Does Your Sewing Machine have Speed Control?

Mine does!

I got the idea for this post from Gwen's blog After the dress...

I have a Viking 500 from about the mid-'90s, and it has speed control.  It appears as a stack of lines just to the right of the word SPEED on the left side of the screen.

Set at 2/3 height, this limits my maximum sewing speed to a medium speed.  Set at 1/3 height, it limits my maximum sewing to a slow speed.  Set at full height, it allows me to go as fast as the machine's maximum speed, whatever that is.  At any speed setting, I can still control the speed with the foot pedal, but cannot go any faster than the maximum speed setting.

Working on the Sewing Room

I have done no sewing for several weeks now.

We have lots of pictures - family and other types - which sat for many months on the floor, leaning against a book case and an armoire.  We recently hung most of them on walls throughout the house.  That task alone almost instantly made this house feel much more like a home.

I also had help hanging my sewing rulers over the cutting table.  Click on the picture to see three photos of the wall in my sewing room:

Sewing Room 2010

Catching up to my Shadow -or- what we did to the garden

I was such a blogging slacker the first part of this year, and it seems that I have much catching up to do.

In the middle of July, we added top soil and cow manure to the garden.  We also added diatomacious earth (DE), and hydrated lime, but it didn't seem to help much.

By the end of July, it got so hot out that the garden seemed to be dying off.  We decided to give it a rest, so we tore out the tomato plants and anything else that was failing in the heat.  Really, why not just give it a rest for a while?

We are hoping that the sun will "cook" the garden so we can start fresh in September.  Also, we put together a tumbling compost bin, and have been adding to it almost every day.

Click on the picture below to enter the garden picture album at mid-July, and proceed to the following pictures to get a chronological view.

Serious Slacker Sews Again!

I have not been doing much sewing this summer, but I did manage to have my own sew-a-thon.  I took a day off work to make two dresses to wear at my parents' 60th wedding anniversary in July.  Each picture below will take you to a picasa photo album.  The matching pictures in my review column (to the right, scroll down) will take you the the reviews for these dresses.

Enjoy!

M 5893

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A New Twist on an Old Basic Food

Hubby made an interesting lunch today.  He made toasted cheese sandwiches, but there were a few additions to the basic toasted cheese sandwich, giving it an interesting twist.

He toasted the sprouted grains bread slices in the toaster, then he buttered the slices.  Meanwhile, he sliced a large tomato and picked some fresh basil leaves from our herb garden.

He layered the above ingredients with cheese slices, sprinkled them with an Italian herb mix, and heated them in the skillet.

The next time we have these, I hope he uses two slices of provolone cheese in each sandwich.  The sandwiches were served with fruit salad, which he did not make.  Click on this picture for a drool-worthy view:

Variation on Special Salad

Once again, I had to have a salad made with avocado.  The first time we made an avocado salad, it contained cucumbers.  Since my husband does not like cucumbers and he does like peaches, I poked around the internet to find a salad recipe that includes both avocados and peaches.  My recipe is loosely based on what I found.

• one diced  Florida avocado, a large, bright green avocado with a seed that rattles around inside when it's ready to eat
• one diced peach
• one diced orange
• three sprigs of cilantro, chopped fine
• three dashes of sea salt

The ingredients were mixed in a large bowl and chilled in the fridge.  The taste is very mild and slightly sweet, a good contrast to the mashed sweet potatoes and garlicky, grilled beef on my plate.  Click on the picture for a close-up drool, er, view: