Thursday, April 22, 2021

I spent all morning in the sewing room working on cards. I have one more left to finish in this particular batch. They will all need to be quilted right away so they can go into the mail. One of the ones I worked on yesterday and finished today needs some adjustment; I hope I can fix it without starting over.

While I was sewing I kept looking for excuses why I shouldn’t go out to work in the yard this afternoon. Sadly I didn’t come up with a good one and since it is Earth Day it seemed appropriate to be digging in it. I’m about to admit defeat on one of the beds. The ground cover (Snow on the Mountain) and the Daisies have pretty much taken over everything. I managed to find the three hostas that we knew were there but unless this weeding perks them up they aren’t doing very well. I think they should be moved and then I can let the other plants go wild.

For the rest of the afternoon I’ll continue to work on my cards. We’re having dinner from one of our Indian restaurants tonight; we haven’t ordered much from them but they have a special vegetarian dinner tonight in honour of the day.

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

I’m often confused about one thing or another but I’m having a hard time remembering that today is Wednesday and not Monday. I think there are two reasons for this particular confusion. Coming home from Texada on a Tuesday rather than our usual Sunday evening (when our weeks were much busier than they are now) makes me think today must be Monday. And garbage day was Monday from February until Easter and it has only recently switched to Wednesday. I put it out this morning because I got a notification in my e-mail but I never really gave any thought to what day it was.

I had to get the Sunday Song Circle video posted to the Hall’s Facebook page this morning. I’ve done it once before so I wasn’t anticipating any problems. I tried it three times using Safari as my browser but when that wasn’t working I switched to Chrome where I tried it twice. When I still had no result I e-mail one of our younger Board members for help. Before he got back to me I received a notification from Facebook that my video had posted. Then I got another one, and another one until all five videos had posted. I quickly removed the duplicates. I remember now that last time I did the post I read somewhere that I’d get a notification but of course I’d forgotten that by today. Tyler did get back to me and told me that I probably did it correctly and it just takes Facebook a bit of time to get it loaded.

I’ve been working on cards the rest of the day. There are five in this particular group that I’m working on; I have two done and one more cut out.

The first one had 40 pieces in a 6.5″ top so you know the pieces were small. I used the precise piecing method that I had the refresher class on last week. Had I not done that I expect I would have thrown the whole thing out. It isn’t perfect but it is a pretty good job.

The second one involved appliqué as well as some embroidery. I tried a different method of machine appliqué today. Rather than use a product to stick the pieces onto the background before appliquéing I used glue (an idea that also came from the piecing class). I’ve avoided embroidery wherever I can but I decided to give it a try today. After watching a YouTube video I realized I’ve been doing the stem stitch all wrong up until now and the embroidery today worked out well.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

We intended to stay on Texada for another day but packed up and came home quite quickly late this morning.

We unloaded some things into the workshop and then Pat cleaned and swept out his truck bed. While I did that I found a few sewing-related things that I wanted to either take back up to the studio or bring home. Pat wanted to get gas (it is a penny cheaper on Texada than in Powell River) and we needed to get the mail.

When we got to the gas station their pump wasn’t working so we weren’t able to get any gas. We had thought we might do a trip out to Shelter Point but since we were short on gas we went down to the public dock for a look-see. When Pat turned the truck off, the fan continued to run. There was no way he could get it to turn off. He worried that it would run down his battery so we decided that we would come home so he could get it looked at right away. They had to replace some sort of module but Pat also saw how it can be disconnected so should it happen again he can at least do a temporary fix.

I spent the afternoon at my computer. I finished transferring photos from our Facebook page onto our blog and then finished off another year of blog archives. The remainder of the blog archives will be easier as they were downloaded with a software program. There will still be things I need to add in that didn’t download but it will certainly be a much easier job.

One day on Texada really didn’t seem like enough time but there is really nothing to stop us from heading back again very soon. Although when I look at the calendar we have things booked up until next Wednesday and again from Thursday on past the next weekend.

Sunday, April 18, 2021

Pat and I are heading over to Texada later this afternoon. I have almost everything packed. My Kindle is charging and my cell phone is beside it so I won’t forget either one. I have a small bag of meds sitting on top of the book I’m taking and my sweater is hung over my purse so I’ll remember to take it. My car is plugged in to the charger so, hopefully, I’ll be able to go places when we return in a couple of days.

Right now I’m waiting to get the Song Circle started. Pat asked me to do a few things differently for the recording. I made no promises but I’m trying to think ahead to how it might work for me. I am off-camera for the event but I have to pay attention so there will be no extra stitching.