Fun with fabrics

I'm working with a box of handed-down fabric scraps, mostly of medium size, from a neighbor who is downsizing.  So far I have pieced together two different fabrics into a skirt, and have also made a fabric-covered folder and a bag for a set of little wooden toys.  I also see several shirts coming out of this box, eventually.  My long-term plan is to switch to button-down shirts made of woven fabrics; knits are harder to mend.  I have a pattern I made years ago from a thrift-store shirt that fit well.  That shirt had no labels and might have been homemade as well.

I've also experimented with covering small cardboard boxes with these fabrics.  It's not something that I want to spend a lot of time on at this stage in my life, so I was looking for a fast method.  I realized that I could cut wide slits into the sides of the box and just push the fabrics ends through, so they would be held by friction.  If the fabric pieces are wrapped around the outside, and tucked through the slits from the inside, the box can look decent enough.

This reduces the strength of the box, but the advantage besides speed is that the fabric and box can easily be taken apart later and re-used or recycled.   

I've also been deconstructing worn-out clothes into kitchen wipes as usual, and material for patching other clothes, and for other crafts.  I experimented with weaving a side seam cut from a pair of blue jeans in and out of the holes of a small basket I don't like--it came out well. 

I've done some Tightwad-Gazette-style "hourly wage" calculations.  Higher-value pursuits include:  washing Ziploc bags, mending clothes, cutting holey fabrics into wipes that take the place of paper towels, skipping or combining shopping trips, and decluttering to free up floor space. 

Back at home

A lot of my focus lately has been away from home.

I finished a braided rug, and put it in the bedroom at the foot of the bed under a chest.  The laminate flooring has a tolerable color, and ordinarily I wouldn't think that a rug would add much to the room, especially since I was using up colors I don't like, but it does make the room feel more finished and grounded. 

The rug's colors are medium tones, as is the floor, so the rug adds pattern and softness without standing out.

I went on from there and leaned a long board against the opposite corner, and then draped a long section of quilt top over it.  It's a bit theatrical, and wouldn't have been practical when my children were smaller.  It also is pushing me to incorporate a little more green into the curtains.  That might be as simple as lacing some crochet cotton through the holes in the lace trim, except that I really should wash the curtains first.

Eldest child has been taking remnants of Christmas-themed fabrics and other fabrics, and making reusable gift bags.  Not only reusable, but also reversible, with one side Christmas-y and the other not.  They look very nice.

The yard has greened up, thanks to plantains covering most of the bare areas.  The corner of the yard where my husband's dried mustard? plant from his community garden plot ended up last fall is coming up all mustard.  The flower beds are becoming jungles.  Children have planted things in various places--potatoes, lemons, carrots, and probably also apples.  

Busy at home

I've been making progress on a lot of projects:  putting a new hanger on the back of a smaller mirror, braiding a rug, mending, knitting an oversized hat, yard work, organizing a closet; one thing after another.

I finally got an antique carpet runner that we were given months ago installed onto the stairs.  I didn't realize that it was going to noticeably brighten the space; the previous big-box-store landlord-special runner--which I left on the stairs as an underlayer--is very dark and it soaked up light instead of reflecting and diffusing it around the stairwell. 

I made progress on another project, ironically, by abandoning it:  making a lampshade for a small lamp.  It was complete except for figuring out how to make it sit securely on the lamp. 

Instead, I pulled out a cracked old lampshade that I had been balancing on an Ikea lamp, and tried it on this one.  The lampshade attached well, but it looked not so good, and was much too opaque.

There's little risk in maybe ruining something that is nearly ruined already.  I decided to poke a lot of holes in the lampshade with a sewing needle-after taking it off the lamp, of course.  Within one minute, that task was subcontracted to an enthusiastic tiny human, who did an excellent job.  Little pinpoints of light come through, and they are brighter or dimmer depending where you are in the room.

Later at a yard sale, I found an outdoorsy watercolor print that echoes the colors in our living room, and also the colors of the lamp and lampshade--and even of the frame of the mirror I fixed--and that exemplifies some of our family atmosphere.

I picked up a free pine bookcase headboard for a twin bed, which turned out to be the perfect size to become a header for two plywood shelf units, which were originally the "doors" of a closeable toy shelf that our church retired a few years ago.  The rest of the shelf is on the other side of our living room now.  The headboard is not as deep as the shelves, so there's a space behind it, and also it covers up the tops of the shelves by several inches, but it also lends them a lot more style than they had before, and it functions as a sort of mantel.   Although few mantels have a painted orange crate and a well-dressed half-mannequin preemptively parked on them.  

