Throwing the Dice

Looking up at our house from our mailbox

A year ago, a friend introduced me to a wonderful thing she was doing called WIPGO. It was a sort of work-in-progress bingo on a Facebook group of the same name. The idea was to take a whiteboard, draw out the squares of a bingo card on it, number them, and then fill them with the names of projects that you had in flight and needed to finish. I was very enthusiastic and took a chalk board, drew up the card, and started putting in all of my unfinished projects (I alluded to some of them in yesterday's post). There were too many for the card, so I doubled up on the little ones. There were still too many, but I figured that that's what 2024 would be for! Anyhoo, each month the moderator of the FB group called out two numbers, and the goal was to work on the projects in the corresponding squares for a certain number of hours each week for the month. There was also a prize for completing a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line. 

It was already March when I found out about the group, and even last year was too crazy for me to follow a plan, so the board languished. Last week I hung it in the sewing room and erased all of the projects. I would like to start it up again, but as I haven't even found all of my handwork WIP's--much less unpacked them, and my life is too too fluid and unsettled right now anyway, so I regretfully decided not to do it this year. 

(Side note: I also decided not to get chicks, plant a garden, or keep bees this year. Those are next year's projects. Instead I am going to concentrate on cleaning up the tackroom/horse shelter/corral area, moving Turi (my Appaloosa/quarter horse gelding) here, and getting him a herd mate or two. Equine management for the first time in my life is going to be intense enough.) 

Though I am not going to do the formal WIPGO, this morning I had a glimmer of an idea about integrating the randomness of it into building a retirement structure AND getting sh*t done! A big part of the difficulty in retirement is the lack of structure in your time--the days are all the same, and hours mostly don't have any significance either. When I was "working", my schedule was determined by outside forces--meetings, deadlines and commitments, what to leave in, what to leave out (extra bonus nachos if you catch the reference in that last bit). I don't think I'm unusual in rebelling against forcing a structure upon myself just to have one. I want one that's productive, satisfying, and fun. I don't want to go to the gym everyday at 10:00. I have NEVER wanted to go to the gym everyday at 10:00, and I resist the idea that that is the kind of schedule I need now. 

So back to using the idea of WIP bingo and daily life... a routine is already organically forming a bit in my days. I start the morning with coffee, sometimes in bed. I do a little admin work (email, schedule contractors, research things I need to know like how to manually open the garage door when there doesn't seem to be a pull cord--stuff like that). Then I blog and do a little housework--in either order. Then I have a couple of hours before lunch to work on a project. That's where the randomness of a WIP--like-thing can come in. I have a list of about six household unpacking and organization projects that I need to complete. I have been struggling getting traction on them. Let's be honest--I've been struggling getting started on them. I'd rather whine about it here on the blog. But no more! Today I am going to write six imminent projects on my whiteboard. There are more than six, but I will just pick six. I will assign a number to each. Then each day I will either pick one (if I have a strong preference), or I will roll a die, and then I will spend two hours working on the project that came up on the roll. Heck, I might even add something in like "take a long walk with the dog". 

The projects will stay on the board until completed, and as soon as they are completed, they will be replaced so there is always something next to each number. Six is an excellent number as it means there is one day a week with no scheduled task (days that I have other things on the schedule count for the project that day), and I think I'll stretch and say I can take the day off any day I want--it doesn't have to be a specific day of the week.

I was going to continue with the afternoon and evening schedule, but this post is already long, and I am itching to make my new WIP dice board.

I'm Projecting Projects

quilting cotton quarters and halves

The sun is shining and I am ready to Project, Project, Project! That is project, the noun: "an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim", and not project, the verb:  "plan (a project or undertaking)." (from Oxford Language). Unfortunately my definition of project the noun is rarely "carefully planned", and due to my short attention span is often not completed. I go hard for a few days, maybe an intense week, and then--just as I approach the finish line--another shiny object/project pops up and I go haring off after it. Sigh.

I need to finish Dave's bison coat by putting on the closures--though it is now way too warm for him to wear. The sewing part of the sewing room is finished, now I need to unpack the office part, but there isn't any more room, and I don't want to...

Thread--regular, serger, embroidery

I have been itching to start unpacking and putting away the tools in the garage. The glass shed needs to be set up (shelving and work surface installed, and all frit and glass unpacked), and I haven't finished unpacking the basement yet. I got as far as books on shelves, a loveseat in front of the fireplace, and games in the games cabinet, and then I petered out. 

I still haven't fixed the broken leg of the games table so it is upside down in the middle of the rec room, and the live-edge desk I was making for Austin doesn't fit anywhere and is taking up the space where the loveseat needs to go. Never mind that little room down there that will be the jewelry studio: it's inundated with all the yarn and fiber that didn't go into the attic--including the Ikea cloth cubes (all 50 of them) that go into the two Kallax wall units that are still at our other Polson house because they don't fit anywhere in the new one! I need a fiber barn to get that all sorted out. 

