The Necchi BV is Sewing Again

I am so happy to see a mostly empty week on my desk planner this week. I slept for almost 10 hours last night. Clearly, I needed it.

A very welcome package was waiting for me when I got home from the pie social Saturday, but I was too tired to do anything except open it. The package contained the old, broken tension stud for my Necchi BV along with a brand-new one. I think I mentioned that I stopped at a machine shop in Spokane last month on my way to Seattle and left the broken stud with a machinist who thought he could replicate it. He did, perfectly!

Yesterday morning, before church, I put the tension assembly back together and fit it into the machine. The stud is that center piece with the thumb screw on it.

I had just enough time to do a quick test sew to confirm that the machine was working properly. The machinist had asked me to let him know if it worked, so I texted him the photo and let him know how pleased I was to have the machine up and running again.

After lunch, I gave Guido—that’s his name—a spa day. This machine is in a treadle base, so I made a new belt, oiled the machine thoroughly, wiped the dust off, installed a new needle, and fine-tuned the tension. You can see that there are no numbers on that tension assembly. Most vintage machines are like that. Tension settings are adjusted by feel.

[Also, industrial machines needles have a round shank, unlike domestic machine needles which have a shank with a flat side. Domestic needles can only go into the machine one way—with the flat side to the back or to the right. Positioning industrial needles correctly takes a bit of practice.]

I am beginning to suspect that old tension stud was worn out, which led to it breaking, because I have always had trouble maintaining good tension on this machine. It is making absolutely perfect stitches now with no extra effort from my end. Perhaps that broken tension stud was a blessing in disguise.

The husband said this machine was lucky to find me. A different owner might have given up and sent the machine to the scrap yard. I’ve always said that if the house were burning down, I would figure out a way to rescue this machine and my little Necchi, because I love them both so much.

Machining is a lost art, and one that I hope will be revived. Not everyone should go to college and work in an office. We need people who know how to make things. The husband always says that the only benefit he got from going to college was finding a wife. 😇

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We have a few more days of warm weather before a trough moves in with cooler temps and rain. If I have to, I can bring tomatoes inside to ripen, but I am hoping that we might get nice weather again before the end of the month.

Right now, making a batch of tomato sauce is on the schedule for Wednesday. I might start some of my bag projects, too, now that Guido is operational again.

The Community Celebrates With Pie

I do love our Mountain Brook community. I think it embodies what community is supposed to be—people coming together to make life better for everyone.

This pie social went very smoothly. A crew of five guys showed up at 2 pm to begin setting out tables and chairs. They hoisted three popup canopies and put out the “Event Ahead” signs on the road. Our cooks brought the ingredients to make pulled pork sandwiches and nachos. And we had a steady string of bakers bringing in pies, all kind of pies. This is Sarah, getting the pies ready to serve:

We had more than enough volunteers, divided into two shifts. We try to keep a clicker count of the number of attendees and Sunnie thought we had about 250, which is 100 more than the spring pie social. People stayed around to help clean up and we were done by 8:00 pm. We don’t have a final count of how much money we raised, but I am fairly sure we surpassed donations given at the spring pie social. Our community is very generous. We sold another $300 worth of quilt raffle tickets and raffled off the quilt near the end of the social.

Now I just need to organize everything into a notebook that can be handed off to the next pie social chairman.

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The husband’s main task yesterday was setting up the trailer for transporting the pigs. We don’t have the best setup for getting in and out of our pig pasture, but that’s going to change soon. There is a large water maple in the way. I hate water maples. They don’t have a trunk per se; they have a collection of thin trunks that grow from the base of the tree, and they also have spindly branches that hang down. As far as I am concerned, they are a very large weed. The husband had to trim the large water maple and a smaller one so he could back the trailer up to the gate.

Here he is removing the small water maple:

The husband told me that after the pigs go to the processor, he plans to take out the large water maple and clear that area. He is also adding another gate to the pasture so he can get equipment in and out of there. The next time we raise pigs, it will be much easier to load them into the trailer.

The tomatoes are coming on and I threw about 10 gallon zip bags full into the freezer I defrosted last weekend. I’m going to try to stay ahead of the curve and start making sauce this week—and hopefully get to do some sewing. The weather is supposed to cool down mid-week. I might get out the bin of sweater knits.

Serger Showcase

The quilt store where I teach is a Bernina dealer. Dealers are required to host “events” at least once a year—a serger event, an embroidery event, etc. These events often are taught by Bernina educators, although I have taught a serger event in the past. Bernina comes up with the project and makes the kits available. These events are a great way for potential buyers to try out machines and for existing owners to get more comfortable with their machines.

For this year’s serger event, the store brought in Kathy Shalda, a Bernina educator from Texas. I didn’t want to take space in front of a machine that could have been used by a student but I did want to participate, so I offered to come and help as a second set of hands. I worked in the background to make sure the irons were hot, troubleshoot machine issues, and do whatever else was needed to help smooth the way for Kathy to teach the class. Our store was the first one in the US to host this season’s serger event. The first time a teacher teaches a class to a group of real students is absolutely nervewracking. We had a few hiccups, but by the end of the class, almost everyone had completed a tool caddy:

I also received a kit and will put together my tool caddy when I have a moment to sew.

Tera was in the class and wore a denim jacket with a beautiful motif she embroidered on the back:

I had a great time at the serger event. I wish I could help at the second session today (and so does Kathy), but I am committed to running the pie social. This is part of what frustrates me about my schedule—the tail ends up wagging the dog instead of the other way around. I may have committed to organizing and chairing this pie social, but I am also committed to handing pie social responsibilities off to someone else to manage in the future now that the event is organized and everything is written down. (Imagine an event without enough volunteers and with all of the information about how to make it happen riding around inside one person’s head. That has been the pie social up to this point.) Sewing is my business and I need to prioritize that before other activities.

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I visited my chiropractor on Thursday. I haven’t been since 2019 because I haven’t had any issues, but I probably should have gotten in earlier this summer. My right hip and right knee have been bothering me, not badly enough to interfere with my daily activities but causing enough discomfort to be noticeable. The massages have helped, but I needed further care.

The good news is that I don’t have any structural issues. I have no arthritis or degenerative problems. The problem is muscle weakness in the back of my leg that is causing the muscles in the front to shorten and pull my hip joint slightly out of place. The chiropractor gave me some exercises to do to help stretch and strengthen the affected muscles. I think that once I get the hip issue straightened out, the knee issue will resolve as well.

I really like my chiropractor. He is in the same office as my naturopath.

The I Spy quilt top is done; I put a border on it and now it’s ready for basting and quilting. I cut the baby quilt on Thursday afternoon. That one is going to be a simple half-square triangle pattern. Right now, HSTs are about all I can manage. I will be very happy when this weekend is over and the pie social is behind me.

My Podcast Guests are the Best

This month is National Sewing Month, but it’s also the month for Project Dress a Girl, which makes and donates dresses for infants and young girls living in poverty around the world. Project Dress a Girl was the brainchild of sewist and designer Mari de Jesus, who owns Inspired Leather, a company making leather hats, bags, and other items. Mari graciously accommodated my request for an interview during what is a busy month for her. Our conversation will air as part of next Tuesday’s episode.

Before I press the record button for an interview, I like to visit with my guests to get a sense of who they are. I also let them know the planned trajectory of the interview. In talking with Mari, I discovered she grew up in Ohio, so I asked where. She said, “A town west of Cleveland”—which is how I describe where I grew up to people who ask—so I pressed a bit more and discovered that she grew up in Lorain. I told her I grew up in Avon, a few miles away, and asked if she had gone to Clearview High School, my parents’ alma mater. She had gone to another Lorain high school, Southview, but it was fun to discover that we were from the same area.

Please visit the website for PDAG and consider making a dress or two to donate. I am going to look through my stash for something fun and make at least one dress this month. The website also has a calendar listing all the PDAG events and YouTube sewists who are participating.

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The husband forgot his phone at home yesterday. I told him I would bring it to him after Susan and I spray-painted “MBHF” on the backs of all the new metal folding chairs purchased recently by the homestead foundation. We’ll be using them at the pie social this weekend. The two of us worked together—supervised by her younger grandson—and got them painted in about an hour.

I have always joked about my “husband radar” because ever since we started dating, I have been able to locate the husband with the vaguest of directions. That is a skill that has come in very handy when needing to visit him on a jobsite.

Yesterday, my husband radar failed me, but it was Flathead County’s fault, not mine. The husband is putting in a foundation on the west side of Flathead Lake. He gave me the address and said “This is hard to find, so put it in your GPS.” I followed the directions, which led me to the named road, but there was no number 817. The numbers started in the 600s. Baffled, I drove around a bit. I could see where the guys were working but not how to get there. I managed to find a closer road—not the one I was supposed to be on—but still couldn’t figure out how to get to the jobsite. In addition, I was on a gravel road that dropped sharply down to the lake and I wasn’t about to go driving into a place where I might get stuck.

I called one of our employees, who alerted the husband, who walked up to where I was parked. He showed me how to get to the jobsite. Flathead County really needs to fix this problem. This road has the same name as the road I was initially led to by GPS, but it’s a completely separate road a quarter of a mile further south with no road sign, and it juts off a road with yet another name. EMS is going to have a difficult time finding someone there who calls for help.

I handed off the phone and went on my way.

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I called our friend Smokey yesterday. He lives around the corner and stops by occasionally to chat and buy eggs from us. I haven’t seen him in a while—I was traveling and he doesn’t believe in the concept of retirement—but he lets us use his stock trailer to transport the pigs. We thank him with bacon. I wasn’t sure he knew that the pigs were supposed to go in next week, so I called to double-check that we could use the trailer. He laughed and said, “Yes, I talked to your husband last weekend when he was out working in the yard,” and I said, “Well, you know that he and I don’t actually communicate with each other.” But better to duplicate our efforts than drop the ball. I called the processor earlier in the week to make sure we were still on the schedule.

Getting Things Done Takes Some Effort

I got out of bed yesterday morning at 4 am, came downstairs, made myself a cup of coffee—morning coffee is an important ritual for me—then sat down at my computer and went to work. Here are all the things I did before the husband came down for breakfast at 6 am:

• Finished the show notes for the podcast, making sure that all the links to items mentioned in the podcast were included.

• Added the intro and outro music to this week’s podcast, exported it as an .mp3 file, then uploaded it to Buzzsprout, where I host my episodes. Wrote the episode summary.

• Finished the episode page on the website (audio file, show notes, RSS feed, and social media links).

• Set up a Zoom meeting link for our homestead foundation fundraising committee meeting that was scheduled for last evening.

• Updated the agenda for the meeting and emailed it to the members along with the Zoom link.

• Emailed three potential podcast guests about scheduling interview times.

• Emailed the duty roster and notes for this weekend’s pie social to all the volunteers.

• Reviewed my notes for a Zoom meeting that was scheduled for 10 am yesterday morning.

• Made a list for my afternoon Costco run.

• Wrote a blog post.

I note all of this not to brag—well, maybe a little—but to help explain my impatience with people who say they don’t have enough time. I could have spent those two hours doom scrolling but I didn’t. I spent about 15 minutes checking social media and moved on.

I said to the husband over breakfast that I was double-booked on Thursday night because everyone wants Janet to be in charge of their projects and events. (I fixed the double-booking issue.) Everyone also believes that they are entitled to unlimited amounts of Janet’s time and energy. I have had to make a concerted effort this week to hold the line on boundaries and remind people that I am not the full-time staff person for their beloved projects. This is also why I hate being micromanaged. No one else on earth can do a better job of managing my time than I can.

More and more, I see a tendency for people to find some organized person and latch onto them, hoping that the organized person will solve all of life’s daily problems. I can’t be that person. There is not enough of me to go around. Twice now, in the past month, I’ve been looped into situations that aren’t anywhere near my wheelhouse. The husband says that people do that hoping that I will just provide the solution.

Yes, I get a lot done. Other people could get a lot done, too. It takes organization and discipline. Those skills can be learned. Maybe it’s because I almost died (twice). I don’t have a lot of patience for people who can’t seem to value the time they’ve been given.

