Projects, Books, Sewing & Sausages
10:24 p.m. - 2009-10-20


The spouse has lots of projects in the works now that our budget situation has improved. We are going to finish up the window replacement project. So far we have done the two sliding glass doors and three bedroom windows, and still have to do the sewing room window and the front picture window. The contractor guy who does the work is suffering from the downturn in the economy, so the spouse wants to throw some jobs his way. This week Contractor Guy is going to put up some wallboard in the garage and install some pegboard so that the spouse can organize his tools better. The big window is on order, but in the meantime we are getting an estimate on the deck. The spouse is sick and tired of having to stain the deck every few years after scrubbing it down etc. etc. so he wants to replace it with that new fake stuff that never rots and never needs staining. Sounds good to me.

I am still sewing a lot. I think that the reason I am not knitting much is that when the window replacement time comes, I am going to have to empty out the sewing/knitting room, a gargantuan task I am not looking forward to. In the meantime, though, (sufficient unto the morrow is the evil thereof) I am still working on the Year of Abby. This week I made her another Mexican peasant blouse with free-motion machine embroidery. I am getting pretty good at that, off and on, by which I mean that sometimes it turns out great and sometimes not so fine. I also finished up the nylon tricot camisole, mended a pair of her socks, made an apron for her, and made a red camisole that turned out amazingly well.

The only other thing I did this week was laundry. Since Contractor Guy will be working in the garage this week, the spouse said I had to finish up all the laundry that was waiting out there. It was quite a mountain of laundry so I had lots to wash and lots to fold and put away. Lots and lots and lots. I discovered that when everything is clean there is not enough room in the house for it to all be put away.

This last weekend two of the libraries had book sales so we went to the previews on Friday night, then I went back to the bag sales later on in the weekend. At the preview I saw a cookbook from the late 50's that I already own so I didn't buy it (How America Eats by Clementine Paddleford), but when I got home I looked it up on on the interwebs and saw that it is selling for between $40 to $225. I was hoping it would still be there when I went to the bag sale, and it was, so I got it for about 10 cents. I also found some great books for the girls, but not so many good reading books for myself because it was too crowded. Times are hard and the crowds at the cheap books sales are really increasing.

Joel's birthday dinner is this week and he says he wants to have tamales. Melissa says she is still sick and tired of tamales because of the other time someone had them for a birthday dinner when she was living over at my dad's. He bought way too many of them so she was eating them for weeks afterwards. This also happened to her the year she wanted sausages for her birthday dinner. I bought about 7 different kinds, and she hasn't been able to look at another one since.

In entertainment news, I like the looks of the animated feature about the boy (robot?) who saves the world.