2009 March 31 | Suzanne Earley

Instead of going to bed, which is what I said I was going to do in my previous post, I decided to go work on my machine applique project.

I should have gone to bed.

I’m blanket-stitching away, starting work on a new section and…all of a sudden, the machine WON’T. No matter how hard I mash on the foot pedal, it goes nowhere and…a message comes up on the screen: MAIN MOTOR FAILURE.

I’m afraid some REALLY BAD WORDS might have escaped my mouth.

One of my first thoughts was “How fricking much is THIS going to cost me???”

The handwheel was sooooper hard to turn. Turning it off and back on didn’t fix anything, so I lifted the machine up out of its well and start looking around.

It didn’t take me long to see that some portion of a bobbin’s worth of thread got wrapped around the handwheel. I don’t remember how full the bobbin was, but it’s empty now.

@#$%@#$%@#$%@#$%@#$%

To bed. I’m pretty sure this one isn’t going to magically be better in the morning either, though.

As a reward for getting some stuff done over the last two weeks (which is completely boring and the cause of the quiet blog), I pieced a new quilt over the weekend. It’s the Slideshow pattern by Terry Atkinson, in the baby size. Super quick and easy piecing. I even have the backing seamed and the binding seamed and pressed. Now to get it quilted.

And then…I was reminded that Mark’s cousin’s baby was a year old on Sunday. And I remembered that I never made her a quilt, so…I started working on another quilt:

I’m following instructions from a Laps from fats book (but I can’t remember if it’s More… or if its L&F for Family & Friends…), she’s calls the pattern Cake Walk. I think this is very similar to the pattern called Bento Box by a different designer. People make such a big deal out of “who designed what” but you know what people? It’s freaking squares and rectangles.

On a different note, the boys are still fascinated by their new yo-yos. They are even learning (and mastering) tricks like the Baby Cradle and the Jamaican Flag. Mark and I are getting tired of undoing knots in strings, though.

I don’t know exactly what made Mark think of it, but this afternoon something about strings made him flash on the Cat’s Cradle trick we used to do when we were kids. Do you rememer doing that? As soon as he had the strings on his hands, I remembered what to do for some of it. Freaky.

He ended up looking some of it up on the Internet. And then taught Will and Joe what to do:

This was the least blurry picture I took. Sorry. Too dark. And haven’t done my lighting homework for this week’s class assignment.

My poor camera is making a really weird sound when I turn it on. It’s still taking pictures just fine, but it sounds strange starting up and it’s scaring me. If I have to send it in for repairs, the cost is something like $250. It makes the sound whether the lens is attached or not, and we don’t really have any idea what could be wrong with it. I’m worried that it’s probably something I did to it. I’m not always as careful with it as I should be (imagine that), so I hope I haven’t blown it.

Maybe if I go to bed, when I wake up, the camera will magically be all better.

Can’t hurt, right?

TTFN-

Suzanne