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Who Has Bedbugs?
I mean, really, who has bedbugs? Nobody I know. Not in my whole life. That particular scourge had never visited upon us. Not even when we traveled and stayed in motels or the homes of other people. Not ever.
And then there were bedbugs. Itchy things. Just like a mosquito, with a swollen bite that itched. A cluster of them, actually.
They don’t last long, by morning the bumps are gone. Not even a red rash where they were, just gone. You mighta dreamed it but it was too itchy to be a dream.
More bugs, bigger clusters. More bugs, more clusters… On the arms, the neck, the feet. Wherever you are not covered by clothing, or wherever the bugs can’t get under the clothing. Sometimes along the waistline where they crawl under your clothes.
We caught them from someone else. We were living in someone else’s house when HE bombed his bedroom. Our bedroom was across the hall, and I’m sure some of those bugs just packed their suitcases and moved across the hall to our bedroom. We moved out a week later. A week after that, we had bedbugs in the new house, only in our bedroom. No other bedrooms were occupied by people.
First a few bites, then the insanity of too many bites to even sleep!
So we did the logical thing. We washed everything we could. Sheets, pillow cases, and blankets. Can’t wash our pillows, wrong kind to wash.
It got somewhat better, but didn’t stop them entirely. And when you wash your sheets, the bugs retaliate and bite you more the first few nights. No idea why they do, but it is a confirmed phenomenon.
So we bought flea powder. This, my friends, is the thingamabob that does the job.
We dusted between the mattress and the box spring. Just lightly.
We dusted under the mattress pad. Just lightly.
We still had bedbugs. For six more days. They got less and less.
We laundered again, and sprinkled a little more flea powder on – between the mattress pad and the mattress cover. We keep the mattress pad in place with a mattress cover.
No bedbugs. Just a little mild wandering itchiness (no bumps) from the flea powder. Zyrtec to the rescue.
I am chemically sensitive, so we used a type labeled as “natural”. Smells of chlorine (I’m terribly allergic to chlorine), but did not irritate me very much.
But the bedbugs are gone, and won’t be back. They have a long life cycle, and generally laundering regularly keeps them at bay unless you have an infestation coming from somewhere else in the home. Once you have them, it takes something to get rid of them, but they don’t easily return if you launder even once a month.
Something about snuggling under the covers and getting all warm and drowsy without thoughts of creeping things waiting in your bedding to feast on you as soon as you drop off…
Ah… Blessed normality again.
Suddenly There Were Aliens
It was a peaceful afternoon, and Kevin was home from work because he only worked 4 days per week. So this was Friday.
We heard a BAM, and then a car revving, and then something flew past the window out on the sidewalk. We could see a car flying past, down the sidewalk, and then back onto the street where the curb apparently ripped out the under carriage and the car ground to a noisy stop.
It was a cute little sports car with a tall insane man inside.
He got out, and began an unstoppable stream of incomplete sentences.
“Woah! That was not supposed to happen I was just…” and he trailed off, took in a deep breath, and went on, “Those guys really had me in…”
He talks about how he was just driving, and then he fell asleep but only for a moment. How he just does not know who it was that pushed his car onto the sidewalk, or why he can’t start it now. He’s telling me that he is worried the cops won’t get it, some are the kind that just get mean about it, some are the kind that understand.
The way I have recounted this may make it appear that he was more comprehensible that he actually WAS. Nothing really hangs together, you have to PIECE it together.
He rambles about driving 300 miles non stop and nothing like this happened the whole trip until now, and how the aliens were there and he apparently does not like that. His sentences are still broken, slightly jumbled, and occur in fits and stops.
He is certain he did not do anything wrong. He is certain it did not just happen. Someone did it. He does not describe the aliens. We are disappointed.
He swerved at an angle onto the outer edge of the driveway of the post office, and the right wheel went onto the sidewalk, and the other was apparently caught by the curved curb at the far edge of the driveway. That made the car stop heading for the post office door (at an angle), and jerked it back toward the road, where the front left corner of his car slammed into the rear wheel of a Toyota Tacoma that was parked there (hence, the BAM) – shattered the truck wheel and tipped the whole thing inward. He then just continued to careen down the sidewalk.
It was a LITTLE car. It skidded the entire way down the sidewalk between the brick wall and the curb, and then between the fence and the curb. Our car was parked on the curb side in the street, and he missed it by a whisker. Clipped a bit of fence post out of the fence though. Amazingly, he even missed the post office mail box that sat on the sidewalk just one side of the driveway – and he SHOULD have hit that!
It was all spectacularly bizarre. A friend of mine owned the Tacoma, I went out to be sure she was ok, but nobody needed me after that, so I went back inside.
Checked back a little later, and he was still talking. Trying to find the right kind of police man no doubt, they were there by then. His car is un driveable, and he’s mad about that, because he was going to keep right on driving, but the curb ripped out the under side of the car, and it won’t go anywhere now. I kinda wonder how he kept it so straight on the sidewalk, or what kind of race track he thought he was on when he was there. WHEEEEEE!
I don’t know what he was on, I don’t live that kind of life. I don’t know how many of those 300 miles he flew in, and how many he just tried to drive.
I do know we did not see the aliens. They apparently did their dirty work and took off before they could be fingered.
On the other hand, took my friend many months before she could laugh about it. She is the one who had the trouble of cleaning up half the mess he made. The aliens did not offer to help her either.
The Absurdity Of “Invasive” Plant Control
Bush Honeysuckle, they cry, MUST be eradicated! It is harmful, they say.
First, they tell you it is not native. Balderdash. It is native. It is recounted in histories and botanical references more than a thousand years ago, and listed as EVERYWHERE in the US that the climate is suitable, and grows into Canada, and some places in Mexico. Whatever history you are reading about someone discovering America, IT WAS HERE WHEN THEY GOT THERE.
Native Americans used it as a medicine, it is used the same as chokecherry, elm, and oak leaf. They called in Honeysuckle Bush, and it is called Roberra, Lee Cho, and Fro Mose in three different Native American languages. I don’t speak them, but a man who does speak all three tells me this, and I have cause to believe he knows.
They’ll tell you it DAMAGES the understory. That it shades out other plants that will grow there, that it leaches toxins into the soil (they say this about everything they hate, even when it is not true), and that it changes the wildlife. Worst of all, deer eat the leaves and the deer them change the ecosystem! Horrors!
They go on to say that it out-competes a similar plant, which they call Native Coralberry (lest you think that it does not really belong here, they insist it is Native). Ironically, Coralberry is a cultivated plant that originated in India, and is documented in more than one place as having been imported and sown into the understory as a shade berry plant because Bush Honeysuckle was NOT PREVALENT ENOUGH! They’ll tell you Bush Honeysuckle is a nuisance, and too aggressive in one breath, and the next they’ll list the advantages of Coralberry and tell you it competes very well and holds it’s own against Bush Honeysuckle.
Key identifiers for Bush Honeysuckle:
Bipinionate leaf structure.
Umbrel shaped growth habit, with branches and leaves that stay fairly orderly and form a canopy on top. Clusters of trunks, up to about 2″ in diameter, growing from a clump, arching up to form the umbrel.
Bright red berries, a little smaller than 1/4″, with a slightly transparent and very glossy skin. Very round, not elongated. NOT on a drupe, short stem.
Berries grow in clusters of 2-4 berries, rarely more, and not heavy like Possumhaw or Yaupon.
Berries grow on TOP of the branch, and at the leaf axils. Berries are very visible because they are dotted on top of the branch, in small clusters.
Leaf is not heavy like holly, and not quite as soft as willow, more like Elm in flexibility. Somewhat rough in feel. Long and tapered (similar overall shape to chokecherry except the point), with a longish curved point at the end. This is a distinctive identifier for it.
The very same things they say are a PROBLEM with Bush Honeysuckle are ALSO TRUE of Coralberry, EXCEPT that NEITHER ONE chokes anything else out, nor shades anything else out, they are JUST LIKE Salt Cedar, they just grow where NOTHING ELSE likes to grow! How could they shade anything else out? They GROW IN DEEP SHADE.
We find in side by side studies, that Coralberry is actually a MORE aggressive spreader than Bush Honeysuckle.
This is just one example of stupidity in this arena.
Salt Cedar is another example, it is not damaging, it does NOT leave salt on the ground, it just grows on alkali banks where nothing else grows, and is of great benefit. The salt leaches UP from inside the soil, and does so whether Salt Cedar is present or not. It anchors the soil along rivers and creeks, preventing erosion. It grows on waterways that have BEEN CHANGED, by man, or by nature, and SLOWS the change, or helps COMPENSATE for the change. It is also NOT invasive, it is NOT a non-native plant, it has been in the Americas since before Leif Erikson (documented by him as that sweet smelling tree we all hate – it has no usable lumber unless very large, and then it is such beautiful lumber they all want it to be bigger, so they hate the tree for being so small that it is not more useful). He said it was plentiful upon all the dry riverbanks.
Native Americans, and people across the world (it is present in dryer climates worldwide), call it Tamarisk, and it is beautiful, having a soft smudgy or misty appearance in pink, yellow, green or white, and a lovely perfume that IS harvested commercially. It fills the air with a sweet aroma in the early summer months. It is beautiful and smells beautiful, it helps the environment and grows where nothing else grows, and someone wants to kill it and leave your creek banks barren, white, and ugly, and no sweet perfume ever.
Kudzu has always been there. Purple loosestrife has always been in the US. Bohemian Vine is native to areas where it is not listed as a threat, and it is kind of pernicious. Canadian Thistle seems to have originated on the last flush somewhere in Kentucky about 800 years ago during a drought when nothing else grew well (natives processed and ate the small buds they were so desperate). Scotch Thistle was named as this by Tennessee Crackers, who had ancestory in Scotland, and named it for the thistle they were familiar with in Scotland. But they most assuredly did NOT bring it here.
Now, there is also some misunderstanding regarding terms.
Noxious means TOXIC. Poisonous. It CANNOT be used interchangeably with any other of the words. MOST plants being vilified (we are not talking about poison ivy), are in fact NOT poisonous, and some are edible (morning glory vine tips are a really great treat cooked with butter and a dash of garlic).
Invasive is supposed to mean non-native to the area, but we can’t find a SINGLE “invasive” plant that is not actually native to the region it is problematic within. They have degraded it to just mean aggressive. It does not mean that it is not good for cattle or other livestock. Often it is GREAT food for them, and they love it, but since you cannot buy it from Purina, someone hates it, and wants you to buy herbicide to kill it so you have to buy your animal feed as well.
Aggressive means it grows more than you want it to. This applies to ALL KINDS of plants, including apple trees (they sucker), prune trees (they sucker), grape vines (they go everywhere), sunflowers (they seed everywhere, some spread by bulb), some kinds of daisies, and many other flowers and weeds that spread by root, or seed. This includes thistles and burrs, which we never like and we often DO have to fight. But this is ALL the great animal feed. It HAS to be aggressive, because animals LOVE it, and just EAT IT TO THE GROUND if it is not a FAST grower, and plentiful spreader. We WANT these if we have livestock to feed.
Nuisance just means it is WHERE you do not want it. It is a weed, because you do not want it where it grows.
County Weed Control wants EVERYTHING to be classed as invasive, because then they get to spray YOUR pastures and lawns, whether you want them to or not. Actually, it is a CRIME for them to do so, there is no LAW (only regulation which is NOT LAW) to force you to stop growing a thing they do not want you to grow. There IS law that prevents ANYONE, including government, from vandalizing your property. They are all about keeping their jobs, growing their own department and budgets, and increasing their power over YOU and your land.
Geez I hate having to talk about this stuff. Gets into ugly areas of corruption.
Use your brain. Think about what they are saying. Most of it does not make sense. Don’t let them persuade you that a thing is a problem if it does a thing and they hate it, but the same thing is an asset to a thing they like. Common Sense does not work that way.
What About That George?
It’s that Muppet’s song. Sung by Rowlf.
You and I and George
[Intro]
Now, here’s one of my very favorite songs (read this with a growly voice)
It’s a romantic little song
It’s called “You and I and George”
I don’t know what George’s last name is
Actually George, well, George came to a very untimely end
Somewhere before bar thirteen
[Verse 1]
You and I and George
Were strolling through the park one day
And then you held my hand as if to say
“I love you”
[Verse 2]
We came to a brook and
George fell in and drowned himself
And float?d out to sea
Leaving you alo-one with m?.
This song is sung with a great deal of feeling and gusto. It leaves an impression on you.
We wonder…
About George.
My friend does not. She wonders about YOU. Where were YOU when George was drowning himself?
Not me.
I wonder about George.
WHY was he drowning himself?
Was the romantic interlude between his supposed friends just too much for him? Poor George. Playing third wheel sucks.
Was he that kind of guy, always trying to get attention? Well, he probably deserved it.
Was he the guy who just HAD to do everything he was told NOT to do? Now we feel a bit better about the whole thing.
Was George 5? Well, I don’t think George can be 5. Nobody will ever sing the song again. Poor little thing, left alone by you and I…
Many people, I am told, delve deeply into other questions left by this song. I don’t. After all, why ponder where YOU were when George was floating out to sea? You were probably on the bank waving goodbye… after all, there wasn’t anything you could DO about it, he was already dead.
I am also told there is an entire Mystery Book written about this song. It is seven pages. In large print.
Then there are those who wonder about I. Where was I when it all went wrong? Who was REALLY to blame? It could have been I.
Sigh…
It often is.
You are probably going to take it, aren’t you?
We Have To Talk About Cockroaches
Nobody wants to admit it when they have roaches in their home. Can’t really blame them, but it means NOBODY talks about what works, and what does not.
We have NEVER had cockroaches in our home. Well… One. Once. Seriously. Just one. We killed it. Never saw another. I think it came in on clothing that someone gave my kids.
But roaches in our home? It NEVER happened. We never lived where they were THAT kind of problem, and we never were so dirty that roaches loved us.
We moved. Right into the middle of the US. We’ve lived in this time zone before, further south, and didn’t have roaches then.
But this house has them. We are staying with someone else for a while, and they have roaches. Terribly bad. But getting better.
Once you have them, and they are well entrenched, it is a different thing than having just one. Or even two (they breed, you know, even roaches can apparently attract something to copulate with). There are hundreds here. In the corners, in the cupboards, under furniture, IN furniture, in the drawers, in the sink, even in the fridge and pantry.
EEEEEYYOOOOOO!
They have fought them. They listened to ALL the ads. And since nobody talks about roaches, they have been at the mercy of advertisers, without much else to help them deal with these. The homeowner researches well, but the web is skewed. He gets articles by makers of traps and poisons. And most of them lie.
He used bombs. Tomcat bombs. They were useless. Other bombs can work, but they leave a lot of residue that is very harmful to people and pets.
He used insect spray. They laughed.
He used a different insect spray. You can smell it. Cockroaches like it. We don’t know if it works or not.
He used traps. White ones. They barely work. He set out black ones instead.
We added more black traps. The big ones, and the small ones. They work, but slowly and indifferently. You can tell that they work because they leave dead bugs everywhere. On the counters, on the floors, in things, under things. Deal with it, dead roaches don’t breed.
We added sticky traps. They work. The roaches like them IF you fold up the trap into a box. Don’t use the ones that only lay flat, that is for mice (and if they have enough glue on them, they DO work for mice, you just lay them where you see mouse trails). Mice don’t like traps, they won’t go in if you fold them up. But roaches like the dark, so they go into boxed traps. The more roaches you have in there, the more likely they are to go in, because they congregate in dark places.
Now those sticky traps are THE THING to catch roaches. You don’t just have to let them sit there and HOPE they’ll get one, you can use them to go hunting!
Turn it up like a stovepipe. Put it over the roach. Wait 5-20 minutes, and the roach will have gotten bored and tried to climb. HA! Sticks to be him! (That was a little joke there in case you didn’t notice.)
So now you have a trap that is all wrong. Sitting there waiting for the ONE roach you caught to get stuck. Only you CAN catch more. Just SLIDE that puppy over the surface (counter, table, whatever), and when you see another one, TIP it and catch the next roach. As long as you SLIDE to the right, and TIP the right side (or the opposite), the roaches already caught will be on the side that is still anchored to the surface, and they won’t have time to run out.
I had a busy morning a few days ago and caught EIGHT small roaches in just a minute, using a single boxed sticky trap. You have to be fast, it is harder to catch big ones than little ones, they just run faster.
So the thing is, roaches do not like the light. So another thing you can do is keep LIGHT in your house. Open curtains in the morning, or use lightweight and light colored drapes that let sunlight in. This really reduces the roaches.
Put a lid on your kitchen garbage. Roaches LOVE garbage. They breed there.
On the one hand, we say, don’t leave a lot of food in the garbage. At least not for long. It is a nice trick to clean out the fridge and leave it overnight in an open garbage, and then bundle it all up and tie it off in the morning. As long as you don’t have mice… Because this can attract roaches into it, and then you throw them away.
But leaving food garbage forever in the corner of your kitchen is a bad idea.
You also want to keep the garbage with food in a SINGLE place in the house. Don’t put food in other garbage cans, it multiplies the problems.
Now, when you fight roaches they will diminish, and then bloom again. Damp weather just brings them out. They love to infest your house on humid days.
When they explode again, they will be BABIES. Little tiny bugs crawling everywhere. Take them seriously, they become BIG bugs crawling everywhere. Go hunting with that sticky trap. WIN!
They love heat. They’ll be a worse problem (with BIGGER roaches) in warm weather, and hot climates. Nuthin you can do about it, but fight them.
They eat all the food. Don’t leave food out. Put it away right after meals.
Wash the dishes promptly. Don’t leave them overnight. RINSE them before you leave them on the counter to wash later. We just don’t leave food on them to feed nasty bugs.
If you buy Pasta in boxes, or other foods that are only contained in paper, WRAP THEM UP or BOX THEM UP in plastic bags or totes, or canisters. Make sure the roaches can’t eat it before you do.
Since they like dark corners, reduce the number of dark corners in your house. ESPECIALLY near sinks, or anywhere else that is likely to attract moisture or grunge.
Don’t leave your sink drain baskets on the counter, either put them under the sink somewhere, or leave them in the drain. Roaches love them, they provide a nice sheltered place to breed and hide.
I am assured you CAN win. But that you rarely do. There’s just so much they can feed on.
I am also told that they are a constant problem where they can live outside. That it is not as difficult to win if you are in a northern state.
Insect and mouse poisons and traps seem to get LESS effective every year. My mother’s dog ate TWO rat poison bricks, and didn’t seem bothered by it at all. Now I think that’s a problem. Shoulda KILLED her. The mice and rats just eat it and go right on messing up the house.
Additional Strategies that I have learned…
Don’t give them anywhere to breed that can be eliminated.
I don’t have a utensil jar on my counter, they love them.
Every single thing you put on the counter has space UNDER it for them to breed. So we must be careful what we put there, and whether we really need it or whether we can eliminate the dark spaces underneath.
Every dirty dish is also an invitation. Sigh. We struggle so with dishes. Like sweeping ants, they just crawl back onto the counter with same dirt on them every day, right?
So RINSE your dishes, and stack them neatly, and WASH them at least once daily. No guilt over just once. Life demands, and most of us cannot wash dishes after every meal.
Use the dishwasher to hold the dirties if you can. Just rinse and put right in, and close it. No roaches there. This does require some management though, you MUST empty it as soon as it is done, or no later than the following morning. Otherwise you run out of room for the clean and dirty both.
Don’t have a dishrack with hiding space under it. We have the classic Rubbermaid rack and drainer. I am switching to a double decker elevated rack with removable drainer trays, that is light in color and reflects light under it. Less opportunity for roaches to hide and breed there. The old Rubbermaid has a drainer with lots of hiding space in a configuration that they love. You CAN get one of those in clear plastic, but it is frosted on the surface, instead of really transparent, so it does not repel them fully.
Don’t leave grease and dirt in the sink either. Just hose it down with hot water if you cannot do anything else.
The sink here is also a problem, it is a recessed sink, with no flange over the top. The countertop is an inch and a half thick, and the sink is mounted below that. There is a nice pocket there between the two (curved V shaped), and the roaches run in and out of that like it was made to be their apartment dwelling. If you have things like this, use clear silicone caulk to fill the gap, so they have no room to hide.
If you have a Trash Compactor, you save a lot on dumpster space, but OH, the cost. Compactors USED to be sealed, behind, under, on top, beside, and they had a rubber gasket on the door. They aren’t anymore, and you have this great big roach breeder that churns out new generations of roaches and feeds them all, with lots of dark hidey holes so they never get completely caught. If you can’t seal it, you need to spray inside that cabinet regularly, and put some traps or bait in behind.
