Remember how Laura
Ingalls Wilder tried to get Ma to make the new-fangled round doughnuts with
holes in the middle, but Ma wouldn’t do it, because she didn’t care to waste
the time it would take to constantly be turning them? She only made the
twisted doughnuts that rolled on their own (because as they fried, they would
become top-heavy – thus the roll).
I thought of that
the other day, when Larry came home from town with the gallon of milk I’d
requested – and a box of doughnuts, too, including one of those twisted kinds. Doughnuts are a rare treat around here – and
my stomach informs me exactly why
it’s rare, when I have no more than one
of the yummy things. 😕
Last Tuesday, I
mentioned to some friends that I had Larry’s W2 form, and needed to do our
taxes – when all I really wanted to
do was to quilt.
“You don’t need to
worry about it yet!” one of them comforted me; “taxes aren’t due until April 17th
this year!”
But… 1) I
can’t stand to have such a thing hanging over my head all that time; 2) I like to do the more unpleasant
things first and save the best for last (a reward, as it were, for getting the badder stuff done); and 3) We have a refund coming!
Sooo... I filled the bird feeders... and soon the
little birds were flocking around them.
A cute little squirrel hopped up onto the deck table to enjoy the black
oil sunflower seeds. He’s fast – it only takes him
about two split seconds to extract the seed from each shell. 😊
And then I pulled up Turbo Tax and got in gear.
I talked to Loren that afternoon; he was
still feeling quite dizzy, but better after a visit to the chiropractor the day
before. The problem was probably brought
on by too many days of hard work cutting and hauling wood, and perhaps a virus,
too. And wouldn’t you know, when Larry
went to split some wood for him Monday at noon, Loren thought he needed to
help, and wheeled several cartloads of wood from splitter to house. It’s hard to hold him down!
Suppertime found me still plugging away at our tax
return. Did I drive y’all to distraction last February/March/April when all I
had to say, day after day, was, “I took a load of stuff to the Goodwill.” “I took a load of stuff to the Goodwill.” “I took a load of stuff to the Goodwill.” ? I have donation receipts for almost every day
during those months! I was itemizing, so
it took a while. The reward was that
each time I clicked ‘Done’ on that date’s donations, the green numbers that
tell me what my refund is went clickety-clicking upwards. I was glad I’d made a lot of donations, and
got receipts each time. When I started,
for some reason Turbo Tax had Larry’s W2 form listed twice – so it had him down
as making twice what he really made.
When I saw that we owed thousands of dollars, I thought, Hey, sumpthin’s not right. I
spotted the duplication... clicked ‘Delete’... Ah. There we go. This is more like it.
Larry took Loren
some muscle milk and some bananas that evening after he got off work. That would give him some needed calcium,
potassium, and protein.
Shortly after Larry got home, I finished the taxes. Turbo Tax informed me that some forms weren’t
ready yet, so… ?? I think, but
I’m not sure, that it’s only the forms for printing and viewing the documents
that aren’t ready yet… but I can’t be sure. Anybody who has anything to do with anything
concerning taxes speaks in a different language than I do.
I went upstairs to
quilt on the Baskets of Lilies quilt until I got tired. That is, until I
got more tired. Or too tired. Maybe it would rev me
up, and I’d really get a whole bunch done! Or maybe I’d fall asleep and
quilt the cat by accident.
Last week when I
put the backing for this quilt together, I decided to use my Bernina 830
Electronic Record. It’s 40 years old and
still going strong; I bought it new when I was 17 years old. I like to
use it now and again, to keep it in good running condition. But!! as I was sewing the pieces together, it
suddenly quit! It’s not the machine itself; it’s the pedal, I’m almost
certain. Loren is going to loan me the
pedal from Janice’s machine; it’s just like mine. Then I’ll know for sure
if it’s the pedal.
At a quarter ’til
two in the morning, I threw in the towel.
The third row was finished on the Baskets of Lilies quilt. More photos here.
I wrote on my
quilting blog, “The more I use my new machine, the better I like it.”
Things would go south
the very next day.
