Quarantine / Permies Project Plan aka the silver lining…

I wish you some peace, Kathleen. This week I had to go get some imaging done (suspected tumor causing weird symptoms. all scans were clean, thank heaven, but all my emotional spoons for the week were gone by about Tuesday noon.). The tech told me that all zones were clean, basically saying don't come pick up the results (here we have to actually go pick up a physical report, even though the images are digital) until after all this has blown over. Heaven knows I'm not going to the followup with my specialist anytime soon.
I feel for the people who need to go to the hospital on a regular basis; I know ERs are doing the best they can to send suspect cases to special triage centers, but I know here that info is not easy to find and when people are sick and scared they are going to go to what first pops into their head: main gate of the ER.

Here, we are on the plan I am on when I go visit my mother in the US (where I do not have health insurance): no unnecessary risks. Luckily my schedule lately does not permit horseback riding or motocross.... but I gave my car to my spouse and asked him to please park his motorcycle til all this is done. The kid is staying away from her bicycle, and we're all just trying to be more careful than usual.

We had slipped off the wagon for a while.  We are now back to making 100% of our bread.  We bake 2x a week. We are also doing a whole lot of house cleaning and organizing.  

Yes, I ran out of emotional spoons by the time we were done with the urologist visit yesterday.  It doesn’t help that I also have auto-immune diseases, and run out of physical spoons pretty quickly.  But today is better (if I can get daughter to go pee!), and we’ll keep on keeping on.  

I need to get some seeds started so I can clear the dining table off.  Then I’ll go through my fabric stash and see what I have that might work for making masks.

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:Finally found where my camera was hiding. This is the cardboard box loom I mentioned. Overall it's pretty basic. The warp threads are tied to sticks, then laid across the open part of the box. The sticks are connected to each other on the underside of the box by some nylon twine. The twine has another stick looped through it, which is twisted or untwisted to adjust the tension.

The reed was probably the most finicky part to make. I had read elsewhere that reeds were too complicated to be worth making at home, and I kind of took that as a challenge. Mine is made from popsicle sticks. There is a hole burned into them at each end, and a threaded rod passed through the hole. There are washers in between as spacers, and a wingnut at each end to hold them in place. It takes some time to get it set up every time, but it works.

If I wanted to combine the reed and heddle into a rigid heddle, I'd probably just glue the popsickle sticks together in groups of 3, with the center stick having the middle cut out. I haven't decided yet if I want to try that.

This is just mind blowingly cool! Apparently not all heroes wear capes! Any chance you could make a tutorial or a video on how you did it? im in love 😍

How are people's projects coming along? Here's my garden start. Lots more work to do.

Wowza, it's been MONTHS.
How are we all holding up?

We've been working normally since March, but the weekends are hard, since everything is closed (and we used to travel and go out a lot). But my daughter comes to spend the weekend with us, and we usually cook and do some sort of usually-no-time-for-this project (often but not always in the kitchen). This has involved many cakes and desserts, but also pickled ginger, marmelade, jam, juices, ginger candy, and lots of different kinds of pickles. The house has been painted inside and out, my office has been renovated, we redid our window screens, some electric wiring was redone, our heating setup got sorted, and it looks like we'll be redoing some plumbing this weekend. Two cars have gotten some serious bodywork, and the gardens have gotten some attention (although frankly, not as much as I wish I could have given them). There's probably more I'm forgetting-- we've been keeping busy on the weekends with no excuses or prior plans!!!

How's this for a silver lining?!?!? In December, I'd found exactly the treadle sewing machine I've been hunting for, for the last 30yrs or so, for only $140. I just happened to have just recieved cash Christmas gifts, and was ecstatic to be able to buy it. I talked with the seller a bit, and told him how long I'd been hunting, and how excited I was. But, the gentleman selling it had it at his lake house(near me), and was stuck at his home in IL, for the holidays, and wouldn't be able to get back to the lake house until February or March. Whoops. His work was in high demand, and he was unable to come back until late April, by which time we'd had covid- related bank issues, and ended up having to user my cash for necessities, instead. He asked if I was still interested, and if course I was, but told him that it wasn't fair of me to hold him to our agreement, when I had no idea when I might be able to gather the funds, again. So, he said he'd relist it, but would check back with me, before selling to anyone else. I told John (my hubs), "if I'm meant to have it, it will happen. If not, then it was meant for someone else, who needs it more."

Just before Independence Day, he got back in touch, and asked again if I was still interested. Well, of course I was, but still had not been able to gather the funds. He said he didn't care. "Come get it. It's yours - no charge". WHAAAT??? I thought it'd misunderstood, so asked him to explain. It seems everyone else that had contacted him only wanted it for parts. While he had no use for it, and needed the space freed up, he also didn't want to see his grandma's machine go to someone he knew was going to tear it apart. So, he GAVE it to me!!!

Edited to add: pay no attention to the collection of jars gathering behind the sewing machine!

Woooohoo! Every once in a while there are signs that humanity still may have a chance. What a score, Carla!!!