Stuck Up

Well it's been one heckuva week so far, eh? Let's just keep doing what we do best, my quilting and blogging friends. Let's continue to be loving, helpful, and generous with one another. With so much cynicism and negativity on social media, I'm thankful that the blogging community stays out of the fray, and that I can find refuge when I keep in touch with all of you. Today, I saw this on Facebook. It's very good advice.

So here's what happened yesterday. Like I said in yesterday's post, it was a day of running around. I left home at 8:45 a.m. and didn't get home until after 3:00 p.m. It probably would have been possible to get in a little sewing time, but I sat around like a pulsating blob of protoplasm, which is probably exactly what I needed. Between then and time to make dinner, I had kitties all over me, and it was good.

One of the things I tried to accomplish yesterday was to pick up some glue that would allow me to continue with the Happy Village. My friend Dana will appreciate this story. She and I had a little back-and-forth about the joys and frustrations of Amazon Prime. Living in the country makes shopping an inconvenience, and Amazon Prime with its two-day delivery has been a godsend. Nevertheless, it has its share of frustrations.

Recently I ordered some printer cartridges (which you generally need NOW!). I didn't need them right away, but still, they took almost three weeks to arrive. Amazon Prime guarantees two-day delivery, and so that was frustrating. But then, I ordered the Roxanne's glue, and I was in the fool-me-once, fool-me-twice kind of mindset, so I looked very carefully at the website:

I've highlighted the pertinent parts there...eligible for Amazon Prime, In Stock, and ships and sold by Amazon. Two days, right? So I place my order on November 3rd, and then I receive this from Amazon:

Later, I received notification that it wouldn't ship until November 25th! And since this was the second time the two-day shipping guarantee had failed me, I took it up with Amazon via this email:

Comments:This item was listed on its shipping page as "In Stock" and managed and shipped by Amazon. It was also eligible for Amazon Prime. Now the shipment status states that it won't even ship until November 25th. I need the item sooner than that, and I was expecting 2-day shipping according to Amazon Prime benefits. Please explain why this is taking so long to ship. 

And they responded with this:

 I've looked into the details and found that due to some technical error the estimated delivery date for the order has this issue on the website. Please ignore it. You don't need to worry about it, you'll receive this order on time.

Your order has already entered in advanced shipping process and will be shipped soon.

Your order will be delivered by Tuesday, November 8, 2016.

Well...you're smart enough to know where this is going, aren't you? Tuesday came and went and no delivery. And so I checked the status and found this:

Well...this was beyond annoying, and so I wrote another email...quite a bit nastier this time. In fairness to Amazon, they have apologized and refunded the purchase price. They can't recall the shipment, however, and so it's still on its way. Still, I need it now, and so waiting until a week from Friday motivated me to go in search of the product locally.

After my haircut, I stopped off at JoAnn. There, I purchased some black tulle. When the Happy Village is in place and the pieces glued down, it is covered with tulle. For this, you can use any color, but the example in the book uses black, and so that's what I used. You can see how this looks in the image below. I've only partially covered the fabrics with the tulle.

Since my pieces are not glued down, you can already see how they've shifted a little. I really need that glue! When the tulle is added, the pieces will be stitched down/quilted over the top of the tulle. The author uses felt as a backing and does some other fancy stuff to finish it off. I'm just doing mine as a conventional quilt. I've selected this fabric from my stash for the quilt back: 

The stitching will be done in this multi-colored variegated thread.

I'm actually not sure when I acquired this thread or how, but it will be perfect for this quilt.

There are other suggested ways of making these little villages, and here are a couple of pictures from the book. In some, she's printed on fabric to include certain architectural characteristics, which I've indicated in the pictures below.

I have an idea about using some of my own photographs from the Caribbean island of Bonaire to make a village. When I think of Bonaire, the colors of gold, peach, and aquamarine come to mind. I can see how building a little village around these images of two churches there might be fun.

Here's one she did of Bermuda in similar colors, and she's added the palm tree detail. I don't recall palm trees in Bonaire, but there were bright green iguanas, wild green parrots, wild pink flamingos and wild burros roaming the island. Those might be very cute details to add into such a village.

As usual, my ideas exceed my time and my motivation, but I might actually do this if the one I'm currently building works out.

Also at JoAnn, I bought the floss colors I needed for the Bag Ladies stitch-along. I love the colors of floss. So saturated and shiny.

And I can never resist the remnant bin at JoAnn. Yesterday I scored a half yard of this green for $4. Not bad. The dots are about the size of a pencil eraser.

So I looked for the glue there. They didn't have it. You didn't really think they would did you? Then I checked online using my phone and saw that Wal-Mart had it. And I'll just be right up front saying I hate Wal-Mart and refuse to shop there. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and so I went to the nearest Wal-Mart just up the road. Do you think they had it? Hahahahahahahahahahahah.

So then, I went to Michael's. They didn't have it either, but they had a big supply of craft glue. I decided to see if I could find something acceptable. I left the store with these two items. This one by Ek Tools (no idea). 

These package points sold me on it:

And I'm not sure how both things can be true, but there's a sucker born every minute, and yesterday was apparently my birthday. Also, this selling point because I need something precise for those little tiny pieces.

When I got it home and out of the package, the pen itself explained the "repositionable" and "permanent" claims thus:

Sorry for the blur....

I did like the tip.

You press it a few times to release the glue, and it turns blue.

Sure enough, it comes out of the pen blue while its wet...

And then turns clear as it dries.

And these glues were just a couple of bucks each, and so I bought two of them. (Besides, I cleverly downloaded the Michael's app to my phone while I waited in line to pay, and I found a coupon for 20% off my purchase. It was almost as good as finding a million dollars!!!)

The other was the Elmer's Craft Bond.

The "precision roller tip" caught my eye.

"Precise application" that "works on porous and semi-porous materials" and "great" for my crafting needs. It all sounded good.

And I do like that point...again, sorry for the blur. I kept getting the camera too close to the subject.

It came out in kind of a wet blob, but I was using too heavy a hand.

And all of that to tell you that neither product stuck my two fabrics together. I looked at it again this morning and it still was unstuck. I might try it again today now that I'm in a better mood and I've given it a night to think about its job. It might work. And I might just have to bite the bullet and wait for the stuff to arrive from Amazon. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Poor Smitty has to go to the vet for his wellness exam and vaccines today. He won't like that at all. It will involve loading him into his kennel and he'll cry all the way to the vet in a voice that will make you certain he's being killed. It's a nice day today, and so I'll let him out when we get home and all will be well again.

As for me, I'm not expecting anything from the glue, and so I'll probably get back to my quilting. We have a weekend guest coming, and so I need to clean things up a little too. As I've been writing this, the weekend guest canceled. No biggy. I hadn't done much preparation, and so we'll just carry on without her, and I won't have to clean. Yay!

Let's all have a good day today, shall we?