Ever Have One Of Those Days....

When you wonder why you bothered to get up? Well, I feel like that today.


For the last couple of months, I've wanted to try to make a 'lacy' scarf using water soluble stabilizer and my sewing machine. Today was the day. I drew out the rectangle on the stabilizer, set my machine for the recommended fancy stitch, reduced my tension as suggested in the book, and away I went.

About 3 hours later, this is what it looked like:

To say this was about as exciting as watching paint dry, would be an understatement. It was tedious and took FOREVER just to stitch one row - and each row had to be stitched twice. At this point, my idea of making one of these for some people on my Christmas list went right out the window.

Then I started to really look at it - it didn't really look like the one in the book - it wasn't nearly as lacy. I'd also used a variegated thread for a couple of rows - big mistake - didn't like that at all. Then I had a light bulb moment - I had shortened the stitch length instead of reducing the tension - talk about stupid! No wonder it was taking so long to stitch out.

So, after about 5 hours of the little voices in my head arguing saying - why don't you just throw it out and start over - but I can't - look at all the stabilizer I have invested in this, and stabilizer isn't cheap - I hate the colours and don't like the variegated thread - but just finish it and maybe you could give it to someone you don't like very much or maybe you could give it to the girls to play dress-up with.

So this is it - maybe once I rinse the stabilizer out it will change from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan - maybe - but I'm not counting on it.

I'm getting used to our new computer - it certainly is fast and I like that! Of course, it hasn't been without it's complications. The sound on it was terrible and when I told Leo the speakers sounded fine on the old computer but sounded tinny on this one, his reply was - it's a computer, not a stereo. Not funny. Music is a huge part of my life - I almost always have music on when I'm on the computer and this just wasn't going to work. He started to explain that the old speakers only had one wire, and this computer has multiple connections blah blah blah - I really don't care why it sounds awful, I just want him to do something to make it sound better.

So, off to Best Buy he goes and comes home with new speakers (that sound wonderful, by the way). What he also neglected to tell me is the old printer doesn't work with this computer either, so not only did he buy new speakers, he bought a new printer/copier/scanner/fax. Now, we already have a scanner - we don't need a fax - but......it was on sale! Must be a man thing. Fabric I can understand, printers - not so much.