Shirt and clothing fabric

Over the past few days I folded and organized every piece of fabric I have. I found five of Dave's shirts in progress and mostly sewn, and four more cut out and ready to sew. I also tidily arranged fabric for another 177 shirts. I didn't even count all the quarter and halves of quilting fabric. A friend's dress surfaced (I am replacing a zipper on it for her), as did the partially-pieced Crown Royal quilt that I am making for another friend. Oh, and the infamous sunbonnet girls quilt that I started with my grandmother over 50 years ago... I think that one wins for the oldest in-progress project. I'm actually kind of glad that I haven't started organizing the yarn cubes yet as they contain many, many in-progress sweaters--including five baby ones that I started and didn't complete for Jessie--now 22.

But that's what retirement is for, right? Completion of old projects and starting all the ones I squirreled away for this very day. But there are baby chicks coming to Murdoch's soon (they have the enclosure set up in the middle of the store), and I don't have a chicken coop yet. It's about time to start seeds for the garden, and I haven't cleaned out the greenhouse yet. How do I choose what to do, and how do I motivate myself to finish what I've already started?

Good thing I put up a whiteboard and bought some new dry erase markers. Think I'll go noodle a bit on my board and calendar.

Yurts and Composting Toilets

Me: Don't throw away the cover on the beef rendang leftovers. It looks like this (holding up a waxed cloth). Just rinse it in cool water and put it back in this box. 

Dave: Where did you get those, I have never seen them before, what are they?

Me: Covers to use on leftovers instead of aluminum foil.

Dave: Are they better than aluminum foil?

Me: Yes.

Dave: How?

Me: They don't go into a landfill.

A short time later...

Me: What do you think of composting toilets?

Dave: I think we've already done our part with the waxed thingies.

Now, me, I am all into the idea of a composting toilet. Especially one like the HomeBioGas one that you don't have to empty. It makes cooking gas and garden fertilizer as it's output. Our toilets are working fine in the house, and I am not trying to reinvent the wheel. But we are going to be needing guest quarters asap for the flood of people who are going to flock to here in the summer. I am thinking a composting toilet in a yurt. We already have electricity and water to the site, and it is a quick, inexpensive (relatively) solution. Build a deck, get some basic furniture, do a little electrical, do a little plumbing (no septic), get a few appliances, and voilà! Guest quarters! 

Last Best Place? Hell Yeah!

Moon setting in the west

Yesterday I took a lot of pictures of the progress on the sewing room to post today, but life had other plans. Dave alerted me to the view on the western side of the house this morning as he was getting ready to take the garbage down to the bear-proof can (writing those words never gets old), and to get us a latte and croffles from Bayside Riser. I looked out just in time to see the full moon setting in the west, golden from the sun rising in the east. The view to the east didn't disappoint either--mist rising over the National Wildlife Refuge and the mountains limned by the rising sun. I ask you, how often is something so spectacular that the first word that comes to your mind to describe it is limned? 

Later, as I was sitting here posting, I looked out to the north to see that we are above the clouds and can see to Glacier Park. A few minutes later when I looked again, the light had completely changed and presented me with a different, perfect vista.

Sunrise over the mist

I need to say that while it is relatively easy to take digital photos and enhance, pop, boost, and nudge them to perfection, each of these photos are untouched. I didn't even adjust the contrast or brightness--just cropped a bit.

In between the beauty of the moonset and sitting down to post, my spouse next alerted me to the lack of Internet. Oh the joys of a new house! The Starlink router was not even showing up so I figured it was something to do with the power. Sure enough, all the outlets in the garage and the light above the sink were out. Checked the breakers, nothing flipped. Looked for an obvious GFI circuit in the garage, couldn't find it. Texted the previous owner, he couldn't remember off the top of his head where the master GFI controlling the garage circuits was either. The garage is still so stuffed with everything from the move--and a bunch of random empty cardboard boxes destined for recycling--that I couldn't begin to find all the outlets. That's okay. I had a long, industrial extension cord and power strip, and just plugged the Starlink router and the freezer (with all the beef in it) into it. It's not a perfect solution, but, hey, these are primitive pioneer conditions.

The photos below are the ones I mentioned earlier to the north and Glacier, taken about 10 minutes apart.

Retirerment One Year In

Sunrise lights the clouds in the north

I play a lot of solitaire. I'm just putting that out there.

