The Plot Thickens

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody!

Okay, so here's the story on old Bessie.  Bessie is my sewing machine, whose name really isn't Bessie.  After last night's debacle, Mike looked at it a little longer and was able to get it working again.  The foot pedal was still only capable of two speeds:  fast and faster.  And sewing at those two speeds made me nervous and nervouser, let me tell you.  Nevertheless, I sat down at the machine this morning, determined to finish up my piece for the "It's All About Me" blog hop.


So I finished the top-stitching on the applique that needed finishing.  This involved sewing at the slowest fast speed I could muster using both straight stitch and buttonhole stitch.  It was rather exciting sewing around curves...sort of like taking a curve in your car at 200 mph.  I tried my best, and it turned out okay.  No major crashes, but I kept my seatbelt fastened and my helmet firmly attached.  Then I switched needles and feet and did the free motion quilting, which was a lot easier at the speeds I was capable of traveling.  When I put the regular foot back on to sew on the binding, I realized that all of a sudden, the foot pedal (or whatever it is) was behaving itself.  I could actually slow down to a reasonable pace.  So weird.  Who knows?  But for now, it's working.  
Tomorrow I will be receiving the new foot pedal and I have the tracking number to prove it.  It's supposed to arrive no later than 3:00 p.m.  Only now, we're not at all sure that the foot pedal is the problem.  It could be one of the circuit boards in the machine itself.  Hard to say.  One thing I've learned from Mike, however, is that a problem that fixes itself isn't really gone for good.  I expect we'll be meeting up again at some point in the future.  For now, I'm just happy to have my piece for the blog hop finished.
Wanna peek?

That's all you get.  You'll have to check back here on the 21st (that's a week from today) to see the whole thing.

So this being Valentine's Day, I spent the morning making biscotti for my sweety.  And I'm going to try to resist this since it isn't on my diet.  I can probably eat one and get away with it, but no more.  And besides, they're supposed to be for him.  If I eat one, it's hard to stop.

I was supposed to do a Curves workout today, but I decided not to.  My knee is giving me grief, and I decided to give it a break.  I'm supposed to walk with Sue tomorrow, and I'd rather not miss that.  I'm suspicious that I should be skipping the squat machine at Curves.  I've been careful, but I think it may be causing me knee problems, which I don't need.

Some of you asked about the project Matthew is working on for school.  This is his senior project that he needs to complete to earn his engineering degree, and he's been planning it pretty much from the first day of his engineering program.  He's interested in poi dancing, which is both an art form as well as the name for the equipment used in the dancing.  Those of you reading from New Zealand will no doubt be familiar with poi balls.  The dance originated with the Maori people of New Zealand.  To read more about the dancing and the Maori people, click right here. 

So Matthew is attempting to build an electronic poi ball that will flash in colors as the dancer swings the ball. Originally, his idea was to have the flashing lights speed up and slow down with the speed of the ball.  I'm not sure how far he's been able to take his idea at this point, but it looks like it's going to work.  He's having fun with it, and he's hoping to end up with something marketable when he's finished.

The only other thing going on around here is that I planted my tomato, dill, and basil seeds last Sunday.

When I looked at them this morning, they looked just like this.  I'm a little surprised that nothing has come up yet, but it could take up to two weeks for the seeds to germinate.  (At least, I'm giving them two weeks before I give up on them.)  For now, I'm keeping them in the house since it's still too cold to put them out in the greenhouse.  They won't move out there until about April.

And that's about it for this Valentine's Day.  I've been having nothing but fun this morning, so I suppose I should go do something less fun.  On the other hand, I could sew some more and see if the machine is still working.  Mysteries abound around here.