Outdoors, a child helped me install some garden edging that a departing neighbor didn't want to move to their new house.  Previously there was no delineation between yard and garden in that part of the yard.  It makes a lot more difference than I expected it would, and there's enough left over to replace some badly-deteriorated edging in another part of the yard.

Local writer James Lileks last week bid his beloved home Jasperwood goodbye.  It's homely-ness is something that I am now pondering, as a Christian and a renter and the mother of a large family.  I've seen Mr. Lileks in person at the State Fair a few times, and we've driven through that very expensive Minneapolis neighborhood once or twice.  

The lipstick almost outweighs the pig

A sort-of-nearby house is for sale again, after being sold earlier this year for more than $150k less than the current listing price.  Photos show exterior improvements still very much in progress.

It's been quite a while since I looked at local real estate listings.  Neighborhood houses continue to sell quickly for ridiculous prices.

By ridiculous, I mean 100% higher than ten years ago.  Which makes the property taxes more than 100% higher, thanks to recent school-funding proposals that easily passed.  

At the same time, the public school ratings range from poor to barely-middling.  The student populations are majority-nonwhite now.

About half of the incoming house-debtors immediately set up leftist yard signs in their yards.  

Yesterday I was in St. Paul.  I only saw one family's children outdoors on a drive of a couple miles through residential neighborhoods, but there were dozens of ICE OUT signs.

I recently calculated the cost per square foot of a city building project.  It was more than the cost for the Federal Reserve renovation that Trump roundly and soundly criticized.  

I just now threw together a very optimistic estimate of the building's cost per visit:  building cost divided by number of building users over the lifespan of the building.  It came out to $11 per visit.  The real number will be higher.

Off day; small fake fireplace

I took a day off between two big projects and messed around with making a little hearth under my sewing machine table.  It's the same table I put an oak chair back into two years ago, to connect and stabilize the legs.

The leather chair seat that I mentioned in that post, by the way, has gone from dull green suede to an impressive polished brown, to dull green rougher suede, under heavy wear from children.

Anyway, I had recently moved a large wooden tray from the top of my dresser onto the oak part, and had put a few awkwardly-shaped things in it, including a half-log that separates to reveal a hidden drawer.

I also recently picked up a small box of veneer bricks from a neighbor's spring clean-out; just the bricks' faces.  I knew that I wanted to use them somewhere soon, and that they wouldn't cover a large area.

In the midst of puttering around the house, I was thinking about making a fake fireplace, along the lines of a scrap wood fireplace in the Wary Meyers' Tossed and Found book I reviewed in 2018.

I realized that I had the brick floor, and the log, and the place for it....

The bricks were just enough to line the wooden tray, after breaking a few to fit, with just one tiny piece left over.  Some of them were fake-singed, and I put those toward the front.

For a back, I immediately thought of a long metal sign I had picked up from another neighbor's curbside.  It has a warm, dark copper color.  I bent it into a U shape with the help of an old atlas, by putting one end into the atlas, standing on them, and pulling up on the other end; probably the first time I've ever used a book as a bending brake for metal.  It gave me good, straight, rounded bends.

Putting everything together under the table, the sign-back was too tall to fit under the sewing machine compartment, so I rotated the sign forward 90 degrees and made it into a hood instead--which makes more sense, anyway.

I found a few warm-colored firelike objects to go around the log, including some copper and a glass candle holder--which I lined with an upside-down picture of autumn leaves--and a curly piece of birch bark.

There is even a modest amount of warm air coming out of it when the furnace is on, because it's right in front of a vent.

Not out of the weeds yet, and still pouring

Although there has been much grace from God, including the glorious orange and golden sunset we had this evening.  There were also rainbows...in February.

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Another household improvement from last year that I'm appreciating now is a clean laundry sorting area I established in our basement laundry dungeon.  Formerly I did a week's laundry, stored it upstairs, and then sorted and put it all away at once--sometimes ten loads' worth, and caffeine definitely helped.  