Dave has been suggesting recently--some days more forcefully than others--that I need to learn how to retire. This morning--as I am up, showered, dressed, teeth-brushed, and coffee finished- all by 7:45 am, and I have nothing planned for the day--I can see his point. This is the first day this year--and in this house for that matter--that I have been up before 8:00 without needing to be. Maybe before 8:30 or 9:00. Let's be honest: I rarely bestir myself till about 9:45. Oh, I'm awake: I check text messages, maybe read the news, my email, or whatever book I'm in the midst of,  play solitaire, and snuggle under the down comforter till the sun is well and truly up. Many mornings Dave brings me coffee in bed. Today I was restless. I was awake, and I got up, but there was no bounce in my bungee. I loaded the dishwasher as my coffee brewed, and saw a life full of repetitive daily tasks stretching ahead of me as far as I could see. This can't be what retirement is meant to be.

I had coffee with a friend in Missoula who is also retired the other week, and he said it's important to take it slow. Unfortunately, I have never done slow well. So far retirement has meant... Huh. I can't even remember what I did for the first few months. I know that when we made the annual migration to Montana in June, I threw myself into home renovation projects (for a home we are no longer keeping), then got mired in the idea of buying a greenhouse/nursery business, then we decided to move here permanently, and I headed back to Texas to pack and ready that house for sale. Getting everything out of that house took five months--and is arguably still not done. But what is left there is Not My Problem. (except for a last little load in the garage). The estate sale person is donating the rest. Anyway, before I knew it, it was the winter holidays, and there is no such thing as a normal life at that time of year for anyone so I didn't even think about retirement.

But now it's mid January. I got through the first half of the month working on Dave's coat, but it's mostly done now (he wears it every time he goes out), and I am left facing Life again. Don't get me wrong--this is not a poor-poor-pitiful-me-my-life-is-so-hard-because-all-I-have-is-free-time rant. I think a lot of people go through an episode of life-re-evaluation in January (hence the prevalence of resolutions and new gym memberships). I also think it's more difficult for the newly-ish retired. I am just trying to work through it out loud here. 

I need structure, but it's difficult coming up with an enjoyable structure. And what's the point of a structure that's NOT enjoyable? Retirement is supposed to be one's Golden Years. Shangri-La. The pot of time at the end of the rainbow. It's NOT supposed to be more time for housework or all the other drudgery that you got to put off before because you were working. 

Balance. That's what I need. Balance between the want-to's and the have-to's. When you are working, the have-to structure is imposed upon you by your job and then by your home and family--unless your home and family is your job, in which case you already had to struggle through the balance issue. It's easy to do a few hours a week on your non-job-how-to's, and then take the rest of your free time for your want-to's. You can justify it.

My problem thus far has been justifying my time choices to myself since I'm no longer "working". I find myself cleaning, or doing bookkeeping, or unpacking, and none of those things make we want to bounce out of bed and start my day. I feel guilty if I don't do something with my time that I feel advances the quality of our life here (cleaning... bookkeeping... unpacking). But that's MY problem. That's all in MY mind--Dave is certainly not pushing me that way.

Let's look at this a different way. My "job" now is to do all the things I planned to do when I finally had time--sewing, weaving, spinning, woodworking, stained glass, ceramics, jewelry, crocheting, knitting, writing a novel, blogging, learning new skills, gardening, equine husbandry, baking, meditating, walking, strength and balance exercises. Those things need to occupy the majority of my day. Then cleaning, bookkeeping, and organizing can fill in around them like they have always filled in around my "job". No guilt. Life is too short--and feeling shorter every day.

Whiteouts and Taxes

It's a whiteout!

I can tell it's getting warmer out as we are back in the white again. I can't say grey because it's a lovely snow color, but you can't see through it. I'm guessing it's humidity, but what do I know? Yesterday saw the driveway plowed. Our guy came up with a bobcat and cleared it, and said it was way more snow than he had seen anywhere else. Anyway, no more Polson drift (like Tokyo drift only slower). 

Yesterday Dave finished setting up the last bits and bobs in his office--including mounting the last bit of whiteboard, and it is now complete. The copper still is not in operation, but I have hope. 

I worked on my sewing room. It's going to be tight, but everything will fit, and I will have a cozy nest when I am done. For the first time in 15 years I will have a comfy chair in a studio space so I can just hang out there. When we were in Missoula last month I got a lovely water color floral-print chair in pastels on cream, and as soon as I find the shade for my stained glass floor lamp, I'll  be set. It's amazing how many things are still unaccounted for in the move. There must be big boxes tucked somewhere that I we haven't run across yet. Maybe the garage. Finding it will be a project for another day, however. 

Today is all about the taxes--both income and property. I have never done income taxes so early. We don't even have half of the official forms in the mail yet, but in this digital age everything is available online. TurboTax (my new best friend) just pulls it all out of the ether for me and Bob's your uncle! 

His favorite place to sleep

As fast as I am going on taxes, everything else moves very slowly here. I got a call from the hospital this morning that the insurance company approved my MRI, but they can't do it till next Wednesday morning even though it's marked stat because they only do them on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays and are all booked this week. Small town rural hospital life. They are going to try to move someone else and get me in, or I'm first on the cancellation list. I am tentatively supposed to have surgery next Thursday, but the MRI needs to be factored into the surgery. Ah, well. Everything will unravel as it is meant to.

