Monday, March 13, 2017

I’ve been without my car for over a week now and I really felt like I was saving money. I haven’t been going out to the shops, although my list is getting rather long. I’ve saved on gas; wear and tear is doubtful by the time I get my bill from the mechanic. But still, I hadn’t spent any money.

I blew all those imagined savings today!

I am a member of a book club and today they had over 90 books on sale for $5 each. If you bought enough books you didn’t have to pay shipping. The bonus with this club is that you get the printed book as well as an e-book (in case you want to start a project before the “real” one arrives). I didn’t pay for any shipping (because I bought several books) but there is no rush to start sewing from an e-book.

A member of one of my cross stitch groups had a give-away and I didn’t win. But I liked the pattern so much that I went searching for it on-line. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I found it and it will soon be on its way to me.

Perhaps all this quilting has driven me mad!

Friday, March 17, 2017

Did you get Irish on today? I’m wearing a green shirt (completely by accident) and I’ve been listening to Carmel Quinn while working on my Celtic Crystals. I guess I did my part.

I’ve packed up my quilting for a bit. I have ten blocks and two corners finished, leaving two more blocks and two more corners to do when I get home. I have two of those blocks stabilized so they will be a bit quicker to finish when I get back to it. I’ve really challenged myself with this quilt and, although there would have been easier ways of completing it, I’m glad I’ve pushed through. It has taken a lot of thread (I was back at the fabric shop yesterday to pick up more), and a lot of time, but I have some quilting ideas now that I can use with other projects. How to quilt something is always a challenge for me.

My car was returned to me today. They’ve had it for two weeks and had no luck finding anything wrong. They say they notice that often in Powell River batteries go dead because of the short trips being made. Particularly in winter, you start the car, turn on the heater and defrost and then drive a couple of blocks, park the car and then maybe drive a few more blocks and do the same. Although the car works fine the short distances don’t allow the battery to charge enough. I’ve given it my own diagnosis as “End of the Road” syndrome! There are only 30 km of road to the north or to the south and there isn’t much to do at either end. In spite of that I guess I’ll have to take a few long drives every week just to keep the car running. Seems a waste, but what else can I do.

For the rest of the afternoon I’ll start getting ready for my trip; I won’t pack but I will start to gather things together. Since I won’t have a vehicle at Christy’s I’ve planned what I hope will be some fun days – craft day, game day, movie day. If the weather is good I have my rubber boots so we can go out exploring, and there is a trailhead for a long hike that is within walking distance from Christy’s. I also have a few crafts of my own that I want to take along so my suitcase will be full.

We’re off to the movies tonight.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

I’ve been staying at home quilting for so many days that I’m excited to be going out to a Guild work-bee tonight. It’s true that I’ve been out of the house, but that has mainly been to run errands or keep appointments. I haven’t been to a Tuesday bee for ages and I miss my sewing people. We are working on bags for the quilt show – somehow this magic bag will hang around our neck and hold our credit cards (for the Merchant Mall), cash for lunch and tea purchases, as well as show our name tags. Apparently we are making 70 of them so hopefully we have a good turnout, but as is often the case the same people show up and the same people don’t. As my regular machine (Purl) is still in the trunk of my car at the mechanics I’ll be taking my SUV out for the first time.

And speaking of name tags, one of our members called on Tuesday night to see if I could add the Canada 150 logo to a business card as that is what will fit in the pouches. I didn’t expect it to be a problem as at the last show meeting the person in charge of the theme had all sorts of items with the logo. But as I started to dig deeper to make sure there was no copyright infringement I was led down a long path to nowhere. I checked the Canada 150 website but the logos they were offering weren’t the one we wanted; we wanted the one that had won the logo contest. I called the Canada 150 office and they basically read me the information from the website – not at all helpful because I had already told him that. Another search led me to Heritage Canada so I called them; they gave me an e-mail address that I should send my questions to (I did that but have yet to hear anything from them). I called the woman in charge of the theme to see where she got her information from and she said our MP’s office gave her a bunch of stuff; when I call her office to see about the copyright I was basically told the government has bigger things to deal with than coming after me for using the logo. I gave up on ever getting definite copyright approval and this morning I sent the business card file to Staples for printing.

Are you wondering about the car? Yes, it has been ages but I realized this week that Deb (the woman who owns the fabric shop) and Ken (my mechanic) are off to Mexico for two weeks. I guess you could say that between their two shops I’m sponsoring their trip! I’ve done fine without my car and I’ll be away all next week so I’ll wait until I’m back from Christy’s before calling. I know there will be someone in the shop if I called, but I can wait.

As expected I wasn’t able to do much sewing yesterday. After the logo fiasco I managed to get Pat’s accounting almost finished in the afternoon; I sent the files off to the accountant this morning. I also did a bit of catch-up work on my own paper. But late this morning I was back to quilting and I have today’s block finished. I’ll do one more block tomorrow and then put it away until I’m back home; there will be four more blocks to finish but I’m confident it can all be done with time to spare.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

I wasn’t, then I was, then I wasn’t again – going to the bee that is. I missed last week and I expected to go out this week but since I have an eye appointment tomorrow and won’t be able to quilt for most of the day I decided to stay home today. I’m staying on schedule with my quilting but I might have a challenge ahead. I’m not sure I have enough of the fabric I want to use for the binding. I could stop and figure it out but I prefer to remain in blissful (if stressful) ignorance until I come to that step.

But I did get out today. I had some Cranberry Hall work that I needed to take care of across the street at City Hall. Then I made a quick trip around to the back of City Hall and dropped off a couple of books at the Library. From there I walked half a block to the fabric store – I needed a couple of colours of thread. Sadly, the colours only come in packs of six and the two colours I needed were in two different packs. I have tons to spare now, or maybe some to share with my sisters!

While I’m out tomorrow I have a long list of things to get done, and some of them need a little prep work from me so I’d better get back to it.