My alarm makes a
very small ‘click’ noise as the arms fall into place a few seconds before it
triggers the alarm. Wakes me up almost
every time, so I shut off the alarm before it blares. On the minus side
of things, that little ‘click’ happens when the alarm isn’t set to go
off, too, so I wake up when I don’t need (or want) to! About 6 ½ to 7 ½ hours of sleep each night is
about right for me.
Wednesday turned out to be a rather
disappointing day, as the timing on my new Avanté has evidently gotten out of
whack somehow.
Tuesday after several hours spent working on taxes,
I went upstairs to my quilting studio to quilt for a while. The machine worked
perfectly; everything was fine. When some time later I ran out of bobbin
thread, I decided it was time to quit and head for the feathers.
Wednesday, I trotted up there to get back to
work. I filled the bobbin… put it in and
stitched a few short inches – and the upper thread shredded and broke. I checked everything, rethreaded, tried it
again. A few more inches… another shredding and breakage.
I changed the needle, checked the tension top
and bottom, cleaned out any lint, oiled the bobbin race, tried it again.
I eventually and with much difficulty finished
a row, rolled the quilt forward, and launched into the same scenario again.
When it was time for church, I’d completed only two feet of that row, with
multiple thread breakages.
Our midweek church service was a welcome
break, and afterwards Baby Malinda delighted us all by demonstrating her new
skill, ‘Pattycake’. She laughed aloud
when I played peekaboo with her, so I left the church inordinately pleased with
myself.
Loren was feeling much better, and able to
come to the service, which was a big relief.
We bought a taco pizza from Pizza Hut, went
home and ate it, and then I headed back to my quilting studio. Maybe it was the bobbin itself that
was the culprit.
I put in a new bobbin… a new cone of thread
on top… gave it another try.
It was worse than ever. Sometimes it wouldn’t even stitch at all. Larry came to take a look; but he couldn’t
tell what the trouble was, either. I hadn’t
hit anything with the machine, and nothing odd happened before it ran out of
bobbin thread – unless maybe, possibly, the last little bit of bobbin thread was
knotted inside the bobbin case and tangled and tugged on the top thread, or
some such thing. Nothing really
noticeable, though.
So I shut it down; I would call the tech the
next day. I can’t take the machine off
the frame, with the king-sized quilt on it. (Not that I could
in any case, as the Avanté weighs 68 pounds.)
Instead of
quilting, I edited and posted photos:
Squirrels, Birds, and a Cat, and Sunset and My Jeep.
Thursday, I called the store where we got my machine to
report the problem.
Since it cannot be assumed that a customer knows anything
about anything, employees (and the co-owner) must go straight through their
script without deviating:
It is immaterial that I just put a new needle
in, rethreaded the machine, and adjusted bobbin tension/top tension immediately
before I called, nor that I have done it multiple times. No, I have to do it again, whilst on
the phone. By the time the conversation was over, my head hurt. 😛 Literally.
😝 And
this, too: 😜
Next time, I’m just going to make agreeing
noises, and tinkety-tink around a bit to make them think I’m redoing all that.
I will say, the lady (store owner, wife of
the tech) was very nice; she was trying
to help. It’s not her fault that
the machine is breaking and shredding thread, after all. The tech wasn’t there right then.
She finally told me that shredding thread means one
thing: the needle is too small.
Okay, I know it
most often means that ---- but I also
know it doesn’t always mean
that. And this time, it most likely didn’t
mean that, since the problem occurred suddenly, in the middle of a quilt,
with no change in thread or fabric or batting or quilting design. Here’s a fact: #50 Bottom Line thread by Superior does not
require a size 20 needle. This, I know.
But... that seemed to be the only thing I could do about
it at the moment: I would have to drive
55 miles to the store for some bigger needles. I knew perfectly well that the problem was deeper
than that – but I had to do this first, to satisfy them. 😒😕
It was a cold, cold
day. I bundled up, grabbed purse, tablet,
and coffee, and headed east. It takes a
little over an hour to get there.
While wandering around the store looking at
all the pretty fabrics, quilts, books, notions, and decorations, I happened to
see the lady from whom we got the portable professional frame for the HQ16,
back in 2010. She’s 80 now, but doesn’t
look (or act) her age. (Probably never
did, heh.) She’s the kind of a person
(let’s call her ‘Junie’) you want to wave at from across the room – and then run for your life, if you want
to have a life for the next little
foreseeable future.
Forgetting this, though I should remember, having bumped into her regularly,
despite the fact that I don’t go there often, I greeted her cheerily.
She asked if I was still enjoying my
machine. I said Larry had given me an
Avanté for Christmas, and I’d sold the HQ16.
She asked how much I’d sold it for.
“$3,000,” I told her.
She looked shocked. “Oh, my, that’s not nearly enough. I have a
Simply 16 – or is it a Sit-Down 16 (she doesn’t know, because she has never
used it) (really! That’s what she said!)
– and I’m selling it for $6,500!”
That’s $505 more than MSRP for a new one.
“What year is it?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter
what year!” she informed me adamantly. “You
go by hours!”
Maybe when a new machine sits without use,
the price keeps going up, year by year?
“Well, I’m satisfied with what I got for the
machine,” I told her. “It was a 2005
(she started to interrupt me to say the year didn’t matter, but I pressed on
quickly), had a lot of hours on it (said to placate her), and I only paid
$2,700 for it in the first place.”
“Oh. But do you know how to find the number of
hours on your machine?? If you don’t,
the tech can tell you.”
Here, the lady who owns the store (let’s call
her Dagmar), evidently eavesdropping, whether inadvertently or not, I cannot
say, marched around the corner and informed Junie, “You don’t go by hours, you go by stitches. Do you know how
many stitches your machine has?”
Nonplused, Junie stared at her.
Before I finish this story, you should know
that Junie is the woman who, back in 2010, upon hearing we were interested in
the portable professional frame she was selling, and that Larry happened to be working
there in the town where she lives, went off to find him.
When she spotted a big boom truck coming down
a street, she put her vehicle in park, leaped out, and flagged him down, right
in the middle of an intersection, shouting up at him, “Are you Larry??!”
Now that we have established that Junie is not shy, we shall proceed:
Larry went to look at the frame on his lunch
break, called to tell me about it.
Since I had not yet decided on or found a
quilting machine, I didn’t know if we should get a frame yet or not. So Larry left the woman’s house after telling
her we would let her know, if we came up with a machine.
A couple of hours later, she called both of us and said that another woman
was coming to buy the frame (which we wound up buying, and which I have used
until the day we sent it to Alabama last month). I thought, Lady, you’re trying to feed me a batch of baloney.
“Okay, just sell it to the other lady,” I
told her.
Junie seemed struck dumb by that response; it
obviously wasn’t what she’d expected.
She called back in less than half an hour to
tell me that the ‘other woman’ had had a car accident, run her car into a pole,
and would have to use the money with which she’d planned to purchase the frame to
instead fix her car. Furthermore, she’d
decided to drop the price of the frame, and we could come and get it anytime,
and she’d save it for us.
Sherrrrrrrr.
Her strong-arm tactics had failed, is all, and she’d suddenly realized
she had lost the sale – so she’d set about retrieving
said sale, in whatever way she deemed best.
We did
buy the frame, as I said.
We also counted everything she said from
there on as 99% bonhomie.
Okay.
Back to the story at hand. Here’s
Dagmar, asking Junie how many stitches there are on her machine.
Junie, who’d put forth that she was knowledgeable about these things, looked
blank.
“What kind of a machine do you have?” asked Dagmar
in a condescending tone, looking smug.
Junie glanced at me, and her face took on
that wily expression that’s becoming more familiar every time I meet her. “Bernina,” she said.
Haha!
That old lady is devious! When she realized she’d said the wrong
thing, she just... switched her story. Most Bernina machines keep track of not only stitches, but also hours of sewing, and
even hours the machine is merely turned
on.
Junie changed the subject quickly before the
questions could get uncomfortable. She
pointed at me. “She sold her machine for
only $2,700! What do you think of that?!”
There.
Now Dagmar was on the spot,
trying to decide how to answer that.
I escaped.
