Again?

Our school district is in the middle of $0.165 billion worth of construction work--which the voters approved in 2017 by an overwhelming margin. I had a hard time understanding why it passed on the first try, and finally concluded that it came down to Property Values.

Now they are back asking for a combination levy renewal and increase, for operating expenses. They have been obscuring the hard numbers, but that's okay, I can make an estimate from the few numbers that they did give. My estimate comes out at an increase of $0.168 billion dollars over the previous levies--this is over the ten-year period they are asking for. Their brochure suggests it might be more like $0.120 billion dollars, but it's hard to put things in context when they are hiding the baseline.

Now that I've found the actual text of the ballot question, it looks even worse. They are proposing to MORE THAN DOUBLE the existing levies.  Also, to index it to inflation. And, it is based on a per-student rate, so if enrollment increases, then so does the amount that they collect.

In the brochure, on page 3, there's a graph that is worth looking at. Just recently I read several of Edward Tufte's very interesting books on elegant graphical displays of information. So when I look at that graph, what I see is how elegantly it both shows and obscures the doubled levy request. At first glance, it looks like two streams merging and continuing together with the same total quantity, because the top and bottom heights don't change, but on the right side of the graph, the middle is filled in, with the increase in shaded area representing the 108% increase in levy.

One fact to know about this school district is that about 1 in 10 students come from outside the district, through open enrollment. They've closed this in the lower grades, for lack of space, so the proportion in the higher grades is even higher. It is also apparent from the things that they brag about in their media, and the things that they don't, that they are heavy on reputation and impressive-sounding activities, but not as good as they ought to be on academic quality.

In 2017 there were highly-coordinated efforts to get the bond request passed. In 2019, I am seeing more of the same; we have received multiple mailings.

The local newspaper was uncritically supportive of the 2017 proposal, something that I did not forget when the paper was asking for voluntary subscriptions. I was just about to donate, but then I changed my mind when I remembered their coverage of this issue. These past few weeks, the paper seems to have gone inactive. I can't say it's a clear case of cause and effect, but I suspect there's a connection.

Costume bits and pieces

I haven't done a lot with children's Halloween costumes this year, partly because years ago my mother-in-law bought my children well-made dinosaur costumes, which have only needed minor repairs since then, so we keep on re-using them.

I did sew one costume piece for a child. It was partly fun, and partly challenging.  Fun, because it didn't need as much finishing work as a regular garment would, and challenging because it's shape and structure required some rather fiddly sewing. But it came out well.

One child wanted an astronaut helmet. I kept forgetting to check the bakery section of the grocery store for products sold under clear plastic domes, but eventually I thought of cutting the top and bottom off a clear plastic 2-liter pop bottle, and then making a slit up one side and uncurling it a bit. They put a lot less plastic into packaging than they used to, and it opens up far enough for a face shield fairly easily. I am thinking of wiring the top and bottom edges so that it stays open by itself, though. The rest of the helmet we are going to fake up from fabric or something.

Another child wanted to be a bird. I figured that I could use different colors of chalk to draw feathers on his clothing, and then use hair spray as a fixative, so it would last the evening, but still wash out afterward. But then he changed his mind.

Fixing a rip in a suede boot

I used a glover's needle and some brown waxed thread, but an embroidery needle and dental floss would have done all right too--except for the color of the dental floss.

For these kinds of bringing-the-edges-back-together repairs, I prefer to use what I call a "Frankenstein stitch". My needlework reference book (a reprint of de Dillmont's very thorough volume) calls it an "antique seam". There's a slightly darkened version of the illustration here; it is one of the lesser examples of the hundreds and hundreds of beautifully-done engravings in the book.

Anyway, the way the stitch is made is to always bring the needle up through the material, first on one side, then the other, and repeat.

Minimalist country style

While on vacation, I read a book called Country Wisdom, by David Larkin. It is a collection of interesting tidbits, not a comprehensive guide.

One of those tidbits was that thatched roofs were really only practical in damp climates; the moisture was needed to keep the fire risk down. That is why the American colonists didn't use them much.

Another one, that I have been thinking about off and on ever since, is that early American country interiors were much more sparsely furnished than most of us believe. The idea of them being cluttered came from a collector, who crammed as many items from his collection as he could into interiors to be photographed. I want to say that this was in the early 20th century, and that the guy's last name started with B, but I'm not sure now. From records of property made at time of death, it can be shown that people's household goods were functional and not plentiful in those days.

The children design a fall craft

Three-dimensional paper pumpkins:  crumpled paper on the inside, surrounded by orange paper--possibly thickened by folding to form the "ribs" of the pumpkin--with rolled green paper for a stem, and green pipe cleaner tendrils at the base of the stem; all held together by a layer of clear packing tape.

They figured almost all of this out by themselves. I did steer them toward the crumpled paper filling, and away from cotton balls, and I let them into the big box of office and art supplies that is usually off limits; toddlers, pipe cleaners, and electrical outlets could be a bad combination.

A deeper mitten basket

I had two baskets for mittens, one at the front door, and one at the back. Both were made of crocheted strips of cotton fabric, mostly old sheets. Since I've been trying to establish a single Coatroom Zone, I needed a single, larger basket, instead.

So I unravelled one of the baskets and re-used the strips to extend the other one and make it deeper. There was more than enough.

Then I cut down on the number of mittens and gloves a bit, so they would actually fit in the basket. I should do another round of this, as it is still quite full. I want the children to dig through it, not throw everything out so they can find something.

Punch needles

I've had the book Hooking Rugs:  New materials, new techniques, by Gloria E. Crouse for a while. It is an older book,  and it is interesting not only for the punch needle techniques that she used, but also for the ways that she used adhesives and other materials to make mixed-media rugs and wall hangings--she's tried everything--and for her tips on how to design, start, and finish a project.

There are basically two ways to make a hooked rug.  One is to use some sort of a hook to pull yarn or fabric strips up through the backing material.  The other is to use a tool to push the yarn or fabric strips down through the backing (from the back to the front)...usually this tool is a punch needle.  This needle is a slit tube with a hole near the pointy end, set in a handle. The speed needle version is mounted on a set-up like a non-electric egg beater, which moves the needle up and down as the handle is turned.

I went to an estate sale recently, and I found a little box of punch needles for $3. When I got it home, I found that it contained three:

First, an inexpensive basic needle, non-adjustable. I had one of these once, but it didn't last long before it broke, because of how the needle and handle were joined.

Second, a similar needle with several depth-of-loop adjustment notches. The needle is mounted inside the handle instead of outside, which makes it much sturdier.

Third, a Columbia Minerva needle just like the one in the book (besides her trusty speed needle), with two sizes of needle tip. It has ten depth settings and a little slide to keep the needle where it has been set. In the book, she tells how she modified hers to get three more possible settings out of it.

I've been playing with it a bit--with something like one hundred hours of work left to do on my other rug projects, I'm not starting another right now--and it is indeed fun to stab through the fabric over and over to lay down lines of loops. The needle is a little tricky to thread, but there are some hints in the book. I used a small embroidery hoop to hold the fabric taut; for a rug, I'd want to build a frame.

If you're going to do wood countertops...

...this is the way to do them.

I've used the spar urethane that they used on the countertop a few times before, and I like the stuff a lot. One project was a set of shelves with a projecting counter, built of 2x4s, 2x2s, 1x10s, and plywood, which I built for additional shelf and counter space in our tiny apartment kitchen. Several moves later, we still have it, but now it is serving as a somewhat wobbly workbench in the basement.

After reading her post, out of curiosity I went to see how well the urethane on the counter of that shelf had held up. Originally, I put two good coats on, and called it good. Now it is very much dented and scraped up by tools, but it is all still there, except for a couple of chips on the edge, and one place where someone sawed into it a little.

I also used the stuff on my plywood hot tub, the furo, way back when. I put at least ten coats on the inside. Spar urethane does not fill in gaps, I found, without some assistance (toothpicks, in this case). It did leak just a little after a few years of use, but it was set up in a shower, so it didn't matter.

The most recent project was the bathroom stool, where the urethane is holding up very nicely...unlike most of the other finishes in there.

Beans

There's a toddler helping shell beans in my kitchen tonight. My husband planted a few pole beans this year, and despite not being able to care for them much, they've produced well.

Last year, with an older child or two helping, we shelled about five pounds of bush beans in two hours or so.

Fall wardrobe tweaks

I did a quick assessment of my wardrobe for fall, and was happy to find that I already had just about everything I need. Most of what needed to be done was to forcibly retire some items.

From past wardrobe inventories, for example the one in my Wardrobe in a Week effort, I know that 95% of my daytime wardrobe needs to be "working casual".

I did sew one thing, a skirt from a synthetic fabric out of my stash. I have nailed down the style and length of skirt that I like best, but I'm still experimenting a bit with the fullness. For this one, I tried a narrower skirt than I usually make, and I found that I like the result, but that I wouldn't want to go any narrower.

The time needed to cut out and sew the skirt was about two and a half hours, including doing a zigzag stitch around the edges of all of the pieces, to keep them from fraying--which was very necessary with this particular fabric.

The fabric's color didn't go well with the rest of my wardrobe, so I overdyed the skirt. I have been trying to get away from dyeing things, because the chemicals involved are quite toxic, but sometimes it is the most economical solution.

