Shut In So Totes, Totes, and More!

 

I admit it; I kind of become more of a couch potato during winter’s cold, ice and snow. I have full-blown osteoporosis in my spine and hips and since old age makes one unsteady to begin with, I figure there’s no sense taking unnecessary chances. That’s my story anyway. Although I’ll also add that when you step outside and the cold even makes your eyeballs hurt, that’s some serious shit going on. This time of year, I can often go for a couple of weeks without leaving the house so you can see why this blog gets smaller and smaller.

I did have a successful showing of my wares during late November as we set up our display for the Humane Society at an assisted living facility craft show. We featured a darling adoptable puppy and my stuff; I tout that I donate profits to them so feel it makes people feel good about their purchase of my things.

My big totes didn’t go but my most expensive purse/clutch did plus two of the smaller bags, which lends me to believe smaller and lighter could be the way ladies are headed in what they want to carry. So, more and more, I am making these; for one thing they take way less fabric and I can offer them at a lower price point. Designer fabric has gotten outrageously expensive, but often times I just can’t help myself because they are so dang gorgeous! Online fabric stores are definitely my “candy store” and I can spend hours endlessly flipping through wonderful new choices. Obviously, I lean toward bright and lively colors; I just like it when things really stand out. In quite a few of these photos I do have a lot of fabrics which I've upcycled from upholstery samples or thrift stores however.

 

Thanksgiving and Christmas are quiet times at our house since we have no family visiting. Buster precludes us putting up Christmas decorations and he constantly knocks over the Christmas tree just with lights on it in his attempts to play or climb it.  I did really score though for my birthday in that Marc told me to buy a new sewing machine as the old used Viking I had started presenting me with many glitches. I did a lot of online studying of reviews and features and settled on a Janome and so far, I’m very happy with it. There are a ton of features I’ve yet to even try.

Marc is keeping pretty busy at the high school involved in both his volunteer/mentoring and he also is helping out with maintaining and fixing a lot of their saw equipment, which had been woefully neglected. He likes passing on his skills so it’s a good use of his time. He sadly had to park his E bike once the roads became snow coated. 

As a last note, with our harsh temperatures lately, we’ve turned into a little bit of a rescue operation for the wildlife. The black feral female cat we fed and fixed last year is back, along with another cat and I took mercy on a young cottontail who would hang out beneath my lilac branches eating wood. I’ve started feeding it and it now comes out from under the sunroom daily as it hears me calling. Rabbits are slow eaters so it gives Buster endless entertainment to watch it feed as he gazes from his kitty condo out the window. 

We hope you have enjoyable and safe holidays this year end. Merry Christmas and here’s to a much better New Year!

 

 

The End of an Era

 

For ten years she’s sat in front of our shop, turning uglier by every season. She provided untold amounts of solid maple wood for Marc to harvest for his woodshop and much needed storage space area for a bunch of miscellaneous junk. But it’s been past time for her to leave as a blight on our front yard so with the help of some equipment kindly lent to us by a contractor friend, we got to it. Ten days, $1200 in expenses like dump fees, fuel, and additional gravel, and many backbreaking hours of pickup work later, most of her was gone. What remains; the frame and axles mainly, will be further stripped and then eventually be put up for sale.

We had good weather, although some days too warm, for our work, so primarily worked during early morning hours. Watching the jaws of the grapple bucket gnawing away at the skeleton reminded me of seeing a small ant with a giant load of something clenched in its front pinchers. Forty foot of fiberglass and wood and more insulation than I’ve ever seen in one place succumbed to brute force.

(a hydraulic dump trailer)

(first step was removing main slide)

(finally just a pile of debris)

(down to the final load)

(what's left for final cleanup and sale)

Was it nostalgic? A little. She housed our family for many years as we chased construction projects all over the country and then finally escaped in her fulltime for many RV travels. Very stoutly built (it’s true they don’t make them like that anymore) and heavy, it took a special truck to safely haul her. Now, it’s all just memories, like so much of our life is becoming….

 

Fall is here.

 

Old People Days

 

It’s hard to write a blog when not much is going on and you’re looking at the life of two old people!

