and trust. Almost everywhere, if you go above and beyond the call of duty in an intelligent way—interpersonally, socially, and with regard to the diligence of your work, the truth of your attitude, and courage—that will work.

Do your best. How simple, and how difficult.

More Log Cabin Blocks

I enjoyed teaching my serger mastery class yesterday. I only had one student, but I don’t mind teaching a private class. She was thrilled with her new machine and wanted to learn as much as she could about its capabilities. We went through the mechanics of it, then tried out the various stitches with different settings and threads. She left class excited to use her machine to make clothing and other items.

Our Mountain Brook Ladies Club made a quilt again this year to raffle off to raise money for the Homestead Foundation. Having struggled through those curvy log cabin blocks recently, I marvel at the amount of work that went into putting this one together. There are little stars in the centers of all those log cabin blocks.

Making a raffle quilt every year is a group effort. Several women pieced the quilt, another one quilted it on her longarm, and another lady sewed down the binding. My contribution was to sew the label onto the back of it, which I did last night. I’ll get a photo and ticket information onto the homestead foundation website later this week.

The husband set up the brooder box in the old garage. I have an appointment in town this morning and will stop at the farm store afterward to see if they have chicks. They usually get a shipment on Wednesdays. We have all black, white, and black-and-white chickens at the moment—with one mahogany-colored rooster—so I most likely will come home with some Buff Orpington or Rhode Island Red pullets.

We have not seen the little owl again, but I heard it in the trees one morning as I was walking out to the greenhouse. It must have a nest close by.

I’ve got two podcast interviews scheduled this week and two more next week. We’re heading into what looks like a string of warm days—62F by Sunday—so I am going to plant melons, cukes, and zucchini this afternoon. Most of the seedlings I planted two weeks ago are up and growing. If I get all of my planting done today, I’m going to start working on at least a muslin of that Made by Rae Emerald dress that the store owner wants as a class.

**********

I’m going to Seattle next month. DD#2’s boyfriend’s mother is also going to be there that weekend so I’ll get to meet her in person. I’m excited about that. And I’m going to need that road trip by then. I truly do not know what is going on, but I seem to have become the dumping ground for everyone else’s neuroses, criticism, and snark, and I am sick and tired of it. I have a rule: When dinner conversation between me and the husband devolves into me recounting all the toxic garbage I had to deal with that day, every day, something has to change. He doesn’t deserve to be party to it, too.

Here’s a news flash: Everyone is not entitled to my time. People do not have the right to bitch about the way I am doing something that no one else wants to do. I was not put on this earth to be unpaid staff for other people or organizations. An occasional thank-you would not be amiss. (The song leaders at church got together at Christmas and gave me a gift card to a local restaurant, which was so thoughtful and so unexpected.) I am not interested in having other people project their anxieties upon me.

And for heaven’s sake, it would be wonderful if everyone developed basic reading comprehension skills. I think I am a pretty good communicator, but people on the other end seem bent on deliberately misunderstanding what I say.

From now on, if you come at me with a load of negativity or crap that isn’t mine to deal with, expect to be ignored. I am too busy living and enjoying my life to expend any mental bandwith on negativity.

Green is the Theme

After discovering that I bought a regular Creative Grids 6" log cabin ruler in February instead of a curvy 6" log cabin ruler, I ordered the correct one from Shabby Fabrics. They are in Coeur d’Alene, ID, which boded well for quick shipping and receipt. Indeed, I ordered the ruler on a Tuesday and it arrived two days later.

This ruler makes my brain hurt. Part of it is the badly-written instructions. (I commented on this a few months ago with regard to the 8" ruler. ) Part of it is that I am trimming “logs” unevenly; the logs on one side of the block are wider than the logs on the other side of the block. I have to pay very close attention to which side logs are added and how they are trimmed. The seam ripper and I have become very close friends.

It has taken me much longer than I planned to make these two blocks.

I am reconsidering the idea of making an entire quilt. A table runner might do just fine. We’ll see. The second block was easier than the first, so maybe by the time the third one is done, I’ll know what I am doing. The actual block made by the ruler is one quadrant of this larger block, and I make fewer mistakes if I chain piece all four quadrants at the same time.

The topic for this week’s podcast is scrap quilts.

********

After running errands yesterday morning, I stopped in at the quilt store to see how many people are registered for my serger mastery class this afternoon. (One, which is fine.) While I was there, the owner said she’d love to have a class on this pattern:

I have a chunk of Robert Kaufman Brussels Washer Linen in the stash, but I’m not sure I have enough. This dress is cut on the bias and requires almost four yards for my size. I might only have three. It’s a great dress, though, and one I could live in all summer. Shortened a bit, it would make a lovely tunic.

********

It is still cold and rainy here. We got snow over the weekend, although it didn’t stay long. We are spending a small fortune heating the greenhouse, but it has to be done now that the seedlings are up. The weather is supposed to improve considerably by the weekend. I’m going to plant the next round of seeds tomorrow afternoon.

The plants in the indoor lettuce system are just about spent. They are starting to bolt, so I’ve cut what’s on them and put the excess in a zip bag in the fridge. I’ll clean out and replant the whole system soon. We had salad with our spaghetti last night, and the husband commented that the lettuce was especially delicious. We are lettuce connoisseurs.

Adding to the Apple Orchard

Costco had apple trees in stock yesterday. I am glad they finally figured out that the first week of March was too early to sell fruit trees in Montana and bumped it back to the first week of April. Most of the varieties they were selling were ones we already have, but I did get one called Wolf River. That apple is new to me. I asked Susan—our local apple expert—and she provided information from one of her books. Wolf River originated in Wisconsin in the mid-1800s, although there are competing accounts of its development.

Apple purists eschew Costco trees with root balls wrapped in sawdust, but Costco trees have done well for us. My State Fair tree came from Costco, as did both the Honeycrisps, the Red Wealthy, and the Golden Delicious—all consistent bearers. I put the Wolf River sapling out in the greenhouse in a large pot until we have time to get it into the ground.

More tomato seedlings have popped up, including several Blue Boar Berry. That was the variety from which I had forgotten to save seeds, so I used seeds from a tomato that had fallen last September and spent the winter on the ground in the garden. Nature is amazing.

I got enough ground beef on sale yesterday to make chili for the pie social. I cooked the ground beef when I got home and will make the roaster pan of chili today. That will go into the freezer until we need it at the beginning of May.

I also finished the little zipper pouch:

It’s cute! I’d like to enlarge this pattern just a bit.

And my blouse pattern resurfaced. It was with the fabric, as I had suspected. I’d like to get a muslin made soon, but I just made a to-do list for next week and it’s not looking promising for any sewing time.

I am struggling (again) with maintaining boundaries around my time. I have over a dozen tasks on next week’s list, only two of which have anything to do with my professional life. Every other task on that list is something related to volunteer activities such as church or the homestead foundation. This was why the Word of the Year last year was NO. If I am not careful, the tail starts to wag the dog. Some of that stems from the assumption that Janet doesn’t have a “real job” and some of it is because I am sitting on a unique toolkit of abilities. We need a video for our church website that will aid us in finding another pastor. Guess who is going to dust off her iMovie skills and make one?

[I’m whining, but it’s my blog and I pay for the privilege of having a place to whine if I want to. 🫅🏻 On another note, one of the YouTube sewists I follow said in her latest video that she got a rude comment from someone who didn’t like the way she spoke. She happens to be German but does all her videos in English—an accomplishment in and of itself—and I find her commentary to be utterly charming. What is it with people that they feel the need to visit such nastiness upon others?]

So much needs to be done and it is all important. The key part is making sure that it isn’t all done by me. I am asking for help and delegating where appropriate, but not everyone knows how to build websites or render videos. Or has a greenhouse. Or can play the piano.

And now it’s time to eat breakfast.

Patterns MIA

Mornings are for paperwork and tasks that require mental acuity. I finished those mid-morning yesterday and went to my sewing room, intending to make up a muslin of my thoroughly frankenpatterned blouse pattern. The weather will warm up eventually and I will need some blouses to wear.

I could not find the pattern. A few weeks ago, I folded the pattern pieces carefully and put them into a plastic envelope with the original, and now I can’t find the envelope. I suspect it is with the fabric I set aside for the muslin. Now I just need to find the fabric.

I gave up searching and came back downstairs to my office to work on a quilt on the Q20. I quilted for about an hour, but an hour at a time is about all I can manage before I start getting sloppy.

I went back upstairs to my sewing room and decided that a zipper pouch would be a manageable project for the afternoon. I can make simple zipper pouches in my sleep; for this pouch, I chose a pleated zipper pouch pattern following this YouTube tutorial. I was halfway through the project when the Shiny Toy came home early from work and needed some foundation plans printed so he could prepare bids.

[Printing in our house has been an ongoing headache. I have a Brother laser printer hooked up to my computer. Theoretically, he should be able to print from his computer in the office to that printer. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. That printer doesn’t seem to like complicated foundation plans. A few months ago, I moved the Epson inkjet printer to his office. He couldn’t print to that one over WiFi, either, so I bought a cable and hard-wired it to his computer. His computer still can’t find it. (Yes, I have updated all the drivers.) To avoid having a frustrated husband who cannot print foundation plans, I have him e-mail the files to my computer and I print them.]

At that point, it was almost time to start working on dinner, so I just gave up on the zipper pouch. I need to do some topstitching, then assemble it.

It’s a weird color combination, but that green fabric was a fat quarter sitting on my cutting table so I used it.

I made this project the other day:

I’m going to make at least one more because I had to work out quite a few bugs in the process of assembling this one. That’s a purchased onesie, cut in half, with a skirt inserted into the middle. Cute, yes. A PITA?—also yes. Serging a woven fabric to a knit fabric is not without issues. I have some ideas for making the process easier. Fortunately, Old Navy onesies are not expensive, and they are better quality than the packaged ones.

**********

Seedlings are popping up all over the greenhouse. I am weeks behind other people in starting plants, but my schedule is based on several years of experience growing plants in the greenhouse. I don’t think leggy tomatoes or rootbound plants make for an attractive plant sale. We all end up with the same size plants at the end of the summer. According to the long-term forecast, April is supposed to be warm. I expect plants to grow like gangbusters between now and the third weekend in May.

A group of us got together last night at the church to prep onions and potatoes for the brat booth at the auction this weekend. This started a few decades ago as a way for our church’s youth group to make some money. The auction paid the kids to cook and serve brats—a locally-made product from a company owned by a member of our congregation—but our youth grew up and moved away. We have another generation of kids in church, but they are all under the age of 10, so adults staff the brat booth. The husband finds this hilarious, because the adults working the booth wear aprons that say Mennonite Youth Group on them.

I still smell like onions this morning.

I have to make a roaster full of chili for our homestead foundation pie social at the beginning of May. Susan sent me a text yesterday that one of the grocery stores is having a 12-hour sale today and ground beef is $2.98 a pound. It has been running $5.98 a pound. I need 15 pounds for one batch. I’ll get that today and make the chili tomorrow. It will go into the freezer until we need it.

Stitch-Outs

We had fun with thread yesterday afternoon. Six students registered for the class. One was not feeling well and one didn’t show, but the remaining four students and I spent 3-1/2 hours testing out various combinations of thread and stitches. (One lady had even driven up from Missoula to take the class.) The experimentation was very educational, and not just for the students. I’ve done most of my work with decorative threads on my serger, so it was nice to see how they looked when stitched out on sewing machines. The selection of threads in the kits was great; they were chosen for me by Wonderfil’s teacher coordinator, Samantha. I got to meet her in person at Sew Expo. She is a smart cookie.

