12-12-2025

Our Library of Things has exploded this year largely due to various donations loosely falling into five categories.

The newest category is Home DIY. The seed was planted this summer while I was purging clutter from my home. When we bought our house in 2014, I was ready to become a homesteader. We would have a large garden in order to fill our freezer with vegetables. The established apple trees on the property would make sauce and dehydrated snacks. We’d eat or bake with the pears. Breakfast would offer a variety of homemade jams possibly for homemade breads.

Our property is heavily wooded. The areas without trees are still heavily shaded. The soil is either rocky or sandy. We needed won the battle with worms for the apples. The pear trees are 25 feet tall. Deer literally ran over the cherry trees. I’m the only one who eats jam, and then not very often. I didn’t learn to make bread until this year.

My decluttering resulted in my canning supplies (a Granite-Ware water bath canning pot with rack, jar lifter, and canning funnel) making its way to a library storage room. It will be ready for checkout by canning season.

Ready for checkout now are Learn to Crochet and Learn to Knit kits. Each has at least one instructional book, patterns, a variety of needles/hooks, markers, and other handy gadgets. Most of the supplies were pieced together from donations made to our Yarn & Stitch group including supplies from private individuals and Linda’s Yarns and a monetary donation from the Mukwonago Crazy Quilters Guild used to purchase an instructional book for each kit.

Our September program on Electromagnetic Fields & Their Impact on Our Health was tailored around the Radio Frequency meter the library offers due to a donation from the GFWC Women’s Club of East Troy. Brandon LeGreca, local acupuncturist and speaker, followed up his program with a donation to the library of an EMI (dirty electricity) Line Meter and an EMF (electromagnetic field) Filter. Used together they can identify the amount of dirty electricity entering a structure and determining both how effective filters would be and how many filters may be needed.

LeGreca’s demonstration during his program was eye opening. An ideal reading on the meter is under 100. The Lower-Level outlet read in the neighborhood of 1200 while the main floor outlet I use for demonstrations regularly reads 2000+.

These new items are currently only available to patrons at the ETLPL through local holds. In about a year, they will be opened up to other PLLS holds.

Residents with other Things to donate are welcome to call the library or stop in to check on our interest as that is an inexpensive way of expanding our selection for those seldom needed or want to try items.

Reading Now: Too Old for This by Samantha Downing

Listening to Now: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (11 hours to go)