Monday

I used my new buoy board this morning for 50 yards of kicking and then 50 yards as a pull buoy. I did that after the first 15 minutes of swimming and then again at the 30 minute mark and the 45 minute mark. My body was a little shocked - my stomach muscles particularly - but I think it's a nice little change.

On the down side, I did share a lane today with a very good swimmer (a regular) so I was pretty careful to stay on my side of the lane and both hands got battered by the lane line. I'm now the proud owner of new blood bruises on both hands and an arm. Sigh. I think if I can remember to take the right hand side, it won't be as hard to keep flapping the line.

Now I'm home and having some coffee. I discovered last night that the garbage disposal has apparently taken to gumming the offerings as opposed to chewing them up. I can live without the disposal pretty easily I think. If not, I'll call the guy who installed it and get him to come out and fix it and the drip at the same time.

BUT I'm not going to even think about that until after the Oven Festuche is over. One household stress at a time, please.

Today will be sewing. Already this month I am falling behind on doll production. I over did it last month so this month I'm feeling delinquent. Which is ridiculous since I'm under no obligation at all for any of it. So where's this pressure coming from??? Silly me. I enjoy sewing. I enjoy knitting. And yet, with both, I get all stressed about production numbers. Next thing you know, I'll be measuring by Six Sigma standards. Old habits die... never?

The machine is calling...

My tweets

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Screw it

So... I'm sewing along and the fabric gets caught up under the needle, which happens. So I carefully unscrew the plate under the needle and promptly lose both the sews. Fuck. I looked everywhere. I finally called the store and they can't tell me what kind they are plus they soonest they could get some in to sell me would be Wednesday. Grrrrr

Finally another grid search of the room with a flashlight turned up nothing so I turned up the machine. One fell out (actually maybe two but I could only find one). At least now I could sew. I got to a natural stopping place and grabbed the now OH SO PRECIOUS screw and made a beeline for Home Depot.

Naturally there was no one screwing around in the screw department. It took me forever to figure out even where among all those screws to look. Finally I found kind of but not quite what I was looking for and then I spied this very nifty Find Your Screw thing... You screw your screw into the tester and it tells you the size. Turns out my screw was a metric size and they only had phillps head versions but what they heck. I bought 12. Plus a packet of little magnets so that I'd have some place to put them next time I take the plate off. $5.00.



Came home, held my breath and tried one AND IT WORKED!!!!!!! Hallefuckinglooyah. So proud now that I got 12 and I also took a photo of the package that has the size and other info on it. I will not get caught again!

The other day I got an email asking me to test out a new sewing machine - it was from the parent company of the store where I bought mine. Without thinking, I clicked and filled out the form. On my way home from Home Depot I got a call asking if I was still interested and could I go to their Northgate store from 11-2 next Monday. I said sure. I got home and dug out the email...

And googled.

And figured out that it's simply a sales pitch for this new machine that is on preorder. I looked at the pre-order deal. Among other incentives is a $7,500 discount. That's $7,500 off the price of the machine. I am not smart enough or rich enough to afford or even be interested in a machine that I need to take our a mortgage to buy. I'm not really even interested in seeing that it can do mainly because it turns out to primarily be an embroidery machine and I'm not interested in that aspect of sewing.

But, I'm not mean. I'll wait until tomorrow to call and sadly report that I won't be able to make it after all. I had a personal emergency come up... an attack of common sense!

Now back to my own machine and it's beautiful new screw.

6 pack review

I think that buoy board work was not a waste of time. My mid section muscles are reporting that they were worked this morning. Nice to know it wasn't a waste of time and money.

I finished another shirt and then went on to make two dolls. I need to make some more dolls with pants - aka boy dolls - but, honestly, they aren't as fun and interesting to make. Still, I should make some. But, not today. Here's today: