Destruction and Mayhem

Sue and I managed to find a little sliver of dry weather when we went for our morning walk. The Weather Channel wasn't very optimistic this morning, predicting an 80% chance of rain. It rained all day yesterday and it was gray and cold when we started out. I was wearing my rain gear, which I've come to think of as my insurance policy against wet weather. We walked for an hour with nary a drop when the drizzle started up just as we were returning to our cars. The universe smiled on us as usual.

So after that I picked up some bean sprouts at the grocery store. My local grocery store won't carry them any more. They've had so many problems with sprout recalls that they've decided to cut their losses and stop carrying them altogether. I can hardly blame them, but it means I have to go elsewhere for my occasional bean sprout fix. After that I came home and went back to my quilting. For today I decided I would stipple the sashings and do some little hearts with flourishes in the cornerstones:

It's a little off kilter. I might decide to redo it, but for now, I left it alone. And I was sewing along when...

Crunch!! Given the horrible sound I heard, this is what I expected to see when I looked up from my needle. At first, I thought I'd left a pin inside the quilt and hit it with the needle, but the needle looked fine. The thread had broken, but otherwise, I couldn't see anything amiss. Then I looked underneath to quilt to find that the bobbin had popped out of the casing. 

If you've ever been happily sewing away only to have the Titanic strike an iceberg, then you know I tried everything to get it running again. I changed needles (just in case), rethreaded the needle twice, rethreaded the bobbin, oiled it, cleaned it, took apart everything I could safely take apart, changed feet, turned the machine off and on...twice...all to no avail. When I tried to sew, the machine literally spit the bobbin into my lap. When I could actually get it to sew a few inches, the tension was completely off. Finally, I gave up and took it to my friendly local repairman. 

(Yes! That actually is my repair place! I just love that "ACE" name. The only name better would be "Acme".)

Now I hardly know what to do with myself as you might imagine. I suppose I could do housework, which brings to mind this:

Yeah, that's one idea. On the other hand, this might be a better choice:

Just kidding...sort of. Actually, I decided to set up my little Janome that has been locked in the closet for so long that I could probably be charged with some kind of child neglect.

Now that I've been sewing on Big Bertha for the past year, this little Janome feels like sewing on a toy. After so long, I wasn't sure I could remember how to thread the needle, but I got 'er done without even consulting the manual. I guess I'm going to be doing some of those smaller projects for the next couple of days. I hope the machine comes back in time for me to finish my quilt before the end of the month. C'est la vie, right?

So I couldn't quite bring myself to go back to sewing without an appropriate period of mourning for Big Bertha. I decided to go out and plant the green leaf lettuce. I'm trying a new seed since my first round never germinated.

And, yes, I did manage to squirt the seed packet with the hose right away. It's probably just as well that I've removed myself from the room with all the sharp objects. Hopefully, this will germinated quickly

because the red leaf lettuce waits for no one. It's doing just fine.

And the tomatoes are doing well too. We had to hit them with some sulphur dust last week. I had problems with sucking insects on the tomatoes last year. I can't see anything other than the telltale yellow spots that appear on the foliage. I was in denial about it last year until the foliage started looking really terrible. This year, I got on it at the first sign of anything amiss.

So they're approaching the tops of their stakes now, and their stems are getting nice and thick. Probably in the next month or so, I'll be repotting them into their largest pots of the season. The basil and dill are looking good too.

Once I had that done, I noticed that one of the iris has opened up. It's not the best time for them because when it rains like it has been, they fill up with water and rot. Hopefully, the sun will shine soon and the rest of the iris will be spared.

So that's my day...not the best, but nobody has died, and that's always my bellwether on how any given day is going. If nobody has died, it can't be all bad.