In the meantime I will keep tackling one inside space at a time and then move out to the garage and the glass shed. By the time spring rolls around I want to have all my studio spaces set up and ready to go--wood shop, glass shed, fiber barn, sewing room, jewelry studio, and pottery under-deck.

More Travails, and, Yet...

Even the cats hang out on the down comforter

While I was listing out everything that happened last Wednesday (the day Dave hauled me to the hospital to have my gallbladder scanned), I forgot to include all the Austin stressors that probably contributed to the root cause of the attack. The Great White North was not the only area of the country to be struggling with weather last week. Down in Austin it got so cold that the discharge pipe from the RO system on our well froze, and a water pipe to the apartment above the garage burst, spewing all the water in the well tank onto the stairs up to the apartment where it froze into a slippery sheet of ice all down. I found out about it when the realtor called because the cleaning people were at the house to do the deep clean, and there was no water. 

Our wonderful neighbor (who shall remain unnamed because he abhors social media and online presence) turned off the water to the house, replumbed the RO discharge, turned the RO back on, and tested it for us. When it didn't work right he diagnosed the problem (a bad pressure switch), and fixed it! Today he is meeting with our plumber to let him in to fix the pipe. I love him. Were it not for Dave (and his wife)...

I don't know what the status is of the cleaning--which has to be done before the staging, which has to be done before the photography, which has to be done before the house is (finally) listed for sale. But I trust Dina (our realtor) implicitly, and I know she will Handle It.

Today I am waiting for the guy that delivered our firewood to come and plow us out. J went out with  friends last night and had to walk down to the road (about a half mile) in some pretty deep snow so they could pick her up. Even when we're plowed out today I bet her Challenger is sidelined for the rest of the winter. 

My right hand aches as I type from where I either dislocated, sprained, or partially tore the tendon in my right, index, metacarpophalangeal joint a week ago. It is still swollen, and still painful, and a doctor friend who called to chew me out last night for still considering Oaxaca with my gallbladder issues also laid into me about potential permanent damage to that hand if I don't get it looked at by a doctor. When I went to the walk-in clinic, they x-rayed it to see if it was broken or still dislocated, but that was about it. I got a loose, supposedly-finger-immobilizing splint-thing, and no guidance how long to keep it on or if I should follow up with anyone... *sigh* Bodies suck.

And now the yet of this post... In spite of all the work it takes to live here in the snow, maintain my body, and learn how to manage retirement (that's a post for another day), I am happier than I have ever been in my life. There is nothing I can't handle, nothing I won't face, nothing that fills me with dread and makes my stomach tight and achey. Life is just right--and I'm going to keep it that way.

Snow Day!

Face full of snow

This winter continues to be... interesting. We were supposed to go to Austin last Thursday, and instead we braved a blizzard (well it was supposed to be a blizzard but was just blowing snow) to go to the hospital so I could find out I was having a gallbladder attack and have lots and lots of gallstones. While poking around in there they also found a pancreatic anomaly (abnormality?), but I won't know what that means when they get me in for an MRI this week. It needs to be done before I have my gall bladder removed (tentatively scheduled for a week and a half from now, depending on how my meeting with the surgeon goes this week). 

Gall bladder stuff seems to be pretty common and minor (through quite painful, as another friend can attest) so I'm not worried about it. But I am bummed that we didn't get to go to Austin and have to either postpone or cancel our trip to Oaxaca Mexico (we are currently scheduled to go the day before my surgery). I haven't cancelled the flights yet in case the surgeon decides something other than Feb 1 for the rip-out date. Oh, and no more attacks since that first one a few days ago so don't imagine me here lying on a chaise and moaning in pain. I'm in my cozy morning chair (in the dining room) getting ready to do taxes--which is painful enough. 

All chained up and nowhere to go

Though we didn't get the 10-14 inches of snow predicted, and the winds weren't 45 mph, we did get quite a bit of snow Wednesday, and again more Thursday. We barely made it back up the drive on Thursday after driving into town to pick up mail. Friday I was feeling a bit stir-crazy as Dave had tied me to a chair all day Thursday (figuratively) to recuperate so I drove back into town to get Diet Coke and the mail. There was no way on earth I was going to be snowbound with Dave and Jessie and no Diet Coke. They can get... cranky. We hadn't been able to pick up the mail at our other house on Thursday because we didn't have the right key (for the third time in a row) so I wanted to get it too. 

Halfway down the drive, and with no way to back up successfully, I knew that I would never make it back up--even with 4WD and rear differential lock, and traction control, and whatever else the 4Runner has. So my main stop in town had to be to get chains. I have never put chains on a vehicle. I remember being in the car coming down the mountain from skiing when I was young and having to stop so dad could put the chains on, and I remember the cursing and struggling that accompanied the task. But needs must when the devil drives in snow.

