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.

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.

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.

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. 

Set

I found several Georgette Heyer books at the thrift store, and remembering Practical Conservative's love of the author bought them.  Not my usual genre, so we'll see.

My life this fall has been apples, election, and hospital.  An acquaintance with a backyard orchard had a bumper crop this year, and we easily picked thirty bags' worth.  I learned how to make apple butter, and that is what I'm doing with most of them now.  It turns out to not be so easy to dispose of quantities of apple scraps in the city when you are stubbornly refusing to order and use the organics bin that you are being forced to pay for.

The hospital was for my oldest child, who is doing well despite taking a Grand Tour of the medical system across seven different sites this month, for a congenital issue that suddenly became a problem.  There is some lingering non-obvious aftermath, but she is chugging through most of the functional tests faster than I would. 

A neighbor gave me an old table leaf that is more or less the right size for our round living room table, and I put two coats of polyurethane on it.  I plan to have Thanksgiving dinner in the living room again; the house has no dining room and it is much more memorable than crowding into the kitchen as usual.  The next challenge is the table base:  it is a pedestal base--for an oak top that can be six feet long.  Someone in the past tried to reinforce the weak point by pounding in a lot of nails.  I think I can repurpose the frame of my old homemade dinner table, if I shorten the legs.  The hard part will be getting it into place around the pedestal and up under the table top's rails, but it shouldn't be too bad because the frame's legs are attached with removable pegs.

George MacDonald's Lilith

John C. Wright reviews Lilith also, after previously writing two posts about MacDonald's Phantastes. 

Lilith is indeed a very difficult book to understand--I've only read it two or three times, and I no longer own a copy--but at the same time the Lilith character is astonishingly modern in her pride and violence, and one of MacDonald's core messages that runs throughout his writings--obedience to God--is made very clear.

Most of the book is set within a highly-symbolic metaphysical landscape.  Within this landscape are a number of scenes that seem to be intended to express spiritual truths.  One scene that has stuck with me ever since reading the book is a never-ending furious battle between two factions, both of which claim they are on the side of Truth.  This battle has no effect at all on the rest of that world.  The protagonist does not engage in it, goes off on a foolish crusade of his own, and eventually has to simply obey instructions about one small rock, which when properly placed brings a great deal of healing.

My understanding of the Lona character is that she appeared to be about fifteen years old, which in MacDonald's time was sometimes considered a marriageable age.  The two very similar white leopards are also difficult to sort out.  One is Lilith, and I believe the other is the daughter of Adam and Eve who also appeared as the masked lady at the house.

For the Little Ones and the Bags, it is helpful to consider The Princess and Curdie, where Curdie is given the gift of being able to discern a person's moral nature.  A wicked person's hand feels to him like the foot of the beast they are morally descending toward; Curdie's good mother's work-hardened hands feel human, and soft and lovely.  MacDonald was showing how a person could descend into brutishness and a very thorough spiritual dullness. 

My personal George MacDonald unit study continues

Not long after my previous post about John C. Wright's review of Phantastes, I stumbled across two more local resources on George MacDonald.  The first was a mis-shelved copy of one of his novels that I hadn't read yet, in a church library.  It is one of the abridged and de-dialect-ized editions from the 1980s, but still much better than nothing.  MacDonald's fantasy novels for adults came at the very beginning and end of his career:  Phantastes at the start, and Lilith at the close.  The ones in between, besides his short stories and children's books, were almost all set in the everyday Victorian society of the time, and MacDonald attempted to bring spiritual truth very close to home for his readers.

I also finally got around to looking at the latest issue of Christian History magazine, and while the theme this time is the artist and missionary Lilias Trotter, there is quite a bit about MacDonald because he was a famous friend of a famous friend of hers, John Ruskin.

Trotter had a great deal of potential as a young artist, and Ruskin offered to train her and launch her into the uppermost level of the Victorian artist scene, but she chose instead to follow God, ending up in long-term missions work in Algiers.

An unexpected review

John C. Wright reviews George MacDonald's book Phantastes, and then follows it up with another post to analyze it.

The book is best known for being the book that was involved in awakening C.S. Lewis to a new level of spiritual and creative possibilities.

I gave up my copy of the book in the downsizing for the last move, but I remember a lot of it, after multiple readings.  It's the kind of book that needs to be read more than once.

It is a remarkably mature work, and it was MacDonald's first novel, published when he was in his early twenties, I believe.

Put-together

I spent some time this morning butchering a worn-out sheet.  Some of the better parts I am saving for sewing projects, and the rest became kitchen wipes.

Last week I pulled out my old wardrobe planning booklets that I had made, which were very helpful in figuring out what I need to do next wardrobe-wise.

Among the books we've acquired over the last few months was a very interesting one:  The Doll's Dressmaker, by Venus Dodge, which has lots of ideas and patterns for dolls' clothing.  Most of them can be scaled up for human clothing.

The children are of course thinking ahead to Halloween and what their costumes will be.  One of the older ones has put together a very impressive cardboard Stars Wars stormtrooper helmet, and is now looking for a source of EVA foam floor tiles for some other part of the costume.

Sabbatical revelation

In my book on sabbaticals, I showed how God had on several Biblical occasions used times of rest to establish covenants with people:  Noah after the Flood, Moses and the Israelites at Mount Sinai after their liberation from the Egyptians, and Nehemiah and the Israelites after the Exile.

I was shown another one today:  God's covenant with David in II Samuel 7--also mentioned in Psalm 89--after "the LORD had given him rest round about from all his enemies".

  

Hard at work

Lots of projects going on around here.  I built a long, rustic bench for kitchen table seating.  I planned it down to the last inch to fit the space and the things I wanted to store under it, then had to root around in the depths of the garage to find all of the wood and hardware that I needed.  The seat is a plank from a waterbed frame.  Several of the other long boards were previously salvaged, attached to stakes, and used as flower bed edging at our old house.  Those needed washing, and were somewhat warped. 

I never did find the box of nails that I was planning to use.  I improvised with bolts and screws that we already had.

I used our drill press to drill some of the bolt holes, and used hand tools for everything else.  There was a pause of about a week with pieces of wood stored under the kitchen table while I thought about how to make a back for the bench.

In the process of building the bench I learned, or re-learned, that I could use nails as easily-removable probes and alignment pins when I was having trouble lining up the pilot holes for screws.

The bench still needs some kind of a finish, particularly on the seat, but I am waiting for warm weather and good ventilation.

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I have also been doing a lot of mending of pants' knees, still have two or three more pairs to go.  Some of the pants are lined, so I can't do my usual method of attaching the patch to the leg seams on the inside, and then stitching the ripped area to the patch.

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I made a belt for a child, complete with a buckle made from coat hanger wire and some sort of a legged spring that I salvaged at some point.  That involved some work with a metal file, not just rounding off the sharp ends, but also filing a deep groove into the wire as a way of cutting it.  I like file work a lot, and I should find an excuse to do more of it.

After I finished the belt, I picked up a leatherworking book from the library.  It turns out there are specialized punches for cutting the slot for the tongue of the buckle, and for rounding the end of the belt, and for making the other holes.  I used kitchen scissors and knives that I had, along with a nail for an awl, and an old preschool-level workbook as a surface that could be nailed into.  I also used waxed thread instead of rivets.

Continuing with the coat

There was a library book I read once by a popular maker of Western shirts, who said that she always made the shirts quite large, and then altered them in the direction of smaller to fit her client.  

It would have helped if I would have remembered that book earlier in this process.  I had to add width in several places, which was time-consuming as the material was too thick for my sewing machine, and each insertion required two long seams.

Now I am in the finishing stages of the coat...zipper, collar, cuffs, bottom edge, and pockets.  It is amazing how much labor and materials go into such a thing.  The outer shell and lining took almost an entire flat bedsheet.

I've been using my homemade leather thimble very heavily, and I thought I should describe it.  It's a strip of medium-weight leather almost one inch wide and long enough to wrap in a band--shiny side in--around my thumb with about an inch of overlap.  Three stitches of dental floss at the exposed end hold the shape.

The overlapped area is the part I use for pushing a needle.  Having the suede side on the outside helps the end of the needle not slip off.  Wearing it on my thumb lets me use my other fingers for steadying the needle even more.

The thimble is one of my essential tools.  I misplaced it at one point, and then had a miserable time trying to use a steel thimble that was among the sewing supplies I picked up on vacation.  Then I took a couple minutes to make a new leather thimble, until I found the original one again.  It needs new dental floss, but it is still usable as long as at least one stitch holds. 

I've also been using one of the mannequins as a handy coat form.  That helped a lot with the layout of the outer and inner layers.  I cut the pieces large, laid them on, and then I could see where I needed to cut and sew them.

Rummage sale

I got out to the rummage sale, and found some good finds:  a set of books by John Ruskin, a very daintily-worked handkerchief, and a box of canning jars.

The Ruskin books I am excited about, because Ruskin was a friend of George MacDonald, who have I been doing a unit study of my own on.  Ruskin is more often quoted from than read, and apparently that was true even back in the day, because every volume in this 135-year-old set that I have opened so far has uncut pages.

The handkerchief has not only embroidery, but also needle lace openwork where the threads that were worked are too small for me to see clearly without magnification.

Slosh slosh squish slosh

Follow the money. 

 

But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters.  -- I Peter 4:15 (KJV)

My turn, parts 2 - 94

A few years ago, I read a book called Everyday Racism, a thoroughly unscientific although commercially published book about a "study" that a professor did with black college students.  She asked them to tell her what the three most racist things that had ever happened to them were, and then she took their stories and wrote this book around them.

Reading it, I noticed two things:  first of all, the vast majority of these students' three worst victimizing racist incidents were in fact not all that bad.  Not really surprising, since both professor and students are from some college which I haven't bothered to remember the name of, that has a certain amount of Privilege attached to it.

The second thing I noticed is that very similar things have happened to me and my family.  And not just a few times; quite regularly.  And where they don't happen regularly, it's because I've been avoiding returning to the places where they did happen--shopping malls, for example.

I started listing these incidents out, and so far I am at 93 and counting.  Ninety-three little sob stories that would be marketable today, if only I were of some other race.

Well, that's not an insurmountable obstacle.  If the Black Like Me guy could travel around the South and "pass", I should be able (with a little work) to pass well enough for a couple of virtual book tours on Zoom over the next two or three years; everyone knows that COVID-19 is racist, just like everything else is....

The elite method, demonstrated so brilliantly by Christine Blasey-Ford, who didn't even need to resort to blackface, is to specifically blame whoever the Establishment is in need of demonizing at the moment, and to not worry too much about who was really present or not.  As long as the "feels" of the story are told in vivid enough detail that even the fictional elements are "brought to life", the hard facts of the matter can be left so hazy and nebulous that no one can disprove the story for certain.

The only real obstacle to this scheme is that I have a hard time writing in other styles without lapsing into parodying them.  But Sokal and others have blazed the trail there... I think the secret must be in the set of one's eyebrows; a sanctimonious posture must be a necessary precondition for sanctimonious writing.

Oh, and I better run my profile picture through MS Paint and add some Color.

Acceleration

The past few weeks have been educational in many ways.  Just yesterday, I learned that 3 tablespoons of the liquid from a can of garbanzo beans (chickpeas) can be used as a substitute for an egg in baking.  I knew about the substitution using soy flour and water, and I guessed that grinding up dried beans and adding a little water would work about the same way, but using canned bean liquid--that was new to me.  It worked just fine in the corn bread, though, and I've been told (but have not yet confirmed myself) that chickpeas have much lower levels of nitrates than other beans, for those who need to avoid them.

[ EDITED TO ADD:  I believe now that I was mistaken above, and that it is black-eyed peas that are low in nitrates, but I have not been able to confirm that yet.]

I've also come across references to chokeberries and aronia, which I hope to look into in more depth later, and a very interesting (and probably out of print) book called Curious Customs, which gives a wry and educated look at many of the traditional American customs that underlie our modern culture. 

I've also uncovered some small modifications to my eating habits which seem to be producing good results, but really, it is basically the same as someone else's "Eat food, but not too much."  I'd add, "And not too quickly,"  especially in respect to fluids and carbs.

Straight out of Mordor

 Where they'll start:

Think long and hard about how far the tentacles of achieving the Green New Deal can extend under the auspices of federal COVID-19 mitigation.

Remember, those who are working on this don’t care about the middle-class and they have not for decades. The visibility of the ‘rust belt’ is the reference. This is about government bureaucrats using their DC power-base to control trillions in economic value and sell their ability to influence the winners and losers to the highest foreign bidder.

Look at what blue states have already done to seize power and control. Now think about that same manipulative intent spread throughout the entire country by weaponizing federal agencies with advanced regulation.

That should start to frame the reference point going forward. Remember, within totalitarian states religion is a risk… the assembly for religious worship is always considered a risk to by those who demand control over free-thought and lives.

 

Plastic bag experiments

A library book called Ecocraft had a project with laminating plastic shopping bags together to make a stronger and more durable material.  My apprentices and I tried it out, and were able to make an improvement or two beyond the procedure in the book.

The basic idea is to place four to eight pieces of shopping bag between two pieces of kitchen parchment paper, and then iron them with a medium-hot iron, first on one side, let cool, then flip over and iron the other side.

The author recommended using clothespins to keep the layers from shifting, but we found that the plastic shrinks a lot as it is heated.  So if the edges can't pull in as it shrinks, then the center will pull outward, and make holes in the middle.

One child also found that the loose edges could be folded over and ironed down, making the perimeter both neater and stronger.

If you let it cool down for a minute after ironing, the parchment paper and plastic will pop apart on their own.

The process gives off a few fumes, but not bad, at least not for humans.  Just crack open a couple windows.  I've been told that birds are very susceptible to this kind of household air pollution, though.

Shopping bags from mall stores seem to work best (#4 LDPE), followed by the better big-box stores, and then the super-thin discount and grocery store bags (#2 HDPE). 

The resulting laminates are flexible and seem tough.  The children called them "plastic leather", and the laminates made from tan grocery bags do look a lot like leather.  Pinching and pulling on one, it stretches only very slightly until I pull very hard.  I don't know about their abrasion resistance yet.  A needle goes through it very easily.

Preparations

The little papier-mache birds that I made took a day or two to dry.  Then I took the two best of them, drew eyes on them, and left the rest in a primitive, unfinished style.  I put them up on the wreath and I like how they look there.

Jackie Clay's Pantry Cookbook has a recipe for dipping chocolate made of chocolate chips and food-grade paraffin that I am going to try out before the holidays.

I whittled another cedar branch coat hook, but haven't put it up anywhere. It only took a few minutes to make.

Things around my house are coming together in various ways, and it has been nice to see things looking pretty.