That Organizing Time of Year

This week is one of my favorite times of the entire year. Christmas—with all the attendant hustle and bustle—has come and gone and I can begin looking forward to a new year. Yay. I love to organize and prepare. On Wednesday morning, before everyone woke up, I organized my quilting rulers:

I have a lot of rulers. Now I can find the the ones I need quickly and easily.

The kids flew back to Seattle Wednesday afternoon. Flights were cheaper and DD#2 had to work yesterday. DD#1 has been sending me chicken pictures from Hawaii. Apparently, there are a lot of free-range chickens everywhere, including this mama with chicks. The two on the chair are trying out their roosting skills:

I made scalloped potatoes and ham yesterday with the leftover ham from Christmas dinner, then put the bone and scraps—with some from the freezer—into the roaster to cook down overnight into stock. I also made some cookies to send to the husband’s dad in Colorado.

The husband is taking a few days off and has been working out in his shop. He put a block heater on his dad’s old Jeep Cherokee and worked on Sarah’s husband’s Blazer. The Blazer has some kind of a fuel issue. The husband has a few theories about what is wrong.

I’m going to bake molasses cookies this morning, put jars of ham stock in the canner to process, and then I am going to sew. I have a few things I want to make before I start the Kanoko tote.

Searching for Simplicity

(And I don’t mean that I am looking for that sewing pattern brand.)

I still haven’t come up with a Word of the Year for 2025, although “simplify” has jumped to the top of the list this week. Perhaps that is a reaction to the Christmas season, which always feels to me like a month-long maelstrom to be endured rather than a time to celebrate. (Such is the lot of church pianists everywhere, I think.) I’ve tried to hold on to those bright moments—traveling with Elaine for the Christmas concert in Idaho, last weekend’s carol singing, and having DD#2 and her boyfriend here—in the midst of all the noise.

I yearn for some peace and quiet. Maybe I should take a chair out to the pig palace and sit there for a while. It’s not a stable, but it’s close enough.

*******

DD#2 and the boyfriend and I drove up to Whitefish yesterday. We went up to Big Mountain—or Whitefish Mountain Resort, as it is officially known—although the top of the mountain was socked in by a cloud bank. I pointed out the vague outline of the chairlift to the boyfriend and assured him that there was an actual mountain with ski runs above it.

After lunch at the Buffalo Cafe and a stroll around downtown, we came back and made snickerdoodle fudge. The boyfriend has a weak spot for anything snickerdoodle. Last year, at the Christmas market in Seattle, I bought him some snickerdoodle fudge. I found a recipe and we decided to make it this year:

We let it set up overnight so I have no idea how it tastes. I think I need to invest in a candy thermometer, though, if we make this a regular thing.

The kids looked through the “cookie book” and decided on some cookies to bake today. (No doubt, there will be more snickerdoodles.) My mother bought this for me a long time ago and it has been used often over the years:

While they are baking, I will be practicing music for tonight’s service.

*******

I had to laugh at myself yesterday—we stopped at the grocery store to get a few last-minute items for dinner tonight. One of the items on the list was french-fried onions for the green bean casserole. I don’t need green beans—I have plenty of home-canned ones. We searched all over the store for the onions. DD#2 thought they might be with the salad toppings. Nope. I finally asked an employee and she told me they were with the canned beans on aisle 2.

Duh. Did I think to look there? No. I didn’t need canned green beans. 🤦🏻‍♀️

What Do I Do?

I was at the farm store the other day and one of the cashiers—who waits on me often enough that she has our account number memorized—looked at me and said, “What do you DO?”

What a complicated question, LOL. I related this story to the husband and he said, “Did you tell her that you’re the chief financial officer of the construction company?” I said that I hadn’t really told her anything; whenever I get a question like that, I stammer out some reply about doing lots of different things and leave it at that. Anything more specific usually leads to additional questions.

I do lots of different things. I like it that way.

I found some appropriate fabric at the quilt store and put a second binding on the hexie quilt:

This has moved over to the “needs to be quilted” pile. That outer border may yet be trimmed down, but I put generous borders on my tops because they are easier to quilt that way.

*******

Another church in our area put on a live nativity this weekend. They asked if some singers from our church could come and sing Christmas carols at the event. Because Mennonites will break into four-part harmony for literally any reason, of course we said yes. The event ran from 3-7 pm on Friday and Saturday evenings. I sang for two hours both times. This was our group yesterday afternoon:

We always include the kids. How else will they learn to sing? That is yours truly in the blue coat. (You will never lose me in a snowbank.) Elaine’s brothers are the tall guys.

This was a stretch for me because I had to sing melody most of the time. We were a bit short on sopranos. I am an alto, and a low alto at that—enough that sometimes, I fill in as a tenor. I pitched everything a few steps lower and we managed.

What do I do? Lots of different things.

DD#2 and her boyfriend got here around midnight last night. (DD#1 and her husband are going to Hawaii for Christmas.) The two of them want to make Christmas cookies, so I bought all the supplies. The boyfriend is particularly fond of snickerdoodles. We might even make some snickerdoodle fudge for him.

Partying With My Sewing Peeps

I went into town early to run some errands and headed back out to Mountain Brook in time for our 11:30 am Thursday Sewing Christmas Party. We began with a delicious potluck luncheon. Beth, who sells the most amazing book art at our annual co-op sale, had decorated the community library with fresh greenery and pop-up books of all kinds:

That’s Sarah’s arm in the bottom right. 💪🏻

After stuffing ourselves silly with excellent food and doing our gift exchange, we played BINGO. We are easily amused.

