Thursday, April 18, 2013

I came up to the studio after breakfast with the intention of giving both Ruby and Pearl a good cleaning. I’ve done a couple of projects on Ruby and it is time to change the needle and clean out the cotton dust. I don’t use Pearl as often, but I have classes both Saturday and Sunday and I need her to be in top working order – or as “top” as she is capable of.

But before getting to that I had a couple of mending projects to take care of. When I put the binding on my Christmas Table Topper I missed the edge on a small bit around the corner. I didn’t notice it until after it was decorating our table so we used it over the holidays as it was. Today I ripped back the binding and sewed it properly before adding it back into my Christmas decorations.

I was in a hurry to finish my lunch bag before the quilt show and I used a velcro fastener to close it. I always planned to close it with a button, but I hadn’t got it done. I’ve only made buttonholes with Ruby once and it worked like a charm. I had problems today though with my lunch bag. Perhaps the fabric layers are too thick? I used a polyester thread from my “old” sewing days but I don’t think that was the problem. When you sew a buttonhole there is a bar that you have to drop down but whenever I started to sew the bar popped up and the machine stopped. I’ve been doing some research and it might be an issue with the thickness of the fabric. I made a buttonhole with a zigzag stitch because I really wanted the job to be done, but I’ll do some playing another day and see if I can sort it out.

I had my Red Cross shift today and, because Pat had something going on, I had to walk (thank goodness for my rain hat). I left early because I wanted to stop at WalMart on the way – I’m learning not to leave things for the way home! I thought I might be early for my shift but I was right on time. There were no clients today, but the convenor was in for the full shift as was the technician from Courtenay. The woman who works the morning shift was quite annoyed when I arrived because the technician had been telling her all the things that we were neglecting to do with the cleaning – like getting rust off the inside of the legs on the shower seats, tightening screws, matching legs, etc. This news won’t make a lot of the ladies very happy, but I understand the need. I was able to ask him lots of things I had wondered about so I found him to be very helpful.

Both Pat and I had something different on for this evening but we feel like we want an evening at home to relax so we cancelled those plans. We are going to try to get the hockey game streaming on the iPad and then we’ll connect the iPad to the TV. It will be just like the old days when we cared about how the Canucks were doing!