Putting things together again

No curfew in Minneapolis or St. Paul last night, only continuing violent crimes.

Coronavirus numbers in tests, hospitalizations, and deaths in Minnesota have held quite steady since mid-June. I suppose an uptick should be expected in early fall, once school and other fall activities get going a bit. Summer is very much the off season for most organized social activities around here, because the people who do the organizing go out of town to their families' cabins.

I made progress on many things last week.  I mended more clothing, and some knitted dishcloths, and a mitten. I aligned the reel mower. I moved two bags of toys out of the living room, back down to the basement where they belong. I established a better workflow for a refinishing project that I am working on, and am finally making progress on it. I found my what-to-do-next cards, which I had completely forgotten about, and am getting back into a routine. I am also easing into exercising with hand weights again.

I've been gradually moving some pieces of decor around, trying things in different places.

Minneapolis again

Riots and looting in Minneapolis yesterday, seems to have been mostly in the Nicollet Mall area, right in the middle of downtown.

Governor Walz was more on the ball this time; a curfew for Minneapolis was declared, and dozens of people were arrested--one account said 132.

Tonight both Minneapolis and St. Paul have curfews.  From TCCrimeWatch on Twitter, it seems like things are lively in Minneapolis tonight, in terms of more scattered criminal activity than usual. There are National Guardsmen posted downtown.

Third Precinct cleanup

We haven't been down there ourselves, but there is a short video here.

Leverage

How Denmark used what they had to build up their agriculture:

The soil was embarrassingly poor for a country with agricultural pretensions--thin and sandy in most places, boggy or overgrown with heath. But by using imagination, they turned a handicap into an asset. While other countries of Europe were clamping down tariffs on imports of cheap American grain, the Danes let it flood in. Their idea was to feed it to livestock and then export meat, poultry and dairy products to Great Britain and other nearby markets. This helped free them of the burden of growing grain themselves, and they devoted the land they otherwise would have needed for grain to raising high-output crops. As their agricultural productivity soared and the numbers of their animals increased, they found in stable manure an unexpected bonus--the means by which to increase the fertility of their soil.    -- Dale Brown, The Cooking of Scandinavia

Boom

We had a crabapple tree come down in last weekend's big storm.  It had started falling down a few days before that, with one branch resting on the roof. Now when I see media images of storm damage, I look for the rotten places in the trees.

We also lost power, which put some of our preparations to the test. We did well on lighting, having lots of little LED lights.  My husband the electronics tinkerer has many LED bulbs (random internet image); these can be powered simply by putting a button battery between the two wires.

[If you add a magnet to that, you have a "throwie".  Much more about throwies here, including discussion about whether or not it is really safe to power LEDs that way, and how to add a resistor to improve battery life.]

One LED will put out enough light to read by, at close range, but LEDs also put out some ultraviolet light, which isn't good for eyes, so I limit my LED reading time, and I don't shine them directly into my eyes.

Our power was restored the next morning, saving us the trouble of canning up the contents of our refrigerator. We have the Jackie Clay canning book, which includes instructions for canning dairy products, with a caveat that this goes against modern canning recommendations.

What went not so well for us was not being able to whisk the car into the garage, because of an overpopulation of bicycles. A branch came down right next to the car.

Punching up plain carpeting

I've been reading a series of magazines from a nearby sidewalk library, and I noticed that many of the rugs pictured were two-color designs, with one color predominating.

That got me thinking about how to take a solid-color rug, and add yarn to it to make a design. Eventually, I remembered that I have a punch needle (which pushes loops of yarn through a fabric from the back), and I wondered if it could be used on commercially-made carpet.

I tried it on two different carpet remnants. I found with the first one that the carpet backing was too strong to push the needle through; I would need to pre-punch each hole with an awl.

With the second, the needle went through more easily, and I was able to punch in a line of loops all the way down the length in only a few minutes. My hand was tired at the end.

I found that I had to set the needle at almost the longest loop length setting to get the loops to show in the carpet pile. (Longer loops than that would require pulling by hand, and it would probably be better to work from the front with a rug hook.) Putting a loop through every other square of the backing mesh made a line that looks just like a line of paint drips. For a more solid color, I would have to punch every square, and more than one row, and even then the original pile would still be mixed in.

More mending

This time, patching a cushion cover.

From previous posts, I see that I made it two years ago.  After some months of use, it developed a small hole on one side, so I flipped the cushion over and used the other side.  Recently it started getting another hole.  I thought about patching it, but the whole side was getting threadbare. Not long after, the hole turned into two long rips.

So I've patched both of the rips, and the first hole, and put the cover back on the cushion, least-worn-side-up.

The fabric is a decent wool plaid, but not an upholstery fabric, so the heavy wear under local conditions is to be expected.

Mending, and screwdriver work

I patched the fabric arm of one of our camp chairs, and the seat of a director's chair.  I ripped out a seam in a pair of boys' pants, where an extra fold of fabric had been drawn in when I was trying to mend them last year. Then I finished mending the original tear.

I also tightened the director chair's screws, and the screws on some of the cabinet hinges in the kitchen.

I did some "re-knitting" to fix an unravelled hole in one of my homemade dish cloths.

I dug through our screw bin and found longer screws for a fixture where the screws had pulled out.

None of these took very much time, and I felt very productive, getting so many things fixed and back into use.

Some traditions don't go back very far

The potato was originally a New World food. This quote is about the late 18th Century Denmark:

But then those were strange days and ways. That new American delicacy, the potato, had not yet done heavy duty as a staple and was being served as a dessert, hot and salted in a napkin.  -- Dale Brown, The Cooking of Scandinavia

Increments

I mended several pairs of boys' pants, and my husband canned up a batch of tomatoes.

A while back when I was sorting kids' clothes, I found a pair of khaki pants that were clearly too slim to ever fit any of my children. I set them aside in the to-be-dealt-with pile, and then completely forgot about them.  They turned up again just when I was wondering what fabric to use to mend two newly-ripped pairs of khaki pants.... Suspiciously Providential.

Worth reading

After finishing Thomas Sowell's Race and Culture, I went on to Migrations and Cultures. Now I see there's a new article out about his life and work and ideas; I highly recommend it.

Sowell is 90 now, and much of what we're seeing in the news today is a direct consequence of people failing to listen to him in past decades.

Book recommendation: The Complete Guide to Sharpening...

...by Leonard Lee. The copy I've been reading has gone back to the library, but it has been put on our to-buy list.

It takes on the topic of sharpening from first principles, with numerous electron microscope photographs of edges, and pages of discussion about what is happening on a microscopic level when a woodworking tool is used on wood, or when a tool is sharpened and honed.

Next comes information on tools and techniques for sharpening, including commercial and homemade jigs (guides/supports). Lee is mindful of the low-budget reader, and gives lower-cost options and recommendations on what to buy first.

In the following chapters, he gives specific and extensive instructions on sharpening every bladed woodworking tool I'd ever heard of, and some that I hadn't. Saws and bits are included.  Common household tools like hammers, kitchen knives, pocket knives, scissors, and tweezers are also covered.

Not included:  reel mowers--which are really a special case under the Scissors category, and usually need only re-alignment, rather than sharpening--and scythes.

Lee is or was a tool manufacturer, and gives a lot of hints about to recognize, care for, and skillfully use well-made tools, including how to fine-tune their sharpening for the intended purpose.

I'd consider this book for homeschooling curriculum, mainly for high school students who are strong and careful readers. The prose and pacing aren't dumbed down or drawn out. But even the photographs and diagrams are highly educational in themselves.

I found it interesting that much of the book was basically an introduction to metalworking for woodworkers.

A maker family

I took two pieces of fabric left over from making skirts and cut and hemmed them to make handkerchiefs. Someday I am going to take the time to learn how to use a narrow hemmer attachment on a sewing machine, but for now I just fold, pin, and sew.

I also altered the collar on the blouse I just finished, by the most expedient method:  I cut off most of the excess fabric, ripped open the seams at the front edges a little, folded the raw edges in, and then topstitched them closed. It turned out well.

Then I took the blouse and a skirt I finished last year, and dyed them purple with the last of my dye.  (I don't like using dye because of its toxicity, and because most of it goes down the drain.) The two fabrics, both originally cotton sheets, took the dye slightly differently--one is a little more reddish than the other.

My mother-in-law was brainstorming about how to make a easel that she could spin a canvas on, vertically. My husband found a caster to use as a bearing, minus the wheel, and got it started for her.

She mentioned a sort of papier mache-like clay that is made of drywall mud and toilet paper. We may try that someime. 

Some of the children have been making stop-motion animations for a church activity, and they have been working like elves. Another child made a little wooden table, and painted it. I usually avoid painting furniture, because paint isn't durable enough, but the table's color (blue) is quite striking.

Gov. Walz adds more dials

After directing all school districts to construct plans for scenarios of in-person, distance, and hybrid (a mix of both to reduce student density to 50% school capacity) schooling, Governor Walz finally unveiled his executive order for how schools can re-open in the fall.

It is based on the 14-day number of new cases per 10,000 in population, by county--which is very much a moving target.  It separates the older and younger students, so that the lower grades shift to hybrid or distance learning a step behind the higher grades, thus helping somewhat with the issue of parents needing school-provided child care.

There has already been a lot of confusion among adults about that 14-day number:  is it the total number of new cases over the 14 days, or the daily average?  The low numbers of the thresholds (in the few tens of cases per 10,000) imply that it's the daily average, but in the Safe Learning Plan, it is clear that they mean the total number. This article has a graphic showing where the counties currently fall in this scheme.

The devil is in the details, as usual.  The executive order allows school districts some discretion, but really only in the direction of being more restrictive, as it threatens intervention by state officials in schools that stay open where the numbers of new cases are too high. State officials may graciously allow schools to continue in-person instruction if a local outbreak happens but is concentrated outside the school.

Parents are allowed to choose distance learning for the entire school year, and teachers may request to work from home.

According to a FAQ, if a student tests positive, then they will contact trace, and request that all close contacts found stay home for 14 days.  Their definition of close contacts:

Close contact is when someone is within 6 feet of the ill person for at least 15 minutes.

From the Safe Learning Plan:

Close contacts are defined as someone who was within 6 feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes starting from 48 hours before illness onset until the time the patient is isolated

More than fifty close contacts from one individual may trigger a Testing Event, which is apparently a gathering for mass testing, with help from the state. Universal testing within a school community is also mentioned, if there's a big outbreak.

In the Safe Learning Plan, it is clear that they are thinking of sending the entire classroom home for distance learning if exposed. 

Minneapolis has already decided to go to all-distance learning for the year.  St. Paul is likely to follow.  The suburbs seem to be leaning toward trying the hybrid model.

Walz is a former teacher, by the way.