Thread class is on the short list to offer again, probably over the summer. I sent a list of class ideas to the store’s class coordinator so we could get them on the calendar. And I am hoping to spend at least part of today working on class samples.

I bought the Angela Walters FMQ book while I was at the store yesterday. I got one of the last copies—they sold out quickly considering the fact that there were half a dozen there on Friday.

**********

These two were sitting outside the kitchen door the other morning:

I see them hopping all over our yard. I expect babies in the not-too-distant future.

Even more seedlings have popped up since I took this photo on Monday:

I have to get past this fundraising auction this weekend and then I can plant the cucumbers and melons. We also get chicks next week. It’s raining as I write this blog post. We desperately need the moisture, so I hope it continues for a few days.

The husband brought the new (used) trailer home from Missoula. It’s a long gooseneck trailer and it took a bit of maneuvering to find a spot for it.

I just want to scream at the QuickBooks people. I logged in yesterday to do some paperwork and they have changed the home screen AGAIN to look completely different. I wish they would stop messing around with the layout. If someone hasn’t already done a PhD thesis on how disruptive this kind of stuff is to office productivity, it would make a great topic.

And I found out the other day that Affinity, the layout and graphics software I’ve been using because I don’t want to pay $60 a month to Adobe, has been sold to Canva. Affinity had a flat-fee pricing scheme—pay $169 once and use the software. Canva sent out an e-mail saying that they have no plans to change that, but I don’t believe them. They’ll change it to a “software as a service” subscription plan as soon as they think they can get away with it.

Thread

I have learned so much about thread in the past couple of days. This is side benefit of teaching: the research required to amass information and put it together in a coherent presentation is as educational for me as it is for students. As a knitter and handspinner, I know a lot about yarn. Thread is not dissimilar, but some of the more technical aspects were unfamiliar to me.

Thread will be the subject of this week’s podcast. I see no point in wasting all that research. I also gave a short presentation to the husband yesterday morning while I was cooking breakfast.

These are the thread kits that Wonderfil put together for me:

I had a chat with the store’s class coordinator on Saturday. One of the items on today’s to-do list is to get her a list of upcoming classes so she can get them on the schedule. That store has an amazing roster of classes and time slots are at a premium.

**********

We had a beautiful Easter service yesterday morning. I put the lid up on the baby grand—I don’t usually do that because it makes it hard for me to see the song leader and it also changes the sound slightly—but for special occasions, I think it’s appropriate. My prelude music was a bit more rousing than usual, too. 😇

Susan’s younger grandson wore one of the shirts I made for him. I was happy to see that I got the size right.

We had another afternoon of bright sunshine, and when I went out to water trays of seedlings, I discovered that the white cabbages (Early Dutch Round) have popped up. Yay!

**********

I’ve curated my Twitter/X feed so it contains the accounts of several clothing historians and textile scholars. This morning, one of the accounts mentioned the work of Chloe Giordano. She does the most amazing animal embroidery. I know my friend Sunnie will love the ones with rabbits. Check out Chloe’s website. She has done the cover artwork for a number of books, too, including this one:

Adorable.

Flying Under the Radar

The husband is going down to Missoula tomorrow to get the trailer he purchased accidentally. (I am still laughing.) I would love to go with him, but I have too much work to do here. I know that a lot of people think that I am a lady of leisure because I don’t have a “real job,” but I do have a “real job.” Tomorrow will be dedicated to podcast production and getting ready for my thread class on Tuesday. Oh, and paperwork and bookkeeping for the construction company.

We’ve been discussing the increased amount of flak and criticism I’ve been taking lately. Yesterday, a random stranger on the internet took me to task over a grammatical error in a Facebook post. The husband pointed out that he doesn’t have these problems because he flies completely under the radar.

We found him on the internet, but you wouldn’t know it was the husband unless you recognized his clothing, his truck, or his tattoos. One of his suppliers recently started selling a product through Home Depot. This supplier told us to order through them from now on, so yesterday, the husband and I sat down at the computer to navigate the process. We were looking at the product page, which features a video, and when I played the video, the husband said, “Hey, that’s me!” We both recognized his boots.

This morning, I looked at that supplier’s main website and discovered a much longer video with him in it.

I don’t expect to skate through life without being criticized, but my response to that criticism is going to depend on how important I think it is.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
—Theodore Roosevelt

You don’t like what I am doing or how I am doing it? Feel free to do all the things I am doing but do them perfectly. I’ll be happy to cheer you on. 🎉

***********

The husband sorted out the heater issues in the greenhouse. We also took the shade cloth off the top—it was there because that was the easiest place to store it over the winter—and all of that, combined with yesterday’s abundant sunshine, made it nice and toasty inside. I expect seedlings to start popping up soon. The cucumber plants that Sarah gifted me are in there, as well as the Spokane Beauty apple tree I bought at the plant sale last year. It was still small enough that Susan said I should wait until this spring to plant it. I kept it in the garage all winter, which stays about 55F. Buds were starting to pop out, so I moved it to the greenhouse.

I am hoping to get some pruning time in this week. I don’t think I need to do much.

I cleaned the house yesterday. I think the massage, followed by all the moving and bending I did, helped my back considerably. Whatever muscles were seized up finally let go.

Fun With Knit Fabrics

I had such a great class yesterday. Five students and I spent the afternoon playing with all sorts of knit fabrics—learning about structure, fiber content, stretch, and how their machines handled each one. Three students had sergers and two had sewing machines. I was very proud of all of them, especially the lady who was unfamiliar with her serger (a Brother 1034) and hit some speed bumps on the way. She fell behind a bit and could have given up, but she didn’t, and by the time class was over, she was very familiar with her serger.

And how far we’ve come from Stretch & Sew! The two ladies with sewing machines brought late-model Berninas and were fearless about experimenting with the different kinds of stretch stitches and overcast stitches.

You know it’s a good class when the teacher is having fun, too—so much fun that I forgot to take pictures.

The quilt store just got this book in stock:

I didn’t buy it yesterday, but I’ll probably get it the next time I’m in there. I took a class from Angela a few years ago in Spokane and really enjoyed it. I like her approach to free motion quilting. It makes sense to my brain.

**********

I had a massage yesterday morning. I have something going on with my back; it is definitely muscular, not structural, and every so often it flares up. DD#1 was delivered via C-section and the surgeon did a low transverse incision that cut my abdominal muscles and destroyed my core strength, and now it is manifesting as back problems.

[That’s also known as a bikini incision, and if anyone had thought to ask me at the time, I would have said just do a vertical incision because I’ve never in my adult life worn bikinis, but oh, well.]

I have fewer issues over the summer when I am out working in the garden and moving around. The massage therapist said she could tell that whole area was inflamed. The massage helped, and I am taking ibuprofen, which is also helping, but I am going to have to be better about developing what core strength I have left. I’m going back another week so she can work on that spot again.

**********

We’re supposed to get a few days of really nice weather before dropping back to the mid-40s with rain. The house needs some serious attention, which it will get today. I’ve also got to decide what to talk about on next week’s podcast. I might discuss thread, because I am teaching a thread class on Tuesday, but I might go in a different direction.

I was going to start a curvy log cabin quilt with some scrappy red and white strips—I have two overflowing bags of them—but I discovered that I bought a plain 6" log cabin ruler in February instead of the curvy 6" log cabin ruler. Rookie mistake in not reading the label properly. I do have the 4" and 8" curvy log cabin rulers, but I am feeling like Goldilocks at the moment and neither of those is quite right.

