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.

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.

Accordion and cardboard

Before Christmas, we were doing some post-dentist shopping at a new-to-us thrift store.  They had two vintage accordions in the store.  I was able to go back to the store in January with Christmas money and some savings.  The brown accordion I was thinking of buying was no longer there, but the other one was.  So now I have a pearly-blue accordion, in good-enough condition.  It is both easy and challenging to play.  Previous musical experience with piano and school band is helping, along with a couple of beginner videos.

My husband around that time brought home very large cardboard boxes from work; enough for each of the children to have one of their own.  It was hard to traverse the living room for a while.  Some of the cardboard became cardboard armor and airplanes and rockets.  The armorer has developed some rather advanced techniques for making helmets and workable elbow joints.

We also made an excursion to the Axman Surplus store.  Some of the kids wanted motors, one wanted plastic clips, and I was pleased to find that they still had some airline china, as I wanted a couple of mini-plates.

I was reluctantly beginning to sew new cushion covers for our glider rocker when several of its joints came unglued and I found that a bushing? was missing.  I found the bushing later, and for now we are enjoying having some extra space in the living room.

Lawn chair, lawn chair, chairs, armchair

I finished the first lawn chair, with a pause of a day to grow some more muscle for pushing the awl and for driving screws through fabric that constantly wanted to twist.

There was some fiddly work that went into each connection.  I'd looked through our hardware hoard, and I have a few T-shaped pins from a retired lawn chair, with the "T" being as wide as a strip of webbing, which is wrapped around it, and then the short stem of the "T" is inserted through the webbing and into the chair frame, and holds the webbing in place while spreading out the strain and neatening the ends.

For a similar effect, I used a strip of milk jug plastic for the wide part of the "T", and a screw, with a washer, through it for the stem.  I think the plastic will not hold up that well in the longer term, but it's good enough for now, and I could be wrong since the fabric will protect it from the sun a lot and my lawn chairs are in the shade for most of the day.

With the second chair, the connectors were short bolts that ran through grommets in the ends of the webbing--which were carefully folded into points.  My fabric wouldn't fold down that far, so I did basically the same thing as the first chair, but I saved the grommets and re-used them as washers.

Most of the assembly happened outdoors, and the work for the second chair was spread over three days; it had more bands than the first chair.

The finished lawn chairs have been holding up so far.  They look nice, except for the one chair's arms still being deteriorating plastic.  Which I will probably replace with wood at some point.

I have three other chair projects, and a table project, lined up indoors.  One of them is a tapestry armchair a child bought at a yard sale, which needs major repairs on the springs.

Doing and undoing

I pushed through repairs on several items from my mending pile, and I have also been going through a much larger pile of handed-down clothing and fabric.

I sorted T-shirts, found the all-cotton ones that we don't want to wear as T-shirts, and cut them up for re-use in an Alabama Chanin-style project, which I can work on outdoors this spring while watching children.

Some of the less worthy fabrics went into the kitchen wipe and baby wipe pipelines.

Other have been butchered down to the re-usable parts, and put away until I get to them.

There were some shorts, which my children don't wear, which are going to be short pants for my youngest when the weather is a little warmer.  No alterations needed, because of the diaper.

The big thing remaining is a wool suit that my mother-in-law shrunk for a project, and then gave up on.  Wool jackets and coats are challenging to disassemble, because there is usually a lot of interfacing and inner structure going on.  It's very educational to see all the work that goes into one, though.  I am thinking of using the wool for a bog jacket, much smaller and simpler than the ones pictured at the link.

I was reading in an older book about how having prints and pictures hung up in a house made it more comfortable, and I had recently come across my set of small classroom butterfly posters and was planning to put them up anyway, so I found a place to string up some crocheted wire, and I hung them up with clothespins.  Only four small nail holes in the wall.

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.

Chugging along

I've been doing a lot of organizing and cleaning, and also a little decorating.

The plastic blinds in the kitchen were very bad when we moved in, and I just took them down and bagged them up--I hate mini-blinds too much to spend money on buying new ones.

I finally got around to washing them in the bathtub.  Hot water, dish soap, and spray cleaner had little effect on the thick, tenacious goo that was on them except to soften it a little.  What did work was to scrub with a drippy mixture of baking soda and water.  They came out looking almost new.

To dry the blinds before storing them again, I figured out a way to suspend them from the shower curtain rod by hanging two clothes hangers on it first, and then slipping each end of the top of the blinds into a hanger.

I came out only a little ahead in the end, though, because some little child decided to break one slat, and then another, of the bathroom blinds. I will splint them back together.

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I did a quick decorating project of covering a half-painted canvas--that my husband picked up from some curbside a while back--with fabric, and hanging it on the wall.  I used tacks salvaged from one of my de-upholstery projects.  I put the nail into the wall a little too low, and then compensated by putting a small wooden spool onto the nail before hanging the panel back up.

I used to cover pieces of plywood with fabric, stapled on, and lean them against the wall to hide electrical outlets from the baby, or put them under crates that would otherwise scratch the floor.

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I looked through the mending bag, and found that I have an even dozen pairs of children's pants waiting to be mended.  I'm going to have to switch thread on the sewing machine.  The thread in it now is very prone to jumping free of the thread guides and creating slack that then tangles down inside the machine.  I was making a quick pillowcase for a seat cushion, and had to pause every few stitches to make sure the thread was behaving itself decently.

The seat cushion was for the deconstructed chair in the library.  I also added one piece of the wood to the back, with short drywall screws, and worked out a way to semi-attach the chunks of redwood beam that it is sitting on to each other, so they're not shifting and letting the chair fall over.

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In other tinkering, we replaced the light bulbs in a bedroom with ones of a warm color temperature, and found out why the glass shade was on upside-down--it is too small to accommodate full-size light bulbs.  I worked out a way of suspending it a little lower using a bolt, a nut, and a couple of washers, with the bolt running up through the center of the original hanger, and being secured from falling back out with the nut.  It was a three-handed job, and I might go back and add a short tube as a spacer to steady the shade.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

More secure seat covers

The chintzy dining chair finally met its end when one of the screw holes ripped out, which got me back to thinking about how to mend the vinyl seats of two steel chairs. The damage was too large for a patch, but I didn't want to completely redo them yet, either,

That left me with making covers for the seats. I found that I had just enough of the waterproof canvas left over from the chair and table projects to cover both seats.

I decided to take the seats off and staple the fabric to the underside, right over the vinyl. The fabric was thin enough for me to get away with this; something thicker would make it hard to get the screws back in far enough.

I did have to piece the fabric together, so there is a seam running across each seat. Since this is a temporary solution, I wasn't very fussy about gathering in the corners, so the whole process went quickly.

Putting things together again

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

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

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

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