Daily Notes--April 6th

                                                 

My husband's mask.  Made from a reusable poly fabric grocery bag which is very very tightly woven. He read about it in an email from Popular Science.  He didn't like it because it needed "a nose thingy" and his glasses fogged up...   He went into his shop and found 6 paper masks ( inexpensive ordinary ones, not special ones) but they had a nice metal nose strip that I removed and inserted into the mask shown.  I also made the mask narrower.  Popular Science got the dimensions wrong.  And I made ties from batik and much narrower so easy for him to tie.  He LIKED it!!!

I was having no luck making a good mask until daughter sent a text that she was going to work wearing a bandana layered with a Swiffer dust cloth.  JUST NO!!!

I used one of the patterns I saw made (I watched like five times) and made a very nice mask from a lovely batik I found in the back of the closet.  And used the nose metal thing from a second paper mask.  I even started my car and drove to daughter's house.  It was my second attempt.  The first one wasn't good.  I lined the batik in daughter's mask with interfacing on one side of the cloth (before I folded it.  The first one had interfacing on the full length and when folded- double the interfacing.  Hard to breath.  And since I added the interfacing- no need for the pocket to add an addition layer.
And washable.   Diane is making me a mask in Florida.  Diane is a very nice person.

I raked all the nasty stuff out from under my blueberry bushes after the sewing and gave each plant a double "soup can" full of fertilizer.  Then I went out behind the garden and scooped bark mulch (the pile has been back there for two years now and is ready to be used as mulch.  I had to scrape the surface stuff because the pile itself is still frozen solid.  It's Maine.

So the blueberries have been raked, fed and blanketed with nice maple/pine mulch. They like acidic soil. We also trimmed off the really old branches.  Already budding up.  Always a nice start to gardening season- getting the blueberries fed and cleaned up.

Husband was out there cleaning up the beds and the paths.  We planted three tiny "evergreen trees" that we found in the woods a few years ago into one of the raised beds and they are now ready to be dug up and planted in the front yard.  It will be years and years before they are even waist high.  We planted a tiny pair of trees many years ago and they now tower over  us.  Real beauties.  We should have gotten in the habit of planting new tiny trees every few years.

I was reading the post over to check for mistakes and....those cheap little masks also have real skinny elastic ear things.  Elastic.  Need to think about that.

I just read book one and book three of a medival romance series by Marsha Canham.  Book two is missing from my little stack of books.  I am pissed.  The one with the blonde archer. I read the book. so where did it go????  Damn.