(Statistically, according to Orkin, homes with Trash Compactors have both HIGHER AND LOWER roach rates. How is this? They recently divided their results, and found upon further research that the LOWER rates were for SEALED cabinet Trash Compactors, and the HIGHER rates were for Unsealed cabinets. The difference is astonishing. Sealed cabinets have less than HALF the rate of roach infestation in the entire home. Unsealed Trash Compactors have more than THREE TIMES the rate of roach infestation. Further, infestations where there are Unsealed Trash Compactors are more intractible, and are almost impossible to eradicate.)
It can help to put a bug bomb inside the Compactor and bomb it with the door closed, but as long as the access to food is not stopped, the beasts will continue to multiply in the food zone.
So this leads us to garbage cans. Two major issues:
First, keep it closed. Get one that is sufficiently sealed that roaches cannot come and go at will, and then keep it shut when not putting things in. Ok, so I get it, this is REALLY HARD with kids or other family in the home. I raised 7 kids, remember? And we never had roaches. But our garbage can was ALWAYS a problem in this way, and it was always the place where somebody splattered tomato sauce. Why is is always tomato sauce?
That leads to the second point. Keep the wall behind clean. You see, I really did have kids in my kitchen. We anchored a layer of white corrugated plastic panels to the wall behind the trash. It often looked messy, but did clean up easier than our lovely wallpaper.
Some people have trouble with open garbage cans under the sink. The entire cabinet becomes a haven for crawling things. Others have problems because the entire house is filled with open trash cans that have food wrappers and refuse in them. Keep it to ONE can, and that needs to be a closed one, OR make sure ALL of the cans are closed.
Experts report that roaches will live and breed inside furniture. I don’t know if this is true or not, I cannot see inside my furniture. But it means that if you have roaches and move, the roaches move with you.
Those same experts assure that they DO NOT LIVE LONG where there is not food for them. Just like coons, they must have a food source, and if you supply it, you can kill all the roaches you like, and more will come because there is still food. But remove the food, and the roaches die, and the coons move out. Granted, sometimes we CAN, and sometimes we cannot. I could not get rid of my chickens and rabbits, and the coons ate spill from them. But we COULD fasten the trash cans better, and keep the lids anchored on, and the coons living under the porch (we could not drive them out, the porch is too low), moved OUT. True story.
Orkin says roaches cannot live indefinitely on dander and hair. They need OTHER nutrients not provided by those. So if you keep the house generally clean, and keep the dishes washed and the gunk scrubbed up, and the food unroachable, roaches won’t stick around. They won’t have enough to live on, and they will move OUT of your bedroom and then out of the kitchen.
Messes should be wiped up promptly, and counters wiped down when dishes are done.
Fruit in bowls will feed roaches if it is overripe. They’ll eat holes in it.
Partially used bags or boxes of cereal, pasta, flour, sugar, potato chips, and other ingredients should be sealed up. Drop them into a zip bag, put them in containers, store them in totes, or whatever that is bug proof. Don’t buy groceries for the roaches.
An outlier I heard about, the roaches were breeding in the WATER HEATER CLOSET, because they had a pack rat there bringing in all sorts of things that the roaches loved. Big old nasty mess.
Some people report that they love laundry. We have not found that this is so, but our laundry does not have seriously dirty clothing with food remains, or dampness that would attract them. It is also done promptly, weekly (thank my husband, he is just the Laundry King, and rocks this job), it does not lay around on the floor, it is always in a basket. In the corner of the kitchen here though (the washer and dryer are there), if a towel is dropped by the dryer, it will have roaches under it within a few hours. So keep your laundry baskets and your laundry room tidy, without piles of stinking sticky or damp laundry.
What is astonishing me is the degree to which I have to change the way I live in order to banish the roaches. A thing I never had, I cannot get rid of, living the way I always did and DIDN’T have them. It tells me it is easier to never have them than to get rid of them once you do. Sorta like bad habits…
Here, I believe the unwinnable battle centers on the kitchen garbage, because it is an unsealed Trash Compactor. There is nothing I can do about it, and perhaps the home owner cannot either. But I know if I EVER have a Trash Compactor (I really like it for consolidating garbage), I will have to ensure that the cabinet for it is sealed.
I am told that a Trash Compactor can be sealed up. I think a trash can that has holes in it (many that are designed for bags have holes in the botttom that bugs can enter) can be done the same way.
Suggestions include using patching made of either inner tube, plastic kitchen cutting mat, or other thick plastic scrap, stuck in place using Shoe Goo, or other strong silicone based adhesive. Patching may be done using silicone caulk also, to caulk the holes shut inside the cabinet.
A gasket may be purchased, and there are several cut to length types that can be used, as well as nitrile or PVC rubber sheeting cut into strips. This is also glued inside using Shoe Goo, to form a continuous barrier around the edge of the door where it meets the cabinet front on the Compactor. Make sure the corners do not gap where ends meet.
In the mean time, perhaps a vigorous spray may help…
Fight the fight, brave ones! It IS getting better as we make the effort.
Cockroach Battle Plan
1. Secure the Food. Food storage in roachproof containers, leftovers promptly put away.
2. Minimize Messes. Clean up counters, floors, and tables each time spills occur. When you cook, Clean As You Go. Tidy your laundry stations. Make sure you don’t have oddball breeding places for them
3. Secure the Dishes. Do dishes daily, store dirties in the dishwasher if possible, rinse them and stack them compactly if you have to keep them on the counter.
4. Secure the Trash. Trash in roach proof containers. Don’t leave trash anywhere else, empty trash before it overflows and lets roaches in.
5. Let in the light. Curtains that let light filter through, curtains or blinds open in the daytime.
6. Reduce hiding places. Reduce the places roaches hide and breed.
7. Put out boxed sticky traps and big black bait stations. Put them everywhere the roaches love to inhabit or hide. Go hunting. Spray if necessary and if you can tolerate it.
8. THIS IS WAR!!! The roaches must not win. (Now, if we can just keep them from getting elected…)
Legal Absurdities
It was just a farmer’s market. A small one. One with pretentions for grandeur.
First, they informed all the vendors that if they wanted to participate, they must be compliant with all “regulations”.
Now, in the first place, regulations are NOT LAW. They are guidelines. Recommendations. Not even exactly legal requirements since they aren’t EVEN Civil Law. Just something that the state harasses you about until you give in and let them enforce them on you. Sigh.
But the farmer’s market board does not understand this, and does not want to. They require that all vendors sign that they will be in compliance with regulations (and the regulations are specified). These regulations require licensing for some things.
They also burden the vendors with many unreasonable requirements, and some reasonable ones. That isn’t what this is about, really, but it just goes along with officiousness where it impedes the intent of the event. They can’t quite figure out that their primary purpose is to help people honestly earn from local sales. They have to make sure that the vendors only do it in an “approved” way, and that they sell only the things that the board thinks will make the market look good. This year EVERY SINGLE ITEM that you sold had to be approved by them, and even if you wanted to bring ANOTHER item that they had already approved for someone else, they did not want you to sell it unless YOU were personally approved to sell that thing!
All this bother for a TWO HOUR PER WEEK market!
