20 May 2008 I'm cooking tape again. The easiest way to shrink twill tape is to put it into a pot of cold water, bring it to a boil, put on a lid, and let it cool. This shrinks the tape at least as well as washing it, and you don't have to untie any knots. But it can be confusing to a man who comes home to find supper in progress and a pot of very strange noodles on the stove. I had trouble finding the correct tape for the russia-drill jeans I'm making (I bought the drill from an 18th-Century sutler, but I suspect that in period, it was *much* more tightly-woven), so I'm tidying my tape boxes, labeling everything and winding it up on some of the bias-tape cards that Evelyn bequeathed me. Found one card with a line drawn across and arrows with "3"" in handwriting much neater than mine; gave me a sense of kinship. An a puzzlement as to where you find a 3" hem on baby gowns. "Drill" is sturdy unbleached cotton (or, in this case, hemp) twill. (Just looked it up: "drilling" was a three-ply thread used for warp when weaving strong fabric. Just untwisted one of the warp threads under a strong glass, and it *is* plied, but only two strands are twisted together. Perhaps "twill" was originally a two-ply thread, which would explain how "drill" came to mean "like twill, but thicker". I don't think I'll look it up. 29 May 2008 We had a small adventure coming home from Donny's barbecue. There was water running across Park Avenue at the intersection with Oak, and various people running around busily. Obviously a water main had broken, but who uses a backhoe on Memorial Day Sunday? Came home to find that our water had been shut off. The two hours the paper says that people were without water had nearly all elapsed, though; it was back pretty soon. We took our evening walk out that way, and it seems that instead of a hole breaking the main, a broken main had dug a fairly impressive hole. (Looked much smaller after they filled it with gravel.) A man who was putting equipment away said there was a hole in the pipe that you could put your fist into. Oak Street is fairly low priority; alternate routes are only slightly longer, and Oak doesn't even have people living on it, though one house on Sunday Lane has a second driveway onto Oak, apparently pounded through the lawn when they had some furniture to move in or out. But it's back in service already; I haven't been to look at it since I heard on the scanner that "Oak Avenue" was open. Wednesday evening, I set out to go on a Kosciusko County Velo Club "beginners welcome" road ride, but when I got to the Trailhouse, I saw the club members in their uniforms waiting for people to show up, and remembered that KVCC is a racing club, so I kept on going, and went home to trade the cleated shoes I was carrying for _Agent of the Terran Empire_ (which I had found on the shelf over the bed exactly where I'd looked for it when I tried to return it before) -- and to forget to get my bike-lock key out of my purse; I'd put the stuff out of my right pants pocket into my right rear jersey pocket, and considered that pocket checked. As I went down Park Avenue again, I met a half dozen or so guys coming from the direction of the Trailhouse, riding slowly, and most were more casually dressed than the club members. But I rather imagine that they kicked in the afterburners once they got out of the village. Met three riders who might have been from that group returning to the Trailhouse when I came back from the library. I checked out Gene Stratton-Porter's _Laddie_, the only book of hers in the YA section that I hadn't read. And I'm not sure about that; some of the samples looked familiar. The STR section of Adult Fiction is mysteriously missing; I must ask a librarian where it is on my next trip. 30 May 2008 Blam! I'd better count our trees in the morning. It's twelve minutes into June 1. I'm on the home stretch of making my hemp jeans. Just in time, as the weather is finally turning warm, and my linen jeans are *way* past repair, even for slopping around in. Now it's rather urgent to get on with making some new bras -- six was rather few for hot weather, two have worn out, one of the four remaining is of the same vintage, and another has been repaired. Went riding again Thursday evening. We've been almost out of mayonesa ever since I made the potato salad, so I went to Marsh after supper yesterday. I intended to come back by way of the boardwalk, since it was nearly an hour before sunset and I hadn't bought anything that needed to be kept cold, but while I was setting up to cross Winona Avenue a drop of rain hit me, so I made an about face and went back the way I came. -- Joy Beeson http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather) west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.