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About six months ago, I broke the tension stud on my beloved Necchi industrial sewing machine. (We shall see if Sunnie’s theory is correct that the word “stud” got my post removed from Facebook last time.) I have missed that machine. It fills the niche between my domestic machine and the Juki 1541. I took the broken stud to a machine shop here in town but the guy there didn’t think he could reproduce it. (Or he didn’t want to try, which is fair.) I contacted a machine shop in Spokane and sent pictures of the broken stud, and the machinist there said he thought he could make me a new one.

I stopped on my way to Seattle last month to visit with him and drop off the part. He sent me a text last night letting me know that the new part is ready:

I’m sending off a check this morning and he is going to ship the part to me.

While I was waiting to start my Zoom fundraising committee meeting last night, the husband put on this video for us to watch (my mother will appreciate this):

This is the workshop of a gentleman who died recently. His widow contacted an estate auction company to come in and dispose of all his machining tools. The amount of stuff he collected over the years is mind blowing. I said to the husband that I wonder if he was collecting all of this stuff just to keep it from ending up as scrap. That’s how I got a garage full of sewing machines. 🧐

One Quilt Top Down, One to Go

I love seeing quilt blocks up on my design wall:

Yesterday was devoted to getting this quilt top put together. It is all done and just needs batting and a backing. I plan to stitch-in-the-ditch quilt along the seamlines.

Now I just need to get the second quilt cut and put together. I’d like to have both done by the end of September. They are a bit overdue as it is. The baby was born at the beginning of August and her older sister is 3. 😬

I have hit the ground running this month. I should have a bit of a breather after this weekend, although the pigs go to the processor next Tuesday and that’s always a big job. I want this pie social off my to-do list. Someone else is going to have to be in charge of them (spring and fall) in 2025. I looked at my calendar this morning and realized that I am double-booked for two events on Thursday evening, so I am going to have to have a talk with my assistant.

My friend Anna came over yesterday to get some cabbages. She has a plant-based catering business and the farmer she ordered cabbage from for this week’s meals never delivered them. I am happy to provide what I can because she pays me in food. She would pay me in cash but I requested food because any meals I don’t have to cook myself are a bonus. I overplanted cabbage thinking the ground squirrels would get some of the seedlings. I only wish the red cabbage had done as well as the white cabbage.

We looked at the tomatoes and the squash and Anna’s going to use some of those, too, in her meal planning in the next couple of weeks as stuff ripens. It is supposed to be 88F on Sunday.

Some friends of mine from back east are coming to visit in the middle of the month and I am ridiculously excited about this. One of my friends sews—she makes items to sell at farmer’s markets—and she and I are going to spend a day together visiting quilt stores. (Everyone else is going hiking. We have our priorities in order. 😇) It will be so good to see them.

I probably won’t put anything in the craft co-op sale—it’s at the end of September—unless I find a day to bind my stack of potholders. I am not going to beat myself up about this. The sewing I did last year consisted mostly of clothing, not stuff for market. I also suspect that I will have to pick up and deliver pork one of those days. I do plan to come and help because the sale is a lot of fun. I put together a basic website for the sale and I’m trying to arrange an interview for the podcast about how the co-op started.

Today is a shopping and errands day. Wish me luck.

Happy National Sewing Month!

September is National Sewing Month! According to the National Sewing Month website,

On September 21, 1982, at the request of the American Home Sewing & Craft Association, an industry and trade association supporting the sewing and craft industries, President Ronald Reagan, under Proclamation #4976, declared September as National Sewing Month “In recognition of the importance of home sewing to our Nation.”

National Sewing Month is presented by the Sewing & Craft Alliance with participation from the American Sewing Guild.

I plan to kick off the celebrations this afternoon by working on the I Spy quilt. There are many different settings for an I Spy quilt—I am using this one, which is based on the disappearing nine-patch block.

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The husband and I had a very productive day yesterday. I reorganized freezers and emptied one so I could defrost it. I harvested another bucket of tomatoes. I also discovered that the zucchini plants are far from done. There were some baseball bat-sized zucchini hiding under the leaves. They went to the chickens. A few smaller ones became a batch of zucchini fritters.

The State Fair apple tree produced half a dozen apples this year—all without insect damage—and I brought those in for the husband to snack on. That tree and the Lodi are my earliest producers. The State Fair produces heavily, but only every other year. This was its year off.

While I was busy with produce and freezers, the husband drove the backhoe around the property and pulled up stumps, including several rotted ones in the front yard. He also tried out the new rock rake attachment for the track loader. The ground is smoother now and mowing won’t feel so much like four-wheeling in Baja.

Our crew said they all want to work tomorrow, which is fine with the husband. This is the time of year when clients call in a panic, wanting to get their foundations poured before the snow flies. The guys have plenty to keep them busy, plus they’ll get holiday pay.

I plan to sew. I worked hard on Friday and Saturday and the upcoming week is very busy. I am going to need this afternoon and tomorrow in my sewing room. The quilt store is hosting a big serger event on Friday and Saturday and I plan to be there on Friday. Saturday is our homestead foundation fundraising pie social from 4-7 pm. I’ve been working on getting that event organized so it comes together in a more formal way; otherwise, it’s the same five people doing all the work. I said I would be the chairman once, get it organized, then hand it off to someone else to manage.

[We had someone ask us at the spring pie social if the homestead foundation would consider hosting a pie social or some kind of community get-together once a month. Truly, I think some people believe there is a committee in the sky that exists solely to provide things for them. These events are a huge amount of work.]

Some time this week or next—some of this can wait until after the actual event—I’m going to corral all my notes and all the flowcharts and lists I’ve made and compile them into a notebook. Bringing order out of chaos is one of my superpowers.

The Fruits of My Labor

The tomatoes are coming on strong. We’ve had to stake some of the tomato cages with 4' lengths of rebar because the plants are so big and loaded that they are pulling over the cages. I don’t prune my tomatoes, mostly because I can’t ever remember to do so. I hate to imagine how the tomatoes would retaliate (like the grapes) if I actually got around to pruning them. Growing them on pig manure seems to be sufficient for excellent production.