It’s $25 for the entire season. Most people just give in. Just like the government.
We get to the farmer’s market and there is a big sign there. “Food sold here has not been regulated, licensed, certified or inspected.”
Wait a minute.
They REQUIRED it to be “regulated”.
Some vendors CHOOSE to license, seek certifications, or invite inspections. Some vendors are PROFESSIONALS who choose to do that. Some are PROFESSIONALS who choose not to!
But after requiring the vendors to DO SO, they now warn the public that it HAS NOT BEEN DONE.
So when an entity decides to ENFORCE regulations on independent vendors, they do not DECREASE their own liability, they INCREASE IT. Because THEY have now ASSUMED the role of ENFORCING it. Voluntarily.
If they really wanted to avoid being sued, they would simply say, “All legal compliance is the responsibility of the vendor, the market entity is not responsible for enforcing any legal or regulatory compliance.” and leave it at that. This is the escape route, rather than taking it on, along with the entire load of liability.
But to then declare that NO regulation (or other compliance) has been done is not merely an insult to their vendors, it is a further invitation for suit. The vendors can sue them for posting a false declaration. The CUSTOMERS can sue them for misleading statements.
Kinda dumb. They want to control so badly that they do it backward in both directions.
I made enough to justify the $25 fee, the transportation, and the time to get there. Barely.
I predict that next year they will have another layer of impeding controls laid down upon the unsuspecting vendors who really just want to bring part of a local business into the public eye long enough each week to increase their earnings.
Keep it up farmer’s markets. You’ll eventually put YOURSELF out of business.
Math Doesn’t Lie, Even For Housing
House prices as listed by Realtors are now OBSCENE. I mean that. Outright Psychopathic – not merely Psychotic, but Evil, Cruel, Insane, Brutal, Psychopathic.
You are told that every house sells fast. You are told that they sell for outrageous prices (and they do, but not what you think). You are told there are no affordable rentals or sales.
You are being lied to. We are seeing for sale signs for YEARS in front of houses. Outrageous prices are 1/5 of the list price, NOT the list price. There ARE affordable houses, but no way to find them.
There are metrics that EVERY community has to have. If they do not have them, the community COLLAPSES.
The Median Household Income in MOST areas of the US is around $50k. The Census Bureau reports it at $74k and DECLINING. But they SKEW the number to make it higher, by eliminating everyone on Public Assistance (this eliminates about 3/5 of people who are under the Poverty Level, and this accounts for the adjustment). Other experts insist that the Median Household Income for the US is actually closer to $41.5k if you adjust for some housing issues (basement rented to family, two families, two households, counted as one), and some additional income issues (counting earnings from outside the US while residing outside, counting some kinds of savings payouts as income, etc).
So the metric is this:
MEDIAN housing prices (for a basic, comfortable 3 br house) HAVE to be available at 1/100 of TWICE the Median Household Income. That means $1000 per month. For a 3 BR.
Currently they tell you you cannot even get a shabby 2 BR for that, and many places want you to believe this will get you a Studio apartment (often a remodeled strip motel room). They’ve been pushing this one for a LONG LONG time, and we are too used to rents hurting.
Median Single Earner Household Income is the next lynchpin. That runs at 3/5 of general Median Household Income – or $30k. That works out to $600 per month for a 2 br. Normal, average, sorta comfortable 2 br in liveable condition.
Now, this HAS TO EXIST. If it does not, you have NO minimum wage workers in your communities! You have no earners for less than about $20 per hour – they MOVE OUT because they cannot afford to live in the community.
MORE SO in College Towns, because young families with parent in school CANNOT AFFORD high priced housing, and in fact, Financial Aid just CANNOT go far enough EVEN WITH part time or even full time jobs! School is EXPENSIVE.
If you have no workers in this category, you lose EVERYTHING.
- You lose hotels.
- You lose Fast Food.
- You lose Grocery Stores.
- You lose gas stations and convenience stores.
- You lose local delivery.
- You lose carpentry, framers, roofers, home repair.
- You lose classroom aids, and MANY teachers.
- You lose DAYCARE ENTIRELY.
- You lose production line manufacturing workers.
- You lose road construction laborers – a few make more, but most not.
- You lose phone call centers ENTIRELY, and they move out.
- You lose ALL cashiers, bank tellers, and clerks.
- You lose office workers of all kinds.
- You lose lower to mid level government and corporate workers.
- You lose part time artisans and crafters.
- You lose agriculture – land prices skyrocket and they move on because they can’t earn enough to cover it. (Industry analysts say this one goes early.)
- You lose mechanics – most do NOT make big bucks, and those who DO make more than $20 per hour are the exception, and have worked their way up for a LONG time.
Once this begins, it CASCADES. You don’t just lose workers, you lose the BUSINESSES that depend upon them. First, they raise wages, and then, they close their doors.
It does not stop with low bar earners. It reaches into higher tiers because they OFTEN reside with a lower income earner, and they BOTH move out.
The next phase is that Services that a community NEEDS are no longer there.
Wealthy people leave first on the receiving end of things. They just WON’T stay in an area that does not offer conveniences.
The upper middle income leaves next. And once they go, EVERYTHING collapses.
This process rarely completes fully, usually a correction occurs, and housing opens up again. But in the mean time, it can get VERY ugly.
Now, there are various lies out there to “explain” this. It is different in every area, but here are two that we have heard:
- Rich people from Salt Lake and California are moving in here and paying half a million for a vacation property.
- Rich people are tired of Vegas and L.A (Houston, New York City, Miami, Chicago, Boston, DC, etc)., and are paying half a million for a property to relocate to. This one is regional, with a different city listed for each region.
- They are selling for AirBNB.
- There’s a factory coming in that is taking up all the housing for employees.
- Refugees are taking all the cheap properties.
- We are also told that houses “appraise” for ten times their value.
- That high interest rates are skewing the markets.
Lies. PROVABLE lies.
First off, there AREN’T ENOUGH RICH PEOPLE IN SALT LAKE AND CALIFORNIA to buy THAT MANY houses at THOSE PRICES. There aren’t even enough of them in the entire US to create a housing crunch in even a single community, let alone in the entire country. (And before we hear the myth that rich foreigners are buying them, you need to understand that rich foreigners don’t exist… Incomes in Europe average FAR lower than the average inside the US, and there are FEWER people living above what we class as poverty level, and FAR fewer living above OUR median income levels. When they buy outside of EU, they buy cheap condos or cabins, but mostly they rent hotel rooms for short vacations because they can’t afford to maintain a second house full time. There are not NEARLY enough of them to affect the housing prices here.)
Second, there aren’t ENOUGH RICH PEOPLE WHO WILL PUT UP WITH SMALL TOWN LIMITATIONS to relocate to the places in question here. They want a CITY. A BIG ONE. Not enough jobs in small towns and small cities to absorb THAT MUCH. Especially AT THOSE INCOMES. And there aren’t enough of them to affect a large town either.
Third, the incomes required here are ENORMOUS. They are in the top 0.000034% of earners in the US. Incomes over $2m per year are RARE, and that is what it takes to keep selling million dollar homes, and it works out to less than 500 people in the US who can afford them. Incomes of $1m per year are a 0.0026% factor. That works out to about 8666 people in the US with that kind of income, and that works out to about 173 per state, only 2% of whom WANT a second home, and even if you tip MOST of them over into a single location, it still is NOT ENOUGH to have more than a MINIMAL effect on a single location. There are not enough rich people to cause this in all the areas it is claimed for. There are even too few who make over $100k to have THAT KIND of effect nationwide, as is claimed, and there is NO WAY they are all going to go to the same place.
Fourth, they don’t buy an EXPENSIVE vacation property. They buy a CHEAP ONE. You can’t AFFORD two huge mortgages, you can only afford one, IF you can afford one.
Fifth, retirees also do not buy expensive. They buy cheap.
Sixth, AirBNB is NEVER a big thing, and it is NEVER lucrative. People don’t generally stay in private rented vacation homes, they stay in hotels. They are suspicious of private rentals for vacations, and they tend to NEVER pay for an entire house unless they overload it with extended friends and family, and leave it a mess. Owners of AirBNB (and former owners) tell terrible stories, and a very high percentage go into foreclosure or they either rent by the year or sell out entirely within 6 months. It just isn’t a way that you CAN make money due to how it operates and how people think about vacations and overnight or temporary rentals. Would you rent a house for $600 per night when you can get a clean hotel room for less than $100? Statistically, only ONE vacation house rents for every 300 hotel rooms. The market would be saturated in this valley with six rented homes, yet people say they are all selling for that… that half the homes here are AirBNB. Not possible.
Factories being talked about, moving into LARGE cities (they won’t locate elsewhere), only need an average of 40 employees. A few larger need as many as 200. NOT ENOUGH to even make a DENT in a fair sized city. 200 employees in a town of 100,000 are lost in the crowd. Heck, that many will have moved out as the new ones move in.
Refugees are the same as rich people. There just aren’t enough of them, and they are not living in low income properties, they are living in flop houses and shelters, and other places while they try to find someone to hire them. The life of a refugee is horrendous, and they lose sponsors as fast as they gain them. There just aren’t enough of them to affect the housing markets anyway, especially in cities that are not landing zones. This isn’t even an issue in Miami except in about three very small districts, and they are OBVIOUSLY racial communities.
Houses do not appraise for 10 times what the populace can afford to pay for them. They just can’t. Houses don’t sell when people make half the amount of the payment due on the mortgage. Crooked appraisers puff prices to keep the idea of high prices in play.
High interest rates do NOT increase prices of houses. In fact, they DECREASE them, because when interest rates are high, monthly payments and loan costs go UP. They go WAY up. An $800 payment can go to $1100 just from a significant change in interest rates. That means people HAVE to have LOWER housing prices to afford to live.
Even if ALL OF THE LIES WERE TRUE, it still is NOT ENOUGH to affect the entire nation, and we find that these lies are being told in EVERY CITY, and even in the small rural towns. It can’t be true everywhere.
Let’s do some of the math.
A half a million dollar home costs UPWARD of $5000 per month for the payments. We know this.
A $100k home is MEDIAN for a $50k income. And that is a $1000 per month payment.
Landlords and banks BOTH just won’t qualify someone on LESS INCOME for that payment. They REQUIRE $50k to get a $100k loan. If there are variances they are SMALL ONES, not huge ones, so you might get a $100k loan on $42k, but you WON’T get a $200k loan on $50k.
Now, let’s examine the meaning of Median.
It means the MIDDLE OF THE AVERAGE. That means SOME will be higher, and SOME will be lower, but the spread is NOT EVEN. Higher incomes disperse more, and the very high incomes are VERY INFREQUENT. The lower ones cluster in the survivable ranges, and about ONE THIRD have LOWER incomes than median, and about ONE THIRD have CLOSE to Median on either side.
People, there just AREN’T enough RICH PEOPLE in the WORLD to skew housing like you are being told.
So what IS happening?
I can identify only TWO factors that are not being talked about. And they are big.
- The internet is broken. Craigslist is broken, Etsy is broken, Ebay is scary twisted, Google is outright fraudulent and broken (search results are screwy messed up and way incomplete), online real estate listings are outdated and fraudulent, online rental listings are even worse. In short, you cannot look up ANYTHING accurate online for housing, especially rentals. The days of finding a house online are long gone.
- Print is broken. There are NO LISTINGS in newspaper classifieds for rentals. There are only puffed and outrageous pie in the sky real estate listings – the majority, by the way, WITHOUT PRICES (always an indication of a con).
This means that DEALS ARE THERE. But nobody knows where. Landlords have forgotten how to promote an available rental. You CAN’T find it except word of mouth, and even THAT is mostly broken. People have forgotten how to personally network.
What we get are Property Management Companies, and Realtors, both of whom are so screwy insane with greed and avarice right now that they JUST WON’T let you rent ANYTHING under “their pricepoint”. And that can be ANYTHING crazy high.
Some of the tricks they try:
- They will discount your income – eliminate many legit types of income from consideration as earnings, so you can’t qualify even for a low pricepoint.
- They charge an “application fee”, and that can be anywhere from $40 to CRAZY HIGH. We encountered one at $80, when they quoted $40 (then they tell us that it is for EACH ADULT). Non refundable. They disqualify you, sucks to be you, you just gambled $40 or more, and lost. And they KNOW they can just yank you and you will never know the truth of whether they already rented the place and just disqualified you to keep the fee. Yeah, it’s a thing. A BIG one. We consider application fees to be a scam, NO MATTER WHO CHARGES THEM (Yes, you, Century 21, and other major Real Estate companies.) This is also done by companies that HAVE NO RENTALS, they just make them up, and charge fees and disqualify. This is also done by Banks and Realtors for housing purchases, with the same spread of fraud and extortion.
- They bait and switch. $975 says the listing on their website. “Oh, that one is $1200.” they tell you. (True story.)
- They maintain OUTDATED listings. Everything affordable is still listed, but no longer available.
- They want you to fill out the application, but they are REALLY BACKWARD about scheduling a viewing of a rental. Sometimes happens with purchase, but tends to be “look at the outside we can’t let you in” version. Can we say, “Con”?
- They LIST the property at one price, and SELL it at another, and then report that it “SOLD” as a $— listing. The sale price is generally LESS THAN HALF of the listing price if it is one of those outrageously high priced listings. You think that you KNOW, because someone at the courthouse who files deeds says this is what is selling and they see it every day. But DEEDS NEVER LIST THE SALE PRICE. Neither does the purchase notice (essentially a bill of sale but without the price listed). It says, “for $10 plus other considerations”, rather than a full price listed. So “comps” you see are ALWAYS on LIST PRICE, and NEVER on SALE PRICE.
