Cooking With Gas!

or Sewing With Electricity might be more appropriate. I got both my machines back yesterday! Woo-hoo! The tech had not called to say my 200/730 needed a new motherboard or some other very expensive, out-of-warranty repair, but just to say "She's ready!"

You know how the definition of insansity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result? WHY would I sit down to the 830 this morning and attempt my shoe with the metallic thread again? Please help me understand why? And when it ate the thread and jammed (again), my first thought was where could I take it to be repaired...because there is no way I could take it in to ASC for a third time with metallic thread stuck in the bobbin! I actually did manage to get all the thread out myself, and really have moved to acceptance that the metallic thread is not, repeat, not going to work. I get it. Really. Seriously. No metallic thread.

This is a funny story from Asilomar about sewing machines...I rented a machine rather than lug one of mine cross country. The machines are all Bernina's - just the basic mechanical model. When I started sewing on the rented machine, I couldn't figure out how to cut the thread. So I mused out loud, "I wonder where the thread cutter is.....?" The woman sitting across from me handed me a pair of scissors and said, "You need to come on back to the real world!" LOL - and Marilyn, who is from Canada and is the funniest person you ever want to meet said, "Honey, the real world sux. You just stay in whatever world you want." It was pretty funny when I realized there was no thread cutter! I thought all machines I had thread cutters!

Worked on restoring order to the sewing room last night and Friday. Leave for NYC tomorrow morning. Judy is coming from California on Friday to help me get organized and said, "Don't get too far ahead!" HA! No danger of that! And you can't even see what's on the other side of the pool table!

But - there's magic happening in the sewing room! Oooooooh - how purty! The challenge will be to keep it this way!

I know I'm in my own little world...but it's okay - they know me here.

Catching Up

So much to catch up on...I haven't written in over a month, I know. One reason is because I haven't been sewing, and not because I don't want to sew, because I do, I really do. To answer my husband's question about why I have 3 sewing machines (actually 7, but I'm not counting the 3 Featherweights and my old Singer in this discussion...kinda like I don't count those Dove candies in my daily Weight Watcher count), because it is entirely possible for two of them to be broken at the same time! Or because I can sew on one while the other is embroidering. Seriously, both my machines are in the shop. The 200/730 had been going to sleep and I would have to turn it on and off to reboot it (it's Windows based), until finally, it just wouldn't wake up anymore...just went to sleep. When I came back from Asilomar last night, there was a message from the tech...this is not good. When I called today, he wasn't in, and I can't talk to him until Saturday. Sigh. And my 830 really doesn't like metallic thread. I was working on my shoe quilt...the heel of the shoe I was making has an overlay of metallic thread...I did everything they recommend when you work with metallic thread (slow the machine down, use a thread net, use a larger-eyed needle) and the machine just ate the thread. And the bobbin case jammed and I couldn't get the bobbin off. Also Not Good. Deep Sigh. So I had to take them both in to the dealer. I still have my first Bernina that I can use - the 180 that I use for classes.

So - I went to NYC for my birthday, came back the next week and went to Tampa to visit Ann and Paul Lee at their beautiful home in Tierra Verde, then left for a week in Asilomar for a class with Judy Niemeyer, brought to you by Empty Spools. Whew! I'm tired thinking about all that travel!

We stayed at the Westin in Times Square - these are photos from our room on the 38th floor. I really didn't think we would make it in, since there were storms that day and flights were being cancelled left and right. But because it was my birthday, the weather gods smiled on me and we landed only half an hour late.

Paul and Ann have a beautiful home, right on the water. We took Paul's boat out on Sunday -

I learned so much in Judy's class at Asilomar...techniques and skills that I can use for any project, not just Judy's. My class members were very focused. They started sewing early in the morning and kept sewing through 10-11 at night. I enjoyed my walks on the beach every morning, my massages in the afternoon, and going in to town for shopping and dinner! I learned a lot but it was also a vacation for me and I enjoyed it.

Finally, just before I left, we finally got started on the work from the flood in September. When we moved here, there was carpet in my sewing room, and I wanted to take that up and put in hardwood or tile, but it was just too expensive. So I put it off. It's just way too hard to keep clean, so while we were having all the repair work done on the house, I took all the stuff out of the sewing room. Here's what it looked like piled up on Al's pool table:

I am so very lucky to have a wonderful husband who enables me in my quilting vice.

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness." Dave Barry