Sarah and I won several rounds and I told her we should go buy some lottery tickets, LOL. We used buttons for markers (of course) and the prizes were small items like Christmas ornaments.

We were a smaller group this year but still did a lot of laughing.

Sarah has taken up watercolor painting and she showed me photos of some of the pieces she’s done. They are amazing. I can’t wait to see what she does next!

******

The husband thinks I am imagining things, but I am pretty sure Dave believes he needs to protect me from Little Roo. When I threw scratch grains out to the clucks in the chicken yard yesterday afternoon, both of them were outside. I went into the coop to get eggs. Little Roo came inside. All of sudden, Dave came tearing into the coop making all sorts of warning noises and planted himself between me and Little Roo.

The husband said that Dave doesn’t do that to him and I pointed out that he’s not a hen. Neither am I, but apparently being female is enough of a reason.

******

I think I am going to hire someone to help me with social media and the podcast. Nicole Sauce has someone from our homesteading group helping her, so I reached out to that person and asked her if she would do the same for me. Even having her get me set up and on some kind of schedule will be an improvement over what I am doing now.

DD#2 and her boyfriend arrive tomorrow night. They are leaving on the afternoon of Christmas Day, and then I will begin my week of sewing and prepping for 2025. In addition to that Waffle Patterns tote bag, I need to make samples for upcoming classes.

The Theme is Squash

I worked on a stack of quilted pouches yesterday, which was a nice, low-key sewing activity. A front came through but the predicted wind never materialized, at least up here on the side of the mountain. We don’t usually get winds from the west; it’s the east winds that we have to worry about. Temps are still warm enough that whatever is falling is mostly rain and freezing rain. Honestly, it feels like March out there. I watched the National Weather Service Missoula office briefing yesterday on YouTube and the forecast into January is for an arctic blast with precipitation. We will get snow, but perhaps not until 2025. I checked the Snotel reading at Noisy Basin, which is in the mountains above our house, and it is at 135% of average. We’re getting moisture, just not in the form of snow.

The husband spent yesterday getting a job ready for a concrete pour this morning and came home covered in mud. He said it rained on them most of the morning.

I am a bit tired of English paper piecing so I switched back to embroidery in the evenings. I was going to work on my embroidered chickens—and I will, eventually—but I got distracted by the Squash Squad project. Apparently, I still have pumpkins on the brain:

This is the Queensland Blue, the third of nine embroidered squash. I will never be as good as Sue Spargo, but these are fun and provide lots of opportunity to be creative with thread.

And while we’re (still) talking about squash . . . the Baker Creek seed catalog arrived the other day. I’ve been growing Waltham butternut squash for the past several years, but it requires 100 days to maturity and sometimes it is touch-and-go. This year, only about two-thirds of the crop matured. I saw that Baker Creek is carrying a variety called Burpee’s Butterbush Butternut—say that three times fast—that matures in 75 days. I am going to try that one in 2025. Anna used all my extra butternut squash and Georgia Roasters this year. I told her I’d be happy to put those in again next year. She takes my excess produce and pays me in prepared meals, so it’s a win-win for both of us.

That is as far as I have gotten in deciding what to plant in the spring.

I think Dave may have figured out that there is another rooster in the coop. (The little rooster has been dubbed Little Roo, which is not a dignified name for a rooster AT ALL, but seems to fit.) Dave chased Little Roo outside yesterday while I was in the coop putting fresh pine shavings in the nesting boxes. The husband has not seen any aggressive behavior and thinks they are getting along. We shall see. Maybe Dave thought he needed to protect me. Who knows what goes through the pea-sized brain of a chicken?

Canning is Done

The 2024 canning season has officially ended:

That is another 14 quarts of pumpkin. The husband will not lack for pies in the coming year.

I still may have to do some batches of beans every now and then, but the canning supplies can go back into storage until next summer.

While I worked on pumpkins, I listened to Nicole Sauce’s podcast episode entitled “Renew Yourself, Renew Your World.” She wrapped up 2024 and introduced her word of the year for 2025, which is “Enrich.” I still haven’t come up with a good word for myself.

I also listened to Amy Dingmann’s Farmish Kind of Life podcast. That episode hit me right where I needed it. It was entitled “Why Are Information Platforms Dying?” She talked about the natural life cycle of social media platforms and how everyone rushes to the newest shiny platform and posts there until it gets saturated and then they begin looking for the next newest shiny platform. I have been told for years that blogs are dead, and yet here I am. Toward the end of the podcast, she made a comment to the effect that “Maybe where you need to be is the place that isn’t popular anymore.”

I don’t like “shorts” or Tik-Tok or reels or other 20-second sound bites on social media. The videos I want to watch are the ones that dig in and explore. I have been agonizing over my inability to get enthused about Instagram—one of the current shiny platforms—and although I am going to make an effort, I am not going to begin chasing clicks.

She also talked about how social media platforms force content creators to sabotage themselves because the algorithms drive the production of more and more content in order to stay relevant, but people only have so much time to consume that content. It is ironic, but the more content a content creator produces, the more likely they are to lose followers. I find this is true; I fall way behind on podcasts that put out more than one or two episodes a week. And that’s the reason I don’t blog every day.

Lots of stuff for this Luddite to think about heading into 2025.

*******

I will sew today. What I sew remains to be seen—it might be zipper pouches or binding potholders, or I might get ambitious and cut out a few tops. I hit the pumpkin pretty hard yesterday and want to relax today. We are under a high wind warning and a winter weather advisory today, so it will be a good day to stay inside.

My Sew-Jo Went on Vacation

I have nothing interesting to report. My sew-jo seems to have started its Christmas vacation early. I am having trouble mustering the enthusiasm to work on any projects. I can tell you that I gave the little boys their hoodies on Sunday at church and they seemed to like them as they were wearing them by the end of the service.

Yesterday was a podcast production and errands day with a meeting to cap off the evening. Today is another pumpkin day. I want to get that second batch processed and canned. I am hoping that once that big project is complete, I’ll be able to relax and do some sewing tomorrow. Friday and Saturday will be devoted to cleaning ahead of DD#2’s arrival. I’m also spending at least an hour a day practicing the accompaniment part to our choir piece for the Christmas Eve service.

This is all the sewing I’ve managed to do in the past five days. I repaired my friend Anna’s apron:

This came to me with a pretty sizeable rip down the front. I trimmed the loose threads, butted the edges together, ironed some SF101 interfacing to the back, then did two passes of a zig-zag stitch at the widest setting (9mm) and shortest stitch length over the rip. That worked well. She’ll be able to continue to use the apron. She said it was her favorite one.

This happens every year around this time. I am sure that once we get past the holidays, I will be ready to hit the ground running. In the meantime, I am organizing and stacking projects.

If you need me, I’ll be in the kitchen.

Getting Into the Christmas Spirit

Elaine and I took a quick road trip this week(end). I picked her up on Friday morning around 10, and after a stop in town to deposit a check and another stop at the quilt store to check in with the owner and the class coordinator, we were on the way to Moscow, Idaho. What is in Moscow, Idaho, you ask? Elaine’s niece is a junior at New Saint Andrews College and we were meeting Elaine’s sister’s family there to attend the niece’s Christmas choir concert. Moscow is south of Coeur d’Alene. It took us about five hours to get there.

Elaine’s sister Alice lives in Seattle, and I spend enough time with their extended family that we all know each other. Alice arranged for an AirBnB large enough to accommodate Elaine and me for an overnight stay.

The concert was amazing. New Saint Andrews has a conservatory program that, while small, easily rivals that of a larger college like Oberlin in quality. The program also included two opportunities for congregational singing: ”Angels We Have Heard on High,” whose alto part I can sing from memory, and “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night” sung to a new-to-me tune by the name of “Otford.” Elaine and I are going to see if we can teach that latter tune to our congregation, because it is a four-part arrangement that is great fun to sing. The sheet music can be found here if you want to take a look.

We had breakfast with the family yesterday morning and then Elaine and I headed back to Kalispell. I am the pianist at church and she is my backup pianist, so it isn’t good if both of us are gone on Sunday morning. The roads were clear save for a stretch over Lookout Pass crossing from Idaho into Montana, but nothing I haven’t driven through (many times) before.

Whew. And now it’s Sunday again and we have church and choir practice.

*******

I received a lovely gift from my friend Janet—one or the other of us is often referred to as “the other Janet” in an attempt to keep us straight because she is the class coordinator at the quilt store. She made me this adorable zipper pouch!

I’ll have to check with her, but I think this is the Noodlehead Pencil Pouch. We are both big Noodlehead fans. I love the combination of the minky leopard print and the faux suede, and one can never have too many zipper pouches.

*******

I didn’t go to Thursday sewing last week; I started a deep clean of our bedroom and decided I didn’t want to stop. Not only did I clean the bedroom, I did our bathroom and the hall bathroom, too. I will go to sewing this week because it is our Christmas party. I have a few other things happening, but mostly I plan to stay home and get some work done.

Hexies and Hoodies

The process of moving items through the pipeline continues. The little boys’ (smaller) hoodies are done. They requested train fabric for these and Auntie Janet was happy to oblige:

I pressed the seams on the back of the EPP project using my little appliqué iron:

That took some time but worked well. Once that was done, I trimmed the edges to make them even:

I put a 2" border on this using some additional fabric from the kit. (No photo yet.) I want to put a second, larger, border on it, but I need to stop at the quilt store(s) this morning to find something suitable, hopefully in a mocha brown color. I am sadly lacking in brown fabrics.

I canned 19 pints of white beans—we were completely out of them—and made two pumpkin pies for the husband. While I was at it, I thoroughly cleaned the coffeemaker and reorganized a couple of cabinets. I also did my last podcast interview of 2024 yesterday, which will be posted Tuesday. I plan on taking off the last two weeks of December.

I get a lot done when I can work without interruption.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, as a rule, but I am going to be much more vigilant about protecting my schedule in 2025. I may not have a job outside of the home but that doesn’t mean I am sitting around doing nothing. I particularly dislike having to rearrange my time to manage problems created for me by other people. We’ll see how it goes.

Now that the EPP project is done, I want to take a break from that and work on some embroidery again. I think I am going to work on my embroidered chicken project for a few weeks.

Good Hexies

I ripped the incorrect seam on the hexie project and sewed the columns back together properly:

The next step—which is proving to be rather tedious—is to remove all of the papers from the individual units. Another reason not to like glue basting. After that’s done, I’ll trim this into a square.

