STEPPING UP TO THE FITBIT CHALLENGE

I’ve had my Fitbit (fitness watch) for more than a year. It promotes two daily goals -- 250 steps per hour between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. and 10,000 steps per day (about four miles). I rarely meet the 10,000-step challenge, even though it’s doable. (It’s about three miles.) I do try to make 250 steps per hour. You’d think that would be easy, but it’s not.

250 steps per hour isn’t many unless you aren’t doing it. How quickly an hour slips by when I’m sewing or reading! I may be so lost in thought that I fail to notice the vibration that means I have ten minutes to get so many steps before one hour lapses into the next. I have to make the effort to get those steps or the opportunity is forever lost. The Fitbit is unforgiving.

I can take 250 steps in a matter of two minutes or so, but I’m so easily distracted. I can walk into the kitchen or the sewing room, get into some task, and then fail to complete the goal. It doesn’t count if you just stand there. You have to keep moving. I have even learned to walk while I brush my teeth.

I try to get those hourly steps by doing something constructive – an errand to the shed, a can to the bin in the garage, table scraps to the compost bin, etc. Making the bed counts, but unloading the dishwasher doesn’t amount to much. In fact, whereas I used to think in terms of efficiency, I now try to make many errands in order that my Fitbit records more activity.

At the store, I find I don’t get as many steps as I deserve, probably because I’m pushing a cart. I also think that the GPS locater doesn’t work as well in those big warehouse-type buildings. However, vigorous left arm movement, such as towel-drying Bess after her shower, will count as steps.

You know, I wouldn’t bother about this thing if it weren’t that I’m basically sedentary, but I know it’s important to move. Even so, the hourly goal is not the main point. The daily goal of 10,000 steps takes consecrated effort (dedicated walking) unless you’re Mike. He frequently reaches 20,000 steps in a day, through hunting or hiking. These goals are especially doable for the active person.

Are there other goals? Yes, the Fitbit keeps track of the hours I sleep with eight per night being the goal. It also categorizes those hours – deep, light, REM, and awake. It will keep track of my exercise minutes, providing I tell it to start and stop. It will track the water I drink and the food I consume if I want it to. It will even give me credit for meditation.

Well, I struggle a bit with these goals, but when I received my yearly stats for 2021, I had 347 days of activity. I was surprised that by comparison, the community average was 97 active days. KW

BUTTER – TO CHILL OR NOT

Today’s local newspaper carries an article on butter. Should you keep it in the fridge or in the cupboard? The advantage of keeping it in the cupboard is that it’s spreadable. The disadvantage is that it will eventually spoil. How long can you safely keep it in your cupboard?

Papa at the Christmas Eve buffet, 1956

Back in the day – let’s say it’s the 1950s – my parents kept butter (or was it margarine?) in the corner of a cupboard. Yes, in my mind’s eye, I see it there now. I would know right where to get it if I needed to butter my toast. However, my maternal grandfather (aka “Papa”), had had a bad experience with rancid butter, and he refused to use it unless it was served cold.

Why didn’t we just buy spreads, you ask. I don’t remember soft spreads until I was married – in the ‘70s. And even then, there was backlash. “Don’t pay for expensive spreads,” was the money-wise tip. “Whip your own with one teaspoon of water to ½ cup butter / margarine.” I wasn’t about to do that.

For years, I didn’t buy butter. I used brick margarine when I baked, and my favorite brand was Parkay. What happened to Parkay anyway? It hasn’t been available in my local market for years. I now use mostly butter when I bake. As for spreads, I like Brummel and Brown as a more healthful alternative. Mike chooses “the lower price” spread. So, there we are – his and her spreads.

I find butter today to be very stiff. Leaving it on the counter, even for a day or two, does not soften it. I heard that this phenomenon is being studied by the Canadians, so apparently I’m not the only one who thinks something changed.

Neither butter nor margarine is good for us, though. Canola oil is a better alternative if substitution is possible. And applesauce works just as well in some baked goods, though I think the end product tends to be drier and to spoil more quickly.

How do you manage butter / margarine / spreads? KW

THE PROMISE OF SPRING

Naturalized daffodils in the grove on the farm, 2020

I had planned to make an immediate start with my sewing after the first of the year, but the first week was lost to a cold, and I've been playing catch-up ever since. 

