So. Radio silence for a month and a half. What have I been up to during that time?
Well. I bought another treadle sewing machine. I saw it at the thrift store for $200, but furniture was 25% off that day. She's a Singer 28 dating to 1905, so a three-quarters size machine. Three-quarters size treadles are rare! I'd never even seen one before! The wood was all in very good condition (including the wooden pitman rod!), with just a tiny bit of veneer loss on the top of the coffin lid. Everything moved freely. So after hemming and hawing through the length of the store, I bought her and brought her home. I placed her where my other treadle (a 1913 Singer 66 back-clamp) had been and moved that machine into the bay window.
As part of my bargain with myself, this meant actually relearning to sew on a treadle. So I've gotten both machines into full working order and actually been sewing on the 66 treadle (it gets better light in the front window)! I made twenty 8.5" crumb blocks for my guild's charity quilting, and have since made a wall hanging also.
I also finished up quilting feathers into the rather plain-Jane quilt top I'd gotten from the thrift store, and bound it. I'd intended it for a picnic quilt, and it's already been used as such - we met a couple of our neighbors at the splash pad over the weekend and spread out in the shade under the trees while the kids played in the water. I'm thinking I need to make another couple picnic quilts so we can all have something better to sit on than towels. So while digging through stash this morning to find a backing for the aforementioned wall hanging, I pulled out another couple of thrift store quilt tops, and some backing to go with the first of them. I'm thinking simpler straight-line quilting this time....
Of this year's three new garden beds, I've only gotten one leveled and in place. Last week, my dad came over in his truck, helped me build a 6" topper for the bed, and we bought a cubic yard of soil at Wilco to go in it. It took darned near all of the soil! But I got it planted rapidfire with the rest of the tomatoes and peppers. I did another A-frame with a pair of the bamboo trellises I've lashed over the past few years, and put the summer squash and some more squash seeds to go in between them on one side, and a whole packet of Minnesota Midget cantaloupe seeds down the other side. I had to tie the trellis to the tomato cages and sink a couple of t-stakes on the other side and tie it to those as well, because the hot winds we've had over the past couple days kept blowing it over. Down the center I did three lines of radishes and carrots, and I plunked in marigolds and violets wherever there was space. We had three days near or over ninety degrees, so the first radishes are already poking their heads up!
Now to get bed #2 leveled....
The cold, wet spring means that certain crops really aren't bearing this year. We'll see how things go. I was hoping for cherries this year, but, alas, I have a grand total of two on the tree. On the other hand, my strawberries and peas are bearing prolifically at the moment! And it's very clearly time to harvest and dry the year's supply of oregano again. Four plants, and it's all I need for both my parents and myself.
