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Monday, February 27, 2017

Its just not my day

Monday is “roll the dice” day, if I’m home and not tripping around somewhere or other.  And I have to admit that I was rather pleased to get number 4 again this week – my candlewick quilt, the same number as last week.  Sadly I didn’t do as much as I had hoped last week, so I’m very pleased to have a second chance again this week.

But first things first, and before I got to work on UFO number 4 I needed to deal with a big bag of plums.  Caravan club members Barry and Diane had brought a whole lot of excess fruit from their trees to the weekend rally, apples and plums, so I was more than happy to take some home to cook up.  The plums got halved, and into the crock pot (slow cooker) they went.  There they could simmer away without any attention from me.

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Two varieties of plums cooking away

There was one more thing I needed to do before I got on to working on my UFO.  The hem on the caravan door mat had started to fray, so I needed to fix it.  In fact, it had frayed so much that I decided the best way to deal with it was to make a facing and stitch it securely down.  It was hard work stitching through so much thickness and partly through the job my needle snapped.  I’ll just change it and get on with things, I thought.

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Facing on the reverse of the mat

Wrong – try as I might, I just couldn’t loosen the screw which held the needle in place – it was just done up much too tight.  And I really didn’t want to force it and cause any damage to my sewing machine.  Robin was away for most of the day, so I just had to wait till he returned.  So I pottered around all day, not able to get on with my sewing, but cut a few strips for the borders on my candlewick quilt, all ready to start stitching when I finally could.
Once Robin returned home in the mid afternoon, he soon had the broken needle removed and a new one in place.  The mat was soon finished.  It’s not pretty on the back side, but it is all fixed.  Finally – I can start sewing.  But I hadn’t gone too far when I needed to get the unpicker out!

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Time to unpick this seam

So what had I done wrong?  It shouldn’t have really mattered which way I stitched the plain cream strip on.  But I had forgotten I had a seam in it to get the required length and I didn’t check that “right sides were together”.  So I started again, stitched a seam or two, pressed them open, and then put my sewing away.  The afternoon was almost over and I had achieved very little!  Think I’ll try again tomorrow, and hopefully nothing will go wrong.  It’s just not my day today.

5 comments:

Jocelyn is Canadian Needle Nana said...

So envious of your lovely camping trip...the sunflowers-glorious, honey and cheese, yum. You are very industrious, Jenny. I would never think to repair a mat like that but you did it. Have a great week!

Kate said...

I think we need these 'off' days just to make us appreciate all the times things go well ... perhaps it humbles us. :) Better luck tomorrow.

Nancy J said...

When all goes wrong, I tend to do the Fight or flee, and just flee, leaving it all till another day.Lovely plums, I was given some from the Op Shop last week, and they were deep golden inside. yummy. Slow cooker, what a great way, hadn't thought of that, so much easier than a pot that can boil over so easily.

loulee said...

So frustrating when our machines don't behave as expected. At least you made progress elsewhere.

Janice said...

Hopefully that is the end of your bad luck run and tomorrow is productive. I bet your kitchen smelled divine with the plums bubbling away.