- Corruption is Rife. Realtors have been taken over by greedy leeches who believe that if they PRICE it high, they can FORCE YOU to pay more, whether you can afford it or not (with the irony that they won’t approve you anyway because your income is not high enough). Once one company starts it, the rest fold and go all in. The world is being run by people who disconnect their “neat idea” from the dysfunction it causes (how else can we explain Colorado’s current love affair with Roundabouts – I mean, we expect this kind of dysfunction in Great Britain, but NOT in America). Get a clue Realtors – you are NOT selling puffed properties like you think you can, and for many of you, NOTHING is moving. We are NEVER prepared to suffer THAT MUCH, to try to make an extortionate payment every month with eviction hanging over our heads if we fail, just so you can scrape 200% of a reasonable sale price. (Many versions of the high price scams, going from crooked breach of contract on sales where the owner gets ripped off, the buyer gets ripped off, and the realtor takes it out of the middle, all the way to involvement of crooked banks or bank loan officers. LOTS of criminal behavior, as well as just merely dishonest, as though there is something such as merely dishonest).
Work it out. The math HAS to work, or it is DECEPTION.
What we are being told is NOT TRUE, no matter who insists that it is.
But I suppose the high prices do have more gossip value than the real world. I am ever shocked at how many people would rather believe the lie than to apply some common sense and math to see the truth and possibly see a solution.
Sizzix – I Gave It Away And Then I Learned
As a die cutter, this thing sucks. I mean, the dies DO NOT CUT anything. They PRESS an indentation into things, but the dies don’t even have sharp edges!
So I tried to sell it. Nobody wants it. I set it out to give it away. Nobody wants it. DI, here it comes.
Then I learn it does other things.
It can be used as a print press. Watercolor prints, transferred ink prints, and other types of prints that you dampen and then press into another piece of paper.
Not really my crafty thing. But hey, who knew?
It can be used as a flower press. You know those prints they make from fresh flowers? Lay then down, push them into the paper, and you get a print from the colors of the flower. This thing works for that.
Again, not really my thing, but I really just had to write about it in case you are one of those people who bought a Sizzix or some other kind of die cutter that doesn’t actually CUT anything.
Press it does. Cut it does not!
Dogface In The Morning
I ate some chicken. It doesn’t matter WHOSE chicken, or where, probably ANY chicken would have done it. (A few months ago the water went off here – smelled of chemicals, badly. I’ve been having severe allergic reactions ever since. Necessary backstory, I suppose.)
Somewhere in the middle of the night I wake, and my lips feel funny. Sorta like the novacaine is wearing off, only fat and puffy. It happens sometimes, and it is never even. Various parts of my face swell up and itch – it isn’t hives, this is LOTS of swelling, and a little bit of itch. It hits one side of my lips (never the same one twice in a row), one side of the top lip, sometimes the other side of the bottom lip, sometimes my chin, sometimes my cheeks, occasionally under my eyes.
This time it is everything. But not on both sides. One side has more than the other, and it isn’t balanced at all.
I look like a dog.
A sad dog.
A St. Bernard.
I’m not quite drooling. Small blessings.
I take the Zyrtec. It isn’t quite up to it.
Oddly I can breathe through my nose for the rest of the night. The swelling doesn’t go down, but it doesn’t go up either. It does not progress to congestion and severe asthma. But my whole face has lumps and distortions.
I wake in the morning and it is still very swollen. I know how this one goes, as I move my face, the swelling will go down. Takes about an hour. This time it takes three… four. Geez. After about two hours I still looked like I had Bell’s Palsy on one side, sorta saggy. It isn’t that my face is saggy, more like there just isn’t room for it all up higher.
My lip still doesn’t FEEL normal, but my upper lip on the left, the last place to resolve, is finally NOT looking like a middle aged man who just shaved for the first time in 10 years and everybody can see how much his lip has grown.
I’m no longer a St. Bernard though. So that’s good.
The Loom That Laura Made
Handmade Shoelace (Band) Loom
The yarn here is handspun, and then plied, so it is a fine spun thread that has been plied into a two ply yarn.
I am using a single ply, thinner, weft thread, and this pulls it to give it a somewhat scalloped appearance on the sides of the finished ribbon.
This loom was made of thin wall trim, glued together with shoe goo. I made the shuttle and heddles also. More shoe goo.
The warp winds around another wood piece on the back, and I use the two clamps to anchor that wood piece so it won’t unwind.
I also peeled and scraped two pieces of elm branch, to use as raddles at the top. They separate the threads (use the heddle – drop it and insert one raddle, then raise it and insert the other raddle), so they don’t get tangled at the top of the loom. This is how I used it the first time.
Shown here is a SECOND heddle, right at the top of the loom, and I used that on this weaving, to see if it was easier to keep the warp threads from tangling as they unwound from the wood piece on the back. It did help – I didn’t use the raddles at first, but put them in later for this picture to show what they were supposed to be doing. Use of the second heddle there is not needed, it is just an optional thing. Once you start weaving, it doesn’t do anything to help things stay neater if the raddles are in use.
When warping the loom, the second heddle in the back can be moved out to the ends of the warp threads to keep them neat and even as you roll the warp onto the back stick. I kept that heddle just in front of the threads I was winding onto the stick, and it kept them neat and even as they went on.
I’m only using this for shoelaces. It is really too small for any other kind of compressed warp weaving, the heddles that fit it are just too narrow. I could use it for narrow balanced weavings that turn out the full width of the heddle, but it would still be mighty small stuff!
You can see the finished lace, and it is pulled down and wrapped around the back brace on the loom, and held there by a binder clip.
To advance the warp, I remove the binder clip, take off the two pink clips, and then unroll the warp stick. I then refasten the pink clips, and pull on the finished weaving to pull the unrolled warp thread up and over, through the heddle and raddles (again, only one or the other is really required at this point). I pull it very tight and re-clip the finished weaving to the back brace. All the rest of the finished lacing dangles off in a pile.
This loom is pretty tiny, and the working space (space between the obstacles at the top, and the frame at the bottom) where you can actually WEAVE, is very short. I have to advance the warp about every 4″. I think this is about as small as I’d ever want to make a loom for making ribbon or bands, or shoelaces.
People do use smaller looms – pin looms, tiny tapestry looms, H looms, and other little bitty things. They are used for small weavings, pieced projects, etc.
This little loom holds up to a 15 dent heddle – that means 15 holes, and 14 slots, for 29 threads total. If using larger yarn it makes a fairly wide piece, and the warp is not compressed. Once you go to band weaving with a compressed warp though, it narrows down considerably, and will only make half that width or narrower, depending on thread weight (the narrower the thread, the narrower the finished piece).
Is it fun? It is faster than I thought it could be – feels faster, anyway. The warping is tedious and awkward. The advancement of the warp is tiresome. The weaving itself is boring, as weaving tends to be. But it is a calm and simple thing to do when I’m tired, or when I’m occupied with something else and just need to keep my hands busy. I don’t really binge Netflix, I’m not the type anymore, but I do spin or weave in the evenings when we watch a movie, and sometimes during the day when I have to sit down.
I’ll be making another of these, much wider. I want to do wider pieces of compressed warp weavings, with band style straight weave and complex weave designs. I have more homemade heddles that have more than one row of holes in them, to vary the weave type.
