Home sweet home... on the move
I have spent many evenings alone this past month... something about the freezing weather in Fort Rock and the confinement of sharing 250 sq. feet with JB, 2 dogs and 2 rabbits... no sewing machine and no knitting project and no more books to read.... and nowhere to replenish the stock of anything... well I bailed out on the men. I returned to civilization. It's true.
Furman my trailer companion
So... empowered with electricity.... I decided to make my mom her x-mas gift. My mother travels around with an old gray plastic Nordstrom bag for all of her dresses -the kind they give you to carry your purchase home. I think it may have duct tape on it. I know it's a perfect gift when it has duct tape on it. It means it is so loved that they don't dare replace it... nothing else will match it's utility. My dad had a tan down vest like that that he wore as a work vest from before I was born, until I was about 35. For x-mas, I gave him a Carhartt vest to suggest that perhaps it was time to retire the old vest. I think one of my nephews wanted his old vest for the blue-collar-cool factor of grandpa's old 1960's work vest. It's been several years, and I don't think my dad has washed the "new" one yet... but he wears it with great reverence as his "work vest"... Carhartt is synonymous for utility after all.
Mom's bag inside out
So this Christmas, I'm making a new garment bag for my mother. I designed the pattern from her Nordstrom dress bag... replacing the gray plastic for Amy Butler fabric. I used a medium weight fusible interfacing and lined the entire thing with medium weight canvas. It seemed simple enough... and really it is... but it does seem time consuming. The piping took some time to create. Zippers always seem a bit counter-intuitive to me. Now of course, I'm at the finishing stages and stitching through some 8 or more layers of fabric... which means I'm breaking needles and bending pins. BUT... I do think it will turn out... I hope.
Deconstructing to Construct... it could be a theme
Old project... finishing up my quilt. I've sewed all the blocks and am now onto selecting my border and back... I should be quilting by winter... yeah... which means I'll have a project to do in the trailer since I intend to hand quilt. We'll see.
Finally, there is the plumbing.... which followed an electrical update. We had an electrician at the house to update some electrical issues in our 1950's home. Well, shortly after he left and I returned from the trailer, I noticed that I had no hot water in my kitchen sink or my laundry room. We thought perhaps it was the old galvanized pipe. Ken, the after-hours plumber savior, advised us that he could spending money tracking down the problem and band-aiding it, or just spend the money updating to Wirsbow and get on with life. Ok... bite the bullet and go for the update. Well... this also means tearing out tile walls, toilets, sinks... and one huge mess just when I was thinking the house looked rather nice. One solution always creates another problem... trailer rule #17.
A new hole in the closet
We will be spending a good portion of our winter remodeling our bathrooms in our "spare" time... meaning the time we're not driving or working on someone else's construction project. The chef never likes to cook at home. We did discover the problem... a hidden hot water heater behind the kitchen cabinets. The electrician pulled the circuit and knocked it out... never mind it had been leaking and stunk horribly... leaving a faint mildewy smell in the house that we hadn't been able to track down to its source. Now we know.
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