Another busy day

It took me 1 hour and 50 minutes to do my errands after I left work - 2 hours was a pretty good guess! I finished hand sewing the rod pockets on the five pieces I prepped the night before and pinned on the pockets on four more. I have two left to do.


After I finished sewing on the rod pocket for each piece, I laid it on the table and measured out the hanging rod length.


Here are the hanging rods marked for length and I wrote the number of the piece it goes with on it too. I will get my handy dandy miter saw fired up and trim these tomorrow. Then after drilling a small hole in each end for the screw eyes I will hand them on a long piece of scrap which I will hammer in finish nails (finish nails don't have a head on them), prop the wood on a couple of ladders and then hang the hanging rods thru one of the screw eyes on a nail so I can spray paint them. Did that make sense? I will take a picture of this operation and post it next week.


I am taking a break from blogging until Monday, 11/29, but I will have a lot to post - the hanging of my exhibit, the start of the family xmas quilt, and who know what other kind of work (trouble!) I will get myself into.

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

The work

I spent my half day vacation and evening doing mostly handwork. I now have all the bindings hand stitching done and moved on to the hanging rod pockets. I have 3 done and here are five more ready for the hand stitching. I underestimated how long this part of the work would take and I am learning a lesson. That lesson would be to take the time and just sew on the rod pockets when I finish a piece.


Last night I slept with the window in the bedroom open! It was 57 degrees coming into work this morning. I know it is going to end soon, but it sure has been a lovely warm fall.

I am taking another half day today, but I have some running around I have to do. I need to take back a HD cord to Best Buy to get a refund on my Visa, stop and get a piece of foam core, and stop at the grocery store for a couple of items. Doesn't sound like much, but I am estimating this killing 2 hours of my half day.

My goal today is to get the rod pockets on the five pieces I have ready and get more rod pockets ready for the next group. I plan on having 16 pieces ready for the exhibit.

Stage 17 - Thor is done.

Stage 17 - Thor is done. I photographed it on a dark background so you could see it. It is about 32" x 36". I am happy with the way it turned out and glad I got it done so that I can hang it this coming weekend. I have a day of vacation to use up - if we don't use our vacation we lose it - so I am going to take 1/2 day today and tomorrow to get all the last minute details finished like hanging pockets, hanging rods, and signage. It was confirmed that my presence is not required anywhere on Thanksgiving so I have all day to work on the exhibit too. YEAH!

I got my car back on Friday. The bill was a little less than the quote _ $1064.18. It feels like a new car when I drive. I am just glad to have my wheels back!

Now where did I put that?

Last night was a mish mash of tasks. I measured all the pieces I am going to be hanging so I can get some wood for hanging them. I was looking then for two things - my Keim wood trim catalogue for one of the men at work and my bill from when I had my oil changed in October. I found the bill, but not the catalogue.

I wanted the bill because they always do a Multi-point check on the car. Well the boxes for the struts and components is marked in the green ok box when I had the car in to get the oil changed on Oct.5. So five weeks later the strut is completely rusted thru and breaks? When I pick up the car tonight, I am going to have a conversation with the service guys and discuss how disappointed I am with their inspection. After all if they would have told me there was a problem, I would have gotten it fixed before it broke so I would not be without a car for almost 4 days. Sounds like someone at the shop needs retrained!

Here is the before of the right side of the garage.

Here is the after of the right side of the garage. The big box has t-shirts that I need to make a quilt out of for the rec center. My brother is highly involved in the baseball program for little kids and these t-shirt were left over from years past. He thinks a lot of the woman that runs the program and thought it would be cool to have a quilt made from the shirts that could hang in the rec center. One more thing to do - by the way this is a freebe job. I also have two boxes of stuff from work that needs shredded. We don't have a shredder so I have been storing it for quite awhile until I can deal with it.


Here is the left side of the garage which I did not have time to deal with last evening. I wanted to show you this so you didn't think I was some kind of superwoman - yes there is still work to be done! The blue buckets have my canna rizomes in them and I need to get those wrapped up and taken in the house before it gets any colder. There is also two doors that I painted and need rehung, my vanity for the upstairs bathroom, and miscellaneous renovation supplies etc.


I am going to be spending all weekend getting my pieces ready for the exhibit so the finishing the garage cleanup will have to wait until next weekend. Have a great weekend!

I'm a winner

I received my winnings in the mail last night. I won a sketchbook, pen, and pencil case from Colleen of http://colleenkole.blogspot.com. Thank you Colleen!


Here is the crock pot of chili I made last night. I eat it over brown rice. I will freeze half the batch and it will be enough for lunches for two weeks.


After some conversations with a couple of my brothers, I think I get to stay home all by myself for Thanksgiving! YEAH! No pie making, no cheesecake making, no making sweet potatoes, no taking a shower, getting dressed, and leaving the house. I need the time to work on my exhibit so I am elated!

Baby is broken

Poor baby needs some work. The shop called and she needs a new strut assembly on the driver side rear, all the stablizers need replaced, and the fuel tank neck has a crack. The cost - $1,142.00. Baby had been paid off for years so $1,142 is equal to about 3 car payments so I figure I am still ahead of the game. I won't get it back until Friday because they had to order several parts. My sister-in-law picked me up this morning and I think my brother will pick me up after work. I would walk or take my bike, but the weather is rainy and windy and then you never know when you might get mugged in this town. I say it is a good time to clean out the garage since I don't have the car in the way. Humm? I may have to do than either tonight or tomorrow evening.

I decided to take the leftover pieced fabric from "Thor" and make some small mounted pieces like the orange and blue ones. Here they are just cut up and ready for sewing on my design wall. I would like to have a lot of these smaller 9" x 12" pieces to sell to people would could not afford to buy a larger piece. I was thinking about selling them for $40.00. Too cheap? Too expensive?

What the heck is that noise?

I got in the car and headed to work. I drove over a bump and CLUNK - there was an awful noise coming from the driver's side in the back. Sounds like a broken spring or shock. I slowly drove over to the dealership clunking all the way and left the car. I have not heard yet what the issue is, but I am sure there is one! It could have been worse, and I am just grateful I could still drive the car.

I worked on Thor a bit last night. This is a shot of the back. Those rows of stitching are 2' long. I used more than a bobbin of thread quilting the first full section.