Coat in progress

It seemed best to start from the innards, and work outwards.  I've been piecing together two layers of sweaters (acrylic mostly) and one layer of blanket into a thick vest.  Sleeves, collar, outer shell, lining, and zipper to follow.

The coat shape is a simpler, larger version of a shirt.

When re-using sweaters, it is best to stitch along the edges before actually cutting them, so that the knitting doesn't unravel.

The machine sewing is going about as well as usual.  I decided it was time to take a break when the needle fell way down into the machine when I was cleaning lint out of it.  I'm going to have to turn the machine upside down and shake it to get it out.

Resourcefulness with black walnuts

An interesting look at uses of black walnut products, with an important note that resourcefulness involves knowledge, tools, and developed skills.  Alternate video link.

Cozy cottage

I made progress on the mending pile.  It is not the easiest or most fun kind of sewing, but it is gratifying to see an entire garment ready to wear again, after putting in much less work than making a new item would take--or than shopping for a new one would take, either.

I also was able to fix a zipper.

I'm been putting off most of my Christmas crafting, aside from a knitted towel experiment, and I'm giving some already-completed projects as gifts instead.

Today is Yooper Scooper weather:  shovel early, shovel often.

I have a pile of used materials to make into a coat.  The most challenging part will be fitting the arms so that the recipient has enough freedom of movement for sparring with siblings. 

Our second mannequin torso was released from dress form duty, so I found an outfit for it and put it back with the other one.

I couldn't find a good place to display Christmas cards, so I've been putting them on the Christmas tree.

A child found a doughnut maker at the thrift store--it's like a waffle iron, but with two doughnut-shaped cavities.  This one was brand-new and unused, and at least forty years old.  An elder sibling bought one at a yard sale a decade ago, and has used it occasionally.

Cutting up, and weaving

I went through my mending basket, and decided which items were worth repairing.  The remainder I cut up, and filled the kitchen wipes jar, and a bag with more wipes, plus I filled a drawer with larger rags that I can cut up as needed, or just use as back-up towels.

I also unearthed my homemade loom and got the project on it going again.  I'm going to have to build up some muscles in my arms and upper back before I can weave for very long at a time.  There is a lot of reaching involved.

I have a plan to make a couple of little Christmas ornaments from juice can ends.  I try to make some kind of ornament every year, in sufficient quantity so each child has one of their own.

We made room for our Christmas tree, somewhat complicated by the fact that my improvised living room table will not fit through any of the interior doorways.  It is going into the back corner, which is a popular napping place because of the heating vent there.

   

Braided rug repairs

Both of my braided rugs had spots where the lacing was breaking.  Not surprising in the larger one, which spent most of winter outdoors a few years ago, while I was deciding if I wanted to keep it.  The wool in the braids came through that fine, but the cotton rug warp yarn that I used to lace them together didn't.

The repairs were simple, but tedious:  pull out the lacing back to where it is good enough, tie on a new piece, thread the other end into a blunt yarn needle, and re-lace until the other end can be tied.

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We have a door where the doorknob assembly has a loose plate that won't stay up against the door like it is supposed to.  There are no screw holes, just two tiny spikes on the back, which won't hold at all, unless I pound on it.  I figured out a way of winding leather lacing around the doorknob shaft so the plate can't slide.

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I also began working on the edge of the living room rug.  I'm doing a row of whip stitches along the worn edge, using crewel-weight wool yarn, to cover and protect the bare threads. I happened to have yarn that goes well with the rug.  A lot of our things are survivors from the '80s when country blue was a trend, and they coordinate well.

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We had a good Thanksgiving, just ourselves, and then on Saturday Grandma came in with ten dozen homemade sugar cookies and everything needed to decorate them in a well-planned operation. Those cookies are in her garage in tins now, waiting for Christmas. It will be fun to see them again and recognize who decorated what. She also brought some cookies just for eating on the spot--store-bought cookies that she mostly bought for the tins.

Easy bird feeder, breadsticks

I was looking for DIY bird feeder ideas, and found lots of cute ones.  Then I had an idea for re-purposing a plastic hanging lantern that I've had for some years.

It looked very suitable, which turned out to be because it actually was a bird feeder.

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A child and I have developed a tag-team approach to making cheese-topped breadsticks:  I make the dough, and the child puts it onto the pan, does the toppings, and bakes it.

The dough is very simple, 6 cups flour, 3 cups very warm water, 2 tablespoons yeast--I usually use 1 and 1/2 tablespoons.  This covers a large cookie sheet thickly.  Halving the recipe or doing one-third of it is advisable.  

The lack of salt in the recipe and the relatively high proportion of yeast (best bought in bulk) helps the dough to rise more quickly than most bread doughs.  The recipe's source recommended 10 minutes of rising time.

We've been topping it with melted butter, mozzarella cheese, and garlic powder, and maybe also Parmesan cheese, and then baking it for about 20 minutes at 375 degrees.  It's good hot out of the oven, not so good cold.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Laundry soap again, and a dustpan

I made another batch of laundry soap.  This is the second batch since my last post about it, and one batch makes two gallons, so we use about one gallon every two and a half months.  I use normal laundry detergent for cloth diapers and my husband's work clothes. 

Elder Child and I were out looking for a broom and dustpan.  We both prefer metal dustpans, and ended up going in together on a cookie sheet, which I cut in half with tin snips, and smoothed with files and sandpaper.  I was planning to make wooden handles, but the ends of the cookie sheet are handle-like enough.

Cutting the metal with vintage giant-scissors-type tin snips was difficult, and required bending the metal a little to give the snips room to move along, so I had to straighten the cut edges afterward.  I believe modern tin snips make better use of leverage and are easier to use.

I also found out that a needle with the tip broken off can be re-sharpened.  I used the narrow side of a small sharpening stone of medium coarseness.  The needle was leaving little grooves in it, so this is not something I would want to do on the broad face.  

Numbers

 Minnesota gubernatorial election results by city and township.

I looked at a couple of the first-ring suburbs, and only around 15% of their voting-age population put in a vote for the Republican candidate.  I don't think that was the case in 2018. 

For comparison, Minneapolis was at about 5%.

The incumbent does have a more executive-type temperament--which he used during the pandemic to efficiently be highly troublesome and ineffective.  The challenger has far better principles, and got in some very good hits in the debates, but is much milder-mannered.

The DFL has captured control of the Legislature, and they have big plans.

Marking time

Both of the governor candidates here want to allow expansion of sports gambling to mobile devices, for the tax revenue.  The city government has put a pause on the sale of marijuana-derived products, probably so they can figure out how to tax it.

I've continued to make small improvements around the house.  For two shelves in shallow cupboards, I put a board across the front of the shelf to turn it into a built-in bin.  The board just rests against the inside of the cupboard's face frame.  The shelves hold small towels and washcloths, which I don't take the time to fold and stack neatly.

I sewed up ripped leather on a child's shoe with dental floss. Needed my leather thimble to push the big needle through the leather.  I also finally got around to mending a few items of clothing.  Still have some slippers and braided rugs and I don't know what else to repair.  Neighbors handed a very nice large rug down to us; it is in good condition except for wear at the edges, which I think I can deal with with some turkey stitch (tufted) embroidery.

I gave up on my bedroom closet office plans, and started using the space for craft supply storage.  I finally found my misplaced bedsheet, which I had cleverly stored among some spare pillowcases.

The weather has been very dry, but I saw that rain was finally coming, and got most of the rest of the leaves raked up before it hit.

The children have been doing good work.  It's been fun to see the older ones teaching the younger ones.

Biden fixes Affordable Care Act "family glitch" by fiat

This month the Biden Administration finalized an administrative workaround to somehow override the law and counteract the "family glitch" that left many families without access to health insurance subsidies.

"Four out of five Americans can find quality coverage for under $10 a month" the administration said in April, speaking of those receiving subsidies.

That's not what we've been paying all these years. 

There is conservative commentary here.

This move will create pressure for families to drop employer-based health insurance and switch over to the exchanges...particularly since inflation is high and prices are outrunning incomes.  Probably some employers will drop health insurance benefits entirely.  The "family glitch" was not accidental, and these consequences are not accidental either.

Xcel Energy seeking to raise electricity rates...retroactively

They are seeking about a 12% increase for 2022, beginning January 1, 2022, and then additional increases over 4% for both 2023 and 2024.  

Altogether, the increase comes out over 22%.

Hopefully their regulator will yield to good sense and public pressure, and not give them everything they are asking for.  Many people would have made different consumption choices over the past nine and a half months, if they knew they would be paying more for it later on.

We're already paying extra for their supposed transition to carbon-free energy.

In other news, we picked apples at a small orchard, several bushels' worth, and I've been slowly working through them.  Mostly making applesauce and apple pie filling in the oven, plus I've sliced up several batches for the dehydrator.  We've been too wiped out by one thing and another to run any through the juicer yet.

The car registration came due, and for some reason the value basis for our vehicle is more than double the amount that the insurance company was going to give us when they wanted to total it last summer.  I didn't write about that saga at the time. What happened was that the vehicle was sideswiped while parked, and then the insurance company and the body shop postured their way through nearly two months of kabuki theater before finally fixing the dent and the side mirror and giving it back to us.

From chair to table

While the rocking chair was out for repairs, I brought my heavily-reconstructed armchair in to take its place. 

I'd been thinking about getting a table for the living room.  Then I got the idea of taking the back off the armchair, and putting a table top on.

That provided motivation to get the rocker back to a usable state, and the table followed not long after.

I did have to take the boards off the chair arms to get the back off.

For a table top, I used a cable spool end that my husband found a while back.  Someone had sawn one face off a cable spool, and then had thrown the rest of it out.

The cable spool is on the small side for the chair/base, but it is large enough to set a few things on, or to do a little project.  The chair seat provides a place to park a few of the larger toys.

My husband picked up a nearly-full bottle of Danish oil from the free shelf at the hazardous waste drop-off site.  Danish oil dries very quickly, and I should be able to do a bunch of things at once, if the weather cooperates.

Recycling around the house

I got an idea from magazine photos for replacing our collapsed family coatrack with a bench with a row of hooks above.   I used our former entry bench plus some planks that were waterbed salvage, plus some wood from our former couch, plus some hooks we already had.  After some crappier-than-usual carpentry--I was out of practice--it all came together.  It would almost look nice if I painted it, but paint doesn't hold up at my house.

It ended up being almost a double win, because the following week the laundry drain clogged and water went across the basement floor where all the coats had been piled before.

I used more of the pallet wood from the couch to make new seats for a pair of outdoor cafe chairs.  The seats will need some more Danish oil or something for a finish next spring, especially on the sawn edges.

I also de-upholstered a rocking chair seat.  There turned out to be two layers of fabric tacked over the original upholstery, plus a layer of something in between them that maybe used to be vinyl, but that had turned into slightly crumbly tar.  The springs were in poor condition, and I used more pallet wood to convert the rocker to a hard-bottom seat, with plans to find or make a decent cushion for it. 

I finished a lingering display shelf project.  The frame is from a wooden door screen we picked up for free, the shelves are tongue-and-groove scraps used as bed slats for a bed we were given, and I cut the shelf supports from more of the couch wood.  It came out looking fairly good; the screen frame had been painted in a nice color. 

We've also been dehydrating cabbage, onions, and celery.

A short index to Minnesota Homeschooling Laws

Most of the homeschooling law is in MN Statutes 120A.22, 120A.24, and 120A.26.  The initial report to the superintendent and the letter of intent to continue to provide instruction must contain the required information, but are not required to use the forms provided by the Department of Education or the school district (which often ask for more information than the law requires).  

Often the school district prefers that documentation be sent directly to their homeschool liaison, although the law says to send it to the superintendent.

"Immunization" requirements also apply to homeschoolers, MN Statute 121A.15 and administrative rule  4604 although there is a procedure to declare an exemption by submitting a notarized statement (your bank may offer notary services), and there is otherwise the option of a parent making a written statement about the vaccines the child has received.  The Department of Health has an Immunization Record Form that includes an exemption section, which would still need to be notarized and which incorporates wording that exceeds the parent's legal requirement.  Medical exemptions are also available.

Activities

Dehydrated some cabbages.  Sewed a shower curtain.  Replaced the covers of various chair seats, re-using tacks from earlier armchair.  Put a second bar across a closet to support a laundry basket holding all of the family swimming gear.

Have also been watching the squirrels chew up all of the black walnuts and spit the shells onto the driveway.

The local homeschool association has been putting more effort into the diversity statement on their website than into providing accurate information about homeschooling laws or keeping the membership sign-up page updated.  Doubt that's going to end well.

Mother-in-law has been doing some interesting experiments with natural dyes...avocado pits to produce a rose pink.

Where's the beans??

I don't know when the cheaper brands of baked beans started being canned as a big lump of beans swimming in a sea of liquid, but now I have encountered it twice, once in a store brand, and once in a brand from one of the largest ag companies.

In the latter case, I pulled out a strainer and measured:  just about exactly half of the can's contents by volume were pourable liquid.

I hate washing strainers.

This reminds me of early in the pandemic, when dried pasta suddenly started taking much longer to cook for some reason.

In other activities, I was able to repair watchbands for two children.  I took a toy apart and pulled some dust out of it that was getting in the way of the mechanism.  I altered a swimsuit so that it would fit for another season.

I knit a dishcloth from acrylic yarn rejected by a child, who also went through a substantial fabric stash and burn-tested samples to separate out the ones with synthetic fibers.

I finished one section of crochet for my curtain project.

Several pairs of pants were retired for being too far gone in the seat, and there is at least one more that needs to be retired, now that I think of it.

My husband dehydrated some cabbage.  I learned that you can freeze tomatoes whole.  Children have been growing mint.

My husband also brought home a vintage metal-frame chair similar to three that we already own.  They are very child-resistant, except for the vinyl seats.  My longer-term plan is to redo them in sturdy leather.

A family from church is making big changes to their diet, and they gave us several boxes of food from their pantry that they could no longer eat.  It was good to get a change from our usual and somewhat tedious simple foods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Independence Day

We took some popcorn and lemonade and went to see fireworks last night.

