A Day of Frustration

If you'll recall a few days ago, I wrote that our furnace wasn't working properly. For whatever reason, the fan would come on, but the propane wouldn't ignite. The fan would come on for about a minute, and then it would shut off, having produced not one iota of heat. Mike knew the problem because he'd fixed it before. There's something called a "sail switch" that gets gunked up with...oh, I don't know...cat fuzz, maybe? And so I was suffering through with the cold until Mike got up. He fired up the furnace and it worked perfectly. I swear I have an electronics black thumb. 

But this gives me a perfect opportunity to discuss what I call "Mike's Maxim." Mike's Maxim says this: If a problem magically fixes itself, it will be back again.

All right, so fast forward to yesterday, and yes...the same thing happened. So Mike spent the entire day taking everything apart and fixing the sail switch, and sure enough, the furnace worked just fine. Except for one thing. Now, it fired up, but wouldn't turn off again. And this caused Mike no end of consternation. Bad words were spoken. Finally, he decided it was the "control board," (technical engineering terms...try to keep up). So, he got on Amazon and ordered another one, which should be at our next destination in Pahrump...today. (I 💓Amazon.) Okay, so problem solved. Except this morning, the furnace is working perfectly again. I believe we'll be experiencing Mike's Maxim again before the week is out.

Okay, so on the sewing front, things weren't looking much better. It was the day I'd decided to sew together the Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs quilt. So, I went to work sewing the blocks together.

Everything looks good, right? What you can't see is that I made pretty much every mistake I possibly could on this. I had the first two rows sewn together. When I added the third row, I sewed it on upside-down. (Doh!) Okay...well, better luck next time. So I took out that seam, only to realize I'd taken out the seam between the first and second row...where it was sewn together correctly. So, then I had to resew that, and then I took out the third row and sewed it on correctly. Sheesh. I'm sure I ran out of bobbin thread somewhere along the way. In my defense, I was offering support and reassurance to Mike, who was swearing at my side. And when I ripped out the wrong row, I did my own share of swearing. We had to put ear plugs in the kitties' ears. I wouldn't want them picking up bad habits from us, you know.

Okay, so then it was time to sew on the borders. I measured and cut and sewed. Everything went fine with the side borders. But then...and this was a mistake in the pattern...the top and bottom borders were too short. Drat! I needed to add a full nine inches to each one, which meant two seams in each of the top and bottom borders. Oh well. All's well that ends well. 

I'm sorry I can't give you a better picture. My ironing surface in the RV is smaller than my 18 x 24 cutting mat. It's about 15 x 20, and so it's hard to iron something this large. Anyway...it's finished except for quilting and binding. When it's all done, I'll still hand sew a row of cross-stitches all around the outside edge. It'll be cute, but quilting and binding will be months out. This is my project for February's

so I'll be linking up there at month's end.

And you might think that was the end of our frustration, but I'm sad to say there was furrustration all around. When I went to pack up my sewing machine, I pulled out its carrying case, and Smitty tried the "If I fits, I sits" Proverb. And there was something wrong with this because he couldn't find a good "fits," which made it difficult to "sits."

Well. At least I was able to finish the 6th Blackwork Basket. I'm excited to finish these because I know already how I'm going to set these blocks. It's going to be very pretty...just you wait and see.

Here are the six I have so far.

Now the 7th one is made up. I'll probably start on that today or tomorrow.

Yesterday's inchy included the dreaded bullion stitch. Bullion stