Sewing Stuff September 8-14

 I actually managed to allot myself 15 (and sometimes 5 more) minutes working in my sewing area the first seven days of National Sewing Month (September).  That feels good.  I feel like not only am I working on cleaning up a neglected spot in my house, but also that I'm having a little daily creative time, even if the creativity is limited to looking at sewing stuff, remembering what I made with it--or intend to make with it at some point, or stitching shut holes in various articles of clothing so they can be worn again.

Let's see if I kept up the momentum over the next seven days.

September 8, I worked on tying the fleece blanket I'd unearthed on September 6.  I got not a whole lot done, only 15 minutes to spend on that day, plus the Yarn Thief decided she needed to 'help' with the embroidery floss I was using to tie with.  Which meant battling her face and paws for who got to 'hold' the embroidery floss as I was sewing it through both layers, tying the knots, and clipping off the extra, then repeat for the next tied spot.  The battle got a little fierce, I ended up with a claw hooked on the inside of one of my finger joints, the Yarn Thief got unceremoniously dumped off the cutting table where I'd been working, and I called it quits for the night before my cat-stabbed finger bled on the fabric.

September 9, was a day of off-and-on rain showers that curtailed a lot of the outdoor plans I had (nothing 'fun', just outside chores like weeding, hanging laundry on the clothesline, etc).  So I used that excuse to spend a little extra time in the sewing area.  I tied that fleece blanket a little more, but also starting hauling some things I'm giving away--that have been dumped in the sewing area--upstairs to get rid of.

September 10, gathered up some more stuff to get rid of, and did some tying on the fleece blanket.  At this point, I have used up an entire skein of black embroidery floss.  But, that's good because I have a whole bunch of off-brand embroidery floss Mother-in-Law sent me years ago that I don't intend to use for charted cross stitch type things where color consistency is important.  So tying the blanket is a great use for it; and now my sewing area is one skein of embroidery floss less cluttered.  LOL.

September 11, I hauled the rest of the get-rid-of-it stuff upstairs, and finished tying the fleece blanket!  Yahoo!  At that point, I hoped to get it stitched around the edges over the weekend and call it done.

September 12, I spent about an hour in the sewing area, and finished the fleece blanket!  I stitched all four sides about 3" from the edge, then cut fringe in the unsewn parts.  One side was all ready tied from DD2 working on it, and some of the 'fringe' that is the ties had broken off, but whatever.  My fringe sort of matches that fringe, albeit left not tied.  This is a case where I am accepting Finished Is Better Than Perfect as my motto.  

September 13, I cleaned up the cutting table from trimming the edges of the fleece blanket; it had shed a lot of black fuzz (no wonder it was the black fringes that kept breaking off when DD2 had tried to tie them in knots, the fleece was almost brittle strings compared to the more 'felted' construction of the pink fleece that is the other fabric used).  And then, I decided to dive into a brand new project!  

I had purchased a quilt kit sometime in 2025, the first ever quilt kit I've bought (the far majority of my quilts have started in my head, gotten sketched on graph paper and then fabric 'found' for them)--it had all fabrics needed plus the pattern instructions.  When I bought it, my intent was to sew it up that summer and have it for either a fall throw quilt or put a hanging sleeve on the back side and use it as a seasonal wall hanging in the mudroom (where my "Memories" quilt has hung since May of 2012).  Of course, life got in the way and that didn't happen.

Well, now that my sewing area was clean enough to use again, and I'd rediscovered that quilt kit still in it's wrapper, I made the decision to indulge myself in sewing it.  So, on the 13th I opened the kit, sorted the fabrics, read the instructions, and cut two of the fabrics as directed in the pattern.

September 14, I cut the rest of the brown squares needed for the quilt.

I am loving this momentum and can't wait to spent another week down in the sewing area in daily small pieces of time.

I Think I Missed The Memo

On one of the blogs I check in to every few weeks, the blogger typically has a Saturday round up of things she had found of interest to her around the internet complete with links.  A lot of her links are of things that do not interest me, so I don't click on every one she posts.  Some, however, pique my curiousity and I go to see what the article is about.  The other day, I followed one that ended up being to a decorating blog.

