Duty Calls

We voted! We found our official drop box after a lot of driving around.

We had to wait, because someone was there ahead of us, a young couple taking a selfie of themselves dropping in their ballots. 

While we were taking our photos, a line of cars grew, with other people waiting to drop off their ballots.

Wearing masks has really messed with facial recognition technology! I don't think either of us could be recognized.

After we dropped off our ballots, we took the pups on a walk in the Old Mill District. The scenery was very picturesque, even though we were on a trail through the town and not out in the wilderness.

You may remember that Pippa had almost nothing to wear when she arrived, so I quickly started a cardigan. Then I had requests for my Everyday Play Dress to fit these smaller dolls, and then the jacket, so I put down the cardigan and made those. This past week I went back to the cardigan and finished it. I added two rows of increases to the original pattern, as these dolls are slightly larger in the waist and chest than Wellie Wishers. I also tried some Wellie Wisher T-shirts, which are a little snug but useable. (She's wearing it under the cardigan.) I also got some Wellie Wisher tights and socks, which will work.

Here she is with the cardigan buttoned. 

I decided she needed a turtleneck in a color that would go well with her shoes. (She came with two pairs of shoes, both pink.) The pattern is my Wonderland Turtle for Happy Kidz, and I converted it by reducing sts and rows/rounds to 80%. It's kind of like working out a puzzle, because some of the numbers don't reduce by even amounts. It worked out, though. I'm making another one now to test my pattern so I can share it with others. The yarn is Knit Picks Stroll Tweed in "Bare," which is no longer available. I had dyed it some time ago with Koolaid using the sun-tea method.

Pippa will need a winter jacket or coat, but before that, she needed PJs. I used the 80% method to reduce my pajama pattern for the bigger Happy Kidz, and it worked. It's a little more difficult to sew in small places, but I managed by sewing a couple of stitches at a time. It's easier if you do the hems before sewing the sleeve and leg seams, but I managed. I wanted to try them on first to make sure the length was right.

I plan to use my pleated skirt pattern reduced to 80% as well.

Now that The Big Send is over, I'm making phone calls with Indivisible Oregon. First I was calling people who needed to reregister because they had moved or didn't vote the in the last election. Then I switched to ballot-chasing, which is one of the things I did in Colorado in 2012. It's fun. You call people who requested a mailed ballot but who haven't yet returned them. We are allowed to leave messages, so most of the time I don't talk with actual people. When I did regular phone-banking before, I used to hope no one would answer, so I could go on to the next call, but that misses the point. Now I might call 30 people and reach two, but I will have left lots of messages. I really don't like to talk to people I don't know on the phone, but we're calling Georgia, one of our two assigned states, and the people I have talked to have been very nice and pleasant. I will do this some more this week.

My books are supposed to come this week, so I should have something to show in my next post.

What's on my needles: The Which Came First Shawl is STILL waiting to be blocked.

What's on my sewing machine: Patterns for Pippa (I like the sound of that) and more costumes.

What's in my hoop: Still the Whole Cloth Quilt. No progress this week.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: On the Ballot. Emil and Pippa finds out how human people vote and why they use ballots. Then they do something fun while the "old people" are out of the house voting.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still just listening to music.

What's in my wine glass: Château Cazevieille Origine 2017. Pretty nice.

What's my tip of the week: A great source of voting information is iwillvote.com. It's also easy to remember and share.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

Time To Vote!

Well, it might have been a quiet week at Lake Wobegon, but not at our place. The biggest event was the arrival of the book. (The phone is for scale. The book is 8.5 X 11".)

I was very happy with the quality of the printing, especially the photos, which I had worried about. The quality is very nice, and the pages lie flat when the book is open.

Everything looked great except that I apparently made a mistake in putting together the pdf to send to the publisher. My original version would have been correct, but after talking to someone in the department that does the printing, I added a blank page at the beginning and the end. This was the resulting location of the title page. Oops!

Not what I had planned. The book still need the ISBN number and bar code added, but it should be OK once I send them a new version with the blank pages deleted.

I ordered a boy doll from American Girl for Zachary for Christmas. He's called "Truly Me 74," but that's not his real name. He will tell Zachary what it is.

He will have me sewing and knitting for him soon. I will need to finish everything earlier than planned. It was to be our turn to have the kids here for Christmas, but then Covid happened. (Insert unhappy face here.)

You may remember that our furnace needed to be replaced. We spent the early part of the week getting estimates for the new furnace, while the temperature dipped down into the 20s during the night. We used the fireplace and some small space heaters, and the temperature inside the house never got below 65ºF. It made us happy that we had replaced all the windows. We informed the winner of the estimate competition on Thursday and Friday they showed up at 8:30 AM and had the new furnace installed by 3:30 PM. Now it's up and running nicely. 

We don't have AC yet. They will install that in a month or so, when they get the parts, and certainly by the spring. In the meantime, we have what we need.

The new furnace looks a lot better than the old one, not that looks matter. It should also be much more efficient, which means we can set the temperature at 70ºF instead of 68ºF! We suspect the hot-water heater will go out soon, but not until we finally have company visiting again. That's how things usually go for us.

We barely got the house warmed up when the power went off. It was expected, though. The power company had warned us that they would be turning off the power at 7:00 PM for about an hour. We had some pleasant candlelight and flashlights, so I was able to keep knitting.

What was I knitting on? I had finished the Everyday Play Dress for the Little Kidz early in the week and posted the pattern on Ravelry. I used Patons Kroy Sock yarn.

Someone requested the jacket that goes with the dress, so I CO for a smaller version of the jacket. I used the 80% rule again, and it worked well. Here's the jacket. For this, I used my mystery 4-ply (fingering/sock weight) left over from my supply brought back from our sojourn in the UK, purchased from a company that is no longer there.

I was able to get some shoes that are close enough to fitting with a little stretching that they fit  on over the thin "socks by the yard" socks. The shoes are designed for Wellie Wisher dolls. They are a little wider and shorter than would be perfect, but they work, and Pippa isn't complaining that her toes hurt. The shoes came from Doll of a Kind. They come in an assortment of colors with grey. I picked the blue.

All week I continued to write letters for The Big Send, which happened on Saturday. I had 480 letters to mail, so it meant a trip to the Post Office. They let me (or rather DH) take a photo of the agent behind the counter and me as I passed my two boxes of letters over to her.

There were two other people there with boxes full of letters for The Big Send, so I wasn't the only one from Bend doing the letters. Now I will be phone banking at least several times a week until the actual election, although the election is already underway. Our ballots arrived on Friday. We filled them out Sunday and will put them into the official drop box today.

Our usual Saturday Zoom meeting to write letters was replaced with a Zoom meeting to train us to make calls. I had some technical difficulties, because I didn't have the right browser, but they got me straightened out. It's so nice to have the one-on-one help from Indivisible Oregon! I didn't get to make any calls on Saturday, but I attended a phone-banking session on Sunday, during which I did get to make some calls, after a new training. Sunday's session was for Reclaim our Vote. We were calling people who had been dropped from the voter rolls because they had moved or hadn't voted or for some other reason. We gave information on how to reregister or find out what they needed to do to be able to vote.

On our way home from the Post Office on Saturday, we stopped off at the park to let the pups run. Rocky socialized with the other dogs, while Dusty chased the ball. No one had masks on, so we stayed away from them. It's too bad, because it would have been nice to chat. The pups had a good time, though. We're expecting snow soon so it was good to get them out for a run.

What's on my needles: The Which Came First Shawl is still not blocked. I'm working on the cardigan for Pippa. 

What's on my sewing machine: Pajamas for Pippa.

What's in my hoop: Still the Whole Cloth Quilt. No progress this week.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Pippa, which introduces the new Little Kidz doll.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: I've still just been listening to music. I didn't even get time to listen to my new Dean Koontz novel, Devoted. I'll probably get back to it this week. Maybe I'll have time to be more devoted.

What's in my wine glass: The Winery of Good Hope Pinotage 2019. Nice.

What's my tip of the week: If you haven't voted yet, you can check your registration, register to vote and get other voter services at I Will Vote.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

Keeping Warm

Even with the cooler nights, the garden is still producing.

It's nice to have our own vegetables, especially as soup and stew weather approaches.

The first big news after the cooler weather hit was that we needed a new furnace, which we learned when we had the old one serviced. It is likely leaking carbon monoxide, although we have detectors, and they haven't gone off. It will cost a lot, unfortunately, but the good news is we can add air conditioning with the new unit, which will help if the fire season coincides with hot weather. We were lucky this year with the weather (although 2020 pretty much has sucked as years go).