Once the fire department auction is over next weekend, the schedule for the remainder of April eases up considerably, and if the weather improves, I’ll be doing a lot of work outside.

Love is in the Air

Watching the tom turkeys strut around attempting to impress the females is very entertaining. They puff up their chests and display their tail feathers and make lots of gobbling noises. The hens seem uninterested.

We have a mating pair of pileated woodpeckers in the yard. I heard them calling to each other a few days ago when I went out to get the mail, and then I spotted the two of them in the trees. I make the husband nuts because I insist that we leave a few dead trees in the woods for the woodpeckers (and the owls, who apparently nest in them as well), although we did lose the biggest woodpecker tree last year when it blew down in a storm.

I’ve also got a broody hen, although it remains to be seen if she will stay on her nest. She’s been there for a week now.

All the tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage have been planted. We just need some sunshine and warmer weather. I’ll put in the squash and cucumbers in about 10 days. They don’t take long to germinate and get big, and I don’t want them to get rootbound before the plant sale.

I did eighteen pints of beans yesterday morning:

Beans are easy except for the fact that they take 90 minutes to process, and that’s after the canner exhausts and gets up to pressure. All told, it takes about 2-1/2 hours. When they finished, I shut off the stove and ran up the road to our sewing group for a few minutes. Sarah had some cucumber plants for me—they went out to the greenhouse—and I had three chicken feed bags for her. She’s going to try making some tote bags out of them. I also picked up the raffle quilt. The Mountain Brook Ladies Club makes and donates a quilt every year that the Homestead Foundation raffles off to raise money. I’ll get a photo of the quilt soon; I usually take it to church and have someone hang it over the balcony so I can get a shot of the entire quilt.

I came home and prepped for the class I’m teaching this afternoon. I had requests for a class explaining the different kinds of knit fabrics—so people know what they are looking at when they shop the Walmart remnant rack—and I need samples of fabrics for students to practice sewing. I cut those up from my leftovers. Next Tuesday, I am teaching a class on threads. I am a Wonderfil educator and when I was at Sew Expo, I visited with their teacher coordinator about this class. She put together thread kits for each student. These are not glamorous classes, but I think they are important skill builders.

I also got an e-mail with my Backstitch access code. That’s the new app for sewists that is in beta testing:

I went ahead and signed up for a yearly subscription so I could get access to the premium features. I like what I am seeing so far. Jen, at Sewing Report LIVE, did a quick YouTube video about it yesterday. She also seems to be impressed with its potential.

And I put a guest form on the podcast website. Having a guest form was some excellent advice I got from Nicole Sauce at the Living Free in Tennessee podcast. Working with guests—and potential guests—is simultaneously fun and frustrating. I put up a notice in a couple of the Facebook sewing groups I belong to, encouraging anyone who had an interesting story to tell to fill out the guest form. I said I was looking for people with small businesses, people who are proficient in uncommon sewing techniques, etc., not just people talking about their sewing hobby. Almost immediately, several people posted in the comments that they would love to be guests on the podcast and described what they do that relates to sewing.

“Great, would you please fill out the form?”

The form is there as a way for me to 1) Decide if a guest is a good fit for the podcast and 2) Keep all the contact information organized in a database on the back end of the website. I am not going to chase people down. If someone wants to be on the podcast, he or she can fill out a form. Also, it lets me know who is capable of following directions. 😉

I’ve received several submissions and I’m in the process of scheduling interviews.

Spring Went on Vacation

Yesterday was a crummy weather day. The temperature hovered around 30F all day with periodic snow showers. I planted two flats of cabbages in six-packs and gave up because the greenhouse was so gloomy. The husband and the crew knocked off work early because it was snowing even harder where they were.