Now, I am definitely not the target audience of those who have decorating blogs.  My decorating style has typically been along the lines of 

a) I needed an item like this (couch, lamp, blanket) and a hand-me-down of that item was given to me. It may or may not match anything else in the house, but I have it and I'm using it.

b) I needed an item and found one I liked for cheap that sorta goes okay with the other stuff I have.

c) I wanted an item, waited years to justify the expense, and finally found one used for cheap(ish) (hee hee like here and here).  I love it, it matches good enough and I'm probably never getting rid of it.

d) I wanted an item, didn't feel like I could justify buying it, and put it on my wish list and then (depending on the size/cost) one or more of my kids (went together and) bought it for me for my birthday or Christmas or sometimes Mother's Day (that one would be small stuff).  Because it was on my wish list it is exactly what I wanted and is the right color and style and everything.

All to pretty much say I don't acquire furniture or other household type stuff on a whim, and especially don't get something because it's the "in" thing of the moment.  The Color of the Year has no value here.  I painted the interior of my house in 2003, when we were building it.  I liked those colors then, and I still do now.  Nothing has been repainted a different color.

Not only that, once I have an item I like, I rarely replace it unless it wears out.  I've never been one to discard something because it is no longer 'fashionable'.  My tastes don't tend to change.

Similarly, I'm not one for changing my decor from season to season.  That, to me, is rather a lot of stuff to purchase, store, and take care of in order to put it out on display for a couple of weeks or months, then stick it back in storage until its season comes around again.

So when I read recently, on that decorating blog I got sent to when I clicked on the link that aroused my curiousity, about changing rugs with the season I went "Whaaaaatttt????  People do that?" (Imagine a seriously confused look on my face.)

To me, a rug is a serviceable item more than a decorative item.  Its function is to protect my floor, typically from dirt.  Being able to pick up a dirty rug and shake it out is much more appealing to me than having to sweep and wash the floor all the time.  In my brain, a rug is a dirt trapper, not a piece of decor.

Which is why I have a rug in my tack room.

I found this rug this summer when I was shopping for something else, liked the color, and figured it would be appropriate for the tack room.  I like shakeable and washable rugs better than the coir mats or waterproof type rugs for near doors.  Now, I do admit to picking that particular rug because of its color, and how well it would match my tack room versus, say, the blue one of the same type.

But, evenso, buying that rug in that color didn't make me fashionable. My first inkling that I was out of the loop on current rug usage was when I wash removing the label from my new tack room rug and saw this:

Layering rug?  Why the heck would you layer your rug?  A rug is for wiping your feet on, it doesn't need layers.  It's not like you step onto the first layer, then peel it back and actually do the wiping on the second layer.  Is it?  Nah, that would be dumb and unnecessary.

Apparently, to be fashionable, you now layer your rug with another rug.  So it looks good.

Which to me, also seems awfully dumb and unnecessary.  Not functional, as only the top rug is receiving the dirt, plus two rugs obviously cost more than one.  But, whatever.  People can layer their rugs if they want.  I'm going to keep using my rugs singly.  For catching dirt.  Pretty is secondary.

Oh, and I'm not changing it (or any of the rugs in my house) seasonally.  I like mine to be timelessly classic. 😉

Happy Things Friday, Mostly in Pictures

 

A jug of freshly pressed apple cider from our first family Labor Day gathering and cider making.

(Thought up and press provided by DS2.)

A camouflaged little friend I found in DD1's apple tree  while DH was mowing their yard.

Just one of many large lady praying mantis I have seen lately around this little place here

(my hand for scale)

Evening sun through an interesting cloud.

Rides through the woods on the LBM

A family joke from long ago: Tag to you, 

'Dead Pony' deodorant to my kids and I.

(An example of humor in sadness that can survive decades.)

Chicken of the woods?  I don't have an experienced mushroom person to verify id, 

so I didn't harvest and eat it.

A monarch caterpillar munching away on a milkweed leaf.

Not pictured:

--DH found and acquired a used, running, ride-on lawnmower on Thursday evening for DD1 and Honorary Son, so he won't need to mow both their lawn and ours on a weekly basis for the rest of the mowing season.  Loading our zero-turn on our trailer and hauling it to their house every week to week and half, plus mowing for them while he was there, was getting hard to squeeze into the schedule, especially with our weather tending toward fall rainy-ness.

--Yummy smoked spare ribs and carne asada DH made for our dinner on Labor Day when (almost) all our kids and grandkids were here for cider making.

--a whole bunch of Roma tomatoes from DS1's garden that I will make into sauce.

