Kinder Summer
11:46 a.m. - 2015-08-18


Well, life with air conditioning is a whole other lifestyle. I no longer need to dread the approach of the summer months. The funniest thing about it is when I go back to the sewing machine in the evening and suddenly feel chilly since it is very near one of the vents. I have to put on a sweater even though it was over 100 degrees that day. Win!

Everyone is watching the development of El Nino with a lot of hope for drought-busting downpours this fall and winter. Our hopes have been crushed in past years, so we are keeping our fingers crossed. In spite of the drought, we have had some good harvests of green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and basil. The apple harvest was fabulous since for unknown reasons the dastardly squirrels did not attack the fruit this year. I put away 15 quarts of applesauce in the freezer and took 60 pounds of apples to the Food Bank.

I have been doing a lot of paper sewing this summer - playing with pattern drafting. My goal is to produce a comfortable, well-fitting shirt, blouse, and jacket. My sister came down and gave me her fabric stash last week, so that I could keep some and take the rest to the craft thrift store. After she went back home, I sat in the hot garage sorting through 7 big black garbage bags full of really nice fabric. We had laughed about how fabric seems to lose its attractiveness the longer it sits in the stash which makes it easier to downsize. She had some really nice stuff in there, so I kept what I wanted and donated the rest. There is some lovely dark linen that would make a nice shirt for A, well, actually it would make 6 nice shirts for A since there is so much of it.

While I was at the craft thrift store making the donation, I ended up buying some more fabric because it was half-off day. I never pass up nice denim and ended up with about 8 yards of heavy black denim. I saw a pin on pinterest about making baby bibs out of denim, which I had never thought of. So now I can make a few handbags and 5000 baby bibs. Or not.