I've been progressing with the old-lady-style crochet, but not so far as to want to practice holding the thread properly.

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I took a short barrel-style upholstered chair from the fifties that I patched up a while back, and stripped all of the upholstery off it.  The most recent potty-trainee had frequently used it as a place to quietly go without immediate detection, and I am not in favor of unwashables in the home.

As usual, it was a messy and somewhat hazardous process, but very satisfying in its own way.

The chair turned out to have two sets of springs in the seat and cushion, which explained the chair's other popularity as a trampoline.

The looseness in the frame turned out to be from two bolts, easy to deal with.  Beyond that, the structure is fine except for the beginnings of a crack along the top.

I am thinking of building the bare frame out a bit with wood, doing some shaping and sanding, and then finishing it simply with Danish oil (fast) or linseed oil (slower).  For the seat, I am replacing the springy cushion with a washable pillow, and keeping the bottom springs.  Some amount of new padding and cover will have to go over those.

I saved all of the tacks that I pulled out of the chair while stripping it down, which will be useful for other chair projects, especially since our main staple gun is currently nonfunctional in some non-obvious way.

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As a research project, I tried mixing acrylic paint with dryer lint, to see what I could do with it.  I found that the lint, mostly cotton, absorbed a lot of the water from the paint, so it dried very quickly and was different to even mix through the lint.  Kneading the two together (wearing rubber gloves) was unpleasantly like handling freshly-vomited cat hairballs, and the dried result is very much like painted hairball.

Sheets and a wreath

My mother-in-law came up with a good set of secondhand sheets from somewhere, which were very welcome here. 

She also brought a box of very nice natural-fiber fabrics and clothing for my eldest child to repurpose.  Child is currently disinterested in any clothing styles less than 200 years old.

Child also went through dozens and dozens of balls of yarn and took samples for burn testing to determine fiber content.  Acrylic and other synthetics melt and drip and curl up while burning, and some of them burn like a cartoon fuse.  

It certainly made me reconsider allowing my family to wear synthetic fibers around open flames.

Cotton, linen, and wool burn much more slowly.  Wool smells like burnt hair.  Cotton sometimes has a small ember still burning at the end when it is blown out.  Linen tends to leave a tiny gray string of ash still hanging

Other children have been busily and ingeniously constructing role-play items from cardboard.

We were given some sweet corn, and my corn huskers left the husks strewn all over outside.  After a couple of days, I separated the leaves and braided them up into a wreath, letting the ends stick out.  The braid was long enough to make two full turns around the wreath; I tied them together with string, and wove a twig through across the top for support.

I still have a little cornhusk wreath that I made last year.  That is now on the back door.

Mending a quilt and a sheet

The quilt I mended by appliqueing leaf shapes over the pulled-out seams.  I sewed around the leaf edges before cutting them out, and then sewed them onto the quilt by hand.

The sheet I mended by a combination of darning and patching.  Darns for the small frayed areas, and patches for the rips, after first closing them with an "antique seam"

The sheet lasted for two whole days before tearing again.  I am not quite ready to purchase a replacement sheet at current retail prices--and accessibility since we are still vehicularly-challenged--so I'm patching it again. 

In the meantime, an old cotton blanket and the large piece of cotton upholstery fabric that I formerly used as a rug are filling in.  It is like camping at home.

Homebound

For various reasons, I've spent the month very much at home.

I've done a lot of the usual recycling of one thing into another:  new cloth diapers from a flannel sheet, and kitchen wipes from worn-out diapers.  I'm making toddler pants out of some 25-cent yard sale sweatshirts.

I laminated some more pretty papers and fabrics for shelf liners.

I decluttered some things that needed to go.

We made a bunch of birthday decorations from paper, including paper coffee filters.  Most of them are still up.

I got a small crochet hook, so now I can crochet my crochet cotton properly.

Porch chair

A project that I planned last year, but didn't do, was to create some kind of a seat for the front porch.

I started thinking about it again, and looked at a couple of broken chairs that I was thinking of combining and re-making.

It turned out that a wood folding chair just needed one small piece of wood replaced--and that piece was held on only by screws.

Replacing the piece--with wood from an armchair that I de-constructed some time ago--actually went as well as expected.

Then I painted the whole thing, after washing it.  That did not go as well as expected; I gave it three coats of paint and it really needs another.  

I also replaced the hinges of an old suitcase that we use for toy storage, with strips of leather, attached with screws and washers.

Thicker, vegetable-tanned leather would have been better, but I used what I had, and I expect that it will stretch and possibly tear at some point.  The leather wanted to twist and spin as I was driving in the screws. 

The other thing I've been working on is teaching myself needle tatting, using shuttle tatting instructions as a reference, but mostly just figuring it out as I go.

I'm not having the tension problems that I was with a shuttle.  The downside of using a needle is that it keeps running out of thread.

Speaking of thread, I find that when I am doing much sewing, the handed-down spools of thread that I am using run out of thread almost regularly.

What looks like an ample supply of thread, may not be.

New diaper covers

Recently I retired some of our cloth diaper covers, the last of the ones that we bought for our first baby.  I had been extending them for the last baby, who had outgrown them, by pinning them on with the diapers, but the baby started escaping from them regularly.

To replace the diaper covers, I made several new ones:  two layers of fabric with a layer of plastic enclosed in between. For a pattern, I traced around a secondhand pocket diaper that we use as a diaper cover.  It has no elastic around the leg openings, yet it manages to achieve a decent level of containment.  

For plastic, I used ironed-together chip bags for one, and stole my bulk rice bag sewing machine cover for the other.  The rice is both tougher and more flexible.

The sewing procedure is very similar to making prefold cloth diapers, which for some reason I can't find any decent directions for, so:  take the fabric for one side, sew the innards to it on the "wrong" side, then add the fabric for the other side with the "right sides" together and sew around the edges--but leave a gap so you can turn it right side out, and then once it is turned, sew the gap closed. For diapers, I also topstitch around the edges to keep them from inverting in the wash.

For closures, I experimented with using elastic ponytail holders and large (coat) buttons, sewing on the elastics where the tension would keep the loops secure on the buttons.

In practice, this works fairly well, although it would be better to have two elastics per side, so that the back edge doesn't pivot outward and make a gap around the leg.  The buttons I used are large enough that no additional buttons are needed for this.

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Then I made a new cover for my sewing machine, using a nice fabric remnant that was handed down to me, that was too small for a pillow cover.

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I took some water bottles that were getting in the way, filled them with water and two drops of chlorine bleach each, and put them aside for use in emergencies and outings.

Buying chlorine bleach at the grocery store was annoying.  New versions have been introduced since the last time I bought any, in the Pre-Covidian Era.  Now there are fabric-preservatives and new scents added to most of them.

I also use bleach to turn black cotton clothing into brown cotton clothing, socks in particular.  The key is to use very little bleach in sufficient water, and to rinse thoroughly right afterward.

Making do

I've been doing lots of sewing, organizing, cleaning, and optimizing.  Mending towels. Cutting up worn-out fabric for kitchen wipes. I found that scrap paper is also not so bad for wiping out greasy pans.

I unearthed some items that have been wanted for many months.  Still looking for the extra sheet for my bed, which at one point I stored so cleverly that I haven't seen it since. I've been borrowing a sheet from my fabric inventory.

The big universal pot lid of my husband's fits my mixing bowl very nicely, which is handy for when there's bread dough rising.

I have finally more or less pulled together enough seating for the whole family to have a sit-down meal in the kitchen, all at the same time.  (The second refrigerator is needed, but is very much in the way.)

I made a list of low-cost family activity ideas, which we have not drawn on much yet, but it is there.

Thanks to the cold weather, I've not had to do much with the yard yet.  Many of the black raspberry canes were mowed down over the winter, so I'm expecting fewer berries this summer.  Waiting to see if the bulbs we planted last fall are going to come up.

A big load of Easter breakfast leftovers were sent home with us on Sunday.  We have a secondhand vacuum sealer that no longer vacuums but still seals, and I bagged up most of the leftovers for the freezer.

I messed around a bit with painting paper coffee filters and making flowers out of them.  They turned out well.

Eggs cost $7.99 for a flat of 30 now, roughly double what they cost before, but a flat weighs nearly four pounds, so they are still relatively economical.

I've been thinking a lot about a window covering for the library, to replace the temporary paper one I put up.  I've made a number of experimental samples, but haven't found anything that I like enough to invest the time into making in a full-size version.

I knit a dishcloth from the crochet cotton left over from one of the experiments.

Biden's family glitch executive order

Text here: they seem to have forgotten to number this one.

It does not actually contain any specific order regarding fixing the "family glitch", only a reference to proposed rule changes, where apparently the IRS would decide to ignore the letter of the Affordable Care Act law*, and do something different instead, and then everyone else would fall into line, and then we all can have a Kum-Ba-Ya Konga Line off into the sunset....

What Biden does order is that a broad and unspecified set of federal entities look for similar instances where they can SUCK AS MANY MORE PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE INTO THE HEALTH INSURANCE LEVIATHAN.  Including streamlining application and documentation processes.

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*As the IRS has interpreted it so far; there are articles and quotations saying that this interpretation is incorrect and that is why this can be fixed at the IRS level without amending the law.  However, I went back and looked at the text of the Affordable Care Act, in Section 1401(a) where it is amending the Internal Revenue Code, and I believe the IRS is correct.  Affordability is defined relative to the employee's cost, not to the family's.

The fact that the family glitch has never been resolved by litigation--I don't think anyone has even tried to do that--also supports the presence of the glitch within the Affordable Care Act itself.  The left is perfectly willing to send a liberal litigant against a liberal defendant in front of a liberal judge in order to get the judgment that they all want, when necessary.

They have not done that in this case; the family "glitch" was intentional, and their belated fix is only for the sake of furthering their agenda.  Which includes the quiet part that one policy advisor said out loud, where healthy families are needed to pay premiums to cover the health care costs of smaller and sicker households.

2021 enrollment in the health insurance exchanges was only 12 million, by the way, and the proposed rule changes might add a million or so more.

Paul Ryan and his ephemeral majority were such a disappointment in their failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but happily there is still God.

Also, apparently Minnesota did some sort of resolution of the family glitch within MinnesotaCare in 2021.  This is the first I've heard of it.  But supposedly it will benefit fewer than 2,000 people. There is this story of a family paying 25% of their income for health insurance being invited to the signing of Biden's executive order, that doesn't mention the Minnesota fix:

"The options we were given to get out of the glitch were to one, get divorced, two lower our income and qualify for Medicaid, or three convince my husband's employer to be in violation of the ACA and not offer any amount of health care subsidies to my husband."

Too little, too late

By far, the most-viewed post on this blog is my Health Insurance post.  Mostly viewed by bots, I presume, but still.

Biden and Obama just had their little Obamacare celebration at the White House, which I saw variously described beforehand as "promoting" and "pushing" the Affordable Care Act, which is an odd way to talk about an epic piece of legislation that was passed en masse twelve years ago, and that supposedly is very popular, and that is also supposedly politically impossible to repeal.

There have been a number of articles recently about finally doing something about the "family glitch" that I described--where health insurance is deemed affordable if the cost of employer-based coverage for a single worker is within 9.5% of their income, and never mind if they are buying family coverage also--because they are not eligible to purchase coverage on the exchanges at all, on account of the coverage available through the employer.

Apparently Biden is about to solve this problem by executive order [Edit: here], and there may be legislative action later on. 

From what I've seen so far, the executive order would allow family members affected by the glitch to buy subsidized insurance on the exchanges, beginning with January 2023 coverage.  They anticipate that about one million of the several million glitched families would do so, along with maybe 200,000 people who are presently uninsured.

I'm sure that the administration will manage to mess up the implementation of this somehow.  This is especially likely when calculating subsidy amounts, since the exact amount ought to depend on how much the breadwinner is paying through their employer in premiums--which can change mid-year as the employee hits a birthday and moves up a price bracket. 

One feature of our present coverage is that after we pay the premiums for the first three children, the rest are included at no additional cost.  This has been the case across various plans from various insurance companies, but I don't know where it came from and I don't believe that it will necessarily be the case with the plans on the exchanges.

I'm not very happy about the idea of having different health insurance for different family members, and having to learn to deal with the exchange, and then perhaps actually having to do so.  It is complex enough when everyone is on the same plan, and when the employer's HR drone is handling the annual health plan shopping and application process.

People have been complaining a lot about the recent inflation, but the truth is that there is still a lot of slack in most people's finances that goes to things beyond the austere basics.  The Biden administration has to deal with the family glitch soon, though, because many of these families have had much less slack for almost seven years now.  The increases in the standard deduction and in child tax credits have only partially offset the premium costs in absolute terms, and the uneven distribution of subsidies created a substantial relative differential in disposable income.

Finally, this fix to the family glitch would only return our out-of-pocket premium costs to roughly the pre-Affordable Care Act level.  Obama promised that premiums would be lower by $2500 per year, remember?

Well???

There are ways that could be accomplished, but you can be sure that that is how it will not be done.

Soap and sewing

A quantity of soap shavings came home with children after an activity.  I melted down the soap to make new bars.

How I should have started was to heat up a little water in the bottom of my laundry soap pan, and then to slowly add soap shavings and dissolve them.  Most of the time, what I had was a softened, gooey mass of soap.  Not as bad as the time I was melting old, dry, hard bits of soap, but not good.  The laundry soap pan does not have a handle, and it took some time to incorporate all of the shavings.

Near the end, I found that turning the heat up from Low to the lower side of Medium was helpful.  The soap was still not anywhere near liquid, but it was at least moldable.  

I packed it into a pan, let it cool, cut it into small bars, and have put them up to dry and harden for a few months.

I suspect they will end up a bit crumbly, but hopefully they will be usable in bar form.  If they aren't, they can go into a future batch of laundry soap.