A little wave of the hand, and I fled into another room, and let the
aisles of fabric envelope me.
Eventually, the
employees finished with their customers and were able to help me. There were no size 20 needles hanging on the
rack, but a shipment had just come in, and the needles needed to be extracted
from the boxes.
I again related the
problem with my Avanté. The people at
the store treated me like a dimwitted kindergartner (in their kindly way, of
course; nobody is ever unkind), as if I didn’t know a quilt from a floor mat,
you know.
Now, my Mama taught
me not to brag and show off... but ... sometimes... you just have to do what
you have to do.
I took out my
tablet. I had already pulled up a
picture of the Baskets of Lilies quilt, anticipating just such a happening by
how they acted on the phone.
“Here’s what I’m
working on,” I said nonchalantly, choosing the precise moment when one of them
asked me what type of fabric I was using. (I very badly wanted to say, “Double-knit. Why?”)
Hehehe... They –
from owner to lowliest employee – quit acting like ah din’t know nuttin’. After that, I put my sweetest, humblest
persona back on, like Mama taught me.
(Only she intended that it be genuine.)
A 90-year-old lady who’s been a friend and fellow quilter
for quite a few years wrote to say, “Lots of people assume because I am old and
wrinkled that all the grey matter has left the head. Some has, but not all of it!”
I wrote back, “Combat
that with a piece of knowledge they won’t possibly know. Like this: ‘Did you know that the space shuttle’s three
main engines operated for 8 minutes and 40 seconds for each shuttle flight,
with a combined output of 37 million horsepower? At their full power,
that was equivalent to the output of 13 Hoover Dams.’ Haha! They won’t know what to do
with you.”
I bought the
needles – $15 for only two packages!
– and headed home again, thinking the size 20 needle probably wouldn’t help.
This is one of
those times when I was glad to be wrong. Mind you, I wasn’t completely wrong;
only partially wrong; but wrong, nonetheless.
In half an hour, I
had completed the row I’d been struggling to do all day Wednesday, when I only
managed to do less than a foot and a half.
This means I quilted 100” – without the thread breaking once,
in just a little over half an hour.
Now, while it’s
true that I didn’t think the larger size 20 needles change things, and they have; nevertheless,
I knew it was merely a Band-Aid for the problem, because… there’s a little
metallic ‘tink-tink’ noise every now and then that tells me I
was right in thinking this machine has gone a bit out of
timing.
Furthermore, it should
still be able to quilt with size 16 and size 18 needles (which I prefer, as
they don’t leave the visible holes the size 20 needle leaves); and things
should not have changed suddenly for no apparent reason in the
middle of this quilt.
Since it changed
after I filled a bobbin, I’m thinking that one of these days I need to buy a
more up-to-date bobbin winder. Mine is a
2005, and it doesn’t have a speed control (another point Dagmar wanted to
argue, as if I can’t see a speed-adjusting knob right before my nose), and I
know from using the TOWA gauge that it doesn’t wind at a steady tension, and if
I wind the bobbin too full, it will stretch the aluminum bobbin so that I can
no longer use it.
Dagmar doesn’t want
to admit this is true; she just wants to tell me that “there are many
variables, and needles, thread, and fabric change things, even in the middle of
a quilt.”
True enough —
but if this machine will no longer work with size 16 or 18 needles,
then something happened to it, and it needs to be FIXED.
Meanwhile, I would
finish this quilt, and be happy that the ‘Band-Aid’ was working.
I called the lady
after finishing the row to tell her it was working, but has a funny sound, and
I don’t like the larger holes in the fabric, and I know something
isn’t quite right.
She laughed, asked
if the stitches looked good, “And you got the row done, didn’t you?”
I said I’d like her
husband look at it when I got this quilt done.
“Well, but he’s swamped!” she protested.
“Okay. As
soon as possible,” I replied. And
once more, “I do know something isn’t right; the machine doesn’t
sound right.”
She asked me to quilt
while she listened – and then she said it sounded fine, and I ‘wasn’t going to
hurt it.’ “Is it quilting?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then you’re fine!”
she said, and laughed.
You’d think a quilter
would know the saying, ‘A stitch in time saves nine’!
Fixing things
earlier rather than later is almost always the best way.
I should’ve hung a
couple of spoons around my neck and then jiggled around whilst I ran the
machine. 😆
I might be quiet,
but... I can also be like a pesky gnat, and bother someone until they help me
just to get me out of their hair. Remember the story in Luke 11? –
5. And he said unto them, Which of you shall have
a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me
three loaves;
6. For a friend of mine in his journey is come to
me, and I have nothing to set before him?
7. And he from within shall answer and say,
Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I
cannot rise and give thee.
8. I say unto you, Though he will not rise and
give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise
and give him as many as he needeth.
9. And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given
you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
10. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he
that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
I remember Daddy
preaching from that chapter, and telling us, “If you really need something, and
you know that person should help you, keep asking!!!”
Friday, I looked
for a new bobbin winder online — and discovered that one from
HandiQuilter costs $349!!! EEerrrrkkk. (...clutching at throat...)
So I looked for one
on Amazon.
AAAuuuggghhh!!! $379!!! I tried another machine shop – $329.
Someone suggested
prewound bobbins. But... they cost more than if I wind them myself.
Everything costs more! Milk
costs more. Cat food costs more.
waa waa waa
But right then, my
biggest problem was that I’d earlier eaten the last banana, and now I didn’t
have one to slice on my Corn Chex. waa
waa waa!
Still, I only had
36.4% of that quilt left to quilt. Wheeeeeeeeee...
I ate my bananaless Corn Chex and hurried up to the
quilting studio.
I found the option
for turning on the bell that warns of overrunning the stitch-per-minute limit
(1,800 spm, on this machine, compared to 1,100 on the HQ16), and it was
off. I turned it on, then quilted faster... faster... faster... until I
heard the little bell. It’s quite muted; I should look for a volume
control. The HQ16 didn’t have any volume control; I don’t know about this
one. But now I know what the tone is, so I’ll listen for it when I’m
quilting. I like to know when I’m overrunning the spm; don’t want
my stitches to be elongated by going too fast.
It got up to 37°
that afternoon, but with the wind blowing at about 35 mph, the wind chill was
28°.
A friend wrote to
say that she’d been to the grocery store earlier, and had used one of the
store’s electric wheelchairs, as she was having some troubles getting around
that day.
Victoria and I once
saw an elderly lady – probably around 90 years old – driving one of those
electric carts in Wal-Mart. She came around a corner behind us...
paused... looked down the aisle to where we were all stymied by two large
ladies standing and blabbing, smack in the middle of the aisle, while people
waited to get through on both sides of them.
They weren’t brung
up by my Mama, nosiree, huh-uh! Rude, rude, rude.
Anyway, the elderly
lady sized up the situation, looked up at Victoria and me, winked and grinned
all twinkly, and said, “That’s what these carts are for! I love ’em.
They’re equipped with horns.”
So saying, she
pressed the button for the beeper (a loud one!), stepped on the
accelerator, and went flying down the aisle as fast as the thing would go,
motioning for Victoria and me to follow her.
Believe me, those unmannerly blabbermouths got themselves out of the
way, straightaway!
We couldn’t quit
laughing.
Victoria, giggling,
said, “I want to be just like her, when I’m old!”
I informed her, “You
already are.”
“Old?” asked
Victoria innocently.
hee hee
Saturday night, I rolled the quilt forward to the second-to-the-last
row. Would there be enough
batting??? I finished that row...
rolled forward... and...
Yaaaay, there was enough!!! There were only 3 ½ inches to spare, but there was enough.
My poles didn’t sag, and this big quilt is
absolutely, perfectly straight at the bottom – and I didn’t have to work at it;
it just came out that way, like it’s supposed to.
However, I was getting done by the skin of my teeth,
as the thread broke two or three times on the last row. Timing issues (if I was right about that being
the problem) don’t repair themselves.
I trimmed the quilt and removed it from the
frame. This quilt measures 115” x 115”. I used medium-high loft by
Fairfield. I wanted extra-high, but Hobby Lobby was out, and I didn’t
want to pay the higher price for whatever they might have at the LQSs.