Sewing Stuff Sept 1-7

 

This is my total mess of a sewing area.  Or, at least, most of it is.  In the far back of the picture is more storage (mostly DD2's stuff she hasn't moved to her current residence or gotten rid of) than sewing area, but it's still kinda in my line of sight when I'm trying to sew.  I'm posting this picture from the very start of September, as I'm hoping to use National Sewing Month to get 15 (or more!) minutes in my sewing area every day of this month and will (hopefully) be able to take a picture of a much less cluttered, much more usable space on September 30th.

Let's see how I did the first seven days:

September 1, I repaired the Poetess's fly mask that is laying over the back of the chair at my sewing machine.  It had several tears in the ears that needed to be hand stitched closed.

Holes do not keep flies out of the Poetess's ears 

(which is the main reason I have her wear a mask.)

Fly-proof once more!

September 2, I sewed up the holes in the toes of a couple of DH's black dress socks.  That only took about five minutes, so I used the rest of my 15 to start putting some things away.  Like scrap flannel from the nightgowns I made K3 and Faline last December.  And knitting and sewing patterns that were also laying out from the same time frame.  I also put a bag of free yarn of several weights, but mostly worsted, that my Mom had given me last fall, into the bin I have for worsted weight yarn.

September 3, I cleaned off a corner of my cutting table and filed away more quilting/sewing patterns as well as threw away the little tags that had been on each square of a quilt block swap I'd participated in back in the early two-thousand-teens.  A couple of years ago I had sewn those blocks into a twin-sized quilt top, which still awaits sandwiching, pin basting, and quilting (all the components for this take up yet another spot on the cutting table 😒).  

Also included in this 15 minutes was sorting out the contents of a cardboard box of DH's grandma's quilting related things that Mother-in-Law had sent to me sometime during the overwhelming years of the mid-to-late twenty-teens.  Inside the box I found lots of fabric marking pencils and spools of thread, a leather thimble, some labels that proclaimed "Specially Made by Ethel" (huh?  Who was Ethel?  Grandma's name was not Ethel.  Nor was her middle name Ethel.), and best of all, a bunch of hexies in what looks to be 60's or early 70's fabrics!!

I've wanted to try sewing hexies into something for a long time.  Now that I know I have pre-cut ones ready for me, maybe I'll actually give it a whirl sometime in the not-too-many-years-distant future.

September 4, I used the sewing machine for the first time since early January!! I mended a seam on a (new, but washed) cloth diaper I had from a pack I bought several years ago to make baby burp cloths out of  (Faline, Buck, Sixlet, Lucky, Octavia) and hadn't used this one yet because one of the center seams on one side had come unstitched during the washing process.  Now it's fixed and ready to be used for a future baby's burp cloth when the time comes to make more!  

I also fixed an inch-long section of a waistline seam on a dress I'd made a long, long time ago that both DD1 and DD2 wore as little girls.  I recently pulled it out of a tote of special things I'd been saving, ran it through the washing machine to freshen it up, and am planning on passing it along to Faline now that she's about the same size.   With my remaining handful of minutes I did a little more cleaning up of the tables that hold my sewing machine, rotary cutting mat, rulers, templates, etc.  I'm getting the itch to work on a real project, not just mending (although there's more mending waiting. . . )

September 5, I didn't get to the sewing area until late in the day, after dark.  I did some more tidying, especially of small fabric scraps that went into a bin of really tiny saved stuff for paper piecing or string quilting.  In the process, I found the shoebox sized plastic container where I keep my leftover binding strips (mainly in case I need to repair binding on a grandkid quilt in the future).  Hooray!  I had binding strips from three baby quilts to add to it, and had been keeping my eye out for it all week when tidying up.

September 6, A little mending with the sewing machine, and more tidying.  Put away larger leftover fabric pieces that were stacked up, each color going into the appropriate bin (bins stashed under the tables).  Put away yet more sewing patterns that were also still out from Christmas sewing last year.

September 7, The sewing area is looking less like a mess compared to at the beginning of the month.  So much so that I can actually use a large portion of my 'cutting table', so I did.  I had found, in my tidying over the week, a fleece 'blanket' that DD2 had brought to me several years ago.  She had intended to make a tied fleece blanket, but when she started to tie it, several of the fringe pieces broke off.  Frustrated, she had given it to me, basically saying she couldn't make it work, and to do with it what I wished.  Well, at the time, I had a ton of stuff going on and so I folded up the two pieces of fleece, partially tied on one side, and set it aside.  Over time, it got moved here and there, and buried under stuff.  

