I have reported mostly about weather for the past month and indeed weather has occupied our thoughts most this January. But I have been working on many projects and my list of productive things that should be done is shrinking steadily. The biggest project this winter has been the refurbishment of my 1940 Singer Featherweight sewing machine.
Sewing isn't really one of my hobbies. I sew by necessity and it is surprising how often it comes up. Usually it involves window treatments because I can't find exactly what I want. Of the fifteen windows in this house, six have store bought treatments and of those, only two did not have to be altered in any way. I can also cover cushions and hem jeans and things of that nature.
Over time I have used several borrowed or hand me down sewing machines. All of them have frustrated me in some way, and the last one, my mother's big fancy Bernina embroidery machine, put me over the edge with its computer touch screen so when my sister came and got it a few months ago so my niece could make a Halloween costume, I was somewhat relieved to see it go and told it not to come back. I just want something that will sew a straight line without a fuss! I have grown weary of appliances, cars and phones coming with computer screens and long for things that can be fixed with a screwdriver or wrench and a little oil.
About a week after the Bernina's exit, my husband said he needed some jeans hemmed and when would the sewing machine be back? I said it wasn't coming back but I was going up in the attic to get the old Singer left behind by the last owner of this house, our friend Milly. I had never sewn with it but I had no concerns about it being more than adequate for what I need to do.
I used my Cricut machine to cut out a sticker with her name
Since I got "Milly" down from the attic, I have fallen in love with these old Featherweights. There are a whole lot of people out there who use and collect them and parts and advice are readily available. The best part is that much like Henry Ford's Model A automobile and 8N Tractor, these Featherweights were designed to be maintained by the user who probably had absolutely no prior mechanical experience. All you had to do was buy a few tools and follow instructions.
They are pretty simple machines. They need clean oil and grease and minor adjustments with a screwdriver.
The manual that came with it instructs the user exactly when and where to apply the oil.
And even how to take apart the subassemblies for more significant adjustments.
The first thing I did before I tried her out was apply some household oil to all of her oiling points. She had been baking up in the attic for twenty years and possibly not used much for twenty years before that. There was a little tag in the box that showed maintenance done back in the early 80s. After I got the jeans hemmed, I wanted to learn a lot more about these sturdy little machines. There are many places on line to get instructions and supplies, but the best is The Featherweight Shop who sells an entire revamp kit with step by step instructions and all of the parts and pieces you need to overhaul a neglected machine and get it sewing again.
The first thing I did was replace the original incandescent light bulb with a new, cool LED bulb. You could have made toast with that thing! And it was right over your wrist. Milly now has new rubber feet, new feet on the pedal, a new belt and a new drip pad. She has been oiled and greased and cleaned and polished and adjusted. She runs beautifully. I even picked up a new, vintage looking attachment box to round up all of her accessories.
I cleaned and refurbished the case and polished up all of the metal pieces.
After I was done cleaning and oiling the sewing machine, my thoughts strayed to my mantle clock. It is thirty years old but stopped running about five years ago, not because it was damaged in any way, but just because whatever oil was left in it had collected dust for twenty five years and turned to gunk. My experience with the Singer (and the chairs for that matter) taught me that the key to tackling projects like this is to do some internet research, figure out who the generally accepted authority on it is, buy a kit, and follow the instructions.
To properly clean a clock you must remove the movement from the case so you can get at it from every angle. This required a socket wrench and a needle nosed plier.
You also have to pull the hands off of it and remember how those go back on. I augmented the cleaning kit with a bamboo skewer from the kitchen because the cleaning stick wasn't long enough and some micro cleaning brush swabs from the Singer kit. The work mat that came with the Singer kit is the perfect surface.
I've cleaned on it for several hours and gotten an amazing amount of black gook out of what first appears to be a shiny brass apparatus. And I got it to run. It will run for about thirty minutes before it gives up again. Which means that the enclosed main spring is still too sticky with old oil to release on its own. So that must be removed and cleaned or replaced. Which will require watching some more YouTube videos. Its doable. And the price of replacement with a reconditioned mainspring is about fifty dollars, a fifth of the value of an entire clock movement. May as well... it doesn't run as it is. And I already told you how much I enjoy objects that can be repaired with a screwdriver.
More cold and more snow. More indoor projects. My garden fence consists mainly of hog panels. With a top rail and a bottom rail, this give you a fence that is a little over four feet high. Deer can easily jump that if they choose, so we added a single wire at about six feet.
The higher wire is not very visible so my husband suggested I add some sort of flag to it so the deer would see it and sense the fence was higher. For those of you who have ever kept horses, this is like going around and tying strips of t-shirt material on a wire fence so the horse can see it. Horses have a pretty active imagination so a mental barrier works well. Cattle have very little imagination and a lot less mental power, so mental barriers do not work well. Deer fall somewhere in the middle. If it seems like too much effort, or looks like a potential trap, they will avoid it unless they are starving. They have never challenged this fence. If they did, they would probably hit the top wire and the wire would likely break.
When we were trying to think up a way to flag this mental barrier, my husband suggested I do something with my vintage seed packets. The artwork on seed packets is very interesting, and the variety makes them fun to collect. They can be addictive like baseball cards. My brain immediately made the jump to vintage seed catalog art which is even more interesting. I just clip pictures from the internet and print them out then laminate them with our laminator machine and presto, you have a plastic "flag" to hang on the fence.
I keep a selection of catalog covers and old magazine covers and even advertisements and poster art to print out. The laminate lasts for two or three seasons if you do it right. Some designs I print out over and over but there are always new ones to try. And I really enjoy them when they are hanging on the fence. They are like wall art. And some of them I walk by dozens of times a day. I take them down in the fall because the deer show no interest in the gravel filled garden when there is nothing growing in it. That saves weather induced wear an tear on the laminate so I can get several seasons out of them.
I print out two pictures per page trying to keep the dimension and scale similar because....
I place them back to back so that there is a picture on each side. I match up pairs with similar widths and trim them to size on a paper cutter. For the laminate to be secure and water proof the paper you are laminating needs to be smaller than the laminate so it gets a good seal on all four sides. I place two double sided papers side by side in one lamination sleeve with twice as much space between them than there is on the outer edge so when I cut them apart they will be centered in the laminate.
I run them through the laminator as a pair and cut them apart after they cool.
I leave a top margin of one inch or more because that is what I am going to fold over the wire and staple. I put three staples in the top of each flag making sure not to staple in the paper area because that will let rain into the paper which will quickly delaminate the flag.
I threw out four flags last fall when I took them down. I always make a few extra in case one needs to be replaced mid-season. Now I am looking forward to May when I will put out my flags again signaling the start of garden season.
On a day when most of America is suffering unusual cold and snow, I thought you all might be curious about our weather. The snow has stopped, the sun is out, but the tradeoff for clear weather is extreme cold. This is one of the rare days when we are hunkering down. With that wind chill factor ~ No morning walk today. My husband did about a third of his walk and came back in. I walked Monday morning when it was in the single digits, and when the wind hits you it cuts through any face covering you can come up with and gives you an ice cream headache. I am going to stay in and finish ordering seeds and seed starting supplies.
Seems like we just did this. There are not many years when we feel we have to shovel. We have never shoveled twice in one season. There is more snow up there this time than the first time. We're getting pretty efficient at this and it only took one hour to clear the house roof. We remembered to move the step to the deck this time so we could get the tractor bucket closer to the eaves and the roof rake that we purchased for the green temporary building was an excellent tool for the house roof.
Many hands make light work. No matter what the chore, it is always nice to have someone helping so that when you look around you find that some of the work is already done. The roof had a very slippery layer of ice on the bottom. If you straddle the ridge, you can push everything from the far side over the eaves with the long handled roof rake.
Along the top of the ridge the snow was about two feet deep.
If you find good footing you can push snow off the back of the roof into the lawn.
The length of the roof rake handle left about three feet along the eaves. Instead of standing on the slippery slope you can reach everything from the relative safety of the tractor loader.
All done. Next week's forecast is for daytime high temperatures in the single digits and more lake effect snow. Lake Erie is 36% frozen over. Average for this date is 40% This is taking for.ever.....
When we got up this morning we discovered that we had over a foot of lake effect snow on the ground. After plowing and breakfast we went back out to find another six inches on top of that.
This is exactly what they mean when they say "a marshmallow world".
This snow fell on top of over a foot of snow that had compacted on everything.
Potting Bench
It's always interesting to go out and see how the snow is distributed,
Strawberry Cages
The tall pub chairs and patio boxes are almost completely buried,
The bunkers full of mulch and gravel look like a ski slope.
We have to get out and move some snow before it gets any deeper. You never know when you might need to get to the trailer.
I shoveled out the trailer just for a reset.
We had to plow the old snow from where the trailer was sitting before we could clean more snow off of the building.
Pull all of the snow off of the tarps and then plow again. The roof is reinforced, but we don't want anything tearing.
We try to keep all of the driveways clear and all of the buildings accessible. You still have to get to things like the tractor fuel. This may only be two feet or so, but when we get another two feet on top of this we will wish we'd started sooner.
We started shoveling the flat roofs.
I shoveled the deck because tomorrow we plan to get up on the house roof again and we will need a place to throw snow... and put up a ladder.
The front porch is also very flat.
We had missed our morning walk because the road was slippery, but two and a half hours of shoveling burns calories too.
Tomorrow we shovel the other side of the roof. That is the part of the house we worry most about. It is 1950s construction. Compared to the older part of the house it is less equipped to deal with the weight of the snow. Instead of 13 feet wide it is 26 feet wide. Instead of a 12/12 pitch it is a 4/12 pitch with rafters and planks, no plywood. The builders were a little cheap with the collar ties. Instead of dimensional 2x4s and tongue and groove planking inside and out, it is modern 2x4s and only drywall on the inside. At night we lie in bed and listen to the roof creak and pop under the weight of the snow. It is a great incentive to get out there and shovel Afterall, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