I finished one of the hoodies yesterday, after another hard-won battle with a zipper. I also decided, after listening to the Stitching Tales podcast episode on buttonholes, to cheat and put snaps on the front of my Ryliss Bod blue-and-gray plaid coat. I sewed on three large buttons, then sewed on large snaps underneath them. Finished is better than perfect. If I waited until I felt like making buttonholes, I’d never wear the coat. And I can always go back and make buttonholes later.

I’m trying very hard to finish current projects before I start any new ones.

*******

I belong to the Craft Industry Alliance—well worth the membership fee—and attended a webinar yesterday focusing on crafting trends for 2025. It was interesting, although perhaps not directly applicable to sewing. One of the home dec trends is a move back to warm earth tones after years of black-and-white-and-gray “modern farmhouse” kitchens, which gives me hope that my circa 1996 kitchen with oak cabinetry soon will be back in style. 😉

I’m not sure about some of the trend ideas I heard discussed—disco cowgirl?—but DD#2 says they get trend decks at work and she just looks at some of the ideas and shakes her head.

The 2025 Pantone Color of the Year is Mocha Mousse:

Eh. You all know how I feel about earth tones.

The 2025 Kona Color of the Year is Nocturne:

I like this better.

Have you heard that Missouri Star Quilt Company has taken a controlling interest in Robert Kaufman Fabrics? (They produce Kona.) Apparently, reaction is mixed, but I am all for any moves that keep Kona available to quilters.

Today is an errand day, although I’m hoping for time this afternoon to finish the other hoodie.

Bad Hexies

I had almost finished sewing the last seam of the hexie project last evening when I decided to put it down so I could get myself something to drink. And then I saw it:

Ooops. I had offset the last group of hexagons in the wrong direction.

I’ll have to take out that seam tonight and re-sew it correctly. Oh, well. This project is close to completion—this part of it, anyway. Once it’s assembled (properly), I have to trim it to make a square. Then I can baste it with batting and backing and quilt it. I may also put a border on it. I haven’t decided. I’m just pleased that it’s moving on after three years.

[This project taught me that I do not like to glue baste my hexie units. I will do the extra work and baste them with thread.]

I cut out and assembled two hoodies yesterday save for the zippers. I know better than to do fiddly tasks late in the day—see hexies, above—so I am saving the zippers for some morning this week when I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I have learned a lot about zippers in the past couple of weeks, enough that they will get their own podcast episode soon.

I also cut out the pieces for the Kanoko Tote. I found a great print for the lining in my stash.

Because why have a stash if you can’t have fun with it? I think the tote is going to be a project for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Most of it will have to be sewn on the Juki 1541.

Potato chip projects are fine. There is nothing wrong with being able to pull a sweater knit out of the stash and make a Toaster Sweater in an afternoon. Sometimes, though, I want to dig my teeth into something that is going to take some time and effort and—most importantly—going to level up my skills. I think the tote pattern is going to be that kind of project.

I also want to cut out the pieces for the Butterick 7008 jacket pattern to work on during that last week of the year.

At least I don’t have to make myself a Christmas outfit. I will wear the crushed velvet dress I made earlier in the year.

Today will be a long day. We have a potluck and congregational meeting after church and choir practice after that. I am hoping the road conditions are not awful this morning; we got rain and freezing rain and a bit of snow overnight—euphemistically known as a “wintry mix”—and heard more than a few MVA calls on the scanner. For our evening viewing entertainment, the husband chose some YouTube videos featuring dash cam footage from people driving way too fast on icy roads. 🤪

An Orange Kind of Day

I started with a 25# bag of carrots and ended up with 19 pints and a couple of containers of carrot sticks for snacking:

A few carrots that didn’t make it into jars went into the sausage and lentil soup we had for dinner.

I am glad to have the carrots done. I am going to wait and tackle the rest of the pumpkins next week. I need to do some sewing today.

I tried so hard this year to prioritize sewing over some of my other responsibilities, with mixed success. I don’t want sewing to be the reward for crossing everything else off my list. It should be at the top of my list. I would love to teach more classes and do more with the podcast, but finding the time to do that is difficult.

I said to the husband that I go on road trips to get away from my responsibilities here for a bit, but being away doesn’t give me much opportunity to sew, either. I joked that I need to tell everyone I am going away for a week but not leave the house. People will assume I am not available and I’ll have uninterrupted time to work on my projects.

The husband got to spend time by himself over Thanksgiving and it was good for him. When people find out that I travel without him, the reaction is usually one of horror. How could I leave my husband at home over a holiday? Easily. He doesn’t like to travel and he loves the opportunity to spend time in his shop crossing things off his to-do list. Why would I want to make someone I love miserable by forcing him to do something he doesn’t enjoy?

*******

I am going to cut out hoodies today and I am also going to cut out the pieces for the Kanoko tote bag from Waffle patterns. I pulled a chunk of gray waxed canvas out of the stash for that one. My initial assessment is that the design is very similar in size and style to my beloved travel tote, but I need to make one up to compare. If it ends up being a good pattern for that kind of tote, I want to make it in a bonded nylon, which is a fabric similar to that in the original tote.

And I was thinking about the Arare Pullover, also from Waffle Patterns:

The suggested fabrics are cotton poplin, denim, canvas, gabardine, etc. I wonder if this also could be made in a bonded nylon? The bonded nylon is not stiff—if I use it for the tote bag, I will have to add some kind of interfacing. I just don’t know. I haven’t worked with bonded nylon enough to learn its idiosyncrasies.

When You Have Evergreen Boughs

We have a delightful woman in our community who has been volunteering with the Homestead Foundation this year. A few months ago, she offered to lead a wreath-making workshop as a fundraiser for the Foundation. A group of us met at her house last evening where she helped each of us make a holiday wreath to bring home. Fortunately, we live right smack in the middle of an evergreen forest, so the raw materials were easy to come by.

I love mine:

I hung it on the door when I got home:

It occurred to me afterward that mine is more of a winter wreath than a Christmas wreath. That must have been my subconscious at work. I won’t have to take this down at the end of December unless it starts to dry out too much.

We had so much fun watching each person’s wreath take shape. Each one was unique and beautiful.

*******

I’ve spent most of the past two days running errands in town. I had a lot of catching up to do after 10 days away, and I’ve also been dealing with a sensitive personnel issue that called for face-to-face and phone conversations with several individuals. They were necessary and important, but I hadn’t factored them into my schedule. Will I be able to keep next week on track? We will find out.

I’ve got too many sewing projects underway right now. Part of the issue is that I am trying to keep things from stalling due to lack of materials—ironic, when my sewing area looks like a Joann Fabrics annex—which means that I’ve started about six different patterns. Nothing frustrates me like getting enthused about a new project, then having to wait for a week or two for some crucial component to arrive in the mail. My reasoning is that if I can’t work on Project A, I can move on to Project B for a while.

While I was in Seattle, I popped into the big Joann Fabrics store near the airport. I didn’t buy anything, but I did walk around and look at all the fabric we can’t get here in Kalispell. I’ve about given up finding anything I need at our store. This week, I was looking for zippers. If I found them in the right color, they were the wrong length, and vice-versa. And it seems that all of the things I want to make call for specialized notions.

</whining>

I haven’t cut any fabric for any of these projects yet, just the patterns, so I am going to choose the one that has the greatest chance of being completed (probably little boy hoodies) and finish that project before moving on to something else.

Today, though, I am going to can carrots. I use them in soups and stews over the winter and we are completely out of last year’s batch. I might do another batch of pumpkins tomorrow. I might as well do all the orange foods at once.

Trace, Trace, Trace (And a Junior Rooster)

I do not cut my patterns, I trace them. Tracing allows me to alter as I go along without cutting and taping. Tracing also allows me to use the pattern for more than one size. If you are one of those lucky people for whom a size 12 always fits with no alterations, you should absolutely cut your patterns. I am not one of those people.

I spent yesterday morning catching up on paperwork, of which there was quite a bit after being gone for a week, but I devoted the afternoon to pattern prep. The little boys are getting two more hoodies, because the first ones I made were a bit large. They chose new fabric—with trains this time—and it arrived in the mail on Monday.

[It is Auntie Janet’s prerogative to spoil little boys as much as possible.]

While the fabric was in the wash, I traced the hoodie pattern in two smaller sizes. The husband, who knows me so well, asked me at dinner if I had started making the new hoodies. 😇

I also traced the pattern for the blue quilted jacket. The ribbing I ordered is not quite the correct color, so I won’t be making the bomber jacket version after all unless I order a different color ribbing. However, I think I’ve spent enough on zippers and ribbing thus far and I just need to make the jacket. But goodness, there are a lot of pattern pieces for it. It’s also lined, which I somehow missed on the first reading of the pattern envelope. The finished jacket looks deceptively simple.

I may make a wearable muslin version out of some canvas or denim just to test the fit. I can always use another chore coat. I am a bit concerned about the sizing. Some of these patterns have what seems (to me) to be a ridiculous amount of wearing ease. I don’t need eight inches of ease at the bust in a jacket, even with quilted fabric.

I am trying to keep patterns organized with fabric and notions. After I open a pattern and trace it, everything goes into one of those clear envelopes with the string-and-button closure.

*******

Robin informed me yesterday that Tim Holtz is releasing a fabric collection in a different color every month. (!!!!) I popped over to the Free Spirit Fabrics website for more information. I will have to adjust the budget to account for this, although there are some colors—orange, for example—that I won’t buy.

On the way home from Seattle, I listened to an interview with Anna Maria Parry on the Craft Industry Alliance podcast. Anna Maria Parry—formerly Anna Maria Horner—is currently the head of Anna Maria Textiles, a division of Northcott Fabrics. What I found so fascinating about the interview was when she talked about the acquisition of Free Spirit by Coats, and how Coats was planning to shut it down because a fabric company like Free Spirit didn’t fit into the corporate structure of such a huge conglomerate. Fortunately, Free Spirit was purchased by Jaftex and the label continues. That’s a good thing, because Free Spirit is the label under which Tim Holtz releases his fabric lines.

So much intrigue.

*******

Those two chicks that hatched over the summer turned out to be one pullet and one rooster. Dave is 50% Buff Orpington and 50% New Hampshire Red. The chicks’ mother was a Black Australorp. The baby rooster is quite a stylish little dude:

He is going to need a name soon. I only hope that Dave doesn’t try to kill him. Dave beat up his father pretty badly and murdered one of his brothers. I am hoping that Dave, who will be five years old in the spring, has mellowed a bit. I don’t need the chicken coop to turn into the movie set of Gladiator II.

Ideally, I’d have two roosters calmly sharing the coop until Dave dies of old age and the little one steps up to be the rooster in charge after he graduates from Janet’s Finishing School for Baby Roosters. I’ve had such great roosters that I like to keep their bloodlines going if possible. The little rooster has not started crowing yet, so he may be flying under the radar for now.