The new doll I mentioned last week showed up a day early, on Tuesday. The outer box was a little squished, but the special box inside was fine.

I opened the outer box outside, tipped the contents onto the settee on the front porch and then went inside and washed my hands. Then I was able to handle the contents without worrying that the delivery person or anyone else touching the outside of the box might have had the virus. We brought the box inside after a couple of days, so I can use it to store the factory box in.

The name of the doll is "Lotta," but she will be getting a new one in this week's story. She arrived wearing a long-sleeved jersey and denim overalls, pink slip-on laced shoes, and a headband.

I think her face is very sweet. Her tag had the number 0256, which I have saved along with her box. She will need some pajamas, but in the meantime, she has an oversized T-shirt to "sleep" in, if she needs to sleep in a story. A cardigan I had made for Jolena that turned out to be too small worked for her and some jeans belonging to Emil that shrunk in the laundry worked with the cuffs turned up, although the pants are a bit big in the waist. I can fix that.

I thought she appeared to be shaped like the Happy Kidz, although they are a lot bigger. I took her measurements and discovered that they were pretty much 80% of the bigger dolls, so I ran off a couple of Happy Kidz patterns reducing the size to 80%. Then used them I drafted new patterns, reestablishing the 1/4" seam allowance, which had shrunk a bit.

I wanted something to go with her pink shoes. (She brought an extra pair of shoes with her, but they are also pink.) I used some fabric Daphne picked out for my Christmas present a couple of years ago. It was very easy to get a dress out of a fat quarter for this size doll.

It turned out to be a perfect fit, so it will be easy to make other things for her, just reducing the pattern to 80%. I do that using the printer.

She needed some spare casual clothes, so I made her some capri-length leggings using some dark navy stretch fabric I had left over from making things for the bigger dolls. (She brought the teddy bear with her, too, and the teddy bear brought a friend along––a white one of his kind.)

Now I'm working on a new version of my Everyday Play doll dress. It's a little harder to figure out, because I'm using the same knitting gauge or tension, the same yarn and the same needles, but reducing all the stitches and rows to 80%. I have to fudge here and there, because 80% yields a lot of partial stitches and rows, and then there are the increases, etc., to figure out, but I think it will work out well. I should have that to show next week. All the match is good for my brain. The yarn has a little pink in it, to go with her other pair of shoes, the sparkly ones.

I have been using the same technique to rework patterns for American Girl dolls to fit the Happy Kidz. I print the pattern at 90% and then lengthen the sleeves, pants legs and skirts. The Goetz Doll Lovers group on Ravelry is having a JAL (Join Along) to make Halloween costumes for dolls. I used Matilda's Closet Graduation Ensemble pattern for this costume for Veronika. I used plain black quilter's cotton. 

Here's a closeup:

I plan to make one of the dolls over into a pumpkin.

Of course, I'm still writing letters urging people to vote. I hope to mail 500 of them this coming  Saturday, but I still have a lot to do to reach my goal. I hope to have a photo for you for next week's blog. Nationwide, we were at 12.5M letters by Saturday. 

In other news, a single copy of my book should arrive at the end of this week. It has been shipped. If everything looks OK, I will print up 100 copies for local people and family members, and others will be able to buy it from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Perhaps it will find its way into your local bookstore.

What's on my needles: The remake of the Everyday Play doll dress, which is very popular on Ravelry. This new pattern will fit the Little Kidz dolls. The Which Came First Shawl still needs blocking. The dish cloths are finished, although I expect too be making more.

What's on my sewing machine: Waiting for more costumes.

What's in my hoop: Still the Whole Cloth Quilt. More progress this week.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Big News, which is the first part of the new doll's introduction.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: I've been listening to music while working on the letters, but for sewing and knitting, I'm listening to Elsewhere by Dean Koontz.

What's in my wine glass: Primi Soli Sangiovese. Great with my homemade lasagne.

What's my tip of the week: I like to use a little scrap of fabric to sew onto when I finish a seam, but sometimes seams for doll clothes start and end inside the garment, like hems. When possible, I sew into the seam allowance to start the seam, sew the seam and then use the seam allowance to sew out again, often back onto the same scrap of fabric I started with. When you make a right-angle turn before ending a seam, you don't really need to backstitch. It's nice and secure. I have done this with quilting as well.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

Cover Problems

I'm continuing to make progress on the whole-cloth quilt. I'm getting really close to the swag pattern on this side, as you might be able to see.

The Which Came First Shawl is still waiting to be blocked. Why didn't I get it done, you might ask? Well, I need to clean up the table where I put the blocking mats, for one thing, and that didn't happen because of more problems with my end of the book production. I had the cover to the book finished (I thought) and it came back with some problems. It all worked out in the end, and the sample copy of the book is in the works.

The problem was with the logo for St. Jude's. I had asked for permission to use the logo, and I thought I was told it was OK. However, the resolution wasn't good on the copy of the logo I was able to download, so I had to go back to St. Jude to ask for a better copy. That's when I found out that I couldn't use the logo after all. Either I misunderstood or the person I talked to told me the wrong thing. I can't mention St. Jude in the book at all. However, I can say that the proceeds from the book will to go an organization that provides research and treatment for pediatric cancer, and it will. I removed the logo and the description of what St. Jude does and replaced it with a summary of how The Doll's Storybook got started and a group photo of the dolls. It should still be ready before Christmas. It was a good thing the publisher held things up with the resolution problem.

I still have nearly two weeks to work on The Big Send. We (all the people nationally working on the project) blew through our goal of 10M letters by the end of the week, so the "powers that be" upped it to 15M. We now have another 5M letters to write in two weeks. This should be possible because more people have joined the team. I stamped most of the letters I had finished already and ordered more stamps on Saturday.

The letters still in the box (with rubber bands around them) still need stamps. I have 400 done and am going to try to do 100 more before time to mail them, October 17th.

I had to have something to knit while on calls with family and others when I couldn't be writing letters, so I made two more dishcloths. I've been using the yarn left over from the dish mat I made a few weeks ago. I had wound off half of the yarn so I could knit with two strands. Then I used single strands to knit the dishcloths. I ran out of the yarn from the cone when I was about three-fourths of the way through the last dishcloth, so I had to join the remainder of the yarn from the ball I had wound off. Since it's cotton yarn and the dishcloth is just for me, I decided to just tie a square knot. I think I might get a coaster out of the tiny amount that's left. In the photo, you can see where I added the leftover yarn.

We had to pick up Rocky's medication during the week, so we all went along for the ride. We stopped off at the park on the way back, and the pups had some play time.

When Dusty was suitably tired, someone came with a little dog and was waiting, so we left to let them have the little-dog park to themselves. It's nice to be able to get out again, now that the smoke is gone. We've started walking in the neighborhood, again, too.

Daphne and Zachary had another dance performance outdoors. The videos were fun to watch. They are both getting to be very good dancers.

They have become used to doing their classes online with minimal supervision from parents. That's good, because the parents have their hands full with college students, some of whom contracted the virus early in the semester and have gotten behind in their work. They're mostly in an age group not always willing to be responsible.

We've been eating some of the last of the vegetables from the garden. This stir-fry was a mixture of our zucchini and chard, and purchased vegetables with Quorn "Meatless Pieces," which is made from mushrooms.

We've also still had grape tomatoes and some yellow pear tomatoes. It's getting colder now, so I expect the garden will be done soon. Before that happens, though, we will enjoy what we can get from it.

Another virtual choir performance has come and gone. This year's annual "Blessing of the Animals" had to be virtual, so we sang "O God, Your Creatures Fill the Earth" while photos of people with their pets and other animals showed on the screen. Our photo with the pups was in my blog last week, so I won't show it again.

The new doll is expected this week, and she will be introduced next week in person, assuming she arrives safely in time. As I write this, she has already gone through Customs and Immigration (!) in Los Angeles, so the rest is just catching the right flights. That will give me something to look forward to.

What's on my needles: The Which Came First Shawl is still waiting for blocking. Still working on dish cloths.

What's on my sewing machine: Still waiting for costumes. I hope to get on it this week.

What's in my hoop: Still the Whole Cloth Quilt. More progress this week.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: The Interview. Mariah interviews Jolena and asks some interesting questions. Some of the answers might surprise you.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: I've still just been listening to music.

What's in my wine glass: Radford Dale Syrah 2017. Nice, but not exciting.

What's my tip of the week: Halloween is coming up. Children should know that regular Halloween masks are not adequate protection. Our Oregon Health Authority has posted this recommendation, and I see that there are some masks that are suitable AND scary.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.