Waiting

Much anticipated is the imminent arrival of The Sailor Son and his lady.  With an hour and a half more until they arrive I realized I have time for a post.  How about that!

Evil Step-Daughter sent another photo of her quilt, now finished with the binding.  The recipient is going to love it!

I finished my four pairs of jeans.  I'm very pleased except the blue ones are a bit tight.  This body needs a blue denim with more stretch.  Sigh.  ;-)

I think I've figured out that all my frustrating sewing machine problems when making the first two pairs, striped and grey, were caused by the very heavy Guttermann topstitching thread.  The black and the gold threads are Coats.  Much better!!

A simple pattern with real back pockets, but faux fly and front pockets.  The soft knit waistband is a big plus in my book.

I also spent some time making a Captain America experience for The Viking.  He was thrilled.

 Even more exictement when we stopped, in costume, at Target for the shield.  He wore the outfit everywhere we went for two days and is looking forward to showing off for The Sailor Son tomorrow.

In anticipation of our visitors I've been doing some spring cleaning.  Always a chore is removing the pollen.  You could write your name on everything on the back porch.

The sandbox cover.  Ick!!

After a long session with the vacuum I managed to get most of it.  Of course I'll have to do it over again soon, darn it.  So looking good.....for now.

The water level on the pond is being lowered in anticipation of some repairs to the dam.  We've realized that not only is wind and water our enemy, but muskrats as well.  Nasty little buggers apparently.  The water has to be lowered four feet and this is how it looks at the moment, down almost a foot.

The boat is on the edge waiting to be used to go out and re-open the valve to let out more water.  The dam work is scheduled for next week.  It should be interesting.

Thankfully, not all of our azalea flower buds died from the cold.  I was so pleased to spot these starting to open today.  Lovely large flowers with that interesting leopard spot pattern.  Beautiful!

Spring....with a chance of sewing

The weather has been spectacular.  Everything has been bursting into bloom.

Some bloom is finished already.  The Bradford Pear trees around the pond have turned green since last week.  We've had a heavy rain and strong winds this week.  Yesterday morning was very chilly, but not as breezy and I caught some nice reflections in the still water.

One of the girls found this photo.  It was taken around 1987.  That's ED with her very long hair on the left, then a friend, MD with all those curls, and the Sailor Son who would have been three or just four.  Hard to believe he was ever that small!  :-)

The Viking was very excited to have a new-to-him pair of boots for running around in our backyard.  Though we are constantly cleaning up, with four dogs it's just easier for us all to wear some kind of "backyard shoes" to keep any messes out of the house.  The paper airplane was given to him by one of the garage owners while we were waiting during my car's oil change.  The Viking was delighted and it was the Toy of the Day.

After everyone had been sick for so long it was nice to get back into the routine of having lunch with Nanny and Papa once a week.  Tuesday is "pizza day" and The Viking does like his pepperoni.  He also likes ketchup on everything.  In this case he was happily dipping his chunks of melon in it.  Ewwwwww!

This is my serger.  The poor thing hasn't seen the light of day for years.  I've carefully carried it from place to place safely stored in it's case and was relieved to find out it is none the worse for it.  A bit of cleaning and oiling and it works perfectly!  First thing I did was make a machine mat with a bag for catching the scraps.

I wanted to try out this pattern and ran to JoAnn's for some inexpensive knit to make a "muslin."  I need to adjust the pattern size as this is too wide across my shoulders.  I also need more serger practice, but it's wearable and I look forward to trying other versions with sleeves.  Very pleased!

While playing around with making the mat and bag for the serger I was trying to quilt the mat with the #4 stitch on the Bernina 720.  Oh. How. Awful.  When you stretched out the stitch to make a nice serpentine pattern it was just terrible.  See the bottom row of stitches.  All wonky and uneven.  I couldn't understand it, as any other Bernina I've used hasn't had this issue.  I checked in with a local dealer and discovered an update for this problem had just been issued!  I zipped up there to pick up the update and sure enough it did the trick.  It even added stitch #1396 to the quilting stitches menu.  So now I can use either #4 or #1396.  Very cool!

So just to prove it works, I dragged out this table runner that's been waiting in the to be quilted pile and did a quick job with some straight line and serpetine quilting and it was quickly done.