Tomato harvest will be an ongoing series of surprises because I can’t remember what I planted. I put the old standby varieties—Oregon Star and Cherokee Purple—near the front of the bed, and the only cherry tomato I planted was the Blue Boar Berry started from seed I scooped out of a tomato that had spent the winter on the ground. That BBB plant is producing like mad and I’ve already snacked on some of them. Eveything else is a mystery unless I crawl around on the ground and search for the tags.

The forecast for the next couple of weeks, at least, is for highs in the 80s and lows in the 50s. I am optimistic about getting ripe pumpkins and butternut squash. The beans are close. This is a pod of Emmalou’s Golden dry beans that I cracked open yesterday:

I cleaned off the Lodi apple tree yesterday morning. I have been watching that tree like a hawk because Lodi apples are like spinach, with an approximate five-minute window when they are perfectly ripe. Lodi apples are thin-skinned—no peeling necessary for pie filling—and don’t store well. I had exactly enough apples for one canner load of seven quarts and a fresh pie for the husband.

The Lodi tree has produced in the past, but not as heavily as it did this year. The apples were nearly perfect. They had no bug damage. Everyone says it’s because the insects haven’t found the trees yet, but I think it’s because I don’t spray. I’ve never treated my trees with dormant oil or anything else. Some of those trees have been out there for over 10 years. Unless all the insects in the neighborhood are incompetent, I think they would have found them by now. In any case, I don’t plan to change what I am doing. I often think that sprays are like antibiotics—all they do is select for the strongest pests.

The Honeycrisp trees and the Red Wealthy produced a few apples, but they are not quite ready yet. Most of the apple trees took the year off or only produced lightly.

I also rotated stock in the pantry and made room for the quarts of salsa and tomato sauce that I’ll be making.

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I’m going to work outside this morning, but I’d like to sew this afternoon. I want to start putting the I Spy quilt together. Searching my stash for fabrics for that quilt has been great fun. The only fabric I had to buy was an X-ray print for the letter X, and fortunately all the Halloween fabrics are on sale at Joanns.

I stopped in at Hobby Lobby and bought enough of the blue quilted fabric for a jacket as it was on sale this week. I’ll order zippers next. I’ll probably also make a muslin of that pattern in fleece to test out the fit.

Finished is Better

Yesterday was slightly warmer than Wednesday, but I knew things would still be soggy in the garden. I stayed in and sewed and waited for the septic tank guy to arrive.

[The temperature was 35F when I woke up yesterday morning, so I am hoping nothing got zapped.]

I pulled out my bins of novelty fabrics and cut 5" squares for the I Spy quilt. I need to do a bit more cutting for that one and then I can begin sewing. I also pulled out a small Christmas quilt that has been basted and waiting and quilted it on the Q20. My first thought was to do some rulerwork on it, but the block was complicated enough that I knew rulerwork would take more time than I wanted to spend. In the spirit of “finished is better than perfect,” I pulled out a cone of red, white, and green variegated thread and quilted allover loops

Sometimes it is okay to let the thread do the heavy lifting instead of the quilting. The border is getting ribbon candy. This needs another hour of work and then I can bind it and cross it off the list.

I’ve got a couple of must-do tasks on today’s list. The apples on the Lodi tree are ready. They won’t last, so I need to get them off the tree and into a batch of apple pie filling. I also have to visit the garden to see what needs to come in.

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I caught up on podcasts on my drive to and from Seattle last week. I got way behind on listening to Seamwork Radio episodes; I like that podcast, although it leans a bit formulaic. The Sew & So podcast, sponsored by Bernina, did a great recap of the most recent Bernina University in Detroit in June. I also listened to the Sewing With Threads podcast from Threads magazine. In one episode, the host interviewed executive function coach Hannah Choi about how she uses sewing to help young people with executive function challenges (ADD/ADHD) to develop those skills. That was fascinating. I may listen to the episode again, because some of what she discussed could be helpful when I teach. I find that a lot of creative people identify as having ADD/ADHD, and even though I don’t struggle with those issues, they do sometimes pop up in class.

I am firmly in the concrete sequential camp and sometimes it is difficult for me to work with people with other personality styles. I know this. I work best when I can take on a task and complete it alone and without interference. I especially hate to be micromanaged, so I have to let people know that up front to avoid any friction.

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September is National Sewing Month. It is also the one-year anniversary of starting the podcast. I’d like to do something special to mark the occasion, but September is going to be a busy month. My desk calendar is already full of highlighted events. The schedule eases up considerably in October, and I am looking forward to my trouser drafting class with Kenneth D. King then.

Planning My Fall Sewing

The temperature never got above 41F yesterday, and it rained all day. (I think it was the same system that hit Ketchikan over the weekend.) If I hadn’t been thinking about fall before, I am now, although we are supposed to be back up around 87F by Monday. 😵‍💫

I had five students in my thread class on Tuesday afternoon. I do love teaching that class. It is full of lots of “A-ha!’ moments and I get so much satisfaction out of watching the students experiment with threads on their machines. One lady figured out how to program her machine to sew her name. She made personalized thread samples. Ryan, the store’s machine tech, was also in the class. He always asks such great questions.

But now I am thinking about fall sewing. I wore one of my Jalie Nathalie tops yesterday and it was all I could do not to pull out my bin of French terry and sweater knits and start sewing up cool-weather clothes. Instead, I spent the afternoon corralling and cutting scraps. The 5" square bin needed to be restocked and I had a stack of leftovers waiting to be run through the die cutter. That was a good task for a cold, rainy day.

I’ve added one project to the queue, to be started after the baby quilts are finished. Hobby Lobby has this lovely quilted fabric, and every time I see it, I think I should make a jacket from it:

I am not much for pastels, but it depends on the color. Clear, icy pastels—not the muddy ones Joanns carries—work with my coloring, and I do like this fabric. I think it would pair well with this pattern:

I like the idea of a zippered jacket, although I would probably ditch that front patch pocket. Of course, I am going to have to source and order zippers, because the pattern calls for a 29" separating zipper and two 7" zippers for the pockets. Finding matching zippers here is going to be next to impossible.

