Plain and Practical

Pick A Pepper Pick A Pepper

 Hee, went to do the errands and went 10 miles to the nice farm market, and they had these wonderful peppers, huge and perfect, two for a dollar.  Much better than those icky grocery store things, small and thick, that will cost $1.89 a pound later.  So will wash and blanch these and then into the freezer in strips stacked into freezer zip locs, they will be great later on this winter

Paid the nice lawyer for creating the LLC, am doing laundry (ran out of socks, again!) and then a bit of sewing I hope.  Leftover lamb patties have to become something interesting in a dinner casserole for the Good Husband, being vegetarian, I'm opting for something with rice and veggies--including Peppers!

Summer Goodness All Around

 Sue and I went up to Upper Arlington to a  Church rummage sale, and on the way back, she showed me the coolest little market.  Now I forgot where.  I think it's on Gooddale (?).  An independent market with locally grown fruits and veggies.  I've been taking pictures to use on our postcards and web site later for the store.  No eatin' until the pichur-takin' is all done with!

and this was my empty hamper, now full with wonderful dresses and skirts and moo moos and other delights that will become colorful, happy aprons after they are washed (the washer is full too, running already, or they wouldn't have fit in the hamper at all, so in a few minutes must go and hang them about the house.  One time, when I was making 58 sets of garb for our wedding guests, my husband said, "It looks like back stage at fiddler on the roof."

This will be more like back stage at a high school moulan rouge production, lots of bright flowers, stripes, shockingly bold plaids, ruffles, and lace.

Be good.  You know, winter is coming, right?  maybe time to start those handknitted mittens and piecing those fleece quilts your loved ones will appreciate when the snow flies!

Let Me Introduce Thee to Lake Hibbard (my flooded yard)

 Hey.  It's been raining and alternate spells of muggy all afternoon.  More storms this evening.   More storms tonight.  Some of this water is already in my basement, but I've got everything up on rubbermaid tubs so all is going to be all right.

Note that vintage fabric from the antique mall?  think it's freshened up yet? hahahaaa.

Back to sewing.  Hoping for adequate weather conditions to sell at the farmer's market tomorrow!

No Treadle Machine, But Did Find Some Vintage Fabrics

 Didn't find my treadle sewing machine yesterday while shopping in three huge and one large antique mall in Springfield, Ohio.  Donna and I agreed we got our exercise, however, and I did find thirty two pieces of old fabric and one bright pink piece of lace for apron-making.  Today, sewing and washing and ironing, all apron-related stuff.

Best of all, there was a tiny piece of dotted swiss fabric folded inside one of the bundles, and just last week someone told me they were looking for dotted swiss.  Now I just have to remember who it was!  so I can send it to them!

Ooooo, Looky, Tablecloth Soup!

 Now, doesn't that look yummy?  As I was cutting and pinning a pile of aprons today, noticed that this tablecloth, previously washed with Oxyclean and thought "good to go," actually couldn't be used because of faded, barely perceptable stains.  Tea colored stains.  So, into the soup pot with boiling water and six tea bags and we'll see if it's usable tomorrow.  It's draining in the washer now, waiting for medium mixed colors to be added tomorrow.

Tomorrow at 10, leaving to go check out a huge antique mall in Springfield, Ohio, looking for TA-DAH, a treadle sewing machine.  I am making the plunge.  I am packing scrap fabric, sewing machine needles, thread, loaded bobbins, and planning to try out any likely prospects I come across. 

I lost count of how many aprons I pinned and did the "first sewing" on today, then I turned them, make the corners all pointy, pressed them, cut and folded and pressed four ties for each, turned and pressed and pinned pockets on the ones that needed them, and now they are waiting for final assembly on Friday morning.  My favorite so far is one made with a curtain that had a Pooh and Piglet print, there was just enough for one adult bib sized apron.

Rest of the night, going to put in a movie and then work on the stack of cooking books to review, the pile is two feet tall again, time to trim it down a bit.  That's the beauty of having an IT guy for your Blessed Husband, he gave me a wide screen so I can put the movie on one side and the word doc on the other.  *sigh*   He's just absolutely perfect.

Drying Herbs, Blueberry Pie and Some Sewing To Do!

 Hee!  they look like I am drying occupi or some odd alien critters.  These are my drying hooks, which hang above the sink and catch the hot afternoon sun and also are an alcove of sorts for the heat from the oven.  These were HOT long 10 inch banana peppers, some ripened to redness, and after 4 hours in the oven, I hung them up to finish drying.  Enough to make you sneeze a little when you're at the sink preparing dinner, eee-choo! and,

  Here's a nice homemade (obviously, no one could sell crusts that ugly in a bakery) blueberry pie, the accountant gave me papers to have Good Husband sign, and will return papers and take the pie, too, it's in the oven right now baking.

and the last three times I've been to a big box thrift store, I've come out with a big bag of 25 cent and 50 cent items, all were 75% off on sale, and these little girl dresses can be de-armholed and backed with that cute mod flowered sheet, and then a little rick rack, and ties from coordinating fabrics, and I'll have a delightful new stack of aprons for next Saturday at the Delaware Farmer's Market!  I like working with recycling garments, each one turns out different because each had a different "starter yeast."  Keeps me on my toes, problem solving.

This Week's Priority

Well, you know we're finishing up the LLC paperwork to start our grocery, so besides picking an inventory software system, equipment that does everything from seal bags to weigh and spit out labels, other devices that hold open bags for filling, red eyed scanners to blind the little labels--lots of things to research and decide upon.  One of the things I can do in advance is develop the month-to-month themes and find resouces for ordering those items, get catalogs of price lists, etc.  I have visited and picked out the store fixtures, found out what Third Party Warehousing comprises of, set up my Ebay account, and baby, it's feeling like it's starting to take form!  I discovered I wanted to offer vintage cookbooks, the old fashioned kind that uses REAL ingredients, comfort foods.  So I ordered 10 boxes/packages from Ebay while I learned to use my new account, these are the ones I've gone through and need to clean:

 

And these are the ones that came today:

 

(note the title on the top one, "10 Cakes Husbands Like Best," so that means no making cakes until you are married?  I've heard of "bun in the oven" but Grandma didn't tell me no cakes without the ring on your finger!  Yikes!

And I got the September Plain and Practical newspaper done, when I got back from mailing them out, I was planning on folding the rest so they would take up less room, but Boo decided that was where he needed to lay down.  Of course.  Now all the papers are "Boo-tified."

Just you wait until you see my next cocka-mainny idea.  Old-fashioned sewing, hah.

Been Busy Inside and Out!

 Been washing the wool that isn't nice enough to spin just as it is--good thing I left one wading pool unplanted, for this purpose.  It's 93 degrees outside.  I thought I moved to Ohio, not the Equator.

And Sue came by with a box of lace.  This is, believe it or not, one-third of the stash.  I washed all the lace that was dusty, and divided it into some for the basement stash, this basket full, some tiny stuff I shared with a friend that uses such (most of it was 3" wide or more).  The rest is in the clean laundry, hand washed and then dried on the line in the breeze.  Note that fat 'ol Boolean White Space was interested enough to actually jump up onto the ironing board to investigate!

and I thought you'd like to see that I'm not fond of exercising either, unless you count 25 trips a day up and down the stairs, getting groceries, fixing meals, doing laundry, sweeping, mopping, dusting light fixtures, and taking walks to town!

Mostly, I've been researching places to put our grocery business, methods of accounting and inventory, equipment to seal bags, display fixtures, health code regulations, rental properties, and ordering vintage cookbooks and kitchen tools on Ebay.  The learning curve is steep, but the LLC is on its way and I'm armed with an EIN number, so ordering catalogs, learning about shipping, getting things written and copyrighted for the shop, and otherwise making hundreds of tiny decisions.

By the way, we went to look at a rental property in Mt. Sterling, Ohio.  We stopped around the corner and were planning on eating at a restaurant there.  After a few minutes, we realized they were not going to give us menus or serve us, so we left.  Prejudice and discrimination are still out there, guess the waitress didn't want to sully her hands serving Plain folk.  Sort of soured us on the whole town, just the way that one waitress--and the others looking on who also didn't serve us--not sure if I am interested in investing tens of thousands of dollars and becoming a helpful, serving community member--with folks like that.  There was no mistaking it--she walked by several times, and when someone arrived after us, she immediately came to them with menus, walking right by us to do so.  Then we went to a fast food place and I had to step on and kill a large roach that was under our table in the eating area, and they also made mistakes on our order and we didn't get everything we asked for.  Bad vibes all around!  Ick!