See Tiger over there on the left?
Now look at the smug expression on Teensy’s face as he stares at Tiger. ‘I
got the Thermabed, nyaa, nyaa, nyaa-nyaa-nyaa!’
(We have two Thermabeds, but one was
downstairs.)
Saturday, since the quilt was all done, I called the store
and asked if I could bring my machine in.
The answer: “Yes, you can bring it in.”
I asked, “How long will it take?”
And the lady says glibly, “Oh, it’s several
weeks out; Kevin’s pretty busy right now.”
!
Several weeks?!
I said, “I can’t do that. I have customer quilts on the way. I need to schedule an appointment, bring it
in, have it worked on, and pick it up right away.”
She acted like I was speaking a foreign
language. But she did at least take my name and number and tell me she’d
give the message to the man.
Some people are more helpful
than others! I will say that the man (co-owner
with his wife, and the HQ tech) is a lot more conducive to customer helpfulness
than his wife. She works hard to convince me that
I have to use a size 20
needle, on account of thread/fabric/whatever. Bah. I know better.
Meanwhile, I’ll make do with those size 20
needles. 🙄 Or maybe Larry will give timing it a try. He set the timing on the HQ16 two or three
times. It’s a finicky job, if you don’t
have a timing tool especially for the work, and particularly if your bifocals
aren’t exactly right.
I headed downstairs to hunt
for fabric for the binding for the Baskets of Lilies quilt – and wound up
hauling my three bins full of quilters’ cotton all the way upstairs. There’s room for them in the closet that used
to be Caleb’s – the closet in the room I made a little library.
By nighttime, the binding was on the quilt. I sew bindings entirely by machine
– to the front first, then pull it around to the back, pin it… and stitch in
the ditch from the front. The back of
the quilt is a floral green on green.
The next step: I
need to make 36 yo-yos for the centers of the appliquéd flowers.
Several people have
asked what my ‘secret’ is for getting the stitching on the back of the binding
so perfect.
It’s this: I pin vewy, vewy ca’fully. I sew
the binding to the front... pull it around to the back... fold it under... and
pin so that it barely overlaps the seam.
When I stitch in the ditch from the front, I wind up with the stitching
1/32 of an inch from the folded binding edge. I use ultra-fine,
steel-shanked, glass-headed pins, and lots of ’em.
There are sewing
machine feet that are especially for sewing binding on, but the stitching isn’t
as close to the edge of the binding. Someday
I’m going to get one (if it doesn’t cost a king’s ransom) and give it a try,
though. I love tools and gadgets that make things easier – so long as
they do a good job.
I have two of some
of my tools, such as snips, so a one-and-only pair isn’t always on the opposite
side of my sewing room when I need it.
Guess what happens
after that?
They both wind up on the same side of the room, side by side, that’s
what.
I didn’t know if the binding
went with the backing very well... but I liked how it looked on the front, and
I tried to keep quite a lot of main things in the quilt blue, since that’s the
major color in Todd and Dorcas’ bedroom. At least the green leaves in the binding do
match the green of the backing. As for
the backing? Well, there were a few green things on the front ------- but
mostly, I had that backing. I bought it several years ago to make curtains
for someone, and the color wasn’t right, and I’ve been looking for something to
use it on ever since. A while back, I
used a chunk out of it... so I had to piece it just a bit, for this backing. It’s not noticeable, though.
A friend who isn’t fond of sewing bindings wrote, “Stopping
to miter the ends together is like running a marathon and stopping a few feet
before the finish line to tie my shoe.”
haha
It was 3° when we went to church Sunday
morning, and the wind chill was -18°,
what with the north wind blowing at 35 mph.
We have about 2 ½
inches of snow today. Maybe 3”. I’ve filled the bird feeders, and
the birds are clustering around them.
I finally got a
look at the feline culprit that I just knew had been sneaking into our
house through the pet door at night. He was trying to come in right when Teensy
was trying to go out – and suddenly there was a scramble and a scurry, growls
and a loud hisssssss. I knew it wasn’t Tiger, because he was
napping on the loveseat.