Summer has mostly passed; it was notable for very hot temperatures and high humidity for an extended time, neither of which we’re fond of anymore. We’re cooler now but still rainy, so the garden has slowed some. I suspect within a couple of weeks it’ll breathe its last productive gasp and I’ll spend a day pulling up dead and dying plants. The cherry tomatoes produced extraordinarily well though; we got thousands out of two plants. I have even been dehydrating them and freezing as a way to try and make use of them. I also peeled, cored and cut lots of apples this year (we have three trees) for freezing for yummy baked goods later this winter. 

I turned my mother’s old time zucchini bread recipe into a way to use up the yellow summer squash and boy, was it a hit. It turned out wonderful. Prior to that I had been taking lots of it to the shelter to share, even with the bunnies and guinea pigs. Chard loves colder temps and is still doing well; I had to also freeze lots of that as I love it in soups and omelets.

 

The shelter auction did well in late August and out of 32 items I had made (jewelry and art) and contributed, all but three or four sold. After the auction, I worked at helping with the sorting and then the dispersal of the items to the winners for several days. Prior to that and during, I was also baking my bread and freezing it in anticipation of having twenty loaves for the bake sale that happens for the city Fall O Rama, which was the 20^th. For the first time I can ever remember, it stormed badly that day and as soon as we set up we got caught up in the deluge and thunder and lightning. Many items were ruined as we only had two small canopy covers and the powers-that-be came around and said they were closing it down. We were able to pack up and move indoors to a local car dealership which was having a pet adoption event so we tried to piggyback on their endeavors but it wasn’t the same. After all that work by so many of us baking, it was a huge disappointment. As I’m sure it was for all the craft and food vendors who then had nowhere to go. Of course, my bread can always find a home or we’ll eat it ourselves!

Marc decided he needed some exercise help so recently bought an E bike and has been setting it up for extended riding. He’s been good about getting out almost daily and is fortunate that the county has many riding/hiking trails, some of which run over 30 miles into other small towns. He fashioned a quick trailer to haul the bike in and at some point I’ll be dropping him off and picking him up at some further point with it and the truck. 

Speaking of trucks, Marc finally sold the old Dodge truck which he purchased new thirty years ago! We parked it out front on the highway and it sold in less than three hours. Given that new, one ton dually diesel trucks are pushing $80-100,00 I can see why….It still ran and had only 160,000 miles on the best Cummins motor Dodge ever used. It now lives just down the road from us! 

Nothing earth-shattering is coming up for us; Marc will be having a contractor friend down soon with his forklift and dump trailer to help us dismantle and scrap out the old Travel Supreme so we can finally get that eyesore outa here! I’ll definitely take pictures of that. I have a couple of possible things coming up for the shelter; a Victorian Halloween house tour (I featured that last year) and a craft fair held in mid-November at an assisted living center where we usually sit with some puppies and me with my wares for sale. We have no plans for any of the holidays and will, I’m sure, spend them alone. 

I have decided to turn my hobby efforts in another direction; I am doing more jewelry and probably will continue with that and I’ve developed an interest in learning how to sew totes and handbags. I’ve ordered some neat fabrics and some instructions and patterns and am just starting on my first “practice” one using some leftover scraps of material. If successful, those will go in the February shelter online auction and we’ll see how they do. Due to the fact that most fabrics are manufactured overseas and given Trump’s stupid tariff regime, the price of fabrics has gone up leaps and bounds so they aren’t going to be cheap to make! It’s a good thing I’ve got a lot of fabrics on hand to get started with. I also do lots of reading and have a jigsaw puzzle going at all times. I try as hard as I can to stay away from the news as it drives me totally insane…

 

Summer

 

My cat loves to turn summersaults. He also loves to break into defrosting meat packages and gobble up half a raw pork sausage brat; eat his way through Saran wrap to half wrapped avocado where he dives in, and he chews his way through new cat dry food packages to eat his fill when we’re not looking or paying attention. He cruises countertops at will; despite how many times we put him down or tell him “No”. It’s where the good stuff lives. One very early morning I walked into the kitchen to find the new package of catnip and its contents like this: Yes, he was dancing very merrily I might add!