Other members of my quilting bee went to Quiltcon East in Savannah last weekend.  They generously brought back a few small goodies for me, not the least of which was this deck of Bonnie Hunter playing cards.  So funny!  Joker Bonnie says, "I said to myself: I need to do something besides sewing today . . . then I laughed and laughed."  I'm laughing right along with you Bonnie!

In 2019 Quiltcon East will be in Nashville and we are already making our plans to go!  In the meantime I have lots of sewing to keep me busy.  I started a short (six month) BOM from Lone Star Mercantile called "Here a Chick, There a Chick" by Bonnie Sullivan.  Raw edge applique on flannel.  Pretty cute.

I also have a biscornu to finish for a guild swap on March 16th.  It is stitching up quickly except for the metallic floss suggested for the dragonflies.  What horrible stuff to work with!  Now I know.   :-)

Warm fuzzies

On the first warm mornings after the ice and snow melted we had some lovely scenes of mist (warm fuzzies?) rising from the pond.

The Viking surprised me with his reaction to seeing the mystery quilt all together for the first time.  After a double-take, he sat down suddenly on the floor and exclaimed "WOW!  You made the biggest quilt I ever seen!  Lots of pieces.  It has so many different kinds of shapes!"   Awwww.  Warm fuzzy feelings.  :-D

We enjoyed the warmth outdoors.  Sandbox time and dog walks.

And even a little work.

I also spent an afternoon baking.  I made gluten-free brownies and gluten-free vegan brownies as a warm fuzzy gift for The Tramp to take to work on the last day of his current job.  He starts a new position at the university tomorrow.  :-)  I also made some banana bread.  I searched around for a recipe that didn't include sugar, and found a good one.  Though when I turned it out of the pan quite a bit stayed in the bottom of the pan.  Oh well.  I stuck the crumbs together with butter and ate them all up.  Yum!  I left the loaf upside down on the board and the rest of it sliced up just fine.  I'm going to have to try again as we all liked it very much.

I've moved on to the borders of the En Provence mystery quilt.  After I finished all four of these border strips I realized my mistake.  There should only be two neutral four patches between the star point blocks.  Sigh.  Rip, rip, rip.  No warm fuzzies here.

The Viking slept over at our house both Friday night and Saturday night while his parents went to two nights of a Led Zeppelin tribute band show.  A little warm fuzzy TV quieted the Energizer Bunny down so I could cook dinner.

Part of the excitement of sleeping over at Nini and Grumpy's house is bathtime with a different set of bath toys.  His favorites are the sharks....which he also insisted on taking to bed.  Warm?  No.  Fuzzy? Not at all.  Weird kid.

He started singing Riders on the Storm in the bath so afterwards we were treated to an impromptu towel dance.  :-D

Luna Lapin has form now.  I think she will look more comfortable clothed though.  Warmer anyway.

Sniff.  I listed the Bernina 530 on Craigslist today.  I'm in love with the new 720, as well as my other machines, but.....sniff.....it's still hard to let one go.  Sigh.

Speaking of other machines, I decided to bring out the 201-2 for a small project today.  It's the first time I've used it since I polished and lubed it up and The Tramp rewired the potted motor.  I gave it some oil, inserted a needle and ran it without thread to get the oil moving.  I heard a tick, tick, tick noise.  Hmmmmm.  Never heard that before.  After much listening and looking I took out the needle and the machine ran silently.  Well dang!  What did I do wrong when I put back together??  I already knew the tension assembly wasn't quite right so I started by finding my tutorial and taking it apart and putting it back together again.  I found the step I had missed in the tutorial so the tension is perfect now.  The machine was still ticking and it wouldn't take up the bobbin thread and stitch.  So I dug up the tutorials on taking the bobbin case apart and reassembling it.  Oh my.  I definitely did that wrong too.  It took lots of grumbling and a few tries, but now the machine is humming wonderfully.  Yay!  Send a warm fuzzy sympathy card to The Tramp.  ;-)

I had just a small project in mind today and it was wonderful to finally start sewing.  I made the name tag for myself a while ago from this tutorial.  A friend recently mentioned needing a new name tag.  I know she has a Bernina Nova which has a special place in her heart so I decided to try it.  What fun!  And it looks ok.  I'm not fussed if she wears it or not, the fun was in the making, and there are sure to be warm fuzzies in the giving.

Now I think I'll go put on my warm fuzzy socks and slip the hot water bottle in the bed.  Sweet dreams!