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We talked to DD#1 yesterday evening. Ketchikan is a small town, and she and DSIL have jobs where they interact with the public, so they know, personally, some of the people affected by that landslide. And getting around is going to be much more difficult. Ketchikan sits on a narrow strip of land between the water and the mountains. The main road through town is currently torn up for work on a water main, but the landslide blocked the bypass that routes traffic above and around downtown. Add to that thousands of cruise ship tourists—the kids have a calendar on their fridge that shows what cruise ships are in port each day, with the number of passengers—and traffic is going to slow to a crawl.

We are having the septic tanks pumped today, which is a necessary but not very glamorous job that needs to be done before winter. I’m going to see what needs to be done in the garden and perhaps make one last batch of zucchini bread.

To Alaska and Back

Earlier this summer, DD#2 and I made plans to go to Alaska to visit her sister in August. I left last Wednesday—in desperate need of a road trip—and tried something a bit different. Rather than drive all the way to Seattle in one day or stay in Spokane overnight, I drove to Ellensburg, WA and spent the night in a hotel there. I was able to use hotel points instead of shelling out $300 for a room in Seattle. Our flight to Ketchikan didn’t leave until after lunch on Thursday, which gave me plenty of time to drive the two hours from Ellensburg to Seattle, pick up DD#2 and her boyfriend, and get us to the airport.

I don’t have many pictures from our trip. This is my fourth visit to Ketchikan so I spent the entire time enjoying being with my kids. DD#1 is an occupational therapist but was able to adjust her schedule to be off work. We did some shopping—dodging thousands of cruise ship tourists—walked around Ward Lake, and went to the lumberjack show. Our SIL is the dentist at the Coast Guard station in Ketchikan, so he took us to the mess hall on base for breakfast Saturday morning and showed us the clinic. We also played a board game called Wingspan, which I need to get so Sarah and I can play it.

We saw a bear, from a respectful distance, although one later walked through the yard on the way to the beach for a salmon dinner:

DD#1 has the most amazing African violets:

She has the perfect window spot for them.

Ketchikan has a small yarn store, which I did not visit on this trip. There is a quilt store called the Whale’s Tail, which I am pretty sure has been there at least since 2009 when JC Briar and I did our Alaskan knitting cruise. When I visited the store in May of 2021, their stock was severely depleted due to supply chain issues. Goods are expensive to ship to Alaska in any case, and a global pandemic and loss of cruise ship business hurt a lot of the stores in Ketchikan. Unfortunately, even though the store hours showed the store as being open the days we were there, it was closed.

Fabulous Fiber Arts and More, however, was open. This is a small combination yarn and fabric store with a well-curated selection of products. I bought some fabric:

Barbara Lavellee is an Alaskan artist who moved to Sitka in 1970 to teach at a boarding school. She now lives in Anchorage.

While we were at the lumberjack show on Saturday, DSIL happened to look at the weather on his phone and noted that a big storm system was coming in. Sure enough, it hit overnight, with lots of wind and more rain than I’ve seen in a long time. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to get back to Seattle, but those pilots that fly in and out of Alaska have nerves of steel. We left shortly after noon, on the bumpiest flight I’ve ever taken, and landed in sunny Seattle 90 minutes later. I dropped off the kids and headed back to Ellensburg for the night, and that was when DD#1 texted me about the landslide. Their house is at the south end of the island, about 20 minutes from downtown. They weren’t directly affected, although they both stayed home from work yesterday.

Now I am back in Montana and feel—like I always do at the end of August—as though I am at the end of a marathon. The garden is beginning to look that way, too. I was out there getting lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers for a salad for dinner and had a good look around. I think that some of the pumpkin vines may have gotten a touch of frost; they are in a low swale in the garden and I wouldn’t be surprised if the air was cold enough in that spot overnight.

I am teaching my thread class at the quilt store this afternoon, but I’ll need to devote some energy to the garden this week and next. It’s time to start cleaning up for winter.

Finally, It's Done

After I attached the first part of the closure hardware to the Haralson Bag, I realized it would take less than an hour to complete the rest of the steps. It seemed silly not to do that.

I am gifting this to a friend of mine. I’m just happy it’s done. Would I make another one? Maybe, but not this week.

I’m not sure why I had so many issues with this project. The problems I had weren’t due to the pattern because Noodlehead patterns are some of the best. Bag hardware is always difficult to source locally. If I can find the correct size, it won’t come in the finish I need. If it comes in the finish I need, it won’t be in the right size. Same with zippers. Nylon zippers can be cut down with scissors; metal ones have to be a specific length unless I want to get out the toolbox.

I do love my rivet press. And I love sewing on the 1541, although I think I am going to have to fiddle around with the servo motor settings again to toggle them back to “stop with needle down.” That is driving me nuts.

School starts soon for the neighborhood kids. I feel like the community is once again breathing a huge sigh of relief that summer is over. We didn’t have any fires, the tourists will be heading home soon, and schedules will start to slow down for most of us. (Maybe not for the parents of school-age kids.)

The husband and I were watching a YouTube video the other night about preparing a dinner in the early 1800s. The menu was beef boiled with turnips, cooked carrots, hard-boiled eggs, and biscuits. What struck me most was how slowly and methodically the cook worked. There was no rush to get to the next thing. I don’t think we realize, sometimes, the speed at which everything moves now.

I’m not romanticizing life in the early 1800s. I know it was difficult. I suspect, though, that even life in the 1980s moved at a much slower pace than it does now.

Ground beef was on sale this week so I bought several family packs. I made a huge batch of meatballs yesterday; I mixed the ground beef half-and-half with our ground pork and seasoned it with hot Italian spice mix. I used a scoop to form the meatballs, then put them on a rack in the roaster pan to cook in the oven. The whole process takes a couple of hours, but by the time I was done, I had enough for dinner and plenty to freeze for future meals. Yes, I could go to Costco and buy some, but mine taste better and I know what’s in them. 😋 The husband ate 12 of them for dinner.

Cabbages and Squash

Some things did really well this year. The cabbage seedlings escaped being mowed down by ground squirrels and produced some really nice heads:

The smaller ones are a variety called Pixie, which are supposed to be softball-sized personal cabbages. They got a bit bigger than expected. The larger ones are the Early Round Dutch, which I’ve grown before.

Some of these might get made into sauerkraut. The rest I will wrap in paper and store them in the old garage. The temperature stays around 50 degrees in there.