[Everything is breaking down this week. The forklift blew a hydraulic hose, but he was able to get a replacement hose in town yesterday afternoon. The propane heaters in the greenhouse need new thermocouples. Thank goodness for the diesel heater. The BMW hasn’t broken down only because I’m not driving it anywhere.]

And then, around 3 pm, the skies cleared, the sun came out, and it warmed up to 48F. 😕

Instead of planting, I made an apron.

This is for the son of a friend of mine. He asked for an Avengers apron and our Joanns just happened to have the fabric.

He also wanted the wrap-around style. This one has buttons on the front with adjustable straps. I used the Mary Mulari Little Sister and Brother Apron pattern:

I had to get out the manual to figure out how to make buttonholes on my machine because I do it so rarely.

I am going to hope for better weather today. I have an appointment in town this morning but I’ll be back out in the greenhouse this afternoon.

**********

The husband accidentally bought a trailer last week. We have to go down to Missoula to pick it up. I was watering the lettuce in the indoor system last Thursday evening and he was reading his e-mail when I heard him say, ”Ooops, I bought a trailer.” He had bid on it, not thinking he would get it, but he ended up being the high bidder.

[The CFO of the construction company is not fond of surprises, but after 37 years, nothing surprises me anymore. And he has an idea for another side hustle involving this trailer, so we’ll see what new adventures that brings. This is how I ended up raising chickens in Montana.]

I don’t have to go with him to get the trailer—we paid for it via wire transfer so he just needs to present the paperwork—but I might go along for the ride anyway. I can knit while he drives.

Planting Week in the Greenhouse

Temps haven’t warmed quite as much as predicted. We struggled to get out of the 30s yesterday, but I went out to the greenhouse anyway and planted seven flats of tomatoes. The propane heater is hooked up, the tank is full, and the husband brought in a diesel heater as a backup. The propane heater has the unfortunate tendency to turn itself off in the middle of the night. We learned that lesson the hard way a few years ago. The diesel heater is on a thermostat and will kick on if the temperature drops.

For planting, I use molded trays that hold eighteen 3-1/2" pots. It works best to plant two tomato seeds per pot, then transplant to one per pot after they get their true leaves. If most of the seeds germinate, I should have approximately 250 tomato plants. Some will be for us and some for the sale.

I planted:

Oregon Star Paste
Russian Purple Paste
Aunt Ruby’s Green
Weisnicht’s Ukrainian
Indian Stripe
Cherokee Purple
Abe Lincoln
Dirty Girl
Blue Boar Berry
Dave’s Atomic Grape
Indigo Rose

Other gardeners have also signed up to grow some of these varieties, too, but it never hurts to have backups. All of the pots get individual labels. I never trust myself to know what is planted where. Surprises are fine in my garden, but not when we’re selling plants.

Today, I’ll plant the cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. I’m going to start the peppers on the lettuce growing system downstairs where I think they will have a better chance of germinating. We’re swimming in lettuce right now, but some of the plants will only give one more cutting before they are spent. At that point, lettuce production will move to the greenhouse and eventually the garden.

The greenhouse is a lovely place to spend a quiet afternoon. I also went out to inspect fence damage:

I was standing in the pig pasture when I took this picture. The fence is bent (hard to see), but that is easily repaired.

***********

Still no sewing. When I do sit down, I’ve been working on a prayer shawl and also knocking out some knitted cotton dishcloths. Those can always find homes. Once everything is established in the greenhouse and the garden has been cleaned up, I should have time to sew again.

Taxes are done and filed. We’re getting a refund, but I always have that applied to the current year.

And what a disaster!—the collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore. That was the first thing I saw when I got on the computer this morning. I worked in Baltimore for a couple of years before we moved to Montana, although not in that specific area.

An Owl in the Chicken Coop

Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo. The husband went to close up the chicken coop Saturday night and discovered a little owl sitting on top of the dispenser that holds the oyster shells. It had a mouse in its talons. He thinks it must have found its way in through an opening at the top of the wire that covers the chicken yard. Dave was not happy. Dave runs a tight ship out there and owls are not chickens. The husband opened the door to the coop and coaxed the owl to fly out.