My morning view of the deck

My first stop was Ace Hardware--they don't carry them. Next was Murdoch's Ranch and Home Supply, and though they carry them, they didn't have the size I needed. But I scored front and back chains at Beacon Tire, and the mechanic brought my 4Runner into their shop and showed me how to put them on. I had two different types--one for the front and one for the back as they did not have two matching sets in my size--so I had to learn two different ways to put them on. The mechanic jacked up the back of the car, then he  did one side of the car while I did the other. Then he checked my side. It was still not easy to do--and I banged my hand right on the finger I either dislocated or sprained the other day--so I decided to leave them on for the whole drive home. To get home I had to go on the mostly bare highway, you can only go 25 mph with chains on, and on bare pavement they bump and clang something awful. But I cannot imagine what it would have been like to have to put them on by myself, at the bottom of our drive, in deep snow, and without being able to jack the car up in back (if you can't jack it, you have to drive forward and back in the middle of putting them on to fit them. Even with the chains and all the other fancy-schmancy all-terrain stuff that car has, it was still a tough drive to the top of our mountain.

While hunting down chains, I asked everyone with whom I interacted if they knew anyone who did snow plowing. I even pulled up next to a guy in a truck with a plow on the front of it at a stoplight and rolled down my window to ask him if he plowed. Sadly he only did his own. I totally struck out on finding anyone, but I did go home with some leads.

This morning I got ahold of the guy who delivers our wood, and asked him, and he does do snow removal. Her can't come today, but he'll be here tomorrow morning. In the meantime, the sun is shining, and we're snug as bugs in a rug in our mountain retreat. Happy snow day, y'all!

Little House in the Mountains

I took a few days off from sewing to let my hand heal and to work around the house. There is firewood to bring in and split daily--we are getting easily half of our heat right now from the wood stove on the ground floor, and the temps are still subzero 24/7. The other day I unclogged the kitchen sink drain.  Yesterday I hauled a pickup load of cardboard down to the recycling drop-off in town, drove the garbage 1/2 mile down the drive to our bear-proof can for pick up, got the Excursion battery out and brought it inside to charge, and used Dave's sous vide heater to help unfreeze the sink drain in the garage... Little house in the mountains indeed. I felt like the Laura Ingalls Wilder of the 21st century.

Everything I have done recently has been driven by the cold (or the snow). I bought a manual, hydraulic log splitter in Missoula recently to replace the electric one we had in Austin. The electric one had trouble working when the temps were in the 30's-40's, and I couldn't see see any way it would be useful up here so we sold it. The new one has two handles to work back and forth to split the logs. It's a decent upper body workout, and no one is going to trust me anywhere near an ax or a hatchet. We put it inside on the ground floor by the patio door, and every day we bring in three loads of wood and split it. It's messy--but warm!

Driving the cardboard to recycling was more to make sure my old Ford pickup would start--and to get the garbage to the bin--than for a burning need to rid myself of cardboard. Dave and I will be driving the pick-up to the airport in Missoula on Thursday before flying back to Austin for a week. We have to leave the 4Runner for Jessie as her car can't get through the snow drifts on the drive. You have to have 4WD to get up to us now. I even got stuck in a snowdrift with the 4Rrunner on North Reservoir Road the other night while driving it to pick Jessie up from a friend's during a snowstorm. Fortunately a very nice man in a big truck came from the other direction five minutes after I got stuck (one of only two cars I had seen on the road at all) and used a chain to pull me out of the drift. On the way home after getting Jessie, we came across two other big men with two big trucks who had managed to both get stuck in the snow--and entirely block the road. There was nothing we could do to help them--and they had help on the way anyway--so we turned around (very carefully) and went back to find another road home.

But back to the cold and my plumbing adventures. One of the first nights of this cold front the kitchen sink wouldn't drain. I tried snaking it, but still couldn't get it to work. So the next day I took it apart underneath and let all the water run into a bucket. When I looked in the p-trap (the curved drain pipe under the sink for you non-plumbers) it had an inch-thick plug of solidified fat in it! It was cold enough in the house that the fat solidified and I couldn't even melt it all with hot water. That never happened in Austin!

The same day as the first plumbing adventure, I thought it might be a good idea to let a faucet drip in the garage so the pipes wouldn't freeze. Yesterday I went out and saw that the faucet was still dripping, and the sink was half full of... ice. I ran some hot water into it and stirred it around, but it still didn't melt enough to drain. So I got Dave sous vide heater, put it in the sink, plugged it in, and set it to 165 degrees. Periodically over the next several hours I checked it, and even when the water registered 145 degrees, the sink still wouldn't drain. By this time it was 10:00 at night and I didn't want to leave the sous vide heater plugged in and running all night because as soon as it heated the water enough, it would all run out of the sink and leave the heater running dry.