I realized with my children getting older and my time less constrained by littles that they could fetch their own laundry and put it away.  I had just gotten a start on the new system when a neighbor Providentially set a shelf out by the curb, the kind with four big square cubbyholes.  That holds clean, sorted laundry for four children now, and on top are improvised containers for the other family members I do laundry for.

On the floor in front of the shelf I put a wire closet organizer shelf, six or eight inches high, from another neighbor's curb, for baskets or bags of laundry waited to be sorted--or taken upstairs, in the case of towels and such.  

I only just realized or remembered the other day that with all this within reach of the dryer, I could just sort laundry straight out of the dryer. 

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Eldest Child led a final effort to use up the remaining apples from the fall.  They were beginning to taste more like pears than apples, and still had to be checked over every week or so to remove the rotting ones.  They lasted a lot longer than I expected.  Very few perfect apples this time.

Even worse, but less worse that it could have been

We discovered that an ambulance ride costs more than rent now.  In Millennial terms, around 400 Starbucks coffees and 150 avocado toasts.  I need to start making friends with drug dealers.

By the gymnastic grace of God, there was same-day treatment and no permanent damage.

ICE has been in our area, but I haven't seen any personally--that I know of.

One thing in my home that I've been appreciating lately is a tall narrow garden trellis that we picked up for free from a neighbor who was moving.  Similar to these curved ones, but with four top spikes that each end in a small ball.

It fits very well in an awkward gap next to an awkward corner in the bathroom, we can hang towels off the spikes, and the trellis keeps them away from the wall.

The Goodwill doesn't really take garden furniture, so it is often given away.  I switched to a metal flower pot stand for my nightstand, and set a wrought-iron-style napkin weight? for picnics? upside-down in it to keep small items from falling through so easily, while still allowing most of the dust through.  I don't put water glasses there because the mattress is frequently used as a trampoline; small house, long winters.

I managed to paint a large picture frame and an office stand that we had picked up at other times, using old toothbrushes as brushes.  Uneven paint coverage, but I think that could be an advantage when trying to simulate marble.  A clear varnish of similar reflectance to polished stone would make it more convincing.

Still pouring...

...and too utterly ridiculously to write about yet.

However, we still had a good Christmas.  I was crafting little presents up until almost the last minute.

The washer got fixed enough to be functional.  At one point I had a whole system set up with two sturdy plastic bins and a bucket.  The second bin is for having a place to move wet laundry to while getting water out of the first bin and out of the laundry itself.  The bucket is for bailing out the bins.  

It worked okay as a temporary solution, but for a longer term I'd want sturdier laundry tubs.  I don't need a binful of laundry graywater flowing across the floor.  We do have a legless utility sink we trashpicked once; it would need to have the drain hole plugged securely against the suction of the laundry plunger (Rapid Washer).  Currently it is a holding pen for dirty laundry.

I set up a drying rack in the bathtub, to let things drip-dry enough so they could go into the dryer.

We even went to the laundromat once.  Almost deserted, probably because of the threat of a visit from ICE, which was good, because there were hardly any chairs--to keep homeless people from camping there.  A sign on the wall said No Sleeping.

Finally feeling crafty

Last-minute Christmas projects, after yesterday's cookie-baking and caramel popcorn:  a book weight with a rock in one end and beans in the other; a sewing kit; individual quotations cut out of an unreadable gift book and laminated; a piece of fabric laminated; an upholstery fabric remnant sewn into a tote bag; a broken necklace that I double-restrung.

For the sewing kit, I took a small, ugly basket and covered it with fabric, gathering it at the inside bottom and stitching through the fabric and basket under the rim.  It was quick to put together, although I think the gathers will tend to collect dust and odds and ends over time.

Recently we were given an elderly woman's extensive stash of braided rug materials and tools.  I've made a good start on a braided rug, and I plan to work straight through my share of the rolled strips, so I don't need to find storage space for them.  It will be a series of smaller rugs.  There's also a bin of uncut fabric, which I will probably use in clothing projects.

Eldest child has reported difficulty in distinguishing the woolens from the synthetics, even with burn testing.  Perhaps some of the fabrics are blends. 

Some of the fabrics were rather musty, so I washed them and hung them out in the back yard--including throwing long, unrolled strips of fabric up into the trees.  For some reason my husband doesn't approve of the look.  The red strips look festive, the gray and tan ones not so much.

