Showing posts with label sewing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sewing. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

I made cookies----there's snow outside---cookies helped

Well, i haven't been outside the house since Monday afternoon 2pm. that's the time it started raining....and then sleeting.....and sleeting.....and sleeting mostly through Tuesday. it was tiny, almost just misty....but sleet just the same. we have about an inch of sleet or perhaps a bit more. the only tracks at our house involve going out the back door, across the covered porch and around the corner for about 6 feet to the wood stove.

I tried sweeping sleet but it doesn't sweep. i tried scraping with the snow shovel but that doesn't work either. we had about half a little bag of salt that i tried to put out. somehow it had frozen into a huge hunk of salt that i couldn't break up. how can it do that if it is supposed to melt the ice. i put the hunk of salt on the ice...nothing. it just sits there looking stupid. and i feel even stupider for trying it. dh says stupider isn't a word.....i say it is.

Last night it started snowing a bit....tiny flakes all blowing around. i went to sleep about 1am and it was still going. but this morning...thankfully, there isn't much snow. you can still see weeds out in the pasture up the hill...that's my measure for how deep it is. LOL  and the front deck only has a couple inches.

All day yesterday i was at my sewing machine. i cut out some very graphic black and white fabrics and made a zentangle quilt top. very cute. then i dug into the box of projects that i brought over. there were large tumbler blocks of Laurel Burch fabrics and all the colors to match. i put that top together, too.

Then last night i started piecing something else. i drew it in EQ sometime in 2008, cut out hundreds of pieces and then put it in the box. there are 6" hexagons and 3" triangles that were cut with my AccuCut machine. no instructions. i had a picture....looked easy enough. figured out i have to stitch 4 triangles to each hexagon and then cut them off to square the edges. picture had 99 or so blocks. i only had enough triangles for 54 blocks. bad word...bad word..  apparantly my brain didn't figure out how many triangles to cut. and that fabric is long gone by now. so plan B goes into effect for a much smaller quilt. then...i still have all the rest of those hexs to do something with. it's never easy....is it?

In between all that.....i made cookies. i had to...the snow demanded it. when you can't get out of the house ....for amusement i make cookies. you've seen those recipes where you put the stuff in a jar, label it for someone to add butter, an egg and vanilla...and then make wonderful cookies. i sold lots of those jars at craft shows. i still had about 4 jars left from last year. when i had made them before they seemed a bit dry and hard to mix with just one stick of melted butter and 1 egg. so i increased it to 2 eggs and added about a 1/4 cup oil. much easier to mix and they tasted much better, too. made about 3.5 dozen. half of those are gone this morning....we are a cookie house. LOL

Thankfully we didn't get the huge amounts of snow that other places in missouri and illinois got. but hubby is bummed....he wanted to make more snow ice cream. he got a few gallons out of the last snow. i think he was going to stock up for summer....there goes my tupperware containers. LOL    but there is no recipe for sleet ice cream and that is mainly what we have....sleet.  i just get my ice cream from the grocery store.....nobody peed on it....at least i like to think that they didn't.

Although i have a camera at the house it is not doing me any good since my software to get the pics out of the camera and into the computer is at the studio and i can't get there. i can see the studio from the house.....it's just across the road....well, down a looong driveway....500 feet....and across the road. but i can't get there. our house sits on a hill....the driveway is downhill...a hill full of sleet....(maybe if i had a sled)....nah, that won't help. the driveway has a curve and my luck i wouldn't make the curve and would wind up in the trees in the ditch. i don't think these old bones would handle that so well. i am always leary of falling and breaking a hip or something. i've lived 60 something years so far without a broken bone and want to keep it that way. so, no pictures till i can get out.....hopefully tomorrow. i'll definitely be ready by then. i tried a nap twice yesterday and it didn't work either time. the first time i just couldn't fall asleep...the second time the phone rang just as i got comfy. no rest for the wicked.

So, all you get today are words....just picture it all in your head...you can do it. and picture a cookie or two, also....i'll share. now i'm gonna go back to the sewing machine and see what else i can get into. i saw a take 5 pattern all cut out in that box yesterday...think i'll work on that. oh....that hexagon top you ask...??    well, it can go back into the box for a while till it germinates some more. i don't want to think too much today.

Stay warm. i'm certainly happy that i don't have school age children at home that are having a snow day from school. if you do.....i feel for you....better you than me. sorry...LOL

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Bobbins can be trouble

I have been throwing away bobbins. i have read posts on winding bobbins slowly and straight. and how bobbins can get out of true. or not to wind them too fast so they don't get too tight. so, when i started having problems with some of my bobbins i figured they were just old or getting out of whack....no idea how that happens. but my bobbins were tight and not fitting in their case. i couldn't get them out without a needle or pin to pry them out. and i couldn't stitch properly with them.

over the last year i have thrown away about 8 bobbins.

and just last week i figured out that i have been throwing away bobbins for nothing...it wasn't the bobbin....it wasn't the thread...it was ME.   siiggghhh!!!

check this out.



see that little bit of thread that is all curled up. that has been my problem all along. when winding the bobbin, i hold the end of the thread and then cut it off after it winds around a few times. and as it winds, the thread curls up on itself. when i just snip the thread and finish winding, there is a little curl of thread there. sometimes it goes down into the hole when i put the bobbin in the case. then the bobbin is caught and doesn't want to move. i have to take a needle or pin to pull the bobbin out. i would put in a different bobbin and it would be fine. so i thought the first bobbin was bad and rewound the thread onto another bobbin and threw that one away.

finally one day i guess i looked closer or something. when i pulled out the tight bobbin i saw the bit of thread curl. i pulled it up and there was about an inch of thread...all curled on itself. once i clipped that off, the bobbin slipped right in...no problem.

so, the new rule is to pull up and snip off that last little bit of thread before putting the bobbin in. works every time and no more thrown away bobbins.

sheesh.....it must be the Polish in me.....sometimes it takes forever to figure something out.  i guess it is good that i figured it out before i threw away ALL the bobbins and went and bought more.

i was thinking that if I had the problem...perhaps someone else did, too.  or not...you all might be more clever than i am and know about this already. but i feel so relieved that i have solved one of my life's little problems. now i love my bobbins again.

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