Marvelous Monday Update 7/29/2024

 It's hard to believe August will be here in a few days. Summer has flown by so fast.  What have you been up to this past week?  As usual, I've had a few things going on.

MACHINE EMBROIDERY

The second annual Kimberbell Day was last Saturday. 

 

It's a national celebration of machine embroidery.  Shops all over the U.S. host the Kimberbell event which is held the last Saturday in July.  This year's theme is Choose Kindness.  

I missed the fun last year, so I put it on my agenda this year.  My "local" shop (which is 45 minutes away) had us prep fabrics for the project we would be doing while watching Kimberbell zoom live on the TV screen.

 

I had my fabric and machine ready to go by the Tuesday prior!

 

Saturday arrived. I packed the car and was and ready to go.

 

 

We played games.  I won two prizes for finishing two word searches, and one a prize for spinning the prize wheel.

 

While we watched the live Kimberbell Day show, we worked on our Choose Kindness project.  We all hoped we'd win a prize from Kimberbell, but alas... none of us did.

We didn't get our project entirely finshed, but everyone made good progress.  Here's what mine looks like so far:

 

Everyone had a lot of fun the entire day. I hope to make it next year! 

STITCHY STUFF

In a previous post, I showed the ornament I made for the Patriotic Exchange.  You can see it HERE.  While in Virginia, I received my ornament from Sue V (my second mom).

She painted a wood ornament and attached the stitched piece on top of a piece of felt.  It's embellished with tiny star buttons.  Isn't it adorable?  The design is part of Olde Glory by Heart in Hand.

 

I'm crusin' along on Mrs Martha 1776.  I had one stripe on her dress almost half finished when I realized I was off by two columns.  Whoops!  I like the nubby end of the mini seam ripper to "erase" the fuzzies off the fabric.  It does a great job.

I couldn't find any of mine, so I improvised by using a small piece of magic eraser.  It worked pretty good.

No trace of red fuzzies.

 

Since I was close to Hobby Lobby on Kimberbell Day, I ran over and picked up a few more mini seam rippers.  They're only $1.99 vs. $6.99 at JoAnn Fabrics.

While watching the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics in Paris, I stitched on Mrs. Martha.

DOGGY DIARIES

Bailey turned one year old a couple weeks ago. We (and by "we" I mean me, Baxter, and Bailey) celebrated with a little party, complete with a photo, doggie cake, and of course a new toy.

 

 

Doesn't she have the sweetest face?  It's hard to believe she's already one.

Baxter celebrated his 2 year birthday back in March.  Poor little guy spent almost a year with his leg in cast after he was dropped and the leg was broken. Three surgeries later, he's back to "normal".  His leg still bothers him if he walks too long.

Mr B is so adorable. Everyone who sees him falls in love with him.  I tell him he's my favorite boy. LOL

 

Until Next Time,

 

Marvelous Monday Update 8/13/12

SUMMER OLYMPICS
About 6 months ago, the signal for NBC stopped reaching my TV.  I was really disappointed to miss the Olympics as the games are one of the very few sporting events I like to watch.  On Friday, the signal came back!  I was able to watch a few of the remaining events and the closing ceremonies.

Congratulations to the USA athletes on doing so well!

~ 46 Gold Medals  ~  29 Silver Medals  ~  29 Bronze Medals ~

FRUSTRATING MONTH
Last month, I decided to clean the carpet in my living room... The only room in my house that has carpet.  I sprayed the spots on my carpet, plugged in the Bissell cleaner.  I've had this carpet/upolstery cleaner for 11 years and it's worked beautifully.  This time, it was not meant to be.