The fabric took up much more of the dye than I had expected, but in the end it looks a bit chintzy. I think it could benefit from a lining to give it more body, but I don't think I have the fabric for that right now.

The Prudent and Prepared Homemaker

Sallie Borrink has made her Prudent and Prepared Homemaker materials available in her Community Discussion Area. There is a lot of good material there, and I'm in the middle of working my way through reading it and thinking about what I need to do in my own household.

The cost of handmade clothing

I came upon a historian's analysis about how much labor was involved in making clothing before the Industrial Revolution.

She took an example from the Middle Ages:

So, 7 hours for sewing, 72 for weaving, 500 for spinning, or 579 hours total to make one shirt. At minimum wage - $7.25 an hour - that shirt would cost $4,197.25.
And that's just a standard shirt.
And that's not counting the work that goes into raising sheep or growing cotton and then making the fiber fit for weaving. Or making the thread for the sewing.
And you'd still need pants (tights or breeches) or a skirt, a bodice or vest, a jacket or cloak, stockings, and, if at all possible, but a rare luxury, shoes.

I believe linen was one of the major fibers, at least in northern Europe, but processing flax is also very labor-intensive.

Her estimate of a weaving speed of 2 inches per hour is exactly what I had estimated for my own speed making the rug.

In a sock-knitting booklet, I found a short history of socks that claims that before the time of Queen Elizabeth, people wore hose made of woven fabric, sometimes cut on the bias (diagonally), and that the fashion for knitted stockings only began when someone presented the Queen with a pair of knitted silk stockings.

I don't think my sock-knitting speed is as fast as two inches per hour, so I find this somewhat believable, although I also believe that someone, somewhere, must have worn knitted socks before Queen Elizabeth's time.
I've noticed how much emphasis in Proverbs 31 is placed on the manufacture of textiles. Another example would be in Greek myths, where noblewomen are often described as highly-skilled weavers. I have concluded that spinning and weaving are harder skills to master than growing food, and are very necessary skills to keep alive. That is part of why I built my little table loom and started learning to weave rugs.

The textile industry in the U.S. has been almost completely wiped out by cheap imports, with both the labor and the environmental damage being moved overseas. There is production of high-quality, sustainably-made fabric going on the U.S. still, but on a small scale, and it costs about ten times more than an import would.

Two new things

We spent part of our vacation in a place which has notably better salvage opportunities than our suburban neighborhood does. I did a lot of walking around and looking at things and considering possibilities. I was mostly looking for a replacement for my string art piece.

I knew that I wanted a more or less oval shape, and a rather large one. I figured that whatever I found, I could clean up and paint white.

I saw no ovals, but a lot of circles. Our school room already has enough circular shapes in it, and most of the ones I found were either far too heavy to quickly hang up on the wall, or too lacking in character.

I've learned that when I'm hunting through clutter for potential treasures, I should go back through and look a second or even a third time; I just can't visually take everything in all at once.

It was on the third or fourth time past one particular pile, when I found an accent window, probably from an RV. The shape is sort of arabesque, with two rounded corners and two pointy ones.  The window itself is dark, curved plastic imitating smoked glass, and is intact. I felt like it wanted to be rescued and used.

I brought it home, washed it, and have been working on painting its aluminum frame. I found that plain white is too cold for the room, which has mostly warm colors, so I mixed a little yellow into the leftover paint, and gave it another coat. I need to look at it again in daylight to see if I like it or not; it may be too yellow now.

The window is on the wall now, but needs to be hung lower. I thought at first that I would hang it vertically, but it looks much better hung the other way, as it probably was placed originally in the RV. It is smaller than what I had planned, so I am going to look at how its scale works in the room also.

The other thing I picked up on vacation was a light armchair that I already owned, which has been in storage at my parents' house. This is for our living room, which was the first room that I did the Cozy Minimalism technique on. I had that room all done, but then I stole one of the rockers out of it for the school room. One of our director's chairs stood in temporarily, but it is not really durable enough to be there, and the children like to pull the fabric back off and let the arms flop down, and use it as a pretend airplane.

This armchair rocks a little bit. The base was still off from the last time I moved it, so I had no trouble fitting it into the back of our vehicle. I was happy to see that I had been smart enough twenty years ago to bag up the screws and tie the bag to the chair's arm.

The upholstery is very worn on the back, and will soon be worn on the front, but the frame and the springs are in good shape, and the stuffing is good enough for now. I still have the seat cushion that my grandma made me for it.

The chair did need some cleaning, starting with vacuuming, and it took me a ridiculous amount of effort to get the screws back in--working against the spring mechanisms, which needed to be wedged open, and for some reason one screw just wouldn't engage with the nut insert that it was supposed to screw into. The screw is into the wood far enough, but it will probably work itself back out now and then.