When I felt the pipe under the sink, the first 12 inches of it were warm, but the next section--and the p-trap below it--weren't. Pushing up my sleeves (and not bothering with shoes or a coat--at least I was on a rubber mat in the garage with bare feet), I put a big cooler under the sink and unscrewed the pipes. This p-trap was full of ice--the entire bend. I cleaned it all out with the hot water from the sink and left it to dry overnight. Today I will put the pipes back on--and then drill out the elk antler for the coat. Just another day in the Great White North!

Part 4: Finishing

The sewing is done! All I have left are the closures and trimming off the bottom. The sewing was actually done Thursday--which was a very Good Thing as temps here have been below zero for the past couple of days and this is the only coat Dave has. He wore it to take me to the hospital yesterday morning and then out for lunch and errands. He got many compliments on it, and a checker at Safeway tried very hard to convince me to make and sell them online. (Insert ROFLMAO emoji here.) 

The hospital trip was to make sure I hadn't broken my hand below my right index finger while wrestling with firewood the day before. Looks like I probably just dislocated and relocated the finger. It was all swollen and sore yesterday, but it's much better today. Dave made me get it x-rayed as he was unaware of my medical certification and unwilling to accept my diagnosis without additional input.

But back to the coat... Now it's time to do the closures. I use the word "closures" instead of buttons because I am not going to use buttons. I am going to take two pieces of elk antler crown (the place where the antlers detach from the head when they are shed) and drill holes in them through which to run strips of hide. The crowns will be sewn onto one side of the coat and the strips will tie around antler tips sewn onto the other side. I can do three if I need to, but I'm guessing two will be enough.

When the closures are done, I will do the hem. Well not really a "hem" as I won't be folding it under and sewing the bottom edge: I'll just be cutting it straight. Right now there's a tail hanging off the back, and the curved edges of the natural hide make up the bottom edge. Dave has decided that he would like a straight edge--and he definitely doesn't want a tail--so I will have him stand while wearing the coat, and I will measure up the same distance from the floor all the way around and cut along the resulting line. 

The hardest part will be drilling the crowns and antler tips to attach them to the coat: not because of the drilling but because my drill press is in the garage and it's -17 degrees right now!

Part 3a: More Sewing, Less Blood

All I have left to sew are the sleeve together--I had to section the sleeve pieces into three parts each to fit the hides, the sleeves to the body, and the side seams together. The hardest part of any upper body pattern (for me)--the collar and collar facings--is done. After that I will put on the closures. I can't really call them "buttons" as they are (big) pieces of elk antler that I will need to drill before attaching them, and then I will have to cut strips off the hide to be the ties between the antler bits. Fortunately there are front facings down both front pieces that will hide where I sew on the closures--and where I also will add reinforcement to the hide body so it doesn't rip at the attachment points. 

Previously my goal was to have the coat done for our trip to Austin at the end of next week. But the weather is changing here and we are set to go from 30-some-degree temps every day to -18 (with a -30 windchill) by the end of this week. Dave has dithered about getting a winter coat of any kind so the best he has right now are his data.world fleece vest and his big sweater. The sweater is warm and cozy, but the wind will cut right through it and freeze him into a Davesicle. 

In preparation for the cold, I drove up to the Murdoch's Ranch and Home Supply in Columbia Falls yesterday and got a new heavy blanket for Turi. I had to get the biggest size Weatherbeeta makes--an 84--for him so I could layer it if necessary. There were none at the Murdoch's in Polson, Missoula, or Kalispell so Columbia Falls it was. Remy came along for the ride--they love him at Murdoch's. We also picked up some more coarse waxed thread from the Joanne store in Kalispell so I can be sure I have enough to finish the coat. I'm not sure they love Remy at Joanne, but they didn't have a sign on the door prohibiting his presence so I took him in with me.

Spending an hour each way to drive somewhere shopping is nothing new--for me, or probably for anyone anymore. But the difference between driving along a lake below the mountain peaks with few other cars on the road in the crisp blue and white winter for an hour, and driving in stinking, sweaty, mind-numbingly slow traffic in Austin, or Atlanta, or, or, or... Words cannot describe, and my heart sings.

Part 3: First Blood AKA Sewing the Pieces Together

Speedy Stitcher and binder clips

I have sewn garments since I was so young I don't remember learning. I know my mother taught me to make clothes for my Barbies--though I lacked the patience back then to do more than whack fabric into some rude pieces and sloppily stitch them together. I also remember writing somewhere some years ago about finding a quilt project that I had started with my grandmother when I was about ten. It was the Sun Bonnet Sue quilt, and I still have all the pieces we cut out and the few that we (probably Gramma) hemmed. By hand. Patience, again, not my strong suit. But someday I will finish that quilt--and the one I am making for Patrick McGarry out of his Crown Royal bags--though that last project is going to require an actual sewing room with multiple machines set up to complete it. Dave's coat is a project for a simpler, less technical time as I am hand sewing the whole thing. You read that right. Me, the anti-queen of patience, I am sewing every seam of a full-length coat by hand. In fact, I have already begun to sew--hence the initial part of the title of this post. It's hard to type with a deeply stabbed middle finger. 'S' is an irritatingly frequent letter. But I'm getting ahead of the story.