The red cabbages are a few weeks behind.

I checked on the pumpkin patch, which is also doing well. We should have a few Georgia Roasters:

Elysian grew these a few years ago. They are very sweet. They will be more of a pale orange when ripe.

The pumpkins are coming along nicely:

This variety is called Winter Luxury. I should have plenty to can up for pies for the husband.

I am hoping for more butternut squash:

The reason I say “hoping” is because these need a few more weeks to ripen. If we get a killing frost early this year—which happened a few years ago—I’ll have a lot of unripe butternut squash.

The packet of seeds which were labeled Purple Beauty peppers turned out to be a hot yellow banana pepper. I would never grow any peppers that hot, so the whole packet had to have been mislabeled. I’ve had enough issues with my seed supplier over the past couple of years that it’s time to find a different one.

A brief but intense storm came through last night. The husband and I were on the front porch looking at a tree that had blown down in the woods when another one came down in the front yard:

We got a few hours of rain with the storm, so that was good.

The hardware for the Haralson Bag came in yesterday’s mail. If I can steal a few minutes from the schedule today, I’ll install it. I probably won’t be able to finish the bag yet, though.

More Pouch Patterns

I got everything crossed off my to-do list Friday morning. My class submissions for Sew Expo are done. They changed the submission process this year and it’s much easier for the teachers. Instead of asking us to submit fully-formed class proposals, with outlines, photos, etc., they asked us just to submit class ideas. The teacher coordinator then discussed the ideas with the teachers and settled on classes. Only after the classes had been chosen were teachers required to submit all the supporting documentation.

I proposed new classes to the quilt store for the next couple of months and got my serger mastery classes on the schedule for 2025. The pie social organization is coming together. I also recorded Part 2 of presser feet for this week’s podcast. After lunch, I prepped the kits for my upcoming thread class. Friday was a very productive day.

Yesterday morning, we had a worship planning meeting. It was only supposed to last 90 minutes, but it ended up being three hours because we got a bit sidetracked on a discussion. It was a necessary discussion, but it extended the meeting. I discovered, however, that I am able to knit approximately half a skein of Lion Brand Homespun—what I use for prayer shawls—in a three-hour meeting. I use three skeins for a shawl, with a fourth for the fringe. Now I know that it takes me approximately 20 hours to make a prayer shawl. Most of that knitting happens in bits and pieces, so the actual creation of a prayer shawl takes much longer, not that I would ever sit and knit for 20 hours straight.

It is apparent, I hope, why I knit in meetings. Sitting through a three-hour meeting without something to occupy my hands would send me around the bend.

Anna Graham of Noodlehead released a new pattern this week called the Plover Pouch:

I bought it; I buy everything Anna designs. It’s in the queue for later this fall.

I also found this pattern from Sew Lux fabric, which will be a great way to use up hexies:

I am trying not to rush time, but I am looking forward to fall and winter when I don’t have to eke out moments of sewing here and there. I’ll be able to make breakfast, clean the kitchen, then head upstairs for an entire day of sewing.

I do need to get out to the garden and check on a few things. We’ve had a few hot days and I should probably cut the cabbages before they split. And there are probably a few more zucchinis. . .

So Much to Learn

I spent way more time in town yesterday than planned. I ran in to drop off a check at one of the husband’s suppliers; normally, I pay bills once a month, but he ordered a sizeable number of new concrete forms recently and we wanted to get that invoice off that supplier’s books and ours. While I was in town, I stopped in at the quilt store and visited with Tera. We haven’t seen each other in months. The store was hosting a Claudia Dinnell machine embroidery workshop. Claudia teaches at our store at least a couple of times a year and her classes are always sold out. I think there were close to two dozen women (and their machines) in the classroom yesterday. The store owner wanted to know why I hadn’t signed up for the class—now that I have a machine with an embroidery module—but I have a limit of learning one unfamiliar technique per week. 🤣

Claudia designs huge, involved projects, but she also offers smaller ones. After I figure out how to monogram with the 880, I’ll probably move on to one of Claudia’s less ambitious designs, like these coasters:

I might be ready for one of Claudia’s workshops the next time she comes to Kalispell.

Tera and I caught up and made plans for Sew Expo 2025. She already has it in her calendar. We haven’t traveled together since Sew Expo 2023 and it’s past time for us to take a trip.

I also talked to the store owner and her daughter about upcoming classes. Ashlee, the daughter, is managing the store’s social media accounts and she asked if I could make a video to help promote some of my classes. I have a sneaking suspicion I am going to get dragged into video production, even if I go kicking and screaming. There is a reason the podcast is audio and not video—video production is so much more involved. If I do it properly, it’s going to involve me getting better lighting and finding a place to film. Ashlee wants just a 30-second clip to promote classes, though, so I came home and figured out how to record one on my computer. It only took me half a dozen takes to get one I liked. (Only.) We’ll see if it is what she wants.

I’ve had some requests for video tutorials or a video podcast. I don’t want to do tutorials. If I ever go to video podcasting, that will automatically cut down the number of podcasts per month—probably by half—because of the time it will take me to learn the editing software and do the editing itself.

I sometimes wonder if people think I have staff. I am a solo operation. I am a very organized and productive solo operation, but there is only one of me. Believe me, I wish I could clone myself.

Because I spent more time gadding about yesterday than planned, I really need to buckle down today. I’ve got to complete my Sew Expo class submissions for the approved classes. I have to record next week’s podcast. I need to make more kits for my next thread class. I have to get the job list finalized for the pie social so we can start recruiting volunteers. And I want to start getting classes on the schedule for late 2024 and early 2025.

We’re supposed to get more rain today, so I’ll have an excuse to stay inside and work.

En Plein Air

Painting class was so much fun. I told Sunnie that it will be one of the highlights of this summer for me.

Six of us gathered at Sunnie’s studio around 8:30 yesterday morning. We couldn’t have had a more beautiful day. Sunnie lives a few miles up the road from me, on a piece of property above and behind the homestead foundation’s community center. She’s on a bench with a lovely view out over the Flathead Valley.

