Sewing chat

Gentlemen, if you would excuse us, I'd like to ask the ladies something.

Ladies, if you sew, do you suffer some sort of strange distortion of your judgment-related faculties when you walk into a fabric store? (Feel free to answer anonymously. I know this can be embarrassing.) The subject comes up because yesterday I got it into my head that I'd like a new skirt, and there is nothing left in the stash of cloth I originally bought to make quilts with, so for the first time in years I went into a fabric store. I almost, just very nearly, got right in and right out. After a quick swoop through the store, a nice print on a black background caught my eye and I picked it up and pondered and thought it would do and even started toward the checkout. But then I wobbled. And then I went around and around the store, half-deciding on this and half-deciding on that, only to choose something else, and then unchoose it. I was having a very good time at this, you understand. I considered color after color, print after print. My imagination had a heyday.

But, finally, I decided I'd spent altogether too much time on this, especially since I'm not all that particular about what I wear (ask anybody who knows me - I don't want to be an eyesore, but fashion-concerned I'm not).

To put it another way, the time and mental effort invested in picking out the raw material for what is to be an everyday, workaday skirt had reached well-nigh ridiculous levels.

So, I decided it was time to choose.

So, I had narrowed it to two fabrics.

So (ahem), finding myself suddenly unable to choose between those two, I (cough) grabbed a bolt of cloth that hadn't even been under consideration, and took it to the checkout and bought two yards of that.

Is to laugh. Is to sigh.

Not that it hurt anything. But...

I am painfully aware that this is not the first time I have spent an insane amount of time in a fabric store, only to buy something not in the top five as chosen during that insane amount of time.

In this case, I got it home and held it in front of me while I looked in the mirror, and wondered why I hadn't noticed what an odd green the background is. And how 1970s-ish it seems. And, in general, I wondered why I bought this instead of something else.

It's not bad, you understand. It'll do. My husband seems to like it, perhaps more than I do, which is just as well because he'll see it more than anybody else, once I get it made, assuming I can manage to get it made. (I'm trying to make this, more or less, but with in-seam pockets, and midi-length. It's about as complicated as I dare tackle when attempting to sew. A talented seamstress I'm not.)

But, honestly, fabric stores seem to do something to my brain. Tell me I'm not alone in this...

Notice to local seamstresses: I found out during checkout that the fabric store is closing in a week or two. There aren't any signs or notices, but the owners are moving across the state to be closer to their kids and they're taking the store's inventory with them. I don't know anywhere else within an hour's drive to buy fabric. Do you? There are lots of online options, of course, but if you delight in browsing and feeling the fabric before you buy, your days are limited around here. Fair warning.

If I might add another sewing story...

Recently I was about to get rid of an old flannel sheet, and it suddenly struck me that there was no reason I couldn't make a winter-weight slip from it. So I folded it double, plunked a full slip on top of it, cut a rough approximation of the slip's shape, making allowance for seams, and making the straps wide and the neckline a bit higher and the slip inches and inches longer, since this is for warmth, and then sewed the two pieces together. Worked like a charm. There's enough fabric left over to make a second one. Such a deal. With a bit more attention to the top, and appropriate fabric, I think I could make a sheath dress this way. The rub there is designing the neckline and straps (or sleeves), but I've got some old regular sheets I can use for trial and error and then for a pattern, if I ever decide to get ambitious in that direction. Anyway, I couldn't find winter-weight slips, and this solved that problem nicely.

Old potatoes

I went to make potato salad this morning, but found that some of the potatoes had gone moldy, and others had dark spots that went deep into the potato. So I said phooey on that batch of potatoes and threw them away. Not wanting mold in the house, I tied up the trash bag and hauled it to the dumpster at the end of the block.

En route, I met a retired gentleman, who called out "Here comes trouble!" when he saw me. As far as I know, that's how he greets everybody he considers a friend. (This is the American West. We have our characters.) I told him, just to pass the time of day, that I'd gone to make potato salad but the potatoes had gone bad, to which he replied that I sounded like his wife.

How so? I asked, when the spoiled veggies were properly dumped.

'She's such a tightwad,' he said. 'She always buys big bags of potatoes, but we don't use many. I'd like potatoes every day, but she doesn't like to fuss with them. They're the easiest thing to make, really, but... well... whatever. The thing is, she never waits until we're out before she buys more, but she always cooks the oldest ones first, and so we never eat anything but old potatoes.'

At this point he faltered, suddenly realizing, I think, that he was telling tales on his wife, and possibly sounding like he was accusing me of always feeding my husband old potatoes (which I don't). He shifted his eyes away from mine and muttered, apologetically, 'Anyway, that's where she is this morning. Making potato salad, to use up some of them old potatoes.'

Uhm. I hope I don't have to say this, but frugality ill applied is not a blessing, ladies. And, gentlemen, neither is being distressed by something in one's household but not addressing it. Privately. Politely.

Super summer snacks

Danielle Bean and her readers are discussing their favorite easy, nutritious, and inexpensive snacks.

I hate to admit this, but I'd forgotten you can freeze grapes. I hate to think how many grapes I've thrown out in the past few years because we just didn't get through the bag fast enough.

Green before green was hip (and lost its bearings)

Sheila Wray Gregoire writes about living 'green' without being a green fanatic. If only the fanatics would listen, I think a lot of people could be spared a whole lot of grief, up to and including needless starvation.

hat tip: SFO Mom

Book note: The Oregon Trail Cookbook, edited by Leslie J. Whipple

My husband handed me a copy of The Oregon Trail Cookbook as a gift yesterday. Oh, my, I finally had to block out time in the kitchen and make something today. I started with Snickerdoodles, a type of cookie. They came out pretty good, if I do say so myself. Even more fun, when my husband came through and tasted one he exclaimed that his grandma used to make cookies just like that. Sometimes a gal gets lucky. :)

From the back cover copy:

The Oregon Trail Cookbook offers a wealth of information on the various food traditions of the Oregon Country, with a special emphasis on the contributions of the Oregon Trail pioneers who brought their rich heritage as they emigrated from all over the world to seek the "Promised Land" of Oregon. Along with an abundance of pioneer stories and recipes, prominent Northwest chefs have contributed contemporary recipes celebrating the local bounty and the 150-year anniversary of the "Great Migration" over the Oregon Trail.

Organized into food categories both familiar (breads) and unfamiliar (game), using ingredients both commonplace (cornmeal) and exotic (bear renderings and cracklings), the recipes of The Oregon Trail Cookbook will delight the palate and fascinate the mind.

The key to this book, and the real joy of it, is participation. In response to a nationwide call for recipes, descendants of pioneers have sent in their cherished family favorites, along with wonderful family legends and anecdotes of pioneer life...

A plus: many of the recipes appear to be well-suited to frugal households. I am thinking of trying the Poorman's Pecan Pie, for instance. The ingredients are brown sugar, oatmeal, corn syrup, margarine and eggs, in a pie shell. No pecans. (On the other hand, I can't imagine what would persuade me to try Fried Pig's Feet. Just isn't gonna happen short of a prolonged siege, folks. Ugh.)

The book was published in 1992, by Maverick, of Bend, Oregon.

A note: Several of the used copies for sale online have "Thunder Over the Ochoco, Pts. 1 & 2" as part of the title. This must be a database error. Certainly it's not correct.

Pan-fried waffles

The toaster broke a few weeks ago. When I stopped to think about it, almost all we used it for anymore was heating frozen waffles.

So, rather than running out and buying a new toaster, I tried cooking a waffle in a dry (ungreased), nonstick frypan. I was afraid it might dry out, since I could only brown one side at a time, so I used a glass lid. I browned the waffle lightly on one side, flipped it, browned it on the other. I wish I'd tried this sooner. The browning was more even than with a toaster, and there weren't dry spots and moist spots, either. I've tried it again since then, again with good results.

The downside is that you can't cook several waffles at once, but I don't generally need several waffles at once.

Now I don't have a toaster taking up counter space, and having to be cleaned and cleaned around. But I can still have my waffles. Such a deal. I've been trying to declutter the house. Decluttering by attrition is still decluttering, right?

Book note: Sadie Rose and the Impossible Birthday Wish, by Hilda Stahl

I live in an old house. There are 18 inches of hanging space in the closet in the main bedroom, and an extravagant 21 to 22 inches in the second bedroom, which was added on years later. It's a good reminder that until recently most Americans (as I understand it) didn't have but a handful of clothes at any given time, especially of the sort that warrants hanging carefully on a hanger.