We thought perhaps it might return to the mouse smorgasbord yesterday—in which case I would try to get a picture so I could determine out what kind of owl it was—but its presence in the coop likely was a one-time event.

He assumed it was a baby owl because of its size, but I am wondering if it was a Northern Pygmy Owl.

When I was growing up in Ohio, baby screech owls used to fall out of trees in our yard. The Metroparks people told us to put the baby owl in a box on top of a car in the driveway. Eventually, the mama would come and retrieve it. They also told us to feed the baby owl some chopped up bologna.

‘Tis the season for the wild animals to invade the yard. I saw a report this morning that someone spotted a bear a few miles south of us, too.

********

I decided to take the Kenneth D. King trouser drafting class in October. The timing works and I don’t want to miss this opportunity. The owner of the Sewing and Design School in Tacoma—from whom I took a class last Thanksgiving—sent me an e-mail right away and said she was excited to see that I was signed up.

I gave Susan the little boys’ shirts after church yesterday. They and their parents weren’t in church yesterday because they were traveling. Sundays are the furthest thing from a day of rest for me, so I’ve been trying to make a habit of coming home after church and doing nothing for at least a couple of hours. Yesterday, I read a book.

I’ve been perusing the Joann Fabrics subreddit—Reddit is a discussion board—and found some interesting comments. I didn’t have to dig deep—these are all from the first page:

—Joanns seemed to have staked a claim on fleece and I think that really is very limited in appeal that it may once have had. There are only so many fleece things that anyone wants and all of those huge fleece blankets I think have had their day and are in decline, for good reason, in my personal opinion.
A good serious fabric is harder to source and they have been out of the business of good fabric for most of this century. The cheap craft market likely has a higher profit margin. Even a Linder chocolate ball may have a fifty percent profit on it. That was true years ago when I worked for Borders. That is why you see them at checkouts, even at a bookstore.
I dont hold out hope for a better selection of serious quality garment fabrics if they do survive. There is more profit in cheap.

—They put most of the independent fabric stores out of business. Then they refocused on crafts and crap, and cut back on the fabric choices. Now they can't make it based on selling crafts and crap. No one at the top understands we would actually spend more if they had good fabric choices.

This commenter, below, is a financial analyst and also sews:

—I read more & feel more confident that the chain has a fighting chance, even if store closures are imminent. The fact that existing creditors were willing to accept equity (that means ownership of Joann’s) in exchange for discharging half a billion dollars of debt AND chipping in 100M+ cash is a strong signal that the creditors believe that Joann’s debt burden was the biggest obstacle to it’s solvency. In layman’s terms, it means the creditors (who we know have complete knowledge of the state of the business) feel confident enough that the company is going to get WAY more valuable now that the debt will be halved, that they are collectively betting hundreds of millions of dollars on that outcome.
I’m speculating here - but reading between the lines of their statement I would guess the plan is to dramatically improve the in-store experience in the stores they choose to keep open, win back marketshare by getting back customers lost to HL and Michael’s. They plan to have higher prices than the competition, but justified by having higher-end, higher-quality selection.

—Maybe if my local Joann’s didn’t invest in almost entirely polar fleece they would be doing better.

—Last time I was in there, all they had for fabric was cheap costuming, fleece, and quilting cotton. There was almost not a single bolt of anything I would make decent clothing with. I say almost, because there were a couple bolts of linen. They’ve always been low-end, but they’ve lost their way, completely. If I want clothing made of crap fabric, I can go to a discount store and buy it pre-made.

One can only hope that Joann’s management is listening to what its customers want, which seems to be “less fleece and plastic crap from China and more options for high-quality garment fabric.” Maybe more people would sew their own clothes if they had access to excellent materials. And classes.