Storms it is

The snow somehow held off until we had finally gotten the yard stuff taken care of.  Since then there has been a whole series of domestic disruptions.  I've only just now gotten the house more or less in order, aside from the washer being broken.  

I happened to have picked up a short RV water hose from someone's curbside a few weeks ago, and so I  experimented with siphoning water out of the washer.  It sort of works if I get all the air out of the hose and bring the lower end down to a basin on the floor; it needs the difference in height to create enough suction for that size of hose, and it only worked for the top half of the water.  

After that, I experimented with using a short hose from the dehumidifier as a flexible water container:  lower entirely into the water, and then lift by both ends.  This worked, but the amount of water it can carry is very small.

I did wash a load of laundry in the bathtub using my antique Rapid Washer-style metal laundry plunger, and experimented with setting wire shelving over the laundry room sink as a place for draining water out of the laundry.  However, really, a stronger force than gravity is needed.

Future loads are waiting until the landlord deals with the washer in one way or another, or until I finish recovering from this cold.

I am appreciative now of two projects I did a while back, which was to take some free-from-a-neighbor bathroom tiles, and two wooden panels from a deconstructed TV armoire, and make two tiled panels:  one for the kitchen behind the wastebasket, and one for the bathroom between the toilet and the side wall; both protecting the walls against family members with bad aim.  Both panels are just leaning against the wall, not attached.  One I finished with grout in the tile joints, and the other with white caulk and a band of paint along the top edge.  Both are much easier to scrub clean than the wall paint, and being speckled white instead of weary beige, they help to brighten the rooms.

The painted wooden frame in the living room now has large red Christmas bells hanging from it.

The apples are for the most part keeping far better than I expected, given their condition when we picked them.  I haven't done much more than sort through them every week or so to pick out the ones that are going bad, and cook up the ones that are partly salvageable.

I realized a year or two ago that the purpose of food is not to be eaten, but to be available to be eaten.

The calm between the storms

I've been working very hard at various things, such as mending, organizing, deep cleaning, family gatherings, and volunteer work, in addition to beginning to write a book for the month formerly known as NaNoWriMo.

Today there was just enough of a break in the schedule to get caught up on raking leaves, and the weather turned out to be just perfect for it.  We made one giant leaf pile in the backyard, and a teenager buried himself in it very comfortably.

Recently my husband and I discovered the clearance paint shelf at the friendly neighborhood big box store.  I painted the outsides of two medium plastic plant pots and made them into baskets for toys and sewing projects.  One of them has a nice contrast between the new color on the outside and the original color on the inside.  I'm not yet at the point of using normal woven baskets much; too fragile.

I also painted the wooden frame from one side of a box spring, which I've been saving with the idea of making a clothes rack, and leaned it up against an empty wall.  I might hang some things from it later.

Awash in apples

Through our local social network, this fall we picked up four buckets of black walnuts at one place, and considerably more than that of apples at another.

Last year, we brought home enough apples to last into spring, aside from the ones we cooked or preserved in various ways.

This year was also a good year for apples, although not quite of the quality of last year's bumper crop.

We were out picking after dark with headlamps, and I was surprised to see how many moths were going after the bruised apples on the ground.

I found a new recipe, not with apples but for apples, from an old community-fundraiser cookbook.  It is a topping for an apple cake, and it looked so weird that I figured it had to be good.  We are using it for a dip for apple slices, although it is rather drippy.  As the original recipe says, "Texture may be funny and brown flecks may appear":

Topping for Apple Cake/Dip for Apples

1 Cup sugar

1/2 Cup sour cream

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Combine ingredients in saucepan, and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it boils.   

The brown flecks are from the sugar beginning to caramelize, which doesn't take long, and the result tastes like caramel and almost like marshmallow.  I found that leaving it in the pan after cooking resulted in more of the sugar caramelizing, and tending to crystallize on the sides and bottom of the pan, along with making the overall color more brown.

Should have worn a respirator

I took a look at a free-by-the-side-of-the-road upright bagless vacuum that I picked up a while back.

It had very weak suction, and with a little investigation it was easy to see why:  the filters were caked and choked with dust.  Someone decided to buy a new vacuum rather than spend a few minutes dealing with them.

The filters are washable, so I washed them, and they're drying now.  I think the belts are okay.

If it's good to go, this will be the basement vacuum.  My canister vacuum from a German manufacturer is about twelve years old, and still works fine.