In other projects, I have been sewing toddler pants, using fabric from old adult clothes and elastic from worn-out kids' pants.  So far I have made four pairs.  The process is a bit time-consuming when I have to pick out multiple rows of stitching to liberate the elastic, and when I have to piece fabric together to make it wide enough.

It was easier to draw up a quick pattern than to dig out an old one.  So these pants look a little goofy, too, but in a slightly different way than previous versions did.

I also worked through several items that needed mending; still have a bag full.

Yesterday I dyed some fabrics in the washer in preparation for making three skirts.  This morning I was able to sketch out a pattern and cut out two of them.  The sewing for these should be straightforward.  The third will be a circle skirt, from a circular tablecloth.

Mending and melding

I finally took a stab at my mending pile, and was able to adequately repair several items of clothing, one of which required serious darning/re-weaving where a button's stitching had ripped right out.

One of the things I did a while ago, and then forgot about, was to overdye a skirt and shirt in the washer.  The skirt had colors that were too bright, and the shirt was much too pale.  The skirt came out very nicely, and the shirt came out in a dull but tolerable shade.

I did a quick experiment with cutting a milk jug into narrow strips and then crocheting them.  Crochet uses up length very quickly, and it was difficult to cut very much of it because the scissors I was using tended to slide on the plastic.

Then I messed around with ironing the result, in between sheets of kitchen parchment paper. The plastic fused in some places and not in others.

I also tried ironing flat pieces of milk jug together to fuse them, again using parchment paper to protect the iron and working surface.  This worked, but since the plastic shrinks a bit when heated, you can't butt two edges together and expect them to stay there.  It also doesn't come out entirely flat.

At the playground, I found some stringy dead weeds that could probably be made into a rustic basket, if one reliably had their hands free for working.

I counted diapers going into the washer, and indeed as described in The Tightwad Gazette, twenty diapers equals one load of diaper laundry.  Cloth wipes are included in that, and really it is twenty diaperings rather than diapers, because I am putting a newborn-size diaper inside a larger-baby diaper at each diaper change.

And onward

I made a simple cover/sheath for a meat cleaver, from a piece of suede and some waxed thread.  The thread is extra-heavy-duty, and there was no particular need for a strong seam, so I made very large (one inch) stitches, and the sewing went very quickly:  place leather on an old phone book, poke hole with awl, make stitch, repeat.  I used my last glover's needle for the sewing, but an embroidery needle would have worked fine.

I also took up my quilt project from more than a year ago.  The quilt just needed a few more blocks made, and then to be assembled.  The last step is sewing down the edge binding by hand, and that is half done now.

My most-used quilt was waiting for a replacement back, when I looked at the cotton batting that was hanging out of it, and realized that it would need new innards as well.  The top needs more repairs besides the ones I did a few years ago, but it is worth re-using.

I read about a woman making sleeping bags for the homeless from ironed-together chip bags, and old coats, and I thought of doing something similar for making diaper covers for cloth diapers.  Then I found a laminated woven plastic rice bag that I had saved, which is much sturdier than the chip bags I ironed, and I used that instead.  I encased it in fabric in about the right shape, and added snaps. It came out looking good, but it is very much too small in the waist, so I will have to add extensions.  I hang diaper covers up to dry after washing them, so I'm not worried that the plastic might melt in the dryer.

Other things I have used the rice bags for:  wet bags for the diaper bag and for swimming stuff, and a sewing machine cover.

A child and I watched a YouTube video of a guy attempting to make bulletproof armor from milk jugs.  He had a laborious process involving cutting the plastic up with scissors, shredding it in a blender, baking it in a pan in the oven, and taking it out frequently to try to knead it smooth.  Even then, he had air pockets in his block of plastic, and it certainly wasn't bulletproof when he tested it.  From our one experiment here last year, we found that an iron generates sufficient heat to laminate flat pieces of milk jug plastic together, one layer at a time.  That was a small piece, though, and I don't know how hard it would be to keep a larger one flat as it is built up.

Place-making

A neighbor was giving away some pieces of furniture, and gave us a small table.  I cleaned out a neglected corner of the laundry room, and made a quiet little place to sit and work on something. There were also two small shelves that were claimed by family members.

A child was working on making a face shield for sledding, and decided to use the side of a 2-liter bottle.  Since it was curved, the child decided to iron it under a piece of kitchen parchment paper..  Turns out that what this plastic does when heated is to immediately shrink and make large, smooth blisters.  But this worked out in the child's favor, because three of the blisters were placed just right for the eyes and nose of a pair of goggles.  Child went on to build a full face mask off of that.

Later on I did my own experiment with another cut-up 2-liter bottle.  What came out was a smoothly pebbled (with bumps up to about 2 inches across) otherwise flat surface that is about five inches by seven.  It looks very nice, but it would take a lot of bottles to cover a surface of any size.