When I pushed it forward, it made a horrible dragging sound. I went online and found a solution on the Bissell website. Easy enough. I did what it said.... the front end still drug across the carpet and made the terrible noise. I then called "Customer Care" and got a lady with a terrible accent. I told her the problem and explained what I did per the Bissell website. I kid you not, she told me to do what I just told her I did.... not just once but multiple times. Within 15 minutes, I was so frustrated that my sarcasm came out big time. Thirty minutes later and after being put on hold multiple times (When I say multiple, I mean in excess of 3 times), she told me that I needed to take it to an authorized service center. Since it's not under warranty, I asked her if there was going to be a fee (which I knew there would be). After she confirmed it, I said "Well then I can take it to ANY service center... not necessarily an authorized one!" Then I told her in no uncertain terms that I was not happy with the customer service seeing as I told her at the beginning of the phone call what I did according to their website and she could've told me to take it to a service center right then rather than waste and hour of my time having me take it apart only to do the same thing I already did. When she went into her canned speech about how customer care was doing their best.... I hung up on her. I was soooo frustrated at that point! So, I had spot pretreater all over my carpet and nothing to clean it up with.
Mission #1 - Failure.

After I told the tale of my woes to the BF, he looked at the carpet cleaner. I told him what I did. He took the same piece off and said there was a little clip on it that was broken. The little clip holds the piece up so it doesn't drag across the carpet. Funny thing is that I looked at buying a replacement part before I even called customer service! The part ended up costing $10.55 including shipping.  The Bissell site or "Customer Care" didn't say anything about replacing the part.... only removing it and re-installing it.

Fast forward a couple of weeks.  Part is installed and pretreater is once again sprayed on the carpeting.  Furniture extracted from living room.  I turned on the Bissell only to have water spraying out of the upolstery hose.  What the ?!?!  No matter what I tried, I couldn't get it to stop.  Most of you know that I'm pretty handy around the house so I was really disgusted at the Bissell. I pushed it in the corner of the kitchen and put the furniture back.  Again, pretreater all over and nothing to clean it up. Humph! 
Mission #2 - Failure.

The next time the BF came over, he started to look over the Bissell to try and figure out the problem. Before he dismantled it, a lightbulb went off above my head. Bzz--Bzzt!  Turns out I had the upolstery attachment in its holder with the sprayer button wedged against the side... which is why water sprayed all over! Duh... I felt so stupid. 

This brings me to last Friday.  Mission #3! I removed all the furniture from the living room and pulled out the Bissell again.  You know the routine by now.... More pretreater on the carpet. Some of the stains from the previous owners re-surfaced, and high traffic areas really needed it!

Mission #3 - Accomplished!!

PHOTO MIGRATION
Last week, I and many other Multiply users received a notice that the site will discontinue blog and photo hosting services as of December 1st.  It's really unfortunate as I really liked using the site for my photos.  After trying many free photo hosting sites (snapgalaxy, dotphoto, flickr, fotki, bravenet, photobucket, mejuba, picasa), I have decided to move my photos to Webshots.  It's got many of the same features Multiply had for their photo gallery.  I've been a member of WS since 2002, I just never used their site until now.

SEWING
A few weeks ago, the local thrift shop had a clothing sale... everything was $1.  I bought a 3-piece suit for $3.  It came with a blazer, skirt, and slacks -- nice additions for my work wardrobe.  The skirt was floor length... definitely needed to be shortened, and the slacks needed to be hemmed.  I knew I could hem the slacks, no problem.  Even though I've sewed clothing from scratch (in high school), I've never attempted major tailoring jobs.  I figured if I screwed it up, I was only out $3, right?  Right!

I have a pencil skirt that I just love, so I used it to pattern the skirt overhaul.  I shortened the sleeves on the jacket, and took in the jacket a bit.  I also put blind hems on the slacks.  Everything fits great now!

STITCHY STUFF
I finished up Part 4 of Fleurs et Papillions last week.  Here's what it looked like before:

and now it's 2/3 done:

Since I finished Part 4 of Fleurs, I switched projects and worked on Sampler aux Bouquets by Jardin Prive.  Here's what it looked like before:

A few days progress.... several motifs are complete:

Until next time,