The bachelor weekend in review

When they got home, Rob asked me if I had fun and I sad No.  Quick, no.  But, that’s not true.  I did have a nice weekend.  I worked my boohonkus off, but I had a nice weekend.  I enjoyed it, in my own way, even though it’s not going to sound like I had any fun at all. 

I got to my hard work early in the mornings.  I repaired the grout around my kitchen sink and in Sydney’s shower.  I’m still an apprentice grouter, so it has to be re-done once in a while, in small spaces.  And, I stacked up the furniture in the dining, living and bedroom and cleaned the carpet.  I repaired our showerhead, which had sprung a leak that was actually painful to the back of the head if you stood in the wrong place.  And, I restored Sydney’s laptop to its factory settings to get rid of some bad mojo that had downloaded itself to it.  And, surprise of all surprises, it worked.  That’s mostly kick something off and come back to it in a few hours and kick something else off, but it’s still time consuming.   

I spent several hours repairing and then using the new machine Rob brought home for me on Friday.  A Bernina 817 for $40, including its cabinet.  A bargain.  Well, I found out why the price was so low.  It sounded like it was shot to hell.  But, it wasn’t  It needed a lot of oil…a lot of oil.  Like I thought I was going to have to call someone in the oil fields of West Texas to ship me a barrel.  And, the belts were out of alignment.  One was too tight and one was too loose.  they shared a common pulley and when I moved that pulley, everything snapped into place and it started working perfect.  Almost silent, strong.  I did some practice FMQ and it’s going to be a great second machine for that.  But mostly, I pieced.

I assembled these two quilts from blocks made during Bonnie Hunter’s Easy Street mystery.  I added the borders and plan to quilt them on the new machine.  Hey, what the heck.  Why not?  I decided the leave the hexagon quilt in the shape it was instead of adding large triangles to finish the corners.  I like it.  A bit of whimsy in a donation quilt. 

And, Saturday night, I stayed up late and did a whole lot of the quilting on this one. 

I knew the motif for what to quilt into those trees would come to me, as soon as I sat down and got familiar with the quilt.  . 

So, that’s it for me.  I don’t know how easy it will be to post for a few days.  I’m in Tampa, Florida.  For training.  Something tells me I’m going to wish I’d spent more of the weekend sleeping and less time studying the right wrist angle for spreading grout.

Everybody take care.  If you see a guy knitting a sock on an airplane, say hey!  It’s prob’ly me.  I don’t run into many men sewing or knitting on airplanes. 

Lane