I also did an experiment into making flatbread.  Cooking it on the griddle and in the oven had very similar results, except that the griddle was better for browning it.

One small step at a time

We finally have matching light bulbs in each bathroom light fixture.

I glued a broken chair and drawer (not to each other), and put them back into service.

The dress project is nearly complete.  The directions had me sew in each sleeve inside-out for fitting, and then disassemble the seams and re-sew the right way.  I also managed at one point to sew one side of the zipper half an inch higher than the other side, which took some time to correct.

I've also been looking at my homemade armchair, which is more comfortable than it looks, at least for me, and thinking about giving it a wider back and seat to make it a couch.  The couch that it originally went with it is unusable until the sides are rebuilt, and it is too large for the living room here.

Really what I need here is a sort of freestanding window seat, with storage both above and below.

I've started saving dryer lint and chip bags for future projects.

There was a household hint in a recent Reader's Digest to put a ball of aluminum foil in the dryer to cut the static electricity.  I didn't really notice any difference in the static cling, but after a number of loads, the ball of foil is much smoother and denser, and looks a lot less like aluminum foil.

Excursions

I happened to be near a discount grocery recently, which has dented and slightly outdated and discontinued groceries, and I found some good deals.  They had a sign up explaining the differences between Best By, Use By, and Sell By dates.

The regular grocery store has a few shelves here and there with similar deals.  They took down their signs about supply issues, and seemed better stocked this week.

I turned the thermostat down two degrees, but I'm not sure the savings in natural gas is worth the cost of the extra food my family will be eating to keep warm.

I recycled an old memory foam mattress topper into cushions for a rocker.  It has a temporary cover made from velvet curtains safety-pinned and sewn with long stitches (basted), until I find the fabric I want to use for it.

My husband has been playing with tin can camping stoves.  One design could hold a beer can stove like I made some years ago.

Achievement

I finished building another elevated "loft" bed for a child.  This time I took a slower pace and had more assistance from children in sawing, gluing, and assembly. 

For some reason the 2x6 lumber that my husband bought for it earlier this month was of much better quality than the wood for the previous loft in the fall.  I don't exactly know the cost, but it was reasonable enough for a piece of furniture that is needed now and will be used for years and years to come, and possibly recycled into something else after that.

I made some improvements in loft-building workflow this time around.  It is important in my loft design to have accurately-drilled holes, especially where I have to drill into a 2x6 from each side and meet in the middle. I gave up trying to use our heavy-duty electric drills (discarded by an electrical contractor), and set up three hand-powered drills:  small bit in the eggbeater-type drill for a pilot hole, and then medium and large bits in two bit braces.  Tightening the bit braces is a Process, at least for me, that involves using large vise grips around the chuck, with an additional pair of pliers to tighten the vise grips just enough (without cracking the chuck). I try to avoid changing the bits in those.

So I was drilling each hole three times with three different drills, but each one was easy to do, aside from the largest (3/8") bit, which tends to dig in too quickly.  I often had to pull up on the bit brace while drilling downward.

When it was was all finished, I discovered that the box spring I intended to put up there was a few inches too long for it, so I had to dig around in the garage for a different support for the mattress.  The seat frame of our futon couch, which doesn't fit in this house, turned out to be a good size for the little Ikea mattress, which must be about a decade old by now.  On top of that I put a doubled memory foam mattress topper that had been handed down to us.

Alternatively

The claim here is that major food shortages in 2022 are likely to be limited to urban areas.

In 2020, the pattern was often that rural stores were last to be stocked; the trucks were sent out from the cities to the nearest stores first.

And the likelihood is that if food becomes very scarce, it will be used to keep order in the metropolitan areas.

Mostly good

The holidays went well for us, aside from me discovering that the freezer plug had been knocked loose, and that the food in the freezer was well above refrigerator temperature.  It is not a large freezer, and it was only about half full, so it was not a huge loss, just disappointing.

I set up a sewing station for myself in our library, and have been working on a sewing project using a commercial dress pattern.  I used an old sheet to make a "muslin" version first, for fittings and pattern adjustments, which turned out to be a very good idea, as the initial fit was poor, being far too small in several places, and large in others.  I did find a zipper in my stash, and I had the fabrics and thread already, so the only cash outlay was for the pattern.

I ignored my mending pile from about Labor Day until Christmas, but after that did most of the easier repairs.

Last month I also made a batch of homemade laundry soap, using scraps of bar soap, and borax and washing soda (recipe should be in one of the posts under the recipes tag), now that we are no longer living in a rental with a high-efficiency washer.  I've previously worked out that this laundry soap does tend to leave a thin build-up of soap scum over the laundry, but that that probably protects the fibers to some extent.  I still use regular detergent for my husband's clothes.  The grocery store was out of borax for several weeks, but eventually restocked.