Here are Susan and Gini getting settled:

Sunnie gathered us together, had us introduce ourselves, and gave us some basic instructions. Another friend of ours, Lindalee—who is also an artist—was helping as Sunnie’s assistant. Each of us chose a view that we wanted to paint. There is no shortage of scenery at Sunnie’s house. I chose to paint the view looking northwest over the valley into Whitefish, with Lion Mountain in the background.

We worked for about an hour. Sunnie asked us to get up and stretch, and then we went to each student’s easel for a discussion. That was so helpful. Sunnie is an excellent teacher. She praised what each student was doing correctly, then gently offered constructive suggestions for improvement. Creating a supportive environment for learning went a long way toward easing anxiety for those of us who were way out of our comfort zones.

It took me a bit of time to get comfortable with what I was doing, not that I every got truly comfortable. Analysis paralysis and I are good friends, LOL. I did relax enough to flow with it and enjoy the process, though. I have a reasonably solid understanding of color theory, and mixing paints was a lot of fun. I was a bit fuzzy on technique, but that came with doing.

Here we are discussing Gini’s painting:

By the time noon rolled around, I was done and happy with my effort. We took a break for lunch. Some students had to leave. Susan, Robin, and I stayed—Susan was finishing her painting, and Sunnie wanted to help Robin and me finish and sign ours. And once my painting was signed, I found myself in Sunnie’s basement looking for a frame. Collecting frames is why Sunnie loves to scour thrift stores.

I am not in danger of taking up oil painting as another hobby, but I was pleased enough with my painting to hang it up here at home:

Sunnie also gifted me with two beautiful pieces of rayon woven fabric that she found while looking for frames at one of the local thrift stores. This is the red one:

This is a spectacular blue and green one—totally my colors:

And she got them for half price off on Senior Day!

I need to get my nose back to the grindstone today. I have a bunch of paperwork and other tasks that need to be tackled this morning. I don’t think I will make it to sewing but we’ll see. I’d like to get one more batch of zucchini bread into the freezer, too.

Assistance in an Apron

It’s a good thing the Haralson bag is on hold for a few days because I discovered I had the wrong size hardware for it. I know the correct size will be impossible to find locally, so I ordered it. Some bags sew themselves. The Haralson has not been that bag.

I ran errands yesterday morning and stopped in to see the accountant. I was in the middle of making a batch of zucchini bread after lunch when the husband called to tell me that the freight driver was 20 minutes out. The husband had ordered a rock bucket for the skidsteer and I needed to sign for it.

Sure enough, about 20 minutes later, a semi pulled into the driveway. Freight drivers hate residential deliveries because they never know if they will have enough room to get in and out. Fortunately, we have a big driveway. I went out, signed the paperwork, and returned to my batch of zucchini bread. About five minutes later, the driver knocked on the screen door.

“We need some equipment. I can’t get the rock bucket off the lift gate; it’s too heavy.”

This poor driver looked miserable. Not only was he making residential deliveries, he was stuck with an immovable rock bucket and his only salvation was covered in flour and wearing an apron.

I walked out with him, asking some questions along the way. What kind of equipment? Did we need the forklift or would the plow truck serve? Tow rope or chain?

[I have lived with a man for 37 years who believes I can read his mind and that verbal communication is superfluous, so I’ve learned that the more information I get up front, the less likely I am to get into trouble.]

After assessing the situation, I went back and grabbed the keys to the plow truck. I also called the husband just to have him bless this plan. He told me where the chains were stored. The plow truck has hooks on the front. Initially, the driver tried hooking the chain onto a hook but the hooks were too big. I turned the truck around and he hooked the chain to the trailer hitch. I very slowly and carefully eased the truck forward and pulled that rock bucket off the lift gate.

That was a first for me, although I told the husband I have no plans to quit my day job. The freight driver was obviously relieved that he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of the day stuck in our driveway.

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My friend JC sent me a quilt top to donate to the Ritzville yard sale.

I love this—totally my aesthetic. If I can eke out enough time between now and the first Saturday in October, I’d like to turn this into a finished quilt and donate it to the auction. JC does the most wonderful improv quilts—you can check out her work on her Instagram account.

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Painting class is this morning. We got rain yesterday morning and more is in the forecast for tomorrow and Friday, but today is supposed to be dry and overcast. This has been a very pleasant August. We are not being plagued by excessive smoke, we’ve had rain every few days, and the temps are staying in the high 70s and low 80s.

The guy at the farm store told me a funny story the other day while he was loading bales of wood shavings into my car. A lady came in and mentioned that she had just moved to Kalispell. He asked her if she was getting ready for winter and she looked at him blankly and said, “What?” He repeated the question. She responded that she wasn’t expecting it to get cold because the average high temperature here was 50F. 🙄

Haralson Bag Progress

I worked on the Haralson bag yesterday afternoon and made quite a bit of progress. I’m following Jess’s tutorial on her Oklaroots YouTube channel. She does an excellent job with her videos—they are very thorough.

I’m at the halfway point, I think:

The exterior is black waxed canvas from Klum House—I have mixed feelings about this substrate. I like that it is a thinner fabric and closer weave than the waxed canvas I get from AL Frances Textiles on Etsy. The “wax,” however, is a proprietary blend of mineral oil and other vegan-friendly oils. It is oilier than beeswax and makes the canvas almost feel wet.

The interior is water-resistant canvas. I’m not so fond of this fabric. It frays if you look at it sideways and the feel of it is a bit harsh. I think I would prefer using bonded nylon fabric for the interior, but I’ll reserve judgment until the bag is finished.

I’m sewing most of this on the Juki 1541, which is an absolute pleasure. The only issue I have now with that machine is that when I adjusted the servo motor to slow down the machine, I somehow toggled the needle stop position to “up” instead of “down.” I had it set to stop with the needle down in the fabric. I am trying to decide if I want to mess with the servo motor settings again to change that or if I should just leave it.

I did the interior zipper insertion on the 880. Smooth.

I may have to shelve this project for a couple of days. I have a busy week ahead. This morning, I have a much-needed massage. I am trying to schedule one every couple of months. When I get home, I need to record and edit tomorrow’s podcast episode. We have a homestead foundation board meeting tonight. Tomorrow, I meet with our accountant. We have a standing appointment every August to evaluate how the year is going and what needs to be done before December 31. That has been so helpful in making sure we are paying the correct amount of estimated taxes every quarter so we have no surprises.

