Around here, there are ‘nice’ blue jeans and ‘work pants’, which actually many times started out as ‘nice’ but through ‘life as it is lived’ here, achieve ‘work pants’ status. Once they’ve ‘arrived’ as work pants, it’s every man for himself, pants-wise (for my readers from the UK, I realize that ‘pants’ in your world refer to what we consider underwear, but just go with me here), and they accumulate stains, paint, worn spots and rips. As every mother of 7 year old boys knows, rips can appear in brand new jeans (especially if you live where there are fences, barbed wire, ends of nails and staples sticking out of walls, etc. ) but most of the time, they get worn in certain places (and actually in places that you’d never expect, too) and then it’s only a matter of time before the weak places separate and rip and there you are. Continue reading →
Saving the Least Worst – Blue Jeans, That Is
Snowed In? No Power? Cook With Your Grill!
As promised! True to my word! At one point over the past week, there were probably a half a million people either unable to leave their homes, travel, and/or had no power because of snow storms in the area between Virginia and New Jersey. Sitting home in the cold and the dark is bad enough; if you are running your kitchen on electricity, it’s cold, dark and hungry too. (and there is that whole ‘how long is the food going to last in the fridge and the freezer?’ thing) Continue reading →
Strike While the Iron is Hot
Aunt Toby realizes that anyone looking at my postings would not exactly find a really rigid organization functioning here. The blog really functions the way most of our households do – gotta keep it flexible within certain immutable facts; gotta take advantage of things as they come along. Strike while the iron is hot and all that. Continue reading →
Well, let’s not brood about it
This past weekend, it became obvious to us that we had one resident of the chicken community out in the barn who was, as that song from Sesame Street goes, ‘not like the others.’
Our little red hen, the Bantam we got as a gift, was starting to molt (that is, lose her feathers) and was hunkered down in one of the nesting boxes and was positively nasty. Wouldn’t leave; wouldn’t allow anyone to put their hand underneath her and frankly had taken on this sort of ‘loose baggy’ sort of appearance.
She’s gone broody. Continue reading →
Not a Chanel
For readers who are not hip-deep in the ’sewing blogisphere’, you may not be familiar with the absolutely explosive growth in people’s sewing what could probably be called ‘Chanel-type’ jackets or ‘Chanel Tribute’ jackets. Go Chanel or Go Home
There are all sorts of patterns around – every one of the socalled ‘Big Four’ has at least one. One of the most popular is the one at the top of the post, Vogue 7975, which has been in their catalog for at least 3 years and is still in their collection and available for purchase. Continue reading →
Snow Bound
Aunt Toby realizes that there are a whole lot of people in what is referred to as the Mid-Atlantic Region who are (if they are clever and good at following directions) hunkered down, looking out their windows at snow and wind and general ’snowmageddan’. And many of them are in areas (cough, DC, cough) where the whole concept of snow plowing and road cleaning is really more in the theory rather than the practice. From my quick and dirty search, it looks as if there are several hundred thousand homes without power in Maryland and Northern Virginia. Continue reading →
If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.
Is there anyone in the world who has not seen “Avatar”? Well, if you haven’t, what I’m going to say is NOT a spoiler. For those of you who have seen it, think of the scene where Sully first sees his avatar in the tank…floating there, in the moisture….happy..peaceful..content…
This photo shows something that is like that…only for growing transplants. Continue reading →
Magic Marmots or, It’s Still Winter
Enough with the dueling ground hogs. And wishful thinking as well.
It’s still winter. It’s the beginning of February and climate change notwithstanding, in Upstate New York, it’s still in the ‘damn cold’ range. Versus last weekend, when it was in the single digits during the day (without wind chill factor) and in the minus numbers at night and was in the ‘miserably cold’ range. We still have at least 6 weeks of cold weather to get through before it even starts to approach the ‘getting warmer’ stage. Continue reading →
Tailors Hams, Rolls and Other Things I Don’t Have
Aunt Toby has been a sewer for a long time. Looking back, since I was first set in front of an old reconditioned and electrified Singer treadle machine when I was 11 years old, it’s been 40-odd years. And sewing is one of those things where there are always new things to learn and there are all sorts of tips and tricks that I don’t know.
But I do know a couple.
One is that with wool (and probably all animal fiber based) fabric, there is almost nothing you can’t do if you have a steam iron and a wet cloth. It helps if you have some of the niftier tailoring equipment such as:
A ham: Tailor’s Ham
A Seam Roll: Sleeve Roll
A Sleeve Board: Sleeve Board
I happen to have my great-grandfather’s sleeve board ( he worked as men’s suit presser), but I don’t have any of the other equipment. If you look at the photograph, you’ll see my ‘jack of all tools’ – it’s yellow and it’s a bath towel.
In this case, after I had sewn in the sleeves on this jacket I am working on now, the seam just did not look really nice, so the first thing I did was that I took another towel (a guest size towel), dampened it, rolled it up and doubled that – that became my ‘ham’ and I shoved that into the top of the sleeve and then with another damp pressing cloth on top, I shrank the top in a little bit so that it was smoother. Then, I removed that towel and took a different towel – the bath size – and I rolled THAT up into ‘arms’ and shoved those into the sleeves. As you can see, they literally go from almost the bottom of one sleeve, all the way across the form ’shoulders’ and then down into the other sleeve. I then pulled the roll slightly up at the top of the sleeve so that the roll is a little bit ‘fatter’ there so that it would firm out the top of the sleeve a little bit and I set that on a drying rack over our hot air registers to dry and set the top of the sleeve.
Not that I don’t want people to buy tailoring equipment – but many times you can use what you’ve already got at home.
It’s Later Than You Think: Order Garden Seeds Now
Aunt Toby hates to make great hulking generalizations but this year has been one for the books.
No matter where you live, the weather has been absolutely awful and totally out of the usual in terms of cold, rain, freezes, snow (tornado warnings in Phoenix, AZ?).
No matter where you live, the economy stinks.
No matter where you live, the winter veggies you get are grown in California, Arizona, South Texas and Florida. And those areas have gotten hit very hard and have suffered huge losses this year. Prices have already gone up because availability has gone way down. Continue reading →
Kitchen Counter Economics is a community where we can share ideas on how to save money, live more sustainably, and gain control over the stuff of daily living for ourselves and our families in the current economic environment. This started as a series of diary postings at the 