First blood on the top edge

I am hand sewing the coat for a couple of reasons, the main one being that I do not have an industrial machine that will sew leather or fur. I know! A tool I do not have that I did not buy just for this project!! The second reason is that doing it by hand that I have more control over the outcome. And I did get to buy a special tool for it: A Speedy Stitcher sewing awl.  It's basically a wooden-handled awl with a sharp needle on the end and a hole running up through the handle to carry the thread. The thread is a heavy waxed linen, and instead of pinning the pieces together together to sew them, I'm using binder clips. The Speedy Stitcher is used to sew heavy materials like leather, vinyl, canvas, and upholstery fabric. It has two distinct advantages over a regular needle and thread: 1) The way you use it creates a locking stitch just like a sewing machine does, and 2) the awl handle makes it possible to push the needle through the heavy material without having to use pliers.

The sewing itself is not too difficult unless I hit a tough piece of the hide. When that happens I need to have a thimble (though a block of cork would probably be better) on the back side so I don't jam the needle into my hand. Luckily I've only stabbed myself twice, and I have already sewn the front pieces to the back at the shoulders, the under collar to the coat, the under collar to the upper collar, and half of the front facing to the front. Tomorrow I am taking a day off from sewing to go to Missoula with Dave for shopping, dinner, and a movie--and to give my wrist a chance to rest as I feel a repetitive stress injury coming on.

Part 2: Cutting the Hide

So there I was with my spiffy new pattern and two massive bison hides, and it was time to lay out the pattern, and cut the coat. Oh the terror and reluctance. A bison hide is a complete, beautiful piece of nature's art all on its own. How to even think about marring the existing flow and lines by cutting it? It was beautiful in the way a sheet of patterned blown glass is beautiful. I still have sheets of glass I bought over 30 years ago to use in stained glass projects that I haven't been able to cut because they are so exquisite just as they are and I have not not been able to see a way to make them even more. Then there were the technical considerations.

Typically, to layout a pattern and cut a garment, you lay the fabric lengthwise down the table. Then you start at the top (one of the short edges) and put down the pieces one after another making sure to align the grain of the fabric and the grainline on the pattern. Bison does not have grain in the way woven fabric does. And it's nap--the direction of  the fur, the direction you pet a dog or cat unless you want to piss them off--doesn't run in a straight line along the length of the hide. It radiates out from an area on the top of the hump. This directionality makes sense as one of the functions of the fur is to shed rain and the nap is the mechanism that does that. And there were more things to take into account like the variations in length, texture, and color of the fur. And the variations were not just between the two hides, but within each one. The area around the legs had long, coarse, straight, black, guard hair. The hump fur was long but not as long as around the legs, very thick, but finer, and it was a little wavy, mid-brown, and gold tipped. Vast swaths of flank and shoulder had soft, short, light espresso-colored, non-directional curls--and then there were the combination areas. 

So how to cut the pattern so that not only would both sides match, but also so that there would be flow and continuity between the pieces on either side of the seams (e.g. sleeve to front and back, back to front, facing to front, collar to back, etc.,)? The answer: very, very carefully. I painstakingly laid out every piece and imagined how each would look when sewn to the others. Then I moved them around, tweaking the image in my head to match the new layout. I wanted to emphasize the upper areas of the coat--the shoulders and front collar by using a longer, thicker, lighter area there. For functionality and comfort, I wanted thinner areas under the arms--that area didn't need to be thick for warmth, and it would be easier to move the arms if they weren't encased in massive cocoons of fur. I also wanted to place the hump on the coat where it would have been on the animal--between the shoulder blades on the back. All the fur needed to point down to shed snow. I wanted to keep the option of using the natural edge of the hide on the bottom in lieu of hemming it, and I wanted to use the longer dark guard hair to fall over the wrists--negating the need to hem the cuffs. Finally the biggest consideration of all was that all the pieces needed to all fit on the two hides.

The hides were the winter coats of two bulls. One of them was pristine. It was the work of art that I mentioned earlier in this post. But the other one... I'm not sure why I picked the other one except that it called to me. The tale of sourcing and handpicking the hides is a story for another day, but I mention the condition of the hides now as it added the final frosting on the complexity of the design. 

