More fun than a barrel of monkeys

It's been one of those days for as long as I can remember. As I sit at the computer writing this, my left foot is soaking in a plastic pail that used to hold kitty litter. Hot water and epsom salts with a couple of drops of lavender oil for an infected big toe. How the toe got infected, I have no idea - it wasn't cut, scratched or damaged by a toenail - but two days of soaking it has just about gotten rid of the redness and the soreness.

Ginger gets her licks in

Rusty sunbathing

Last night I was working on my quilt - one foot in the kitty litter pail and the other foot on the treadle. I thought it might help with the tension problems. It didn't. You know, Monday I thought I had it all sorted out. I finished quilting the inner square of the quilt and it wasn't too bad. Had a few spots left to do. All I did was turn it off. When I went to work on it the next day, back to the same old problems with thread loops on the back. What did I do? The only thing different was that Monday it was hot and sunny and Tuesday it was cold and raining. Do I have to become an expert meteorologist, too? Just kidding.

I loosened the tension by a hair. It looked pretty good, I was admiring how good the stitches were looking... Jammed. Ripped out the stitches and loosened it a little more. Hey, the next set of stitches looked even better. Pretty nice.... Bobbin ran out of thread. Ripped the stitches out again and loosened the tension just a little more because there were still thread loops on the back. Filled the bobbin, rethreaded the sewing machine and tried again. It worked. We're back to seeing bits of bobbin thread on the quilt top again. I'm hoping that will disappear as my quilting improves, if I live that long.

 

 

I should mention that I don't really take myself seriously, and I hope you don't either. When I whine I'm just mentally slapping myself. I'll blame this one on the Moon passing through the sign of Virgo from now until Friday. That means it's in my natal First House and makes everything about me!

 

 

And fabric! There was a deleriously happy side to yesterday as well as my fabric from Sew Sisters came! I really wasn't expecting it until after our current mail strike was over, but it just raced through the system and landed in our post office a lot sooner than expected. My postmistress was just as excited as I was because I usually open my fabric purchases right there so she can see them, also. Then we pet them for a while and hope no one else comes in.

Future Yin/Yang quilt

Future sparkly quilt

Future, ah, dragonfly quilt

Years of tension adjustment practice

I found some nice black and whites and so started collecting them to make a Yin/Yang pattern. Two opposite patterns of Silhouettes (Willow and Fans) by Ro Gregg for Northcott and an unidentified Chrysanthemum pattern. The rest were purchased with pure self indulgence - some liberally-dusted with gold glitter fabric from My Asian Garden - Ro Gregg again for Northcott (crests in brown, gold and raspberry, and leaves in turquoise); and some beautiful unidentified wide backing Japanese dragonflies in madder and indigo. And thread! Sulky Blendables, which Linda at The Quilted Pineapple has told me may give me more tension challenges. Aaaaaagh. Oh well. A life without challenges is pretty boring. Some challenges, however...

Well, now that the rain has stopped and it's sunny and hot again, we'll see how the quilting goes.

Until next time,