And Now It's December

I have no idea where the last two months went. October and November flew by. I shall endeavor to keep December from moving so quickly. Wish me luck.

I left on Saturday the 23rd for Seattle, spending the night in Spokane and arriving at DD#2’s apartment on Sunday (my birthday!) in time for lunch. Later that afternoon, I took the ferry over to Bainbridge Island and settled in at the Airbnb in Poulsbo that we had rented for the week. My mother, sister, and my sister’s fiancé arrived Monday night. DD#2 came over on Tuesday, her boyfriend joined her on Wednesday, and on Thursday, the whole horde of us traveled to spend Thanksgiving Day with DD#1 at her in-laws’ house. Her MIL generously welcomed all of us with a huge meal and lots of visiting.

In between and around, we visited Port Townsend—the airplane museum was a spontaneous but wonderful stop—shopped in Poulsbo, went to the Christmas Market at Seattle Center, and saw the movie “Wicked.” That movie is now at the top of my all-time favorites list. It had an actual storyline rather than just a flimsy plot held together by loud and expolsive special effects.

I did do a bit of fabric shopping on the way to Seattle. I always stop at The Quilting Bee in Spokane, and I was delighted to find a new line of fabric from Tim Holtz. And it’s pink! I am a huge Tim Holtz fangirl and buy just about everything he puts out. Fat Quarter Shop also carries a fat quarter bundle and yardage:

This is destined to be a quilt for me.

I made my FIL a quilt some years ago using a Tim Holtz fabric. The pattern was simple subway tiles with straight-line quilting. The evening he received the quilt, he laid down in his recliner, fell asleep, and didn’t wake up again until the next morning. Homemade quilts have special sleep-inducing properties. 😉

*******

I found a new-to-me pattern company called Waffle Patterns. They offer some very intriguing designs and the patterns are currently on sale. I bought the Arare pullover pattern, the Bamboo coat pattern, and the Kanoko tote bag set. The Lemon Pie cape coat is also adorable, but where I would wear that?

I’m going to try to sneak the tote bag pattern into the queue, because I am going to need to replace my beloved travel tote bag at some point. I don’t want to have to recreate it from scratch. The large Kanoko bag looks very similar, so I think I can use that as a jumping-off point.

Speaking of waffles, I bought some cotton waffle fabric from Minerva to make my mother a Roseto robe. She’s had no luck finding a summer robe, and when I bought that pattern, we both had the same idea—I would make her one.

No matter where I go now, if I see something in a store, my first thought is, “I could make that.” It keeps me from buying items unless I absolutely need them immediately.

And finally—I ordered some ribbing from Pacific Trimming in New York City. I decided I want to make the bomber jacket collar version of Butterick 7008 because it looks a bit more upscale than the self-collared version. I ordered the ribbing before I left and it arrived while I was away. I think I have everything I need now and can start on that project.

Doing the Thing

A couple of my sewing friends commented yesterday—not unkindly—about the number of clothes I make. They wondered about the size of my closet or where I wear these items. Here’s the conundrum in a nutshell:

I can’t teach effectively, or wax poetic about a sewing topic for 30 minutes on a podcast episode, unless I have a thorough understanding of that topic. (Zippers, I am looking at you.) And in order to get that level of mastery, I have to do the thing. YouTube is full of content produced by people who don’t really understand what they are doing. The number of people posting tutorials using fabric that has never made the acquaintance of an iron is proof of that.

Consider, too, that most clothing patterns require the creation of at least one muslin to assess and correct any fit issues. If you’re lucky—or adept at making alterations to the pattern from the beginning—your muslin might be wearable. If you’re really lucky, it will become a favorite piece of clothing.

From that standpoint, sewing clothing is rather a wasteful process. I try to minimize that waste by finishing my muslins even if I don’t plan to keep them. I might pass along the garment to someone else or I might donate it to a thrift store.

I don’t know how to get around this. Theoretical knowledge is just that—theoretical. Issues become apparent when a pattern goes from two-dimensional paper to three-dimensional fabric on a body.

I will admit to a certain fondness for clothing (and fabric in general). I may not be a fashion plate, but I like colorful, well-fitting garments. And I enjoy the challenge of sewing those garments myself. Believe me, I understand the relationship between fast fashion—which, by extension, can become fast sewing—and the amount of junk ending up in our landfills. I’m attempting to bypass fast fashion by making quality clothing for myself that will last for years, but there are parts of that journey I cannot avoid.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. 🙂

********

My birthday is on Sunday. I’ve been serenaded by some church friends at a meeting, received several lovely cards, and when I got home from town yesterday, there was a bag of goodies waiting for me from Robin, including a yard of this wonderful chicken fabric:

I am going to make something special with this. Robin is a good gifter. She knows what her friends like.

I am making some good headway on one of my English paper piecing projects. This was a kit from a class that Tera and I took at Garden of Quilts three (!) years ago.

I have a few more columns of big hexies to sew together before this becomes a wallhanging quilt, but it’s getting there.

I picked up this Simplicity pattern on sale at Joanns yesterday:

I have three lengths of stretch velour in the stash (hot pink, black, and a deep lavender) that want to become something cozy. Also, this dress/top has a zipper, and I am on a quest to master zippers. Stay tuned.

Two Sweaters in One Day

A benefit of having my class canceled was that I was able to devote all of yesterday to sewing. I made the most of the entire day. One of the patterns I traced Tuesday afternoon was View D (bottom) of Simplicity 9385:

This is a dead simple sweater. It’s also very similar to Burda 6315, or how the current iteration of Burda 6315 looks. I’ve messed with that pattern so much that I decided I needed a clean slate. This looked like a good candidate. I used my Burda 6315 pattern pieces to determine a size, because the ease and finished measurement chart on the Simplicity pattern envelope were way off and would have had me cutting two sizes larger than I really needed. Yes, sweater knits need more ease than a clingy rayon spandex knit, but I didn’t require six inches of ease at the bust.

I have four yards of a Walmart sweater knit in my stash. You’ll see from the photo that it looks almost black, but it’s actually a very dark green. Eh. Not really a jewel tone, but I knew it would be good for a muslin.

I sewed it up but decided I didn’t want a hem after all. I like the banded bottom of the Toaster Sweater. The only reason I didn’t just use the Toaster Sweater pattern is that it’s a raglan and sometimes I want a set-in sleeve. Rather than shorten the sweater and cut and attach a band, I employed a serging trick I’ve used to make cuffs on baby leggings. I folded the bottom of the sweater up to the inside by about 3" and then folded it out again by another 3". Think “blind hem” on a pair of pants and you’ll get the idea. The result is a fold of fabric with a third layer of fabric on top. The raw edge of the third layer is even with the fold. I serged along that fold/raw edge and voilà!—instant band on the bottom of the sweater.

I didn’t want a band that drew the bottom of the sweater in tightly, but this band really needs to be a smidge smaller. No matter, I got the information I was looking for, which is that I like the band and I like the overall sweater length. This is about as “cropped” a sweater as I can make and still have the proportions look reasonable on my body.

I made the changes to the existing pattern and made a separate pattern piece for the bottom band so I could make it a tad smaller than the body.

For version 2.0, I pulled out one of the sweater knits I ordered recently to coordinate with my hot pink corduroy skirt and/or pants (I have both). I really had to work to get the pattern pieces to fit, so the band is not as deep on this version. I also had to abandon the idea of a cowl neck instead of a turtleneck. I thought I had ordered two yards of fabric but I think it was meters (this was an Etsy seller). I had a literal handful of scraps left when I was done cutting.

I made it work, though, and I am very pleased with the outcome:

This pattern has a bit of teal in it, too, so I could wear this sweater with a pair of teal corduroys in my closet that have been begging for a coordinating top.

I have two more sweater knit fabrics with hot pink in them. Both likely will be sewn up with this pattern.

*********

I am ridiculously excited about the release of the movie “Wicked” tomorrow. If you are unfamiliar with the story, it is based on the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. The story is set in the time before Dorothy lands in Oz and follows the friendship of Glinda (the Good Witch) and Elphaba, who eventually becomes the Wicked Witch of the West. The novel was adapted to a popular Broadway musical (Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth) and is coming out as a movie tomorrow. If the trailer is to be believed—watch it here—I think the movie is going to be fantastic.

I chaperoned band tour the year DD#1 was a junior in high school. We went to Seattle and Portland and saw “Wicked” in Portland because the kids were playing music from the soundtrack in their spring band concert. And if I remember correctly, the girls saw it in New York City on one of their trips with their grandparents.

Patterns, Fabric, and a Bomb Cyclone in Washington State

I spent most of yesterday organizing patterns and tracing a few new ones. The Butterick jacket pattern arrived in the mail. I would like to start on that one soon. I like the bomber jacket version, but that requires that I hunt down some ribbing for the collar in an appropriate color—I would have to order it—and I’d really like to be able to wear this jacket before next summer. I may just make the version with the self-fabric collar. 🫤

Sourcing supplies is such a PITA sometimes.

I traced Butterick 6858, which has been in my stash for a while.

I want to make the dress version eventually, but I am going to start with the top. The front of both the top and the dress consists of three pieces seamed together princess-style. I also like that scrunchy collar. This may end up being one of those sleeper patterns, like the Déclic top—unassuming, but such a staple—because the envelope also contains pieces for a skirt and a pair of pants.

The teal-and-black tweed wool fabric I ordered arrived yesterday as well. It is even prettier in person than it was on the screen.

I may work on these new patterns today because my quilting class was canceled. I’m a bit annoyed about that for a variety of reasons. I’ll just leave it at that.

********

The new piano tech showed up just after lunch to work on my baby grand. Before tuning it, he took it apart and cleaned it thoroughly, which it desperately needed. I’ll be having him tune it again next time. He did a wonderful job and it sounds just the way I want it to sound. A person can tune a piano without knowing how to play, but I think that having a tuner who plays and understands harmonics beyond just tuning notes to specific frequencies makes a big difference.

********

The chains for the Jeep also arrived yesterday—it was a big delivery day—so just before dinner, I went out with the husband to practice putting them on and taking them off. I am unlikely to drive over Snoqualmie Pass in the kind of road conditions that require chains, but the law in Washington state is that a person can drive over the pass in an AWD/4WD vehicle if the vehicle is also carrying chains. The chains don’t have to be on the vehicle, but they have to be inside it. Still, it’s good that I have them and know how to put them on. The husband observed that there are plenty of OTR truck drivers who don’t know how to put chains on their trucks.