Now that I had found it, I looked at it again, decided that for whatever reason the particular fleece fabric used just wasn't going to work for making a tied blanket where you cut fringes in the sides and then tie top and bottom together with the fringes.  Rather than getting hung up on the why it wasn't working for that/how to make it work, I decided I could make a tied blanket of a different type with it.  Both layers were still lined up with each other, so I laid them out on my now sorta usable cutting table, smoothed the layers, and pin basted them together.  My intention is to use embroidery floss at regular intervals sewn through both layers and then tied into knots as you would if you were tying a quilt rather than quilting it.  Once that's done I'll sew around all four edges and call it a finished and usable blanket.

The fleece blanket in question.

A Long Time Coming

 Lookee what I got!

I finally, after 23 years, have a bench in my mudroom that seats two adults (or four small grandchildren) for putting on and taking off footwear!  This is something I've been wanting, and from time to time keeping an eye out to purchase, for literally decades.

Initially, DH didn't want me to buy one because he was going to make one.  I honestly believe, in 2003, when we were finishing up the house at this little place here enough to get our occupancy permit, that he did have the best intentions on building a bench.  Temporarily, we had two plastic lawn chairs (you know, the white kind that was so popular in the early 2000s) there in the fall and winter.  

Maybe they were actually there longer, as I don't remember what came between them and the small, narrow, not very heavy duty, more decorative than useful, bench that I found at Goodwill around about 2006 or so and stuck in my mudroom.  Yeah, 2006 and DH hadn't had time yet to make me that bench he intended to make.

That little bench stayed in the mudroom until about 2016 when it started to pop apart in places because it really wasn't intended for large adult men to sit on.  I banged those joints back together and moved it to near my front door, where it stayed until around 2019 when I gave it to DD1 for her house.

Next in the mudroom were two 'extra' wooden dining chairs as we had bought six new ones for our dining room table because three of the original six had broken by that point.  It made sense to stick two in the mudroom for everyday use putting on and taking off your shoes, plus they'd be handy when we needed to seat extra people at the table.

At some point, one of the chairs started to deteriorate in strength, and we strapped a booster seat for a grandchild on it to ensure that someone lightweight used it for family meal gatherings.  Which left just one chair in the mudroom.

Yeah, post-2016, DH still had not gotten around to making that bench.  In his defense, from 2014 through Covid 2020 his work schedule was horrendous and I think in many ways both of us were just trying to keep up on the basics (him working 60 or more hours each week, plus work travel, and me trying to work plus do my chores plus take up the slack on the most important chores of his).  Nevertheless, time went by and no custom made by DH bench ever happened.

Fast forward to now.  I happened to be heading out in my trusty rusty Suburban to go run some errands (because one of the errands possibly entailed needing more trunk space than Sweet Madame Blue has) and saw, two miles down the road, a sign for a garage sale.  It happened to be at the house of someone I used to know pretty well; the mom of a friend and softball teammate of DD1 throughout high school. So I pulled in her driveway, partly to see what she was selling and partly just to say hi.

Long story short, after talking to her a bit and finding out how all three of her (now adult) kids were doing (as well as how many grandkids she has), I looked through her sale offerings and I saw this bench!

It's sturdy!  It's big enough for two adults!  It's solid wood!  And the price was very right.  So I told her I couldn't live without it, handed her some cash, put it into the back of the Suburban (yay, cargo space!) and brought it home.

It's going to live in my mudroom forever because this is what I've been wanting and waiting for.  (Unless, of course, in retirement, DH becomes a furniture maker, in which case I will gladly swap it out for a DH-made bench of similar size and styling.  Because now that I've acquired what I've waited 23 years for, an oak--or pine--plank on plank-width legs with no back [his original homemade mudroom bench idea] is not going to do.)

Books Read in 2026: August

Call It Horses by Jessie van Eerden . This one was listed in July, but I'd barely started it so didn't really have anything to say about it.  Now that I finished it, I wanted to give a quick review.  It was not at all what I expected from the blurb on the cover. And, (disappointingly to me) it doesn't have much to do with horses at all, they only come in at the very end of the book. It is not a light read, nor does it have a cute happy ending.  That doesn't mean it was a bad book, it just means its not one you want to pick up if you are currently weighed down by some heavy life circumstances. (Which I wasn't, so I read it, but if I were I don't think I would have had the mental bandwidth to finish the book.)

On to August's list!

Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry by Harry Kemelman.  This is the second in the series, and I loved it just as much as I did the first.  I got ahold of it from the library via the state library interloan system, and was surprised by how old this particular copy was: 1966!  It actually had the old original due date slip taped on the page inside the back cover with due dates from the 60s and early 70s, then on the inside of the cover itself was a pocket with the due date card which had more stamps from the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. So I not only enjoyed the story itself, but also got great joy seeing a book older than myself still in circulating condition!  Really stood out as to the durability of books printed back then versus books made in this century.  On the other hand, it also made me realize that these stories have fallen out of fashion and tend to languish in library storage rooms these days rather than out on the shelves where browsing readers can see them.  Let's bring them back into popularity because this is a great series and I fully intend to read all of them.

The old blue cloth bound covers of the 60s.

Stitching that held the pages together (stitched, not glued!)

A Dark Path by Linda Castillo.  This is a now-in-print version of several short Kate Burkholder stories that were previously released on Kindle only.  Since I don't Kindle (or any other form of reading books on a screen instead of on paper) I was really happy to see that stories I knew about but wouldn't ever read if they were electronic-only were going to be compiled into an honest to goodness book.  And I wasn't disappointed, either!  Each story is stand alone and roughly 60 pages long.  Perfect for a time when you don't have hours available daily to devote to reading.  They are all well written, with no rushed or sloppy feeling to them.  Really makes me hungry for a whole novel; I hope the author has got a new full-length Kate Burkholder story in the works.

Nantucket Second Chances by Pamela Kelley.  This one was suggested to me by the library's automatic book picking system when I requested a different (not in print yet) novel recently.  Looking on Amazon for the blurb, it sounded like it could possibly be something I'd enjoy reading, so I put a hold on it. It was okay; although if I were to be brutally honest, I didn't like it.  I had a hard time getting into the characters, not just because they were so obviously from a different economic class than me, but also because many of them seemed to be shallow stereotypes.  Similarly, I felt that every drama point resolved too easily and quickly to be realistic.

Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie.  This is her third novel, and in my on-going personal project to read/re-read all of her mysteries (since I read the majority of what I could get my hands on of hers as a teenager, it's been a long time), it was next on my list.  It did not disappoint.  She most definitely was and still is, in my opinion, the queen of murder mysteries.

Oh No, Not Bots!

(I'll start with apologizing for potentially blurry pictures.  Not the best angle, lighting, etc for a cell phone camera when you are crouched next to a horse, leaning slightly into the underbelly danger zone and trying to be quick about it all the while hoping the horse doesn't move.)

Recently, there was an evening when I brought horses in from the pastures to put them in stalls for the night and feed them dinner, and I saw this on the inside of one of Poetess's front legs:

 

BOT EGGS!

Oh no, not bots!  I quickly checked her other legs, and yep, the other front leg had eggs attached to the hairs too.  Which meant, without a doubt, that the time of year the bot flies are out laying eggs had come.

What are bots and why does it matter if they put eggs on the horses' legs?  Bots are a fly that, as an adult, do not eat.  They only mate, lay eggs, and die.  It is the eggs that are the problem.

Eggs are laid on certain parts of the horses bodies, parts that the horse can reach with it's mouth--say, to rub an itch, or to smack at a different fly that is biting them.  When those eggs are rubbed by the horse's mouth, they come off and are ingested. Once ingested, they hatch, and the larvae dwell in the horse's digestive system as parasites.

As we all know, parasite = bad.

Which means that it is imperative to removed those eggs as soon as I discover them.  The less chance of the horse ingesting them the better.

So, I dug around in the tack room and pulled out my trusty pumice-like bot block.  A bot block is used, with some pressure, in the direction of the hair growth to scrape off those bot eggs.

Bot block employed.

If the horse stands still, and standing still no matter what I'm doing to them is an important skill I teach my horses, it really only takes a couple of minutes to remove those pesky bot eggs.

Leg free of bots once more.

PHEW! Potential crisis averted.  (Crisis being intestinal worms to get rid of, which are much harder to reach than eggs on legs.)

I checked each horse, and did need to do some scraping with the bot block on the other horses too, some as much as Poetess, some less.  A quick daily check has, so far, found no more eggs deposited.  Thankfully this 'season' (botflies) is typically only a few weeks, which means I only have to be diligent in checking for eggs for a little longer.