UPDATE: I did make another wider loom to make wider weavings on, and when I made this first loom I had also made a beveled shuttle. It took several days of sanding and shaping (I only had hand tools to do it). It was pretty hard to do, and I had no motivation to do another one, especially the larger one I really needed. But I had a 4 inch one (Inkle style), when I discovered how to make a simple shuttle from popsicle sticks. I used the stick shuttle for several sets of laces, and found it to be functional, but sometimes awkward due to having to keep track of two ends as I worked it through the warps.
Today, three weeks after this initial post, I tried the beveled shuttle. It is FAR easier to use, it just slides through without hanging up. I’m really glad I learned to make the popsicle stick shuttle, but I’m much happier using the beveled shuttle.
Warp Speed
Weaving, that is. Star Trek never had this.
I don’t have pictures yet. Sorry. But I need to write anyway.
I have a SampleIt Loom. Have had for a few years now. I got it soon after I started spinning. If you spin, you have to USE the yarn you make, or the thread you make. But then, you also have to make ENOUGH thread or yarn.
Problem was, I didn’t have enough of any one thing to really DO anything with on the loom, and warping the loom requires space that I did not have. Still don’t. So my loom sits in the corner, lonely and abandoned looking, gathering dust. Too costly to let it do that forever, I WILL use it. But I need a project that I have enough yarn for first.
Stumbled on Band Weaving. Was not impressed. Then I was. It is quite lovely in many patterns. They used to call it Ribbon Weaving, and sometimes Tape Weaving. Look it up, it is easier than me trying to explain and you getting it all wrong.
Shoelaces. You can make shoelaces with this. Decorative ones. In any color you want, provided you can find the thread. I started with crochet thread, bedspread weight cotton. Works good.
It took WEEKS to get from “I want to do THIS” to actually threading a heddle.
First I had to make a loom. I did. A modification of the Beka 4″ wide loom, mine is wider, and shorter. Just 9″ by 12″. Works much the same, but has a design change on the warp board on the back to make it simpler for me to make.
Then I made an even smaller loom, just a 6X9″ frame. I tied on two raddles, and added a 3/4″ by 1/4″ board that is about 8″ long to wind the warp onto. Tied that on, strung the heddle, and made pink and yellow shoelaces. The colors I HAD that I didn’t mind using on a practice product. I now have two 30″ long striped shoelaces that someone in my family will find in their mailbox sometime around Christmas this year. 25 threads wide, ends up about 1/2″ in finished width.
Next are Kevin’s bootlaces. Navy, Light Blue, and Dark Green. These are about 3/8 of an inch wide. They are wool. Handspun wool. It is what I have on hand. I started these on the same tiny loom, but used some clamps instead of string, to make it faster to advance the warp. The loom suddenly went from simple looking to trashy – the clamps are large, with pink handles and grips.
The thing is, weaving by hand is SLOW. And this is a TINY loom. Even the larger one is SMALL. Weaving ribbon is pretty fast as far as passing the shuttle is concerned. The time is lost in advancing the warp .
Warp thread is the long thread that you put through the heddle (look it up). It runs from the back of the loom to the front, and however many warp threads you put on determines in part the width of the end product.
The threads that go back and forth in the shuttle, to form the rows from bottom to top are the Weft. So you weave the weft into the warp, again and again, until you run out of room. Then you advance the warp – you unroll more thread to use at the top, and you roll up (or just reanchor) the finished weaving at the bottom.
There are all sorts of ways that looms handle this one basic function. Some are easy, and some are hard. Some are simple, but take time. If you make a loom by hand, this is one area where you often have to compromise, and accept a more difficult or time consuming method, in order to simplify the pieces and assembly of the loom.
I’m faster now at advancing the warp than on the first set of shoestrings. With those, I wove about 3-4 minutes, and then spent 2-3 minutes advancing the warp. Now it takes less than a minute to advance the warp, but I’m also weaving wool, which is a bit slower since it likes to cling to itself and does not slip easily when the heddle is raised or lowered. It seems to be taking longer to weave this set of laces, even though I’ve gained so much speed on the warp advance.
Band Weaving is a great place to start, because it teaches you patterns in Straight Weave. Straight weave is just back and forth, every other thread, alternating row to row. So if you have a hole and slot heddle you just lift for one row, and drop for the next row. There are literally hundreds of patterns you can create with Straight Weave, just by varying the colors.
With Band Weaving, it is a Compressed Warp style weaving, so all the warp threads get pushed together tight, and you don’t even see the weft threads. It makes it so you only have to worry about the colors on the Warp, in order to work out a pattern. It can be simpler to start out than many other kinds of weaving.
Kevin is weaving on a Peg Loom, and it is Compressed Weft. So the back and forth threads compact down, and you don’t see the warp threads that hold them together. This simplifies the process for him, he only has to worry about getting things right one direction, not two.
There are other things I want to do. But I have to work out how to make the loom do them. There are problems with small looms that cause aggravation for weavers worldwide, and it makes it difficult to produce even work. Wider and longer finished work compounds those problems, and it gets really awkward to first warp the loom, and then keep the warp from getting all tangled or having uneven tension. I assume there may be solutions. But I cannot find them.
Meanwhile, I CAN make small ribbons. And they make really cool decorative shoelaces.
I am either really crafty creative, or I am really pathetic.
Ever Wonder About Those Corncobs?
“I’d like to subscribe to your newspaper, what is the cost?”
“It is a dollar a week. But tell you what. You drop a load of corncobs behind my outhouse and I’ll give you that subscription.”
“If I had corncobs I wouldn’t need your newspaper.”
This is an old joke, and we wonder about those cobs. Surely that would tear you up so bad it would not clean you at all! And that’s the truth.
They didn’t USE corncobs, they only CALLED them that. The corn was husked dry, and the kernels were rubbed out, leaving the cob with the husks attached. You had a bucket in the outhouse, and you filled it, cobs down, husks up. You took off HALF of the husks, and that was your TP. If you were the second user, you tossed the cob into the can after you tore the husks off.
That isn’t all they used. Outer cabbage leaves, dried flexible, were an option, as were lettuce leaves, dock leaves, elk cabbage leaves, maple leaves, and other large leaves that were not scratchy. Newspaper was used, and was preferred because it was a softer paper. But the Wards or Sears catalogs would do just as well (once the new one came out you could use the old one, if you were still using the catalog you had to tear out the pages you did not need and put just those in the outhouse, otherwise you just left the catalog, a double benefit if you were a reading stinker thinker). Once they went to those glossy paper catalogs though, they lost their appeal as an alternative to paying for TP. Some families still endured it though, and remember it as a sort of punishment.
In the winter, rags were cut up into 4″ squares, and left in the outhouse. SINGLE USE! So you needed a lot of rags for a thriving family.
We are so pampered to have soft paper, and we don’t even know it. We complain if we are forced to use what my family called “Elephant Wipe” (paper towels). We don’t think about the privations of yesteryear, if we even understand what they were!
There are so many things we hear of and we can’t begin to comprehend what it actually meant. Corncobs are just one of those things that is misinterpreted regularly.
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