Time to Plant

We’re going to be off to the races here shortly. The fire department auction is next weekend and will consume four days of our time. The husband and I are in charge of the equipment sale. It is not as involved as running all of Finance—which I did for several years—but it is still a big responsibility as it brings in most of the revenue.

The week after the auction is Holy Week and Easter and that’s always a busy time for church pianists. And Susan and I have to produce the homestead foundation newsletter that week, too.

I had WS here yesterday. After lunch, we went out to assess the situation in the garden. There is still at least a foot of snow on the ground:

I have to use all of my imagination to envision what it’s going to look like in another month or so:

We’ll get there.

WS helped me sort through the pots to see what we need.

Some of the trays are falling apart after 12 years so I put in an order for new ones. The husband brought home six bags of potting soil and I will get tomatoes and peppers planted this week. Not only am I planting what we need, I am also planting inventory for the fundraising plant sale in May.

The greenhouse is a bit of a mess. We store a lot of supplies in there over the winter and also collect boxes and cardboard and other items we’ll need. WS and I put the tomato cages out in the garden. Yesterday was overcast, so it wasn’t exactly toasty inside, but it was warm enough that we could work in shirtsleeves. I plan to spend this afternoon out there doing more cleaning and organizing.

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I finished messing around with the Butterick 6754 shell pattern. I am happy with my third and final muslin. There are no egregious wrinkles, the sleeves hang perfectly (I had to adjust the sleeve cap shaping slightly), the side seams are straight, and the darts are where they are supposed to be. Zede Donahue cautions against “overfitting”—trying to eliminate all wrinkles—so I am stopping with what looks good to me. And my personal yardstick has always been, “Does this look better than what’s coming out of China?”

I knew I had issues with tops and blouses being too short, but seeing the differences between commercial patterns and my bodice sloper has been an eye-opener for me. From now on, the first step in tracing anything will be to see how the pattern compares to my bodice sloper. The information in that Threads article was so helpful, as was the bodice sloper class we took at Sew Expo.

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The husband—the man who never met a tool he didn’t like—told me the other day that I should buy myself a good heavy-duty industrial sewing machine. My Necchi industrial is really a lighter tailoring machine and balks at sewing Sunbrella. He says I could sell plenty of generator covers (all made in my copious spare time, of course). I’ve been looking for a good used vintage industrial machine for several years, but those are hard to come by in our part of the country.

I talked to our friend Tommy, who does auto upholstery. He said I was welcome to use his machines any time. We’ll see. I am still in the research phase. I’ve narrowed my choices down to the Sailrite Fabricator, a Juki 1541, or a Consew 206. They are all about the same price and have similar features. C.H. Holderby is an industrial sewing machine supplier in Seattle, so if I could find a time to get over there and try sewing on a few different models, that would be helpful. They might also have a nice used machine.