On Wednesday, I am taking a painting class from Sunnie. She is offering this as a fundraiser for the homestead foundation. Sunnie specializes in oil painting. We are going to paint “en plein air”—outdoors—at her studio up the road. I think there are half a dozen of us registered for the class and it should be great fun. I may or may not share the results. 😂 I think the last time I painted with oils, I was a freshman in high school in Miss Furey’s Art 101 class.

And, of course, there is the garden. The zucchini isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.

Sew Flow

The author of the book Uptime, Laura Mae Martin, talks about the concept of “deep work,” or those large blocks of time where a person can sink into a project with no distractions. That can also be referred to as “flow” or “the zone.” I crave those periods of time. I can get things done in little bits of time here and there, but I have to fight the temptation to use those bits of time to sit down at the computer and doom scroll.

[Joel Salatin, of Polyface Farm, keeps a list of jobs that can be done in 20 minutes or less so that if he or one of his workers finds themselves with 20 minutes before lunch, for example, they can knock a task off the list.]

I did not work on homestead foundation stuff yesterday. I made breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen, and made sure we had no escapees in the chicken yard. The husband helped me stake some of the tomato cages with 4' pieces of rebar, because the tomato plants are so big and loaded with tomatoes that the cages are falling over. The peppers, though—the ones that were labeled “Purple Beauty” bell peppers—are all a yellow variety. For all I know, they might be hot peppers. I’ll have to taste one. That is just weird. I could understand one plant being mislabeled, but “Purple Beauty” was the only pepper I started in the spring, so the seed packet must have been wrong.

The husband had his own to-do list to tackle. The fan motor in the furnace went bad back in January or February, so every time the furnace kicked on, it made a horrible noise. He replaced the motor yesterday. The furnace will be quiet this winter.

Speaking of winter, our rabbit was in the yard yesterday morning and we both noticed that it is already starting to turn white. I have been watching the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) reports and we are heading into a La Niña period. Interestingly, our biggest winters have occurred not when we have a strong La Niña, but when we have a neutral one. During the winter of 1996-97, it began snowing here on October 15 and never stopped. The last of the snow didn’t melt until the end of May. We had so much snow at our house that the dogs were able to scale the piles of snow and walk around on top of the garage. My in-laws came to visit at Christmas and my MIL said it was like being inside a snow globe. And that spring, there was not a U-Haul to be found because so many people were moving out of the Flathead Valley.

Click on the chart if you want more information.

This winter is supposed to be another neutral La Niña. If we get a repeat of 1996-97, a lot of transplants may be re-evaluating their plan to live here. Is that a bad thing? I think not. There is a reason Montana has never had a huge population of people.

Back to sewing . . . I finished the armchair caddy for my recliner:

It’s a weird mix of prints but I liked the color combination. And now all my English paper piecing supplies are close at hand.

I also started a baby quilt and an “I Spy” quilt—both destined to be gifts. I need to get them made soon. I cut out the last zipper pouch from the large quilted piece of fabric, and I cut all the pieces for the Haralson bag, now that I have correctly-printed pattern pieces. (My Brother laser printer does not scale and print patterns properly.) I would have started sewing the Haralson bag but it was late in the afternoon and I was running out of juice.

I wish for more days like yesterday. I’ll have more this winter (especially if it’s a long, snowy winter), but I have to get through canning season, first. All those tomatoes will end up as sauce and salsa.

Lettuce Lettuce Everywhere

I have cracked the code for consistent lettuce production. I’ve got a row in the big garden that is producing, a couple of beds in the herb garden that will be ready in another week or two, and I seeded a row where the arugula was. (It bolted.) That should give us lettuce well into the fall, and when I can no longer grow lettuce outside, I’ll restart the system in the basement.

I’ve been indulging in my favorite salad every day this week:

Lettuce with a light vinaigrette of walnut oil and white wine vinegar, liberally sprinkled with walnuts, dried cranberries, and bleu cheese. So good. The lettuce variety is Ruby. I found it at Victory Seeds over a decade ago and I plant it every year. It is dark red and green, a bit frilly, easy to wash, and the taste is amazing—not bitter even when the leaves get big. This is also the variety I grow in the basement system over the winter. Last year, the husband said that our homegrown lettuce has spoiled him for anything that comes from the store—like most foods.

[Kalispell peeps, we still have a couple of pigs left if anyone is looking for pastured pork. They go to the processor the first week of September, with delivery at the end of the month.]

I also cut some of the collard greens and blanched and froze them. I gave up on spinach years ago because there was a five-minute window between “too small” and “oops, we bolted.” Blanched and frozen collard greens work just as well—or better—in soups, and collards don’t bolt. I’ll continue to cut and freeze some every week until they give up.

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The chicks have made it their goal to catalogue every single means of escape from the chicken yard. They are finding ways to get out that never occurred to me. I had to put them back in three times yesterday. Each time, I scolded them, their mother scolded them, and even Dave put in his $0.02 worth. The chicks are fat and sassy. The husband got more chicken wire out of the shed last night and will make another attempt to toddler-proof the yard.

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I worked on homestead foundation stuff and the craft co-op website until lunchtime yesterday. I’m making progress. I try not to get frustrated about it, but sometimes it feels like rowing upstream. I chair a fundraising committee for the foundation comprised of dedicated volunteers who meet monthly. Our fundraising goal last year was $15,000. We ended the year having made almost $20K, so this year, we set a goal of $25K. I think we can do it because we are more than two-thirds of the way there. The problem is getting board members to attend meetings so we can decide how to spend the money. Last month, we didn’t even have a quorum. And when I hear the “Well, I’m busy” excuse, I just want to scream. It’s not like I am sitting at home wondering what to do with all my free time.

We have a board meeting Monday night and I am afraid I might not be able to keep my opinions to myself. 🫤

I sewed all afternoon. I knocked out a few more zipper pouches and worked on another project that has been sitting on the cutting table. My moth-themed bonded nylon arrived from Wonderground Fabrics and I am dreaming about what to make with that.