If you don't live in an old house, you can get the same message from reading old books, or books with historical themes. I recently read Sadie Rose and the Impossible Birthday Wish. The copyright is 1992, but the setting is pioneer Nebraska. Sadie Rose, the heroine, is coming up on her 13th birthday. Spoilers follow. She has two dresses, an everyday one and a good one. The good one is too small for her. For her birthday, what she wants, but the family can't really afford, is hair ribbon. Not a lot. Just enough for her two braids. One set of two ribbons, in other words. On her birthday, she gets her first "long dress," one about ankle length, made over from a dress someone else wore. She gets a few other things, but oh, those ribbons seem impossible. Spoilers end.

This is Book 9 in a series. I haven't read the others, but found that this one held up just fine as a stand-alone. It's Christian fiction, aimed at 9 to 12-year-olds, with a view of teaching them about patience and compassion. Sadie Rose and company manage to get into enough adventures and misunderstandings to keep it from being syrupy, and it's got some nice historical tidbits (OK, how would you keep dirt from falling out of a sod roof into food on the table? Did you ever think of that being a potential problem in a soddy?) but it's still in that class of Christian fiction that some people find too focused on the acquisition of virtue. (Or, at least, it felt a bit too much that way for me, perhaps I should say.) Still, it's better than many, and Sadie Rose is no wimp, bless her heart, and she's a likeable kid, but not perfect by any stretch.

I'm open to recommendations for other kidlit, both Christian and secular, that shows how people routinely used to get by with far less stuff than is generally considered normal today, not to mention far less entertainment, etc., but didn't whine about it. Suggestions?

January sure has been long this year...

It is snowing. Again. Winter put in a stirring performance this year around here, and it seems intent on making curtain calls. In a man-made and man-run theater, we'd have audience members bailing out the exits by now, and stagehands hauling out the hooks to drag the spotlight-drunk star off the stage. But since we don't run the show, and since I can't afford a trip to, say, Hawaii, I'm settling in to enjoy the snow. I might as well, I guess. Two to four inches is predicted during this encore. I might have to dig the snow shovel back out from the shed. A few weeks ago I naively thought we were done with this sort of thing for the year, and happily packed the shovel away.

We have, by the way, a baseball tournament in progress down the street. Baseball, if you haven't noticed, is not an indoor sport. Teams have come from all around the state just to play a summer game, and are, off and on at least, playing it in swirling snowflakes. Such a deal. It will make for good stories when they're middle-aged, if nothing else, I guess. "When I was your age, son, I played baseball in the snow. And we won. So stop your bellyaching... What's the younger generation coming to, anyway?"

It was just our luck that a cold winter coincided with a spike in heating oil prices. Is spike the right word? It doesn't seem strong enough, somehow... Anyway...

I grew up in a social niche where 72 degrees was room temperature. I think somebody in government recommended it as a good temperature, and somehow it came to be the most common temperature, and from there it became the expected temperature, and from there it became the temperature at which all self-respecting people (at least all the self-respecting people we knew) kept their houses year-round. I remember, as a kid, that amongst our friends were people who would lower their thermostats during the winter, but didn't want anyone to know about it. There were also people who closed off part of their house during the winter to save on heating costs, but likewise didn't want anyone to know. Common sense, apparently, was out of fashion.

I don't know what we were thinking. I can't remember the last time I had the thermostat at 72, nor the last time I didn't close off rooms I wasn't using. It's no hardship, and it saves enough money to make a difference. You wear a few more clothes in the winter? So what? You have to get acclimated to a lower temperature every fall? So what? As for the closing off of rooms, it makes it all the sweeter when spring comes around, and you can stretch out again.

Of course, I'm blessed with a cheerful temperament, and I enjoy outsmarting circumstances, and frugality is one of my favorite sports. Some people, I notice, are happier pretending to be put upon. I don't get it, but there it is.

A few months back, an acquaintance at church was telling me about where she lived, in a tumble down part of town. She was saying that the house she rented was really pretty comfortable, despite what people thought about houses along that street. She was also gushing with nice things to say about her landlord. I've had that landlord as a landlord in days past, and he really is a nice man, and johnny-on-spot when it comes to reported problems. If you'll work with him, he'll work with you, and he goes out of his way to keep rents down.

So, the other day, I had occasion to look up the acquaintance, and found that she was days away from moving to an apartment elsewhere in town. Now that she'd decided to move, she had not one good thing to say about the place she was leaving, but chief among her complaints was that she'd had to spend $900 on heating oil so far this winter. She was pointing out the cracks along the doors, and bemoaning the lack of insulation. She also tried to light into listing little things she thought the landlord should have done for her, but didn't. That wasn't flying well since we both know the man, so she shifted back to being really upset about the heating bill. "This place just sucks oil," she said.

Well, I've lived in places like that. I currently live in a place built back before much (if any) insulation in the walls or ceiling was considered necessary, and before windows were insulated, and there are cracks around our windows and doors, too. We put tape here, and foam there, and plastic sheets up, and it helps, but it's still a bit tricky to keep it heated, especially if you're trying to stretch your dollars. So I started in with pleasant commiseration (what are friends for?), and was starting to tell her about how we just bundle up a bit and turn the thermostat down, etc., and how it helped us a lot. I'm not sure what I expected, but I got a startled stare from her.

And then it sunk through my thick skull that while I was warmly dressed in a sweater, she was in a short sleeve shirt. Her oil stove was in the same room as us. Set at 72. I guess she never got the updated memo...

I didn't know quite what to say. From what I could pick up, she'd spent the winter being frantic about her heating bills, and yet she hadn't done the most basic adapting to reduce the bill.

She's on welfare. We're not. I wonder if that makes a difference, or if she's simply a few decades behind me, and thinks it's shameful to not have a room temperature of 72. Or what?

Oh, well. She considers me a self-respecting and respectable person. I can only hope that I helped her feel OK with the idea of turning down the heat.

Before you laugh too hard, or tut tut too much, I'm nearly willing to bet you've got some counterproductive social standard hanging around in your life, messing up your goal to be a sensible person. After I read this post a week or so ago (specifically, the last part of it), my husband and I have been cheerfully recounting all sorts of things we used to hold as important, or necessary, that we don't consider "imperatives" anymore.

For instance, my mother's rule was that when you took clothes off in the evening, they went into the clothes hamper. It makes no sense to me to wash clothes every time you wear them, if they aren't dirty. It's more work, it uses more water, it uses more electricity, it uses more detergent, and it's harder on the clothes. But, I kid you not, it was a struggle to overcome the idea that I was doing something wrong by quite sensibly wearing a dress or shirt or slacks or skirt more than once without laundering.

And what was that nonsense we had back in the day that if two girls showed up to the same event wearing the same dress or outfit, that we were expected to run crying from the room? Or that we had to have a new dress for every "event"? I can't make sense of either "imperative," but I recall feeling something akin to horror if someone's clothes were too much like mine, or if I couldn't get a new dress for a dance or other special occasion. If I remember correctly, it was generally considered less humiliating to stay home than show up in a dress you'd worn before.

Excuse me? Where in the world did that come from? And why didn't the grown-ups sit us down and chew us out for behaving deplorably?

Oh, wait. We learned it, for the most part, from our mothers...

So where did they learn it from? And why? I've long since tossed those attitudes overboard as rules not worth keeping, by the way. (A lot of the rules we learned in the '60s and '70s, are, to my mind, not worth keeping, but that's another story.)

Anyway, I'll bet you've suffered a few such glitches in common sense at one time or another in your life just because 'everyone else is doing it'. Yes? C'mon. What are some silly rules you used to follow that you've opted to not 'honor' anymore?

Beyond recipes

Do you buy ingredients to match recipes, or do you cook more like this: Treasures Up My Sleeve -- Potatoes?

hat tip: The Common Room

Girls get curls

If you've ever wondered how to do "rag curls," Higher Up and Further In has a how-to post.

I will admit to some disasterous attempts at rag curling as a child. But nothing that a shampoo session didn't cure. :)

Making money with money (serial number edition)

I'm getting better at looking at the serial numbers on bills. Until recently, I had no idea that some people collect dollar bills with "fancy" serial numbers. But go check eBay. It's amazing.

Many of the bills that go to auction don't go for more than face value, or barely more than that, but sometimes something pops, so we've learned to check the bills that come into the bookstore, and also the bills I get in change at the grocery store. We haven't found very many worth trying to auction, but having sold a twenty for twice face value got me hooked.

