Come Stitch With Me

The world is a crazy place right now.

Online videos show people are fighting over everyday items at big box stores to the extent someone was injured enough to require ambulance transport to a medical facility.

In my area, it’s eerie to see grocery store shelves literally bare. It’s not the usual bread, milk and eggs run we see when a dusting of snow is forecasted. People are frantically buying up whatever they see. Produce, meat, bread, paper products, frozen foods, milk, canned biscuits – all gone.  Hubby’s employer has now curtailed all travel, so my road warrior hubby will be at home for a while. This meant a trip to the grocery store last night for milk. We got the last 1/2 gallon of 2% milk and managed to find substitute brands for other items we typically buy for weekend breakfasts.  Makes me ever so thankful for my stocked pantry and freezer (Mrs. Schubert’s cinnamon rolls in the freezer section are a good substitute for the Pillsbury canned version).

Local schools are cancelled for the foreseeable future. I’ll be teleworking 3 hours per day to support digital learning initiatives, plus compiling book orders and conducting library database maintenance. Reading new books was on my list, but now that the libraries are closed, I’ll have to borrow/buy ebooks or visit the local bookstore.

What this does mean is that I will have some time to really organize my sewing studio and actually finish some of those UFOs languishing on my work table.

Keep calm and quilt on!

The past couple of months have been a blur:

• Hubby has returned to work full-throttle, including all of the insane week-long travel.
• Boomer nearly bled to death and required several days in hospital at the ER vet. Thankfully, he’s made a remarkable recovery and we’ll be resuming limited therapy dog activities later this month.
• Sadie, the Labradoodle we’ve been keeping, is now officially a member our family.
• I severely sprained my right ankle about 3 weeks ago and am still recovering.

My sewing studio hasn’t been touched in a couple of months, except to hand sew on a couple of buttons. It shows.

I celebrated National Craft Month by sewing today. How about you?

“I’m at the warehouse,” read the text message from my coworker.

She was at our school district’s behemoth warehouse looking for tables. In a flash, I receive photos of several sewing machines that she’d discovered. One of the high schools had disbanded its interior design program (aka home economics) when the supervising teacher retired. Several of the machines had been sent to the warehouse as surplus.

“Tag the Janome and the blue Brother,” I replied.

Both machines arrived at school a few days later. They were in sad shape. The Brother was immediately pronounced DOA as it was seized up.  The Janome, on the other hand, was a different story. While filthy and obviously neglected, I was still able to make decent stitches by simply advancing the hand wheel. I immediately ordered a replacement foot pedal/power supply, extension table and thread guide.

With the new parts, the machine sewed well enough to be used during Friday clubs. Clubs are now a thing of the past, so the question became, “What to do with this one?” I decided to keep her. I spent time servicing and cleaning her up today. What a difference! I could not believe all the crud that was under the bobbin area – broken needles, extreme lint and thread wrapped around the gears.

My FW maintenance class served me well. I have confidence in my ability to service my own machines and most of the tools already on hand to fix minor problems I encounter during a service. Is the service perfect? Oh definitely not!  However, said machine now sews beautiful stitches with very little noise. Besides, I can always take the machine to the mechanic  if it’s beyond my abilities.