I've gotten more interested in free appliances like this since I learned how much metal can be salvaged out of them.  And hardware.

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There's a Popular Science book from the World War II years that I've been leafing through:  the "Second Giant Home Workshop Manual".  It's a frenetic mix of home science demonstrations, home improvement projects, and DIY wartime preparedness, punctuated by instructions on how to electroplate with various metals.

It reminds me in some ways of the early years of the pandemic.

The 'cleaning reflex' was triggered

Yesterday I took apart my living room, down to rolling up the Very Nice Rug and taking it outside and letting little children jump around on it.

The fall cleaning was long overdue, but it was initiated, in this case, by a child throwing a pinecone and breaking a storm window.

The pinecones were free, from church, but they turned out to be an expensive lesson for that child.

Anyway, having figured out the magic secret of removing the screen and the other storm window--it seems like it is a different secret for every rental we've lived in--I was able to clean the whole window, and then went on to wash the outsides of the other first-floor windows.

Returning inside, with the kids' desktop computers already disconnected to get at the window, I decided to keep going, slowly.

The children wanted the computer table moved to a different wall, and I wanted to move the toy shelf somewhere less prominent, replacing it with bookshelves that were already in the room.

I took out one end table, which used to function as a perch for little children and now only accumulates clutter.

The toy shelf went in front of a window.  I put our very rustic red dollhouse on it, knowing that our cat likes to curl up in one of the upstairs rooms.  Now she can watch both the family and the outside world from up there.  The rest of the dollhouse is again being used for drawing and coloring supplies.  

The second fridge discovers its destiny

The second, "stupid little apartment" fridge was due for a cleaning and defrosting, and then a child left its freezer door ajar for long enough that there was too much frost for it to close.

So, an unscheduled defrosting.  The good part is that wiping the ice and water off the interior more or less took care of the cleaning part, although I did also clean behind and under it.

There's been a bit of a dead mouse smell around, which I thought might be from back there, but it wasn't.  The smell was worse outside, and we looked all over along one whole side of the house several times without finding anything.

It seems to have been in one of the gutter downspout extensions; it went away after we finally got some rain.

Anyway, after getting the fridge dried and plugged back in again, I had an idea.  Instead of being The Overflow Fridge, or The Weird Ingredients of My Husband's Fridge, it could be The Leftover Fridge.

It is smaller and shallower, so there's not room for things to be lost in the back.  Also, if it gets full, I can easily see what can be thrown out to make room.

So far, this is working very well.

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For the toy bin, I found a fabric basket/bag I had made some years ago.  It sits in the bin and holds most of the toys.

First things first

"This seems to be axiomatic--going ahead with the work makes the tools show up.  They also seem to come in threes....Determination is a magnet."  -- Roy Underhill, The Woodwright's Shop:  A Practical Guide to Traditional Woodcraft

I have been lacking determination to finish any projects, except for building a toy bin to go under a play kitchen.  The bin helps get the toys off the floor, but since it is mostly open on the front, they still look like clutter.  I might put a little curtain on it.  I'm planning to put a finish on the bin to visually unite it with the play kitchen.  They are joined with leather straps on the back, and I should anchor the whole thing to the wall when I'm done.

After that, aside from being sick and reading through a stack of free Christian historical novels from the library, I began working through deep-cleaning various household biohazards.  In particular, my eldest child and I cleaned the refrigerator.  It is an early-90's model that is extremely simple and reliable compared to the dysfunctional 2010's fridge at our previous rented house.  

I discovered, through the advanced-level technique of reading the owner's manual that the previous owners thoughtfully left for our landlord, that the drain tray underneath is supposed to be cleaned monthly, instead of never.  There was a whole ecosystem in there.

I also cleared out some rotten onion "mush bombs" in the basement, and cleaned out the utility sink and both of the bathroom sink drains.  I have a length of wire with a little loop at one end like a fishing pole, and a handle at the other which keeps it from falling down the drain, for fishing out clogs.

Next on the deep cleaning list is the second fridge, which is a stupid little apartment fridge that frosts up badly; simple, but not in a good way.

George Floyd Square

I passed through George Floyd Square earlier this summer, serendipitously.  I didn't realize before that there isn't just the one Black power fist at the intersection, but also one in each of the neighboring intersections, which define the "Square".

It still looks a lot like the photo here.  You can drive through the Square, but the north-south traffic is squeezed over to accommodate the memorial.