Snoqualmie Pass is actually under a blizzard warning right now due to the bomb cyclone that hit the coast last night. “Bomb cyclone” sounds like a lot of hype, but it is a legitimate meteorological term. A storm becomes a bomb cyclone when the pressure drops at least 24 millibars in a 24-hour period, and this storm qualified. I looked at it on radar last night and it looked like a buzz saw heading for the Washington coast. The eastern Seattle suburbs were also getting some wicked easterly winds due to the pressure gradient that set up over the Cascades. That is the same kind of pressure gradient we get with back-door cold fronts that send the wind roaring down the mountains toward us from the east, but that phenomenon is much rarer there than it is here.

DD#2 checked in just after dinner. The area where she lives may have lost power overnight but I think she’ll be okay otherwise.

A New Necchi!

I’ve done three podcast interviews in the past week. Interviews seem to follow a feast-or-famine pattern; either I have several clustered together or I go months between them. These three will get me through the first week of December, though, without having to wax poetic about some sewing topic for 30 minutes.

I particularly enjoyed my interview yesterday because my guest and I were talking about sewing materials such as faux and thin leathers. She mentioned that she has been trying out domestic machines to see which ones can handle those substrates, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the Bernette B08 did very well, as did the Necchi C35. A Necchi! She had listened to one of my episodes where I talked about my Necchi industrial and thought I might be interested to know that the Necchi C35 did almost as well as the Bernette B08 in her sewing tests. It has a very attractive price point at just under $500.

Necchi dealers are a bit thin on the ground here in the US—the nearest dealer to me is in Boise, ID. I’m not likely to drive 12 hours to try one out, but I am intrigued.

I know that the modern Necchi machines are nothing like the vintage ones I love so much, but I am happy that the current Necchi company management seems to want to stay in the game. When we were in Florence, Italy, in 2017, I had a lovely conversation with our tour guide about Necchi sewing machines. (She had one.) There is a great deal of national pride in that brand.

********

I quilted a bit on the Q20 yesterday afternoon. I like to make quilted pouches from large fabric remnants that I quilt together with leftover batting. I use a thin voile as the backing—the pouches will get a decorative lining, but the voile helps to stabilize the quilting and keeps the machine from getting gunked up with batting lint.

These pouches are also a good way for me to try out some new quilting patterns and ruler patterns. I did tiny clamshells—an Amanda Murphy ruler—on this sheep fabric that was a gift from Robin:

So cute!

I am working on one now that is getting quilted with mini hexagons. (Another Amanda Murphy ruler.)

********

I know we recently had a full moon and that seems to bring out the worst in people, but I am dismayed by the kind of behavior I’ve been seeing lately. I can sum it up in one word: disrespect. Disrespect for other people’s time, effort, and beliefs. People are not treating each other as they would like to be treated. I am annoyed when that disrespect is directed at me, as it was yesterday, but I am also annoyed on behalf of my friends who have been on the receiving end of some of this nonsense. We should be better than that. We should do better than that.

As I’ve heard some wise people suggest, “Go outside and touch some grass.” Or snow.

Sewing More Sweaters

The instant gratification of sewing compared to knitting cannot be beat. I made myself a sweater yesterday:

This was a “two yards for $6” remnant from the Walmart rack. I don’t want to overload my closet with black and white again—it was all I could find in a retail world of muddy earth tones before I started sewing my own clothes—but I need practice sewing fine-gauge sweater knits and this was intended to be a wearable muslin. I measured the gauge at about 15 stitches per inch, much finer than anything I would ever knit by hand. I run too hot these days to wear sweaters heavier than this. Fiber content is polyester (?) with some rayon. That’s a guess, because the label says only “Fibers of undetermined content.”

The pattern is the much-hacked Burda 6315. The bottom front is curved, which helps the entire sweater to hang properly, but it does look a bit weird in this horizontal print. I need to press the hem. I ironed some knit stay tape to the bottom edge before hemming the sweater on the coverstitch machine, just to keep the edge from stretching out of shape, and that worked nicely.

[I need to spend a few hours at Macy’s or Nordstrom looking at construction details because I am not always sure that my methods are the best ones to use. The coverstitch hem looks fine, but I am curious to know how something like this is done in RTW.]

I feel more confident, now, cutting into my two new fine-gauge sweater knits. The second one arrived yesterday:

This fabric is another sweater knit with some magenta in the print:

I have one more sweater knit on its way from Cali Fabrics along with the teal-and-black wool tweed. All of these sweater knits will probably become some version of Burda 6315, although I might change the neckline to a cowl. Or I could use the Toaster Sweater pattern. We’ll see.

I also made up my class samples for my class this week. I learn so much from this process because I have to think through what I am doing and how best to explain it to my students.

********

I have a new piano technician coming on Tuesday to tune the baby grand. Years ago, I had a local guy named Frank tune my piano. Frank played euphonium in the community band and he knew I played the trombone, so he would bring low brass recordings with him and after he finished tuning the piano, we would sit and drink tea and listen to them. Frank also had a gift for making my piano sound wonderfully rich. Sadly, he died of leukemia a few years ago. The tuner I have been using since then is adequate, but he doesn’t play music and I have not been happy with the sound of my piano. I have a Yamaha and I chose it specifically because it had a bright sound that I wanted, but “bright” is not the same as “tinny” and mine leans tinny, especially in the upper register.

If you think I am choosy about how my piano sounds, you should read the book Grand Obsession by Perri Knize. Whoa.