Sewing Hubris

1. Sewing hubris may strike at any time.

2. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it should be done. For instance, just because, days before Christmas, I learned that a tall skinny person wanted pajama pants and I have more fabric and patterns than any one person ought to, doesn't mean I should fill spare moments with a strange pattern. I did anyway.

3. Reading pattern instructions does not mean you should follow them blindly. I read the instructions. I attempted to follow them instead of just sewing pajama pants the way I've been doing for eons. I ripped out all the seams twice, and gave up on finishing them for the tall one. I would alter the pattern so it would fit a short rounded person: me.

4. Just because it is an old pattern does not mean the measurements are out of date. I assumed that the pattern from the 1980s would do what most vintage patterns, have done--shift sizes downward.  I added 2 inches to each side.  I assumed that I would have to add a diamond at the center back because I have curves and the person for whom I was making the pants in the first place does not. But wait! The 1986 pattern also came in Short, Average, and Tall, and I had used Tall. No need to add in back, just remove in front. And my, these seem roomy.

5. When the pants seem roomy in the try-on stage, they probably are. I marked the waist by tying elastic around my waist and pulling the extra fabric over the elastic until the fabric fell without wrinkles. Roomy, though.

6. Even when the waistband is elastic, it's a good idea to have a separate waistband. It is so much easier to manipulate 3 inches than 30 inches of fabric. I got this right.

7. Mark both the waistband and the pants into quarters and stretch  the waistband to fit the waist.  I lazily figured that it was elastic, and would fit, and ended up unpicking half the band and redoing it.

8. The pants are about 4 inches too wide all around, the precise amount I added. They are pajama pants, lounge pants, and  it doesn't really matter. Besides, loose pants are good when one is battling a knee wound that oozes constantly.

9. Accept it that sometimes what you sew is neither a win nor a loss.

10. The pattern you want to use will show up just after you complete the item with a pattern previously unused.
11. Perhaps I should cut and sew pajama pants that are less roomy. How often does one need pants to accommodate a herd of ferrets?

Fear of Party Food

It's party season, and I am afraid. Everyone brings dishes to share, and no one wants to provide anything that might be seen as boring, comforting, or safe.

I am afraid of dishes embellished with pomegranate and cranberry. Yes indeed, those are lovely reds, but I don't want to see them touching my green beans, asparagus, artichoke, or romaine lettuce.

I'm afraid of glazed hams adorned with slices of pineapple and maraschino cherry. I'm horrified by miniature meatballs resting in a light brown sweet sauce accented by currants and raisins. I'm appalled by fried tofu, which bears a startling resemblance to hockey pucks and may actually taste like hockey pucks. I haven't been tempted to try them.

I think breaded fish fingers and chicken nuggets might possibly be safe to eat if one person  prepared them from beginning to end, but most likely these items have come from the test kitchens of major corporations and contain a smorgasbord of ingredients that, if properly combined, could   make plastic, or a highly toxic poison.

I'm afraid of Spam and Cheez Whiz on crackers, a fad which has mercifully died or is on its last legs. Cheez Whiz is now a homemade stain remover for greasy stains. If that doesn't make you think twice before using it as a condiment, nothing will. 

Raw veggies come in a variety of colors and can be dipped into a variety of things (if you spoon those things onto your plate, that is, because sharing dips at a party is a good way to spread germs) but artistic arrangements --nay, sculptures-- are off putting. Who wants to be the first to remove Abe Lincoln's broccoli eyebrow, or George Washington's cauliflower hair?

Salami, pickle and cheese kebabs are suggested party food at Betty Crocker holiday

Spinach and artichoke dip from the freezer section, with a salt content  marginally lower than that for the Dead Sea, was the fad a few years ago. May it never reach true food status, as salsa , hummus, and pesto have.

People get very coy about the ingredients of their showpiece dishes. Perhaps an ingredients checklist could go with each dish: This contains No Nuts, shellfish, HCFC, GMA,  polysorbate 60, red dye. Then again, perhaps someone will devise a dish that will contain all those things , and those who eat it will be issued cards that say "Proceed immediately to the emergency room."

Trendy, iconic, and amazing are words I don't really want to see again, but iconic foods can't be all that bad. Chocolate chip cookies, fudge, brownies, are iconic foods. Sorta like Mom's apple pie. My own mother abandoned pie-making when I was 12, claiming that I could make better piecrust than she could.(Blatant excuse!) But pie is messy to serve. Tarts would be nice.

I'm not precisely sure what makes up today's marshmallows, but extracts from mallow plants are not among the ingredients. Still, I do not want to see marshmallows adorning  raw salads, baked vegetables, cakes or pies. The proper way to use a marshmallow is to partially char it, and eat it nude and unadorned, preferably at a camp fire.  

Simple Drapery Installation

No job is ever simple. I had thought to combine pictures of an electric screw driver, a stepstool and a traverse rod, separated by plus signs, ending in an equals mark followed by the word "Frustration." I can't make Blogger do this to my satisfaction.

When I found cotton damask shower curtains in just the perfect color, I bought four to transform into draperies for my bedroom. I lost them somewhere in the house. After I had lived with bare window shades for 3 years, they resurfaced. I made draperies for one window and hung them before noticing that it was not going to be that easy for Window #2, where the window shade hardware blocked the spot where the traverse rod bracket needed to be. 

Life would be so much simpler if the screwdriver that fit the screw when I was on the floor still fit it when I was on a step stool  trying to screw it into a window frame. Or if the rod holders had not been designed to be installed only by long skinny screwdrivers wielded by men, or anyone with upper body strength. I have a Black & Decker battery screwdriver. It works very well when I am on the floor, but the minute I have to hold it above my head, all bets are off.

I should have known, when the brackets for the window shade allowed themselves to be pried out with a screwdriver, that it was deceptively easy. I should have realized right then that getting the traverse rod brackets back up would require multiple trips up and down a ladder, multiple screw drivers, and a wide range of screw sizes. No, following the instructions at a home ideas site was harder than it looked. I should have realized that this was not going to be a simple 10-minute operation, after which I could confront the next "simple" household maintenance chore. It became a 30-minute exercise in endurance followed by panting, and a crying need to do something frivolous for at least 30 minutes.

Life would be so much simpler if the only traverse rods that fit that window were anything but quirky custom things made in the 70's. There are too few hook hangers, AKA traverse rod carriers. Finding hook hangers to slip in is Mission Impossible, even though the online info says Ace carries them at nearly the price of an entire new rod. Stealing hook hangers from newer traverse rods is somewhat difficult because the hook hangers tend to want to snap as you pry them from the rod. And, of course, they are a good half inch shorter than the existing hook hangers.

Oh, it's just a simple matter of counting the existing hangers and spacing my top pleats to match them. I know the formula, but I cannot make (2 +1+2+5) x7  equal (2+1+2+5) x6. Especially when the correct number of hangers should be 9 per side. I am mightily tempted to buy large paper clips and large safety pins and contrive. As long as it can be done on the floor.

Dishwasher Myths

1. Dishwashers kill germs

2. Dishwashers use used less water than washing by hand

3. Dishwashers are timesavers when there are a lot of dishes to be washed.

Do today's dishwashers really kill germs or do they just provide new and different ways for germs to multiply? They grind food particles exceedingly small and recycle the water constantly, so the same tiny particles slosh over dishes frequently, just as they would in a pan of hot soapy water. Saves water over conventional dishwasher methods, but is it safe? And is the final rinse water really fresh? Can a machine that uses fewer than 3 gallons get that many dishes really clean?

There is no drying cycle. Water pools on flat surfaces. Having to dry all the glassware by hand is an annoyance. Sometimes I toss incompletely dry flatware into the flatware drawer. I put away dishes that are not completely dry. How is this better than the old days, when we either covered the counter with drying items or roped a family member into drying and putting away? The real reason counter tops of the 1950s had no clutter is that we needed a place to put wet things while we washed the rest of the dishes.

I've noticed tiny dark dots on all my glassware and vintage Tupperware containers. Those new disposable food savers never look clean after a trip through the dishwasher. I always end up washing them by hand. Having to wash them by hand points up how very flimsy they are, and makes me long for the old plastic stuff. Glass is better for food quality, but  it's heavy. 

I run the dishwasher on empty, with vinegar, every month to clean it, just as I did for its predecessor, which dried dishes and did not endlessly recycle the same water.  Contrary to the instructions from the manufacturer, I do rinse dishes before putting them into the dishwasher. I take reasonable precautions to ensure that items that go into the dishwasher come out cleaner, or at least not needing to be washed again.

Yet each time the dishwasher is opened dark spots make fresh-from-the-dishwasher items look dirty. I have dark spots on flatware. If I do nothing, this leads to pitting. I have dark spots on my Corelle, which leads me to wash the dishes again, heat water to boiling, and pour it over the dishes, which I then let air dry. I scrub glasses with abrasive cleaners and pour boiling water over them. I'm rewashing just about everything I put into the dishwasher, the energy-saving, water conserving, convenient, healthy dishwasher.

It's not all that convenient. Dark spots imply it isn't healthy.

I'm beginning to think that my so called dishwasher would be of more use if I used it only as a dish drying rack. That's the ticket. What I really need is a roll out multi-tier rack stationed over a drain.  Low tech. Almost no tech. 

Bosch 500 Series 24-in Built-In Dishwasher (Stainless) ENERGY STAR
This is the latest incarnation of the dishwasher I do battle with daily.

Yard Sign

"Who doesn't love a free yard sign?" the email wanted to know.  

I don't love yard signs. It never occurred to me that yard signs were lovable.  If the yard sign is for a yard sale, I'm interested, but hardly in love. 

When I grew up, the only yard signs I saw were crosses burned into lawns, and those are fairly unlovable symbols of hate. Where I grew up, near the alphabet agencies, people didn't advertise their affiliations for fear of losing employment opportunities. We handed over cash rather than write checks to political parties, we quietly marched off and voted on the appropriate days, and rarely discussed national politics in groups of more than three. "Who doesn't love a free yard sign" tells me more about the age of the writer than it does about the candidate they want me to volunteer to help.

Some yards are veritable thickets of names, supporting every candidate from president to city council. Some yards sport a new biblical quotation each week. Some advertise niche festivals, love for a specific breed of dog, the fact that a child has graduated from high school, joined the Marines or has a birthday. Every contractor who works on a house, from roofing to installing vinyl flooring, wants to put out a yard sign. Houses for sale have additional yard signs proclaiming open houses on Sundays. What this really means is that traffic will be very slow because cars will line both sides of the street, which is not really able to accommodate 3 lanes.

Yard signs are like Facebook. People can't take time for personal interaction, so they put up yard signs, some of which are 6 feet tall and have guy wires on each side.  They're like small scale billboards, and they stay up for MONTHS. You know the ones, they're printed in red on screaming yellow plastic and they have streamers at first, until ripped of by the wind or children.

The wire frame from the yard sign has its uses. Several of them support chicken wire to protect a garden from grabby pests. A single one supports bloom-heavy flowering plants. When imagination fails, the frames can go in the recycling bin.