u/Late-Difficulty-5928

I ordered some parts last week and got them yesterday. I plugged her in for the first time and got light. She was kinda sluggish, though so I left it for this morning, after I could clean up a little and oil.

I replaced the cracked pulley knob, belt, and tire bobbin. The drive belt was past the last leg. Bobbin winder works really well, but I had to pull the flywheel apart and clean it to get the clutch to work. The light bulb that came with it was still good, but I ordered an LED and like the light better from that anyway.

I was pretty impressed with how the outside cleaned up, but the guts were kinda gross. Luckily, a lot of that brown came off with just a little sewing machine oil soak.

Everything moves wonderfully, now that she is all oiled up. Unfortunately, I can't tell you how she sews, because I forgot to order the screw that holds the dang presser foot on.

This is something I haven't done with sewing machines before, so I feel quite accomplished doing what little I did!

My partner insisted that I name this machine. Giving in to pressure, I named her Dorothy, after my grandmother who was responsible for my first notions hoard. My other sewing machines don't have names, but he is particularly enamored with this one, even though he doesn't sew. Maybe he will start so I have a coconspirator in fabric collecting.

I've actually had this one for about fifteen years. The intent was to get it up and running, but life happened and that never did. Now I am thinking about getting it up and running again. It came with a bunch of feet, bobbins, and accessories, but no power cord. I guess that's a good place to start. Anything I should probably do before I plug it in? According to some website - I forget the name but it has a database of sewing machines, it's a Singer 66.

I watched a tutorial on YouTube that was supposed to be the easiest way to put one of these together. It's not an incredibly complicated concept, but apparently my brain wasn't having it. It took me about nine hours to make the first half of the panel and totally botched it.

I started seam ripping and said screw it, I am going to start the second half and see if I can make that work. I came up with my own system of doing things and while it isn't perfect, the pattern came out as expected. It only took me two hours with a few breaks to walk around and hydrate. It's not the 45 minutes I was promised, but if it took four hours, that would be reasonable for a quick quilt.

Now to pick some stitches and get the second half up to snuff.

I still have to put the binding on the last yardsale find, but I am roasting tomatoes to make sauce today and I am clumsy. Now I am rifling through what else was in the yardsale bag to see what is next. This block was already done, so I imagine this was the intended purpose. I used Google lens to see if maybe there was more to it because it feels kinda empty at the bottom. Perhaps I am not quite seeing the vision, though. I can't decide if I want to go forward with this and see what happens or do something else. I have a fat stack of white on green but no green on green and no more of the white fabric that is used in the half triangle squares, which might make it weird.

I did think how they made their half triangles was pretty clever. I hadn't seen anything like it. I thought some of you might find it interesting.

He is a 10, but that booty betrays him. (It's not serious. I asked if it was okay to post in case it might embarrass him. He thinks it's hilarious. Our 30 year anniversary is next month and we adore each other. It's just a wild way to wake up.)

I was thinking about just doing a stich in the ditch, because there are so many patterns maybe stippling the white parts to make them more interesting, but I can't decide. First time doing foundation paper quilting some of my points are off, but I think it turned out okay.

So . . . I had this start happening last year. It started with the grocery store tomato seed plants and spread. I figured maybe that was the problem so I didn't do any grocery store tomato seeds this year. The one on the right is a fox cherry. The one on the left is supposed to be a Beauty King but it looks more like my Spanish heirloom. The Fox cherry started looking bad first and spread to the heirloom.

Everything is stunted, which I assume is the 90-100+ weather we've been having here. They were watered daily during those temperatures. There is granulated slow release fertilizer and I am using a tomato fertilizer once every week or two. In case it's hard to see, the leaves and stems turn yellow and then brown and crispy. No notable spots or damage. They just . . . Die. What y'all reckon it could be?

North Carolina Foothills 8a feels like 10a

It was definitely easier than I expected it to be.

We have so many maters this year, so far. I am so excited to see these ripen.

Costatas Romanesco: Man, have I struggled with squash this year. The last one I posted didn't make it. As you can see, there are a few others dying on the vine. Huge plants, but they are flowering at different times and have been playing hard to catch. I managed to hand pollinate two and apparently didn't do the first one correctly, or soon enough. I pollinated this one with a Tromboncino flower, because they always have one open. No fruit from those plants yet, either. But hey, I got this one that seemingly grew overnight. That gives me hope for the rest of the season!

None of my other micros look like this. They are all beautiful. These started getting tiny little spots and I saw what kinda looked like cob webs on them. They grow to this size so fast, I kinda want to call it a day and double bag them before they infect my other plants but . . . They have tomatoes on them! What would you do?

Probably a dumb question, but I am going to ask it anyway. We've had plenty of fruit between three plants. They just keep withering away while very small, which I assume is a pollination issue. It seems that there is never a male or female flower open when I am out there to possibly hand pollinate. This one is quite a bit bigger than any of the previous ones, so I am hopeful. I have grown squash before, but never this variety. Is there a certain size they get where you can be fairly confident the problem isn't pollination, if there is a problem?

Got nine varieties from Heritage Market/Bunny Hop seeds. This is by far my favorite, just for how beautiful the foliage is. It's been the best in terms of growth, as well. On their site it says they get cocktail sized tomatoes in a 5+ gallon pot, so that's happening this week. They are in 1&2 gallon pots right now. I am so excited to see how they do!

Micro Tina

Up potted all my micros today. A while back, when they were starting to fruit, I asked if that was normal and what I should do about it. There was a bit of an argument, so I just let them do what they were going to do and observed. I am here to report my findings for conversational purposes.

Across nine varieties, all but one set fruit while in four inch pots. The one that set the most fruit, Micro Tom, is still among the smallest of the plants with the weakest root structure. To be honest, all the Toms look pretty pathetic.

Groovy Tunes has the most robust leaf and root structure and it hasn't flowered yet. The stems are also really thick.

With one exception, the structure of the plants are directly related to how much fruit they have on them. Jewel Beetle had three small tomatoes and a very nice root structure. The stems are a little skinny, though.

This all makes sense for most fruiting plants, and flowering early usually means the plant has some sort of stress. All of them were grown under the same conditions, with the exception of some with poor soil. I didn't count them in my observations.

I don't like pinching flowers, because that's fruit. I am curious to see what the yield will be for the non-fruiting plants. I grow enough to where the next round I am doing to do some additional experiments.

The bags of soil were so dry this year, from the box stores. The last photo is plants in the hydrophobic soil. The rest were planted from amended soil from last year's containers. They will perk back up and will be transplanted tomorrow, but sheesh.