2/19/15

Coming Together

It was a busy day today. I needed to do the housework I'd been putting off from earlier in the week. Also, it was the day for my monthly pedicure...a week late, and so I was really needing and wanting it. After that, I needed to make a short trip to the grocery store. We're planning a camping trip to the beach this weekend, and so I needed food for that. We're expecting fantastic weather for our trip, and so I hope this forecast holds.


It won't be terribly warm, but you gotta love all that sunshine. Sorry east coast people, but I can't get over how nice our February weather has been. February is often one of our coldest months, and we have been blessed with gorgeous weather more days than not. 

Back during the ice storm in November, Mike and I bought some Yaktrax so that we could walk around on the ice without risking life and limb. Shortly after that, Mike put snow tires on our truck...something he's not done in the seven years that we've owned this particular truck. I told him then that these two purchases would probably spell the end of winter in Oregon...and in November, winter hadn't even arrived yet. Sure enough, we've not seen a single snowflake and only rare cold temperatures since then.

It reminds me of the time we single-handedly ruined an entire summer for our Oregon friends and neighbors by installing, first, an automatic sprinkler system, and, second, replacing our air-conditioning unit right before the start of the summer season. It turned out to be the second wettest summer on record in Portland that year, and we didn't use either the entire season. So there you go. I'm sorry to say I can't control this particular weather-related power we seem to have, otherwise, I'd send you east coast people a heat wave just so you'd know how much I love ya'. And I'd send you Southwest people some rain.

Putting weather aside, I did manage some sewing this afternoon. I'm starting to sew my Dream Machines blocks together. I have the first row of blocks and sashings together now. It's looking better than I expected.


Do you ever work on a quilt with a sick feeling that you're going to hate it when you're finished? That's how I'm feeling about this quilt. I'm trying my darnedest not to buy any more fabric in order to finish it, but I'm not entirely happy with the fabrics I have selected either. It occurs to me that this is probably why I don't make more scrap quilts. Often, I find myself gnashing my teeth over how they're going to look when everything is said and done. 

The most recent example of that was the Blogger's BOM turned "Joseph's Quilt" (a quilt of many colors). It took literally years for me to finish it, mainly because I was afraid I wasn't going to like it. As it turned out, I liked it just fine. It's certainly one of the more colorful quilts I've made, but it was also the scariest.


So all of that to say that I'm hopeful I'll end up liking the Dream Machines quilt as much. For now, I'm feeling slow to warm up to it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for sure, but mainly I'm just closing my eyes and moving forward, hoping for the best.

I'm pretty unhappy with that ruler fabric because it's printed crooked on the fabric. If it were consistently crooked, I'd just fussy cut it to make it right. Instead, it's straight on one side of the fold, and crooked on the other. How does that even happen? If you're wondering, this is Sewing Seeds fabric by Quilting Treasures. And Quilting Treasures, you're on my sh*t list right now for such crappy workmanship on this particular fabric. Just sayin'. A quilter doesn't forget these things.

Tomorrow is a cooking day. I'm getting most of the food ready for our trip, and so I'm making cottage pies, and frozen breakfast burritos, and I'm baking some cookies. I'm hoping I'll still have some time to sew, but that remains to be seen.

Before I go, however, I need to take care of some bloggy housekeeping.


I have it on good authority...two of you...that some of your comments have been "bouncing" (for lack of a better word). This seems especially directed at people with "yahoo" email addresses, but perhaps there are others as well. There are no valid comments in my Blogger spam folder, and so for whatever reason, some of your comments are being rejected by Blogger. I have no explanation for this other than having it on additional good authority...also you...that Blogger made some changes within the past two months.

Up until today, I had made no changes to my settings. My settings are the same as they've been for years. Nevertheless, this problem has cropped up. Since I know of no other way to fix it, I'm now allowing ALL comments, even anonymous ones. I happen to know that I'm going to get spammed by making this change, and so I've decided to start moderating all comments. Up until now, I've only moderated comments on posts more than 30 days old. Now, I'll read everyone's before they appear on the blog. It's a pain in the neck, but I don't want to miss any of your enjoyable and informative repartee. Maybe this matters not one wit to you, but it matters to me.

So comment in good health, and hopefully, that will take care of this problem. Please let me know if you continue to have problems. And, by all means, if you know a different solution to this problem, chime in!

12 comments:

Cinder Gal said...

I think that once you quilt your Dream Machine quilt it will be better. I find if I quilt to death the parts I don't like it really helps.

Kate said...

That's not good that the measuring tape fabric isn't printed straight.

I've not heard that anyone is getting turned away from making comments, but I do know I'm not getting all the comments as email. So I've been manually writing emails to people who comment on the blog that I don't get an email from. That seems to be working out OK

Junebug613 said...

I haven't been commenting as much as usual, but you always respond, so I'm not experiencing any problems. That totally stinks about the ruler fabric not being printed straight. It is understandable to be anxious about how a quilt will turn out, when you didn't have an exact picture of it in your head before you started. You have wonderful taste though, so I'm sure it will be great. I hope you have a lovely time camping! We've had some funky weather over here, but it's not snowing, so I'm not complaining.

Vroomans' Quilts said...

I am bouncing on more than I was before - but I just copy/paste and send the comment in a new mail. A year ago many of the IOs made changes (not just Yahoo) to prevent the Heartbleed Virus and screwed things up and the complaints have been heavy. Now it seems that some one has made some sort of change (without informing us) and it has made a worse mess.

I hope you have a wonderful mini vacation. We are to get into the 30's this weekend - then dip back to brrrrr and snow.

Sher S. said...

I love the dream machines just as they were, but that tape measure fabric is really throwing me off and I don't like it there. I'm sorry to be honest but it just doesn't seem to go with the whole idea of the machines. I guess the machines are busy enough without the tape measure fabric added, a solid or marbled fabric would work better. It's just so orangey.

Lynette said...

Love Joseph's Quilt! Isn't it funny how the setting can really pull a disparate set of blocks together into a whole that works? I'm really intrigued by the spool blocks on the machine quilt - my eyes have fun trying to decide which orientation to pay attention to. The comment thing - I don't thing that's a Blogger change, but a Yahoo change. It has to do with how email companies assign some security thing to the mail items. AOL and some other domain have been bouncing off comment notifiers for about a year now. Yahoo has joined those ranks. The commenter is the only one who can put together a work-around, not the blog owner. And so far, the only work-around is to make an email address in a non-bouncing domain (such as gmail) and tie *that* email to their own blog instead of their real email. That's what I did, used gmail, because then you can also tell the gmail account to forward everything that comes into it to your "real" email address. So now my blog is tied to my gmail account - when I comment here, your blog sees a readable identifier from gmail and tells you I commented (the AOL, Yahoo, and somebody-else's-domain are not readable and Blogger can't fix that). If you reply to me, it goes to my front-man gmail account, which immediately forwards your reply to my real AOL account that I actually look at on a regular basis. It's all a big pain, but for now, it's a game we have to play until security assignations and major platform companies figure out how to make things play nice together again. It's all a casualty of identity theft and electronic spying. :P

Anonymous said...

Barbara, I am glad to be able to finally comment as anonymous (no blog, URL or Google account), just to tell you how much I enjoy your blog and what a good writer you are. And your quilting "misadventures" always put my own in perspective and make me laugh. Have a great trip (and yes, I wish you COULD control the weather and send us some rain!)......Dee in CA

Dogwood Lane Rambles said...

I always feel that way in this stage of a quilt so it must be a self doubt thing for me and it usually goes away once the whole thing is together. I've only made one quilt in the last few years that I ended up hating once it was completed and I still can't tell you why because it should have worked and others like it. That one was given away pronto! The comments thing has been a drag lately for most of us trying to be sure that our readers are acknowledged especially. I hate to think that I've missed responding to someone who has taken the to comment. That's just me I suppose.

Diane Wild said...

Some things don't have to be complicated. I've always thought if it's not broke, why fix it? Anywho, we'll get through this together. Have a restful weekend.

Brown Family said...

You may get two comments from me that are almost alike. For some reason, if I have to chose a profile, my comment disappears!

ittehgaps said...

B, Not sure exactly what you mean by 'bounce' but I regularly get a failure notice to my comments on various blogs. I have a yahoo account. I am able to sometimes go back and see my comment showing up on someones blog but still puzzled as to why I get the notices on most of my comments. Tried to figure out if it is associated with blogger, wordpress or what but...I sometimes really hate computers... though soon as I say that I realize I would be missing so much information and new ideas that you bloggers share so generously and has inspired so many beautiful quilts to keep my family and friends warm. I follow you with bloglovin. Cindy/ bluemoonstencils@yahoo.com

quiltzyx said...

Well, here goes!
That is awful about the measuring tape fabric. The least they could do would be to make it crooked all the way across. Sheesh.
Hope your weekend away was wonderful - the pics looked good that I've seen so far.