Cold in April

The current temperature is 13 degrees. I am praying that the heater stayed on in the greenhouse, although the diesel heater is still out there for backup. It has a thermostat and should kick on if the temperature inside drops below 70 degrees. At our pastor search committee meeting at church Sunday evening, we were discussing the possibility that this freak spring storm might cause some people to reconsider their plan of moving to Montana. One can hope, LOL.

The gusty winds finally died down after 24 hours. Both Elysian and another neighbor lost trees. The large tree in front of Elysian’s barn came down but landed without doing major damage. Dealing with the mess always takes time, though. We lost three more trees, none of which needs to be dealt with immediately.

Elysian was gone overnight Monday. Yesterday morning, the husband opened the kitchen door to find her dog standing on the porch. He had managed to get out of the yard. She has a big Alaskan Malamute (I think) who is not fond of men but adores me. The dog ran away when he saw the husband. I went out and called for him and he came running, so I put a leash on him and brought him back to our house. He had scrambled eggs and a bit of rice for breakfast:

I think it’s funny that all the neighborhood dogs come here when they get out or get scared. When Ali first moved in across the road, they had a dog named Eddy who knew how to work the door handle and let himself out. He would wait until the humans left for work and then go exploring. One day, I opened the door and found him lying on our porch in the sun next to Rusty and Lila. Sometimes he would come in with them and nap in the living room.

Elysian’s dog stayed with me until she got home and could make arrangements for getting the tree taken care of.

I went out to the greenhouse to water plants and discovered that another rodent had managed to evade the traps and had dug up a bunch of the melon and squash seeds. I replanted those and watered everything. The hose was frozen, though, so I had to haul water from the spigot in big watering cans. Hopefully, we will catch whatever is out there snacking on seeds. I covered the trays until the seeds sprout. Once the seedlings come up, they are usually safe.

I am still working on serger stuff. My class on Monday went very well. I had six students. Four of them had new air-threading Baby Lock machines, one had an older Pfaff, and one had a Brother. We had all the machines working and everyone had finished their projects by the time class ended.

[I need to become more familiar with those Baby Lock machines. The store owner offered to lend me one for a week so I could practice with it. I’ll probably take her up on the offer in May when things calm down a bit.]

The students wanted to know when the next class would be, so I am trying to get three or four classes put together and on the schedule for the next six months. This requires a fair bit of thought, however. What should the topic of the class be? Should I do a class on sewing with knits or a class on various machine stitches? What projects are going to showcase the techniques being taught and can be completed (or mostly completed) during class time? Should I have the students buy their own supplies or should I kit something up and include it in the cost of the class? If the store owner needs to order fabric, can she get it in time?

I can’t get too fancy, because some of the students will come with basic machines. The Baby Lock sergers have a setting for a “wave” stitch, which is a way to make a two-color edging swing back and forth. Lower-end machines won’t have that, although I discovered yesterday, while perusing the project manual for my machine, that I can do that stitch on my $300 Juki serger by holding the thread against the machine with my thumb as it comes through. It’s a crude method and I haven’t tried it yet to see if it works, but the instructions are in the manual.

And of course, the instructor needs to know how to do all these things she’s teaching. I watched an interview with Marianne Fons and Liz Porter—two women who founded a quilting empire—and Marianne Fons commented that when they taught their first quilting class, they would announce the topic for the next week’s class, and then the two of them would rush home, learn the technique, and sew all the class samples.

I’m enjoying myself, but class prep always takes time. Once I get them done, though, lesson plans should only require minor tweaks here and there.