It's the winter. The most exciting thing Mike and I have done is to finally plant my huge order of spring bulbs. He dug trenches in the garden bed on the west side of the house, and I tucked them in. He insisted on helping me, saying that if we worked together, we could make quick work of it, and he was right. I’d probably still be out there if he hadn’t dug the trenches. Hopefully, the bulbs will come up and bloom, and then I can transplant to the farm at my leisure next fall – and the fall after that – and the fall after that . . .

I had a meeting yesterday, so Mike took on the challenge of digging the little VW GTI out of the garage. In the midst of the snow challenge, we didn’t drive it, so we didn’t care that snow accumulated in front of its door. Then with the freeze thaw of subsequent days, that berm turned to ice. It took some effort to break it away. The streets are clear now, so the GTI is adequate transportation once again.

And today, since I could, I went to JoAnn’s for some leisurely shopping. The initial impression was spring, but I was there to check out holiday clearance. Even with the 70% discount, some items were still more than I would pay. KW

RIBBON FABRIC

I subscribe to an online sewing group, “Sewing with Cinnamon,” an extension of the doll clothes pattern website, “Pixie Faire.” “Sewing with Cinnamon” offers tutorials on various aspects of sewing doll clothes, and this month’s topic is sewing with ribbon.

Well, as it happens, I know a little something about sewing with ribbon. When I was a little girl with a family of diminutive dolls, my mother made dresses for them, the skirts of which were strips of ribbon. I think the ribbon she used had come from my Grandma Portfors’ stash. The fact that she did this wonderful thing for me has forever influenced the way I think about ribbon. I was immediately intrigued. How did she even think of it, I wondered?

Perhaps you can see that Mother sewed the strips together with a very fine zigzag stitch. She didn’t overlap the strips at all – just held them side-by-side and zigzagged away. And she even made an underskirt in the one dress by sewing strips of eyelet lace together. In that case, she lapped the finished edge over the unfinished and straight-stitched.  

Mother didn’t make near as many doll clothes for me as I would have liked. Instead, she taught me how to sew, and I made doll clothes for my dolls as well as my nieces’. I always found it rewarding, so I took up doll clothes sewing as a retirement hobby. KW

'TWAS THE MONTH AFTER CHRISTMAS

 

We are “as well as usual,” blessed phrase! The snow is about 15 inches deep and drifted. The trees are beautiful with it and we have magnificent effects at sunrise and set. – Ina Dobson, January 1935

Mike and I have not been as well as usual. We were concerned that we might have the dreaded Covid, so Mike went for a home test kit. The test was negative. We just have the plain old flu with congestion. “’Nuf sed.”

Some things don’t change. Grandma Ina’s words about the snowy landscape might have been written today. Here in town, we have 3-4 inches of new snow on top of the 8-10 inches we already had, and I expect there’s a good 15 inches at the farm, where the effects at sunrise and set would be breathtaking. Wish I could be there to see it. The effects are not so outstanding from our town house, but the snowy hills ARE beautiful in the winter sunlight – when we have any sunlight, that is. The long-range forecast is for warmer temps, so we expect days of slush.

I took our artificial “pencil” tree down New Year’s Day. I didn’t exactly plan to do it, but there I was – packing the ornaments and carrying the tree to the storage shed. Now its corner looks bare. Certain holiday / winter displays remain, and I will put those away gradually. I especially enjoy candles during the dark months.

I have already made my list of projects to finish in 2022. Notice I say “finish.” I have plenty of projects in progress, so the only starts I will allow are doll clothes and projects using fabrics from my stash that I can finish in a timely manner. And my project list is private. Better to say what I did than what I’m going to do, but a list does help to focus my efforts.

In the craft genres I follow through social media, the bombardment of project ideas is relentless. Do people really join those sew-alongs, crochet-alongs, block-of-the-month clubs, etc.? Do people really need ideas? I have enough ideas to last forever.

And how about the contests? I’m amazed that contests seem to work as a promotional tool. “Enter to win,” they say. One person will win. The rest of us won’t win. It plays to a false hope.

My shopping interests lie mainly in fabric, yarn, and patterns, and if I didn’t have sales resistance, we’d be broke. Of course, Mike would reign me in well before that happened, plus I’d run out of places to store it all. I admit to being a collector, but I stop short of saying that I’m a hoarder. Still, I like new things, and I’m determined to use up fabric and yarn on some simple projects because I WANT MORE! KW

[The photos on this post were taken at the Julian and Ina Dobson Homestead in the 1920s and '30s.]