So I ran to the
door (it’s the door that goes into the garage, and there’s a back walk-in door
in the garage that we leave open slightly so that the cats can come and go),
jerked it open – and there he was. A gray stripe with white bib and
feet. He’s the one that’s been marking his territory, which makes
life unpleasant. Ugh!!! Strays and drop-offs cause us troubles.
I yelled at him, “GET OUT!!!”
He went
(reluctantly) – but toward a far corner of the garage, rather than toward the
door – and then I saw why: Larry had shut the back walk-in door!
This means the stray has been stranded in the garage, and couldn’t get out.
If he wanted to eat, he had to take his chances at coming into the
house. At least there’s a litterbox in
the garage.
I propped the back
walk-in door open enough that the cat can get out, but the 30 mph wind won’t
blow it to and fro; banged my head good and proper on a heavy tubular valve sticking
out of the air compressor; and refilled Tiger’s food dispenser. No wonder
it dwindled so rapidly over the last couple of days.
And no wonder Teensy
and Tiger, who are not the best of friends and only carry on with an uneasy
truce because I demand it, have been fracasing (should be a word, and would
be a word, had Noah Webster ever observed Tiger and Teensy) about with more
venom than usual.
This morning when
they got into a row, I went storming into the room and ordered, “STOP IT!!!” Tiger waddled hastily out the pet door, so I
slid in the blocker. After that, of course, Teensy wanted out, and
Tiger wanted back in. I had no idea that there was a real
enemy cat out there in the garage, and Tiger couldn’t escape to (relative)
safety inside!
I went on curling
my hair – and was amazed some minutes later when, after hearing a scrabbling at
the pet door, Tiger came rush-waddling into the bathroom, expressing his great
consternation and dismay in that gravelly voice of his.
How on earth did he
get back in?! I went to look at the pet door – a
brand-new one, very sturdy. Tiger trot-waddled along with me, and looked,
too.
The sliding
block-door was still in place. What on
earth???
“How’d you get in?!”
I asked him.
He looked up at me
with his piercing amber gaze, glanced at the pet door, then back up at
me. “Mrrrrrow,” he rumbled, with an almost-shrug. I think that was
to say, I can’t imagine.
Then I noticed that
the poor ol’ kitty’s nose was all scarfed up and bleeding a bit. The only
thing I can figure is that he got his nose under the edge of the sliding
block-door somehow (I hadn’t gotten it all the way down – it was half an inch
above the sill), lifted it enough to allow himself to squish through – and once
he got in, the door slid back down into place.
Otherwise, he must’ve
ghosted himself through the wall.
Siggghhhhh...
Why do the good cats take it out on each other when a bad
cat comes around?!
It’s almost suppertime. The coffeepot being empty (Larry helped me
drink it, at noon), I made a cup of coffee with a hazelnut coffee pod from
Senseo Coffees... and, knowing that wouldn’t last long, I’ve also started a pot
of tea brewing. Let’s not tell Larry
what’s in the pot, and see if he notices, okay?
😉
There are chicken breast filets and baby
bakers in the oven, and the kitchen smells mmmmm, good.
* * *
Suppertime is over, and the chicken and baby
bakers were indeed very good. We also
had applesauce, orange juice, and Strawberry Supreme frozen yogurt.
After watching a youtube video that explained
how to set the timing, Larry worked on my Avanté. We discovered, upon removing the needle
plate, that the hook was actually rubbing hard against the needle, shoving it a
good millimeter to the side.
Furthermore, one of the timing set screws was completely loose – which
explains why the machine went out of timing without even hitting something such
as a pin, a ruler, or a too-thick seam.
It’s close now, but not quite right. Larry was too tired to try again; he’ll work
on it tomorrow night after work. Anyway,
I am glad to know I was right: the
timing was off, and that tink-tink noise was indeed the hook hitting the
needle, just as I thought.
Hopefully, Larry can get it fixed before my
customers’ quilts get here. Some are on
the way right now, even as I type!
P.S.:
Oh, and Larry did not realize he was drinking tea instead of coffee; he
just sipped happily away at cup after cup.
😁
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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