The city wants the memorial out of the street.  The activists want to close off the street to traffic and build a memorial plaza.  Business owners have unsuccessfully sued the city for not providing law enforcement, and now are going to mediation.

When I was there, in the evening, there were only a few people around, and the mood was subdued, aside from someone yelling about a block away.

"The People's Way" former gas station across the street is--I think--where the city had their surveillance camera feed that the 911 dispatcher was watching in real time.

The general trend of the big cities going cashless has pushed many of the homeless out into the suburbs.  I saw a uniformed security guard at one of the mid-range grocery stores, and there were loiterers around the HarMar Mall last year and keycodes for the restrooms.

Laundry bags and mattresses

Last year, I turned two skirts into laundry bags, by sewing the bottom edges closed.  One was a skirt I didn't like the feel of, and the other just needed to be retired from my wardrobe.  The fabric is strong enough.  One bag has a drawstring and the other has a zipper, which is nice because otherwise it is rather difficult to get the laundry out.

Another project from a couple months ago was to turn a double-sized mattress into a twin size.  It's an inner-spring mattress that's two or more decades old.  The innards turned out to be very similar to the twin box spring I took apart one time; just no wood and less steel, and more padding.  

I cut through the fabric and padding, and used a small screwdriver and pliers to pry off the metal clips holding the springs to the edge, and then wire cutters to cut the spiral wires connecting the springs.

The heavier steel edging was a little harder to deal with.  I didn't want to cut it and then be left with no way to reconnect it.  I came up with a scheme for bending each edge over to the other side--which didn't work because the width I removed from the mattress was greater than the thickness of the mattress, so they stuck out too far.  I let it sit for a few days, and eventually figured out how to take up the extra with additional bends.

Then I started clipping things back together, crimping the clips I had removed back on with pliers.  This went okay for the springs, and less okay with the rings that had to poke through the padding.  They probably have a special tool for that at the factory.

I finished by sewing up the fabric with sturdy buttonhole thread.  The mattress is a spare for now, and is currently on a free-by-the-side-of-the-road metal daybed frame, under another mattress.

I also, roughly a year ago, repaired a seam on my own mattress.  I was thinking about replacing the mattress entirely, until I realized that it would be silly to replace the most popular bed in the house.  I sleep well enough on it.

Upgrades

I was able to repair a sink strainer that wouldn't stay in the open position by taking a piece of plastic tube from a marker, the fatter kind of children's marker, and cutting a slit down the side so I could snap it onto the stem of the sink strainer to hold it up.  It would have been easier if I had cut it to the right length before making the slit.

I also experimented with making a simple dust jacket for a book out of quilting fabric.  It looks nice on the shelf with the normal books, although the fabric sticks out a bit at the top and bottom of the spine.  I expect that it will collect dust and need to be washed and ironed at some point.  I perhaps should have pre-shrunk the fabric.

Yesterday I used a handed-down upholstery remnant to replace the seat on a freebie metal patio chair.  The chair uses splines in channels at the sides to hold the fabric in place.  The original plastic mesh didn't have hems or channels sewn at the sides, but I put them in the replacement, for strength.  It took a considerable amount of work to put the new fabric on, with the splines in and with tension across the width.  I am sore today, but not nearly as sore as I should be, thanks to milk.   I had sore muscles before I started.  I'm somewhat doubtful about the strength of the fabric, but it supported an adult's weight, cautiously applied.

During my break I painted new letters on my keyboard.  It's not that old, but almost half of the alphabet had disappeared.  I used a contrasting color of nail polish to paint the missing letters on--in Morse code.  I didn't get all of them on very clearly, but it has helped me learn some more.

Back from break

I'm going back onto a semi-regular posting schedule.

Eldest child is doing well.

I finally have No! Children! In! Diapers!!  And they can all buckle themselves in, on their own or with a little help from a sibling.

I also have Multiple! Teenagers!!  I can go for a walk whenever I want, and we can easily go through two gallons of milk in a day.  I didn't have to hire a random stranger to babysit when I had jury duty last year.

I did a lot of stocking up on books, tools, and supplies, which has turned out to be timely, because there is apparently some law of the universe where my family's finances can only flourish under a Democrat administration.  I don't mistake the money economy for the real, real economy, though.

I've also been writing a teenage-level fiction book, which has been a lot of fun.