Two clothing repair challenges

It turns out my clever plan to reinforce the thighs of my corduroy pants with a honeycomb stitch really wasn't all that clever. It took me at least two hours to stitch both sides of the pants, and within three months, they were falling apart again. Not only had the threadbare area expanded well beyond the borders of the original darn, but the threads in the darned area itself had worn through and broken off in several places. This left nothing to protect the fabric underneath, which had started to develop actual holes. They were still small, but clearly re-darning the area wasn't going to do much to keep them from growing. If I wanted to save the pants, I was going to need a new fix.

Since darning hadn't worked, I decided to move on to an entirely different technique: patching. I didn't have any fabric remotely similar to the original grey corduroy, so I decided to go for a complete contrast instead. Down in my scrap bin, I had a fairly good-sized bolt of colorful striped fabric in good condition that we'd picked up at a yard sale or somewhere. I cut two pieces of this large enough to cover the threadbare areas on both thighs, right over top of the honeycomb stitching. That saved me the bother of picking it all out (and possibly weakening the fabric in the process). 

I left a little extra space around the edges of each patch so that I could hem them. I folded over the raw edge and sewed it down using a back stitch. They came out a little bit lumpy, but more structurally sound than just a chopped-off piece of fabric. 

Then, using my usual whip-stitch technique, I sewed the two patches in place. My first attempt was a little messy, as I didn't pin the fabric down first; I just followed the line of the seam in the pants. That worked fine along that one edge, but it didn't secure the entire patch well enough to keep it smooth and flat, so the fabric underneath ended up a little puckered. I couldn't bring myself to pick out the seams and do it over, but I did make a point of carefully pinning the second patch before stitching it so that it would come out neater.

All told, this repair took me a couple of hours, about the same as the first one. But I'm hoping it will hold up longer and maybe justify the amount of effort I put into it.

Sadly, I don't think there's any equally simple fix for the wardrobe item that most recently fell apart on me: my two-year-old black ankle boots. They already had cracks in the sole that Shoe Goo had proved unable to fix, making them too leaky to wear in the rain. But when I wore them out on a walk today, one corner of the heel simply disintegrated, leading me to suspect that I won't be able to wear them even in dry weather for much longer. 

You can't replace the heels on a cheap pair of boots like this, and at this point, there's so little left of the sole that there wouldn't really be anything to attach it to anyhow. The only question is whether I can come up with some sort of hack that will allow me to get another couple of months of use out of the boots—long enough to get me through the multiple rounds of trial and error it will no doubt take me to find a replacement.

Recipe of the Month: Kung Pao Tofu (with bonus dessert)

I've had other things to post about the past couple of weeks, so this is my first opportunity to tell you about our new Recipe of the Month: Kung Pao Tofu with Roasted Cauliflower. Brian found this recipe on a site called Eating Bird Food while hunting for new ways to use a cheap cauliflower we'd scored toward the end of January. As usual, he made a few small changes to the recipe:

• Scaling it down from four servings to three
• Substituting canola oil for avocado oil
• Leaving out the fresh cilantro, which we didn't have (and I don't care for anyway)
• Replacing the hot chili sauce, which we also didn't have, by adding a dried hot chili to the marinade instead—and then, for fear that change would make it too fiery, dialing back the crushed red pepper to just a pinch for the two-thirds recipe

As it turned out, he needn't have worried about the heat level; the dish was mild enough that even my delicate taste buds could easily have handled more. In fact, I'd say it was bordering on bland, despite the ample amounts of onion, garlic, and ginger in it. It just seemed like it could have used a little bit more of pretty much everything. Texture-wise, the cauliflower worked better than the tofu, which seemed a little too soft and squishy for the dish. It might have worked better with some Soy Curls, which have a firmer texture closer to chicken. But given how unmemorable we both found it, it's probably not worth making a second attempt.

But that wasn't the only new vegan recipe we tried this month. Last night, as a special Valentine's Day treat, he prepared the Salted Dark Chocolate Tart from Gimme Some Oven. This rich little dessert has a gluten-free chocolate-almond meal crust filled with a dairy-free chocolate ganache made with coconut milk. It's supposed to be served with flaked sea salt on top, but Brian decided to make that part optional. Since the recipe says it makes 8 to 12 servings, Brian cut it down to one-quarter of its size for the two of us.

This dish was much more successful than the tofu. The crust was a bit crumbly and didn't come out of the pan neatly, but the ganache was creamy and delicious. Brian had his with a sprinkling of salt and found that enhanced it still more, but I chose to top mine with a generous portion of coconut whipped cream instead. This actually made it a bit less decadent, tempering the richness of the filling by stretching it out over a larger volume. We ate about half of it up while watching the last bits of Campaign Three of Critical Role, leaving us with two more small portions to enjoy tonight.

So, unlike the kung pao tofu, this dessert looks like a keeper. We might fiddle with the recipe a bit to see if we can keep the crust from sticking, but we can be sure the results will be good enough to justify the effort.

A completed birthday project (and one to come)

Last January, I asked Brian for my most ambitious DIY birthday gift ever: cleaning up our unfinished workshop/laundry room/storage room. I wanted to get rid of all the unnecessary stuff, neatly organize the stuff that remained, and most importantly, cover up the bare insulation that currently served as the wall surface. I knew at the time I asked that this was a big project that might take up to half a year to finish. But as it turns out, that was a serious underestimate. 

It took us a couple of months just to get around to the first stage of the project. In March, we went through all the stuff in the room and identified several things we didn't need: a junker bike we'd picked up off the curb, loads of other bike parts, my unused guitar case, a hanging-file box, a big box full of brown glass bottles that we'd picked up for free at a yard sale and used only a few of, a box of wooden blocks, and a packing tape dispenser. We donated all the bike stuff to the New Brunswick Bike Exchange and disposed of the rest without difficulty on Freecycle. 

After that, we couldn't get started on covering the walls until we'd bought the necessary lumber. But since it came in large sheets and our little Honda couldn't possibly hold more than one, this step required renting a truck. We finally got around to doing that in June, when we were able to use the same truck to pick up a new patio set from Craigslist (along with the lumber for Brian's planter project). The year was more than half over before we actually got the boards cut to size and up onto the walls (first flipping around the batts of insulation so that the moisture barrier was properly positioned on the outside, facing toward the heated space). And it took us all the way until my next birthday—and just a little bit longer—to complete the job of tidying and reorganizing the stuff that remained.

But tidy it we did, and I'm ready at last to unveil the final result. First, as a reminder of what we were up against, here's the "before" picture of the room as it looked when I asked for this present a year ago. 

And here's the "after," as seen from roughly the same angle.

The lighting is still terrible for photography, but everything else is so much better. The two remaining bikes are both neatly hung from the ceiling, the boxes are all neatly stowed on the shelves, the work table has been cleared off, and all the tools have been arranged so that they're visible and easy to access.

Here it is from another angle: the before...

...and the after. In this shot, you can see the neat reorganization of the shelves, the workbench (which has a usable surface for the first time in years) and, most of all, the scrap wood pile. It's now all neatly tucked into the back corner, arranged by size, rather than spilling out onto the floor.

 

Let's come in for a couple of close-ups. Here's one of the wall nearest the door, with its nice new wood covering. In addition to hiding away the insulation, the OSB wood panels make a suitable spot for hanging things. We put up a little hook to hold our clothespin bag (my old purse) and hung up the extra sections of our shoe rack to provide convenient, accessible storage for safety gear and extension cords. This also had the advantage of getting them out of their storage box so we could throw it away, freeing up more shelf space.

And here's a look at our reorganized tool storage. We already had that pegboard and most of the hooks; it was just a matter of arranging them optimally to display most of our tools. The few that don't fit are either tucked in a toolbox or neatly laid out on the cabinet below. (We did buy a few extra tool hooks, but they cost less than $15 total.)

The one problem with this new layout is that I can't quite reach the top row of tools on the board. But Brian addressed that with one more DIY piece, completed just today: a little step stool made out of scrap lumber. (He realized after completing it that the supports were placed too far in, so he added markings to indicate where I could step on it without tipping it over. But he'll probably take it apart and reassemble it at some point.)

Here's one last area that I didn't manage to get a good "before" picture of: the floating shelf over the utility sink. Previously, this shelf was a piece of MDF that was seriously bowed under the weight of all the various detergents and cleaning tools piled on it. Now it's a smaller piece of leftover plywood that neatly holds a pared-down assortment of cleaning supplies we'll actually use.

So how much did the project cost in total? Well, it depends on how you count. We spent $244.56 on lumber at Home Depot, but about half of that was for the planter project, so that's only about $125 for the walls. Add the $15 or so we spent on tool-hanging hardware, and that's around $140 worth of supplies. But if you include the $102 we spent on the U-Haul to get all that lumber home, that brings the total cost to around $242—still less than the cost of the closet doors that were my 2016 birthday present, but not by much. And in terms of time and elbow grease, this project was probably at least as demanding.

After this complicated project, I'm hoping my birthday request for this year will be a lot easier to fulfill. Over the years, the grout in our shower has become increasingly stained, despite my best efforts to keep it clean. Also, bits of it have fallen out, leaving deeper gaps between the tiles, which makes the stains even harder to remove. So, for this year, I've asked to redo all the grout, then seal it so that it will stay put and stay clean. We've done this job once before, so we know we can handle it, but last time we neglected the sealing step. I'm hoping that with a good sealant, we can keep the grout clean and intact for at least a few years, and when it starts to wear off, we can just reapply the sealant instead of having to replace all the grout. I've already invested in a bottle of Aqua-X Grout Sealer, which got good reviews from several professional review sites (including this professional tiler). Now all we need is a tub of grout and—always the tricky part—a free weekend to apply it.

Gardeners' Holidays 2025: Seedfest

Our gardening year starts with a Gardeners' Holiday I've referred to by a variety of names: Festival of Seeds, Pruning Day, Seed-Starting Day, Indoor Growing Day, or simply Renewal. The specific focus varies from year to year, but it's basically about getting ready for the gardening season to come. It's too early to harvest, too early to plant, but not too early to plan and prepare. And this year, our preparations are focusing on a crop that's not usually on the schedule: pawpaws.

We first learned about pawpaws from a landscaper we hired in 2012 who recommended them as an easy fruit tree to grow in clay soil. At the time, we were hesitant to follow up on this advice because neither of us had ever tasted pawpaw and we didn't know if we'd like it. That changed in 2018, when Brian learned of a pawpaw patch near his workplace and started scavenging some fallen fruit there. (Since it's on private land, he scrupulously avoids picking fruit off the trees, but he assumes the fallen ones are unwanted and therefore fair game.) He found them appealing enough to save the seeds and start a few seedlings, which he planted in a back corner of the garden the following spring. Six years later, two of those seedlings have grown into small but sturdy saplings that, according to Fruit Tree Hub, could start producing fruit as soon as this year. 

Technically, two pawpaw trees is enough for fruit set, but Brian has decided he would like to have a couple more if possible—even he has to wait another 5 to 7 years for them to grow up. He saved the seeds from some pawpaws he gleaned last September, and last month he started saving soymilk cartons to plant them in. Yesterday he went out and dug a big chunk of still-frozen soil out of the garden, distributed it among nine of the cartons, and dropped one seed in each. He's still got three more cartons that he plans to fill and plant as well.

Now, if you're doing the math, you'll realize that if all of these seeds come up, that will make 12 new pawpaw seedlings. And if you're looking at the picture above of the corner where our two pawpaws are now, it will probably occur to you, as it did to me, that we do not have room for nearly that many new ones. However, there's no guarantee the seeds will sprout, so Brian's plan is to start plenty in hopes of getting two seedlings healthy enough to plant. If he ends up with extras, he'll try giving them away to friends, coworkers, or strangers on the local Buy Nothing group. But he's not counting his pawpaws before they're hatched.

As for the rest of our 2025 garden plans, they're progressing at a more leisurely pace. We've received our seed order from Fedco (all except the new Pirat lettuce, which is on back order), and Brian has started soaking some parsley seeds so he can put them into seed-starting tubes tomorrow. I've already laid out the plan for next year's beds in my garden spreadsheet, which only took about 15 minutes with my simplified rotate-and-flip method. We still need to prune our plum trees, as well as buying and applying a load of leaf compost to amend the compacted soil in the garden beds (and fill up the gap Brian left by digging out so much soil for the pawpaws). But those jobs can wait until the weather warms up, or at least peeks its head above the freezing point. So we've got another week or so of snuggled-in-for-winter mode before it comes time to start diving into the gardening season in earnest.