Current Mood : Anticipation !
Current Image Notes : Please enjoy Dearest Son's most recent art form, flower arranging. He prefers employing found items with natural lines for presentations that guarantee a second look.
Happy Earth Day ! To both native Earthers and those originating elsewhere.
I sorta did my part, sorta didn't. Gathered up some trash from the living room I'm sure I should feel guilty about, but didn't drive anywhere today. Took lots of photos for the blog this morning, and I use rechargeable batteries in the camera. Loaded up a new bobbin with the specialty thread that came with Brody, and stitched out DMIL and DFIL's names on some more of cut up Dearest Son-damaged pants. Much better - the bottom bobbin thread didn't show up top at all. And the bags I'm making them should use up all of the useable pants scraps, leaving only a few rags made from the damaged parts.
And I even used one of those rags today. When you buy thread like I do - lots of it cheap and second-hand, housed in old sewing baskets and in bulk mystery bags - you get a lot of mystery spools. There's no telling how old, what size, who made, anything about it. I had an odd skinny cardboard tube spool with a bundle of thread professionally wound on it, for forever, and I'd never used it, but it was absolutely DMIL's favorite color. So I really wanted to use it, but there wasn't a lot of ‘good' fabric out of those sad pants if it didn't work. I can buy more thread, but not more wrecked pants !
So I grabbed the best of the rag selection and loaded up the deep majestic purple mystery spool. It seemed rather silly to embroider her name twice, so I did my initial again, from the built-in library Brody came with. Came out nice. Just for kicks, I decided to use one of the shapes that were also included - the heart this time, in a sort of eyelet stitch. Since I hadn't moved the fabric in between designs, the ‘D' was exactly in the center, and it all came out good. I really like it. So I'll keep it, I'm just not sure if it'll become another fridge magnet, or a changepurse, or maybe even a patch on my jacket. Hmmm... You'll see it tomorrow.
Learned two more keys on Brody while stitching out DMIL's name. One changes the ‘start' of a design from the center to the furthest point left, something I didn't know could be changed. Another can join two pieces of embroidery together. Not sure it that's just for what came with Brody or if it can work with whatever's in his memory, but it's pretty cool either way. I can sort of do that with that free download program, Embroidery Fonts Plus, but one of the two images has to be a word using one of the fonts included or one of the proprietary purchased ones.
Anyway. When I'm downloading the design for DMIL's bag front - a dancing cat with flowers - later today, I'm gonna add the clock one I snagged during last weekend's Sweet Embroidery site sweep. There's two parts to it I'd like to skip over if I can, and I don't yet know if Brody will let me do that. Stitching it out's the perfect way to find out.
Beloved Hubby scared #ell out of me while I was working on DFIL's name stitch-out. I didn't know he was home until he banged on the open Lab door ! All was forgiven, though - he'd gone to Target just for me, for the rice crackers I love so ! And to think, I just started using the empty plastic jar from the last cracker binge to hold various labels and points that Dearest's school collects. Two more hold buttons in the Lab, and another holds the rice sock we microwave as a mini heating pad. Can't help it, they get empty so fast...
OK, confession time. There's a reason I went from barely touching Brody for nearly two weeks to playing with him almost every day. The hoop that had the stripped screw ? It's not really fixed. Even the new screw skips, and I have to play with it to get it to tighten the hoop enough to stitch with. It's probably the nut that's busted, since it does that with both the original and new screws. I was rather upset about it, so I avoided it and him, and embroidery. Part of the housework frenzy last two weeks was to give me plenty to do, so I didn't have time to be upset about it. Yeah, I'm nuts.
Rather than go back to Brother and have them ship another huge box containing a tiny bit of metal, I'll just play with it - I figured out how - until I'm frustrated with it enough to seek a replacement or solution at a hardware store. I mostly went with Brother last time because 1) everything's still new, and 2)I was worried that non-Brother parts might damage something. I've since heard from several other embroidery folks who had similar problems solved at Lowe's.
But even I have to get over me sometimes, and I guess I did, if I'm planning out what's getting stitched out a week in advance !
