NaPoWriMo 2023 Day 4

Mom and I had dueling eye doctor appointments, same time, different doctors. We drove home via Joann’s and I picked out some fabric for chair cushions, after we sat in the car and read today’s breaking news headlines. Then it was home to enjoy a wonderful dinner of Norwegian salmon and celebratory bloody marys.

Sat in the front yard
watching the daffodils blooming
rather than the news

it’s possible spring
will last a week or so
unless we get snow

over there a grackle
is being scolded by a
chickadee or two

such a relief, the sun
warm on me and the garden
be hopeful today

NaPoWriMo 2023 Day 4

Field trip

This morning there was blue sky and sunshine after weeks of grey and clouds so today was the day to bring my sewing machine in for some look-see. After millions of miles of sewing/quilting, a long period of no-use, and then some quite successful clothes sewing this past fall, I went in one day to do a quick repair and it said – NO. It pretended like maybe it would consent to sew and then no.

So after a few possible trips that were put aside for iffy weather, Mom and I set off to Gloversville Sewing Center so my trusty machine could get looked at. I am hopeful that it will be a belt or something easily fixed but I’ve had this machine since January 1994 and rode it hard. I did dutifully clean and oil it during all those years but I get it being tired and cranky now. Will wait and see what the report is.

I am not morally opposed to getting a new sewing machine but I didn’t really want the couple dozen embroidery stitches on this machine, so I don’t get the selling point of 150 embroidery stitches. I want straight stitching, basic zig-zag, maybe a couple edge-finishing options and droppable feet for easy free-handing. I don’t think that’s asking a lot. When I was doing a lot of machine quilting, I would sometimes put a strip of masking tape over the two adjustment knobs on the front, to prevent them getting bumped and getting me into zigzag mode accidentally. Now all the machines have large touch screens on the horizontal part, with lots of screens to go through to make your choices… (eyeball roll here)

And of course since we were there, we had to look at all the fabric. She found some fun stuff. I found a couple things which may get used for like a vest lining or something:

Field trip

Bobbincount 7 plus 10 (plus a smidge more)

I thought earlier I couldn’t possibly do anymore quilting tonight but you know – sort of like horses knowing the home barn is nigh… I found myself back at the sewing machine.

The seventeenth bobbin ran out and I stopped to wind a new one. I knew there was not much left but what can you do.

Here’s a view of the tiny bit of thread used from what is technically number eighteen. A smidge doesn’t really count as a whole bobbin though so I’m going to declare the total to be seventeen!

#Bobbincount – the Sixteenth (six plus ten)

And now, for something completely different and frankly I am not even sure what.

#Bobbincount Five Plus Ten

#Bobbincount four plus ten

Tonight after dinner with mom, I got in the car to start the drive home. Turned on the radio and there was Tchaikowsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Garrick Ohlsson providing the piano in this Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood performance. I heard this concerto often growing up because it was a favorite of my father.

The pianist received several standing ovations and finally announced an encore, a Chopin waltz. Ahhh, what a way to drive home.

#bobbincount 3 plus 10

So I had to stop and undo a little quilting. Can’t complain because it’s been pretty smooth going but I couldn’t leave this bit. Broke the top thread and found I didn’t have to cut the bottom because the bobbin had just run out. Now I’m ready to go again.

#bobbincount 2 plus 10

#bobbincount (11), unexpected cheer and stuff

I plowed along tonight, listening to The Silmarillion and to music and enjoying the temperate temperature. 70’s is much nicer for quilting in than 90’s.

Bobbin count for tonight is 11, and I actually quilted 2/3 of another one, but you’ll hear more about that one tomorrow no doubt.

Last night I went down to get the laundry out of the dryer. It was late and I was just going to put it away and go to bed. As I came up the stairs my eye was caught something in the pantry-way along the cellar stairs – could it be? was there really a bottle of Moscato there? This was what greeted me when I took off the wrapper.

And this was the other end of the cork:

Hard not to be happy about that!

#Bobbincount the 10th

A practical note for those who chance here, discovering this blog: I began with twelve empty bobbins and have two as yet uncounted bobbins which are partially full of thread. I will now start to re-use the ten bobbins now empty. And if it seems, to your willing ears that my speech has become long and of a manner more familiar in older times, it mayhap be laid to the first part of the audio book I am listening to. Long those words feed down into sentences and then to gathering tributaries of interwoven rivers and tales, bearing along those with many similar names and many varied lands and places now lost to time. Although the fair people of those places may no longer be known in our own lands and it being uncertain that the dwarfs shall ever again wrought bobbins as in the shining hour of their realms, I will re-use the bobbins you see before you, remembering always the friendship that many treasured in their time and the strength with which they bent against the evil one who shall not be named here.