I'm still a rookie, so haven't figured out the ins and outs and categories yet, but what I'm currently looking for in money that passes through my hands are bills that have years in them (for instance, 19792001), that have the same digit four or more times (25555346 or 23535551, for instance), that feature number blocks in mirror image (for instance, 54322345 or 35644653), bills that don't have any digits that repeat, especially if the numbers are in sequence, (for instance 24358760 might get bids, but 2345678 almost certainly would), bills with only two digits (23323232, for instance), really low numbers (00000007, for instance), or bills that have the same repeated digits front and end (22254222, for instance). There are also bills that supposedly somehow feature "good poker hands" but I haven't figured that out yet. Then there are "lucky number" bills, like those featuring lots of eights. I haven't got those figured out yet, either, not really. (How should I know what someone else considers "lucky"?) Condition also matters, but we've sold some bills in not very good condition to people who apparently really, really wanted a bill with that serial number.

I might caution you that a few of the buyers and sellers in this field seem to be into occult stuff. Not many, but, well, forewarned is forearmed and all that.

As a funny side note, the other day when my husband went down to our bookstore cum gas station, as luck would have it just then a one dollar bill very near the top of the stack in the cash register had what looked to be a pretty good collectible number. A tourist came inside, saw my husband looking at the bill, noticed the serial number, and offered $20 for it. The customer left happy, and we were happy, too. It's a smallish store. Nineteen dollars to the good is nothing to sneeze at. But... after the man left, my husband and our employee started wondering about what had just happened. 'Wait a minute. Wasn't that the man who just paid for gas a couple of minutes ago? Did he pay anything in one dollar bills?' We're not sure, you understand, but we have a funny feeling the man might have paid twenty dollars for a one dollar bill he'd just spent with us. Maybe not. But it's a distinct possibility. But he was pleased as punch I'm told, and apparently had money to fling about without doing harm to himself, and so... we're trying to ease our consciences some by counting it as charity on his part, if, indeed, he did buy his own bill back, so to speak. (And thank you, sir, if that's what you did. Twenty bucks may not be anything to you, but to us it's a blessing.)

Anyway, I don't have any yen to collect bills for their serial numbers, but I'm quite happy to help collectors fill out their collection, if I can. And, besides which, it's a bit like going on a treasure hunt every time I get bills back in change at the grocery store or post office. I put newly acquired bills in a different place in my purse than already-checked ones, and sit down later to go through them. It's a bit of a sport, really. And it costs me nothing. Such a deal.

Oh, you're paying for it? In that case...

My husband recently crossed paths with an old friend, and they talked of this and that. At one point, the conversation got around to the costs we've faced because of my husband's illness and that our friend faced when his wife was dying.

Hearing that J.'s experience was so close to ours made me think that there might be some of you out there who could benefit from something we learned along the way, his family and ours.

Long story short: When we staggered, weary and worried, into the medical supply store to arrange for an oxygen concentrator for home use, we ran into a problem. We didn't have insurance that would cover precisely that and we weren't on welfare of any sort and didn't intend to be if we could help it. And the rental fee for an oxygen concentrator was something like $380 or $385 a month. I forget the exact figure, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back; just enough to push us onto welfare, at least for the time being. We didn't want that. On the other hand we had to have supplemental oxygen; under the circumstances an oxygen concentrator was the difference between life and death. The lady watched us crumple in surrender to cruel fate, and then, taking pity, she said it might make sense for us to buy one.

We braced ourselves and asked how much that would cost.

She said we could probably find a refurbished one for around $500. Sometimes you could even find one for $450. Sometimes they cost something more than $500. They were in short supply, but she'd see if she could find one for us, if we wanted.

We wanted. Oh, how we wanted.

She came through for us, for what she'd estimated.

You read that right. To buy a used but refurbished and perfectly adequate oxygen concentrator cost us less than two months' rental fees.

J.'s wife's concentrator also cost him about $500. He'd had insurance, but the co-pay was high enough that it made all the sense in the world to buy instead of rent.

On a related note, when my husband was battling heart failure and pneumonia a hospital nurse told us that they'd ordered up a hospital bed for us to use at home. We asked how much that would cost. She gave us a variation on 'don't worry about that, dearies.' We told her we had to worry about that because we were self-pay. They obviously don't have a lot of self-pay patients; most folks apparently have insurance or government assistance or are deadbeats who have no third-party coverage but also no intention of paying their bills. After taking in that we really were people who paid their own way we got the information that as long as he slept at an incline we'd be all right. The point was that he'd suffocate and die if he tried to sleep without being propped up. A recliner would do nicely, if he could sleep in a recliner. And so we managed with a recliner, which we already had.