He is however, a real comedian, bringing us laughs daily with his silly antics and behavior and he’s also very loving. If we could just stop him from attacking the girls (our other cats) he’d be the perfect little guy. You just learn to accept all the bad to be able to soak in all the wonderment and joy that this little life brings to our days.

I wish I could say the same about our political mess. I hate that it has become so all-encompassing that it’s hard to get through even one day without its strident ramifications. Regardless of what side of the fence you may sit on, you can’t deny that American life suddenly seems different somehow; not as friendly, not as accommodating, not as inclusive; much more insecure and uncertain. And way costlier!! As we edge ever closer to a police state, it creates utter and complete dismay for a huge swath of us who want life back before Trump. The anger and childishness that our politicians display towards each other and the public astounds many of us who wonder “Just where did civility and respect for one another go?” Without trying to be overly political I can only say from a feeling developing deep down in my bones: THIS IS NOT GOING TO END WELL.

Summer warmed up so our garden finally took off but has been hit or miss. The spinach bolted rather quickly so I really only got about two good pickings off it. Chard is doing well and the tomato plants are getting huge. Something is eating the small summer squash plants so they are still in the “iffy” category. The peas have been a virtual flop; I may get a handful off them is all. Radishes got planted late and seem to be taking their time. 

(Munchkin amongst the peonies)

Another Humane Society rummage sale has come and gone and I ended up working a lot more hours than initially intended as the gal that heads it up was out sick much of the time. Consequently, it was a little chaotic, and very crowded with donations! The first day of drop-off we were slammed and at the end of the third day we couldn’t find any more room to display items so just had to leave them wrapped in their boxes and bring them out as other things sold. Every year, with increasing age of all of us gals who participate, it gets just a little harder to pull off. Thankfully, Marc stepped in and helped us set up the heavy tables and came again for cleanup and pack up of the leftovers. One of the main draws to working the rummage is that we volunteers then get first dibs on items that come in and Marc & I made quite a haul this year. Of course, we give a generous donation to the shelter for the items but they all prove very useful to us. Marc's particularly pleased with a chain saw case, binoculars, and a nearly new air fryer which he has been using almost daily, along with his outside grill.  I picked up about seven puzzles, pieces of fabric, some darling ceramic coffee mugs, books, a bird bath, and a silk felted scarf I am cutting up for use in art projects. 

In other news, serendipity came calling about a month ago and a neighbor put up for sale a 2012 VW Passat with 120,000 miles on it. The car is in clean, beautiful shape, one owner, used for long distance commuting (he was a commercial airline pilot out of Chicago), and he had it priced for quick sale $3-4000 under book value. He was asking for cash and after watching several younger parties very interested but not able to come up with the funds, even though we weren’t really looking for a car I told Marc we should jump on it. We took it for a test drive and found it to be a huge step up from our 22-year-old Saturn, so we bought it. It can now become the “winter car” so it takes the roads salt abuse instead of our new Subaru. We put the old gal up for sale out front and she finally sold to a young driver this past weekend. It was a little nostalgic seeing her go; after all, she’s been a member of the family and such dependable transportation for 21 years at very little cost—hard to beat that! Long time readers will remember how long I’ve been driving that thing, ha!

We still seem to have myriad projects awaiting us around the house outside so the jury is out on whether we will be making it up to spend any time at our lake place. I would like to get at least a few weeks there in late summer/early fall if possible. Marc did manage to get up North for a couple days to help his buddy in his job of remodeling a lake cabin his wife inherited recently. What a darling place and such outstanding views! I could sit there for hours, that’s for sure! Northern Wisconsin is filled with thousands of such gems; the amount of water frontage in this state is amazing but what do you expect with over 10,000 lakes and hundreds of rivers? I’ve missed being on ours….

I am switching up my projects for the upcoming online auction in late August for the shelter. Jewelry has been tempting me so I’ve ordered some new stuff to produce more earrings, bracelets and necklaces. I even got a hankering to make paper beads and incorporate them; they are great fun to make using my hand painted papers and some fantastic scrapbook papers I found at Hobby Lobby. Maybe I’ll have some more pictures by the time the next blog rolls around! 

Till next time, be cool like our King of Chaos here: