made by Leeloumade by Leeloumade by Leeloumade by Leeloumade by Leelou

Monday, June 20, 2011

Do not try this at home. Ever. For any reason.

*Don't forget! You have two more days to leave a comment HERE to win the garage sailor pouch!*

First of all, a huge ginormous WELCOME to the new readers! I love you guys. You're my reason for blogging. How was your weekend everybody? We've been having  the typical June Gloom here in sunny Southern California, which is actually pretty welcome. There's even been a tiny bit of rain! Makes me want to snuggle in and spend a whole day knitting. But nope, no time for that for me. Here's how my weekend went:

Saturday, also known as "The Day That Ended in Horror"
Back around mid/late May, I was shooting emails back and forth with a fellow husky owner, musher, and crafter extraordinaire friend, Bonz. She was showing me some beautiful fabric she had designed to make "survival kits" as bridesmaid/groomsmen gifts. I LOVED this fabric. I had to have it. You can click on the pictures below, they're linked to where you can buy it. Cute, no?

survival olive green survival

So we worked out a deal where I would make the pouches, and get to keep whatever fabric was left over.  Whoring myself out for fabric? Yep. Will work for fabric. I be poor. I be so poor, I'm po'. Can't even afford the 'or. All in all, there were going to be 17 pouches with the extras Bonz wanted for herself and her family. She needs them by the beginning of July. Eek! Okay, but can do. I figured if I could churn out 2-3 pouches a day (with my schedule, that's doing pretty good) I could get it done in a timely manner.  My panic increased a bit when the fabric didn't arrive until this past wednesday.  I can do it! I can do it! I just can't procrastinate, and must buckle down. I consider it a great test for myself to see if I really CAN make sewing a bit more of a business instead of a "if I feel like it" sort of thing. Strength and personal character, right? Right. :)
     Thursday and friday evenings I cut out the pieces I would need. Saturday morning was the last of the cutting-out, and I felt pretty darn good. Go Boo, go! You can do it! As I sewed together the decorative bits for the bridesmaids pouches, I marveled at how productive I was. Damn! I could really move if I wanted to! I was so damn proud of myself. Theoretically, I could finish all 7 of the girls' pouches in ONE DAY. I had my Django Reinhardt station on Pandora, sleepy huskies behaving, and some smelly-good oil burning. It was a fantastic day. I was ready to sew in the zippers, when my machine got a bit noisy and "catchy" (you know, it doesn't want to flow and catches along the way?). Nooo! Not my Viking Victoria!
     I opened up the bobbin case, took it apart, blew out the lint (it needs a good cleaning) and inspected everything to see if there were any tangles or anything out of place. Nope, not really. Top thread? Nope, everything looked correct. So I adjusted my tension and tried again. Same problem. Bottom part looked loopy in places and easily came apart. This is a sample on a piece of test fabric, dark so I could see the white threads easily:

WTF?!?! I continued to fiddle, and started to get really upset.

So what does Bonnie do when she gets really upset? I'll show you:
Oh yes, yes I did. I was desperate. I was the kid that always took things apart and put them back together. Not that I'm a mechanical genius, but generally I can figure it out. I was just looking for something jammed, or some lint backed up somewhere, a tangle, ANYTHING. Which I did find, by the way. There was some old thread wrapped around a place I couldn't have gotten to without taking everything apart.
    My hands were shaking the whole time, and I was muttering expletives, trying to be VERY GENTLE and not break anything. Which I didn't. Go me. This was about.....oh...5? 6pm? And by 11pm I had this:
I said who's hoooouuse? BOO'S HOOOUSE!! 
I managed to get all the computerized parts attached correctly, everything hooked up, and running. The stitching seems fine now. *WHEW* I cannot portray my relief. You know that crazy laugh people do after a giant disaster they've lived through? The one that says "holy shit, I can't believe we just got through that!". Yeah.

I have an appointment to bring my machine into my local sew &amp; vac place for a proper cleaning and tuning, because the machine is running LOUD now. This is not supposed to be a loud machine. I'm sure it needs a good oiling, and hopefully they can check it out and see if everything is in its proper place. Please lord, please let it be a simple fix. But at least it's functioning, and I didn't completely kill it. I am all at once proud of myself, and also want to beat myself over the head. *whack whack* YOU ARE NOT A MACHINE TECHNICIAN THAT WAS A COMPLETELY STUPID THING TO DO! *Whack whack whack*

So I'll be borrowing a machine from a wonderful friend until my machine comes home, hopefully in 3-5 days if the nice lady on the phone was correct. But who knows? They could open it up and say "what in the world did somebody DO to this poor machine?!" and they could quote me some astronomical price and timeline to fix it. Please people, I need all the good things you can spare. 

Sunday was spent in a haze of knitting, netflix, and napping. First The Rocketter (I &lt;3 that movie), then disc one of Mad Men, season one. Yes, I know. I'm the last one to jump on the bandwagon of Mad Men. I loved it! Can't wait until the next discs come! Pizza was ordered and consumed, and a stupidly long nap was had. My wonderful sister brought me home a carnitas burrito from Chronic Taco, and I figured a glass of wine was well deserved with dinner. 

So how was your weekend? LOL!


  1. Good job on the sewing machine; I'm glad it seems to have worked out in the end! My least favourite thing is when I take something apart and then put it all back together, and I'm left with a mystery piece that I don't know where it goes. Hope that didn't happen for you!

    I can definitely relate to "will work for fabric", though I usually end up working for yarn. :) For my current crazy need-to-buckle-down instead-of-procrastinating situation, I'm working for about 10 dollars a day and a steak dinner at the end. I'm helping a friend on etsy make some friendship bracelets for a huge order. I've only got, hmm, 182 left to do in the next nine days. And that's after making around 170. I wonder why I sign myself up for this kind of insanity? :)

  2. I seriously think sewing machine repair people should offer out "loaners" like car dealerships do. I really need to have my Bernina serviced (nothing wrong, it's just past time) but the turn-around is a week. And a week is ... like a WEEK too long!!! :(

  3. Oh I really hope they get your machine sorted out really quickly and cheaply. I killed my first machine. It started sounding like a machine gun! But it was hella cheap and I did run it into the ground. Eek! I'll be thinking of you, promise!

  4. Wow, well my weekend didn't involve any sewing machine surgery, but the way I was feeling about mine on Saturday it nearly went out the window an ended up in that many pieces! Actually, it wasn't the machine's fault, it just isn't able to do what I wanted it to, and it's hardly it's fault I can't measure either...

  5. Gwen: *blink blink* many in 9 days? ARE YOU INSANE?! I'm totally speechless. How long does each bracelet take you? I think $10 a day isn't worth it, no matter HOW good the steak is. No steak is that good. Well, almost no steak. Anyway, you are truly an amazing friend indeed for doing that, and I'll be curious to see how long it takes you to get through all those.

  6. Katy- you totally made me laugh because I have SO been there. That's when it's time to stop and take a breather. ;) hope your project came out okay in the end! What were you working on?

  7. Army of four- you are SO right about the loaner thing. In the past, it wouldn't have been a big deal. But now that crafting is a part of my daily life? No way, man. I need my machine. Even if I didn't have deadlines looming, I'd still be very twitchy for a week if I didn't have another one. Thank you Kathy for loaning me a machine!!!


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