Going Domestic

Pfaff should be a four-letter word!

Well, what else is new? Serger is confounding me again. My cool multi-coloured woolly nylon thread broke, and ever since I have re-threaded it, my rolled hem stitch doesn't look the same. I reaccquainted myself with the user manual two nights ago, and proceeded to tinker with the tension for both loopers, trying to correct the stitch. I think that I got it closer to correct, with "correct" defined by the manual, but it doesn't look at all like the stitch that I'd been happily hemming flannel blankets with just two days earlier. It's wider, the woolly nylon thread looks too woolly, and my flannel seems to have been stretched! The hem stitch that I am happy with on my other blankets looks like it's more closely related to the three-thread flat hem, so maybe I'll just re-adjust the tension and try that one out.

I am going to have to hunt around again for some good sewing resources on the internet …

Sometimes I miss the apartment

Last night Mother Nature didn't bring much snow to Calgary, but there certainly was rain and wind. Lots of strong wind. We suspect that a shingle was blown off of the roof. I woke up around four in the morning, and couldn't fall back asleep because I kept imagining that the big fir tree that is nearly leaning on the neighbour's electricity line was going to topple over and burst into flames, or that one of the the many birdhouses on our property would fly off of their respective trees and crash into any one of our windows! It was a traumatic early morning for me!

I honestly did sleep more peacefully in the apartment. Sure, the construction was so poor that I could hear the phone ring in the suite next door, but I worried less about security. There were no bushes to scrape against the wall outside my bedroom, nor did I fear small loose objects from outside getting enough air to crash through our patio doors on the second storey! I'm not sure that there's anything else that I miss, though ... it's fabulous to have a garage!

Yoo-hoo ... spring?

It's supposed to snow again tomorrow. Sad, really. We had indisputably spring-like weather for the past three days, so it isn't difficult to see why I thought that spring had really arrived in Calgary. I even saw four robins yesterday!

Over the weekend, I did indeed plant my two calla lily bulbs and have set them out in their pot in by the sunny window in the kitchen nook. Chris later started some potted herbs so that the callas have company beside them on the kitchen table (guess I'll have to wait another year to have a herb spiral ...). Chris cut the lawn and even tossed some new grass seed out with the hopes of bulking it up this year. There are buds on the tulips and the ornamental onions, and the two hardy rose bushes are sprouting leaves. See? I'm not crazy for thinking that it was springtime!

On a related topic, Chris emailed me a link to this barbeque fact sheet yesterday. I must admit that we've never done anything to rehabilitate our barbeque for another season of use before, aside from removing the bird nests last year when we were still living in the apartment ...

I should have a licence to operate these things!

I'm happy to report that my serger is back in business. Early weekend experimentation revealed that unlike a regular sewing machine, the stitch width can't always be adjusted - at least, that causes my Pfaff to malfunction. The serger miraculously started working again when I changed the stitch width back to the setting recommended in the user guide. I should feel really dumb, but really I'm just happy that it isn't broken!

I also discovered that I had inadvertantly had the flat hem program selected, not the rolled hem stitch. There is so much to keep track of! This weekend's progress was encouraging enough that I did try the rolled hem on a flannel blanket, with my spool of multi-coloured wooly nylon thread that matches my fabric really well:

Changing the thread was a tense moment!

Need Green Thumb Vibes!

The weather has been spring-like enough for the past month for me to know that I'm not a complete failure at bulb-planting - the tulips and the ornamental onions that I put into the ground in the fall have come up (I’m not are certain about the hyacinths and the anemones because I forgot exactly where I planted them). This early success was encouraging enough to prompt me to pick up a package of two pinkish-orange mini-calla bulbs at the garden centre last month. The mini-callas caught the attention of both Chris and I when the garden centres started opening up in February. I did a little research in the copy of The Calgary Gardener that Chris gave me last Christmas, and was pleased to find out that it's possible to grow callas in Alberta as long as they're not left outside for the winter. Happy, I bought a small package of bulbs and a big pot to keep them in. According to my book, I'm supposed to start the bulbs indoors at the end of April (so that's on my weekend to-do list), and I can take them outside after the threat of frost is gone. In the fall, I'll bring them inside to the mudroom and keep my fingers crossed that they come back in the spring.

Where was this a year ago?

I was beginning to think that there was a dry spell in good home-related reading, but I happened upon a special feature that the Toronto Star has been running: Your First Home. We already have one of those, but the articles have some good suggestions on finding a realtor, mortgages, neighbourhoods, etc.

I must admit that the only resource that Chris and I had when we started house-shopping was a copy of Buying & Selling an Home for Canadians for Dummies, and we basically picked our realtor at random off of a website. We did interview him before deciding to work together, but I am relieved that we were a good judge of character because it takes a certain sort of person not to mind looking at over sixty houses over five months and without being tempted to drop your clients :)

My serger is a tease!

My new serger has been sitting on the kitchen table for three weeks now, tempting me. I've been good about ignoring the list of sewing projects in my head and focusing on studying for the CFA exam instead, but I had three meters of the prettiest flannel sitting around, so on Monday I decided to take an hour or so to try out the rolled hem stitch on a flannel blanket for the little sprog. I was quite excited when I ran a piece of scrap fabric through the machine and discovered that I'd adjusted the needle position, stitch length, stitch width, and the other knobs properly! I had an amazing finished edge of delicate stitching! I started hemming the edges of the flannel blanket that I'd cut to size, and things were going just as good until I paused halfway down my second edge to get a glass of water. When I sat back down at the serger and put my foot on the pedal, nothing happened! The machine was still on, as indicated by the light over the needles, but there was no movement - not even the sound of gears grinding on a strand of stray thread! I have no idea why my new serger hates me already! I'm hoping that it will be in better spirits today and I won't have to take it into the shop this weekend …

A vented home is a happy home

Four and a half months after our actual energy audit, the report on the findings finally arrived in the mail yesterday. Our house scored an energy efficiency rating of 57/100, which places it in the "renovated older house" category (which it is, as a matter of fact). The auditor determined that we have the potential to bring it up to an efficiency rating of 77, which would make it equivalent as an "energy efficient new house". Simply replacing the decrepit furnance in the basement with a mid-efficiency one will gain us 10 more efficiency points, so that makes the task sound less daunting!

Our report came with a huge folder of information, and the booklet on top of the pile was one of on the importance of kitchen and bathroom ventilation - very timely because Chris and his dad had just spent the better half of the weekend installing a new fan in the upstairs washroom (we're no longer banned from showering upstairs! Yay!) and a hoodfan over our stove. I have no idea why the previous homeowners never put one in over the 30+ years that they lived there, but the kitchen looks more *finished* now with one mounted from the upper cabinets. Chris and I picked out one with made from stainless steel on the advice of my folks, who said that the painted ones tend to rust after awhile. We haven't really had an excuse to test the fan out yet, but I must admit that I have spent a bit of time goofing around with the halogen lights :)

Whose salad is it anyway :)

I must admit that Chris and I don't usually made our own salad dressings. We don't eat a lot of salads, either, until the summer comes and the romaine and spinach in the grocery stores are crisp and plentiful. But we both ordered the caesar salad on Saturday night when we were dining out at the Vintage Chophouse (highly recommended!) with his parents. At Vintage, Caesar salad is prepared tableside, and as I watched our salads being assembled, I was reminded how much salad dressings are a matter of creativity and blending something to one's own taste. This Caesar dressing has a few improvisations from the standard recipe that I was exposed to in the past: dijon mustard, capers, and smoked bacon. And it was unbelieveably good! The only complaint I have about the salad was that it was so large that I wasn't able to order dessert :)

Typepad is featuring another food-related blog right now - The Amateur Gourmet. I checked it out this morning and had a chuckle! Check out this post about Martha's Pine Cone Cake - I didn't believe it either, at first!

Lemony Goodness

I was just excited to see not one, but two recipes for lemon squares posted over at i was just really hungry, which is my new fave foodie site. Chris and I had been pretty good about avoiding the temptations of Decadent Desserts, but then I noticed that my latest issue of Everyday Food has Martha's recipe for lemon squares. It must be a sign. And I happen to have a few fresh lemons at home in the fridge ...