Today is Wash Day! Or Maybe Green Beans!

Well, it's actually almost Tuesday as I type this out. Work is so very hectic. I work late every day and barely make a dint in the pressing work! I am paid for 3 hours a day in the summer, Monday through Thursday, but work at least 8. I feel I can't let the students down. But -- while I do agree it's good to work "For the Glory of God," as the bookkeeper, I notice that while that is said, 'tis not followed, by the administration. Ahem.

But...back to washday, and I just heard the washer stop its spin, so that means into the dryer and tumbling and tumbling till good and dry. I often use the line, but not at night, and it's also RAINING in the desert (just a bit here, but deluges elsewhere). Pray we get a bit of one of the deluges, please!

We sang this song when I was young. Maybe I should re-title this post as "Green Bean Day." Oh, I run so late. My nickname, among several, was "String Bean" as a girl. We called green beans, string beans. Remember settin' on the porch, snapping beans and pulling those strings? Ah, those skinny days. Where did they go? 

Today is Monday! 

Today is Monday!

Monday, wash day,

All ye hungry brothers,

We wish the same to you!

Today is Tuesday!

Today is Tuesday!

Tuesday green beans,

Monday wash day,

All ye hungry brothers,

We wish the same to you!

and so on...Wednesday Soup, Thursday Roast Beef, Friday Fish, Saturday Payday, Sunday Church...

Here is a picture of part of my laundry room shelf. The laundry room is actually just a stub of a hall off the main hall, and what a racket when I'm doing laundry. But the shelf shows the influence of the culture here: I absolutely LOVE the smell of the Mexican laundry soaps. I put a good shake into every load, along with the Gain, the Out, sometimes a spray of Febreze, sometimes a measure of the washing soda if something has that doggy smell from my dear doglets. (My chiweenie is nicknamed "Stinkbug" and with good reason. Smelly little creature, but I love him.)

New Mexicans know how to do laundry. The air is fragrant on washdays. My neighbor long ago, an elegant and kind woman, first showed me the Ariel washing powder. Her whole house smelled so fresh and good. I throw a handful into the kitchen garbage can each time I change the liner. Not shown: Big boxes of Gain powder, ORIGINAL scent only, please!

So the washer churns and the dryer cartwheels while I am trying to catch up on the blogs and do a bit of housework, a bit of crafting, and a bit of gardening.

I have been in the desert long enough to get excited when it rains, and rush to take photos of the raindrops. 

Storm light; I love it! Some raindrops are visible in the left corner.

Whither thou goest, I will go (to stomp down baby lemon grass and onions...)

Old terra cotta planter we inherited when we bought the house....it was foretelling my new body shape...

Chi-chi-chi chive talkin'...

And my favorite "task," making pinkeeps out of my stitcheries. And NO, it is NOT too early for autumn decorating!

On our Sunday drive, we saw some pretty sights, too:

Rows of grains and sunflowers planted between thousands of pecan trees...

My future pecan pie ingredients...

Pretty horses next to the pecan groves. The flies were fierce and their tails were slashing and hooves stomping!

Someone is having a bumper crop of "tunas" (prickly pear fruit)...

View from a neighborhood called Raasaf Hills -- millionaire row -- pecan groves stretching out for miles.

Well my dear bloggie frens, have a wonderful week and I will be hopping to your blogs to read your posts! 

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Free "Spring Springing" Cross Stitch Chart!

Here is a little free chart (see link below with color charts, symbol charts, and key) with two versions based on both my Jumping for Joy design and a good friend's primitive bunnies (used with permission) that she stitched long ago. I hope you will enjoy stitching it, if cross stitching be your hobby! It is easy enough for a beginner to stitch, too, for those who may be interested in taking up cross stitching. I am unhappy with the date, as I noticed it is off-center. "Free, and worth every penny," as we say. I flipped the top flower motif for an alternate version. The alternate version just has the color stitches shown, not a symbol chart also. I have run out of time because Spring Break is over for our school, so it's early bed and back to work tomorrow. Out of time to play, BOO! 

Use this LINK <--- so that you get the PDF of this chart. It's stored on Google Drive and that is as safe as things get on the internet!

I hope you all have a great Monday and a great Holy Week. We had a fantastic Palm Sunday Mass, very moving. Our priest, several of the Knights of the Altar (altar boys and girls), and deacons put on a spoken-word play. Our priest has a really great voice.

I did something naughty today. I snuck into a closed park to take photos of the crabapple blooming there. This is an open-air park few visit that has been closed for over a year, due to "COVID." The lure of the spring blooms was too much. I had to miss them last year. Even if a person lives to be 100, that's just 100 times to see crabapple blossoms. This photo shows the old and the new: Last year's shriveled crabapples, and this year's promise.

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Washing Tinfoil, Using Margarine Tubs as "Tupperware," and Sewing Pretty Cardboard

I still do many of the make-do type of things my grandmother did. If "tinfoil," which I guess we now know as aluminum foil, is not very soiled after use -- for example, if it was just used to shield some baked squash from getting too brown -- I wash it and put it into the warm oven to finish drying. 

If you peek in my fridge, you'll think I eat an awful lot of margarine and am afraid of running out. There are little tubs of "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" sitting on every shelf. The real tub of margarine is always kept in the little butter area on the door! Everything else is holding bacon grease, leftover black olives, baby carrots floating in chicken broth (for the plump doggies to snack on) and so on. 

Maybe this was common in the 1960s only where I grew up, but we had wallets, coasters, collapsing coin holders, and recipe-holders sewn from pretty cardboard. Many department stores placed blouses, shirts, and so forth in lightweight cardboard boxes, usually printed with the store name or initials. Others had fancier boxes with all-over patterns, and the five-and-dime had stationery boxes that were just divine. I remember some gorgeous shoe-boxes as well, back when all shoes were expensive. 

My grandmother would desconstruct the printed cardboard boxes and cut out pieces for useful items, then sew them. Many times, she would sew through a double-thickness of cardboard, with two different patterns, so that the item was "lined." But for some items, it was just a single thickness with the pretty side of the cardboard "out." Sometimes she'd rub beeswax onto the cardboard to "seal" it and make it more durable. Sometimes she used crochet to connect the pieces. Until it fell to dust, I had a sweet basket she had crocheted from the fronts of Christmas cards.

In keeping with that tradition, I have been making both flat and stuffed hearts to make into a garland for the wall. I used part of a lovely old cardboard gift bag that a friend from India gave me years ago. Coral and blue aren't the usual Valentine colors, but they go very well with my Southwest home, and in my stash of collage materials I had paper flowers in all the right hues. Most of all, I just love make-do's. My mind is so happy and engaged, full of memories of my grandmother, when I'm doing the same handiwork she did so long ago. 

I wonder if anyone else has unusual and extremely thrifty little ways that were handed down to them or that they discovered?

Computer Goes Kaput, And Portable Sachet Making

It started with a funny little noise, a noise of the disk whirring when there was no reason for it. Then the whirring added a tick-tick-tick sound, and the screen would freeze, and a disk error would pop up and require the computer to go through lengthy "checks" which always ended with the funny noise and the tick-tick-tick sound.

And then, the computer was no more...at least for now.

Luckily, I have an external hard drive I keep updated. But it is very difficult for me to do techie tasks and set up a new computer (as in "new old" computer). I had on hand three of the same kind of all-in-one computer that were the choice of a school where I taught a few years ago. I saw the abuse and bumbling the machines withstood, and got these three when another school district upgraded. Unfortunately, of the three, the one I was using is no more, but this "new" one might, just might, also last a couple of years. The other one is set up for my husband. For $50 each, I am happy with them. I have spent 10 times that on fancy computers that didn't last three years, and I'm not doing that anymore! I don't mind being behind the times computer-wise.

But it is working well enough! So now I get the treat of going to various blogs and seeing all the news and musings!

My husband had his first cataract surgery three days ago (on his birthday, no less). He really didn't want to do it, but now he is extremely pleased. I feel it will help him be more involved in life. He was getting very shut down...While waiting at various doctors' offices and the surgery center, I had plenty of time to do some stitching. 

I also made two little hand-quilted coasters out of cotton fabric scraps and cotton batting (shown under the sachets), and another scrap bag heart sachet, this one with beading. Then I started on some little sachets made from velvet ribbon. I just cut a length of ribbon, remove the wiring, fold and stitch. I'm stuffing them with lavender. I use culinary lavender, both to make sure it has no nasty chemicals and because I've noticed the culinary lavender seems stronger.

I like to chew a bit of it to keep my breath fresh. I use clove and fennel the same way.

Hoping everyone had a good week (and a non-kaput computer).

    Kind regards,

    The Merry Olde Dame, Holly

Overdying Floss with Coffee

I did a little experiment a bit ago. I had a bargain bag of variegated floss from J&P Coates. When I bought the bag, I thought it had a large variety of floss, but it turned out just to be triples of each color. I like bright colors in some moods for some stitcheries, and muted colors for other stitcheries, so I decided to overdye a set of flosses.

I just used regular ground coffee, and a low-tech drip pot. I made it pretty strong, and I pushed the floss into the hot coffee, stirred it now and again, and then took it out after about three hours. In retrospect, it was not long enough. It looked like a good, deep overdye, but when I rinsed the floss after letting it dry and "set," a lot of the coffee color washed out, too. So the effect is very subtle.

In the photographs, it's hard to see the difference between the overdyed floss and the regular floss (paper bands still on). In real life, the difference is more obvious.

Some needleworkers are adamant to never use tea or coffee for overdying, but I look at it a bit differently: I have seen samplers and stitcheries that are 200 years old, and they are intact, despite how the people of the day prepared the dyes and even the floss itself. They aren't disentegrated despite a lot of hoo-haw over acidic content or tannins. But everyone has the right to their own opinion. Some of the little things I stitch, like a simple pinkeep/pincushion, don't need to be preserved for the next 500 years. An elaborate stitchery, perhaps yes.

I might try walnut dye in the future, but I hear it gives a gray tone, not a brown tone. I go back and forth on whether I like muted yellow-browns, or muted cool grays.

I think I'm going to stitch up a Valentine's pinkeep and then overdye the entire thing. Perhaps. I like the look of the muted tones on a very clear pastel fabric, or clear tones on muted fabric. I'm not sure about both floss and fabric being muted. 

Do you like the look of muted floss in a stitching project?

    Kind regards,

    The Merry Olde Dame