The second hide had many scuffed and scarred areas down the flanks and around the legs. It was clearly from an old bull who had lived a long life, owned his environment, claimed his place, and dominated his herd. The more I looked this hide, the more I wanted to honor that life in Dave's coat. So I decided that, rather than only use the unmarred areas of the hide, I would incorporate the scuffs and scars to show how badass he had been. 

Finally, pattern laid out, it was time to cut. I didn't even try to pin the pattern pieces to the hide. Instead I laid them on the tanned back side and traced around them with tailor's chalk, Then I used a furrier's knife--a handled tool loaded with a cut-down, double-edged, super-sharp razor blade--to delicately slice through just the hide. I didn't cut the fur, instead pulling it gently apart as I separated the pieces. It took two days, and I am thrilled with the way all the pieces came together. Luck and skill. Luck and skill.

Next up: Let the sewing begin!

Part 1 : The Pattern

To make any garment, you need a pattern, and garment patterns are more complicated than you might think. There are more pieces than just front, back, sleeves, and collar. There are also (at minimum) under collar and front facings. Then there's the way the pieces are sewn together and which lines get moved to size them up or down....  If you are lucky enough to have a pattern with which to start, then you still have to carefully measure your model to make sure that the pattern fits in all the appropriate places. You might think that if you are a size X in ready-made clothes, then all you have to do is buy a pattern for size X garments and they will fit just the same. However, consider this: When you go clothes shopping, does everything you try on in a size X actually fit you? No. Because there is no such thing as either an absolute standard size X pattern or an absolute size X body. 

The next consideration for the pattern is the material for the piece. There are MANY issues with my material. For the purpose of pattern fitting, the biggest one was thickness. The final pattern had to accommodate the thickness of each of the components (sleeves, front, back, collar, etc.) so that Dave would have the ease to move in the finished coat, but it also had to be tailored enough so that he wouldn't be overly hampered by the bulk of it.

Right off the bat I was at a disadvantage because I had no coat pattern. I had a sketchbook containing a "pattern" of an original bison robe coat, i.e., a not-to-scale line drawing of the various pattern pieces with no suggestions on how to measure for them. I had several photographs of the coats worn by Kurt Russell in the Hateful Eight, I had photos of coats made by other craftsmen, and I had a womens' wool coat of my own whose lines I liked. The only true "pattern" I had was the one I use to make Dave's Hawaiian shirts. In my mind, I had a fuzzy image of how I wanted to combine the various elements of the coats in the photographs with the design of my wool coat to make a unique garment. To give me a leg up, I used the shirt pattern for the basic shape of all the pieces. Like I said--garment patterns are complicated and it's hard to tell which edges have to be which lengths in order to sew them together. Collars, facings and sleeves are not as straight-forward to resize as shoulders and sides are. 

It took three days of futzing, changing, and modifying to come up with a first draft pattern to use for the muslin. I had Dave try on my old wool coat for fit, and I made notes for where it needed to be adjusted for him. Then I traced the pieces of the coat (without taking it apart because I really like that coat) and added in the adjustments for his body. Finally I overlaid those pieces with the shirt pattern as additional validation that I was on the right track. When I was satisfied, I cut and sewed the muslin. 

For those unfamiliar with the term, a muslin is a test garment made from muslin or some other inexpensive fabric to test the fit of a pattern. I chose heavy canvas for my muslin to simulate the drape and movement of the finished coat. I lucked out in my choice of canvas fabric from WalMart--the only place in Polson left to buy fabric now that the local quilting store closed--in that it had a stripe pattern and the stripes in the finished muslin gave me a visual reminder of the direction of the grain of each piece. More on grain in the post on cutting the actual hide.

I finished my muslin at 8:00 pm last night, and when Dave tried it on it fit perfectly. There were a couple of places where I needed to extend the length of a piece so it would fit with another piece sewn to it, but those are quick fixes easily made today. The fit and drape were the biggest issues, and they worked out. Was it luck? Skill? A combination of both?  I am not silly enough to think it was all skill, but I'm not falsely modest enough to lay the win entirely at the feet of luck either. It was a good day. 

Happiest New Year!

In years past I would have posted about resolutions and changes. This year I'm blowing past all of that and jumping right into the first project of the year... The Coat! 

For Christmas this year I gave Dave two bison hides, a copy of the Frontier Scout and Buffalo Hunter's Sketch Book, and a promise: A custom-made bison robe coat by mid-January. As I was making the pattern yesterday, I decided to chronicle my progress here. 

So why a bison robe coat? Well, Dave has embraced his new inner Montanan, and saw a picture of the coats made by Merlin's Hide Out on the web. Merlin's made the bison robe coats worn by Kurt Russell in Quentin Tarentino's movie the Hateful Eight. But he didn't want anyone to buy him one, and I (of course) decided that it would be much more fun to make it than buy it anyway!

Though I would love to get into more details, I need to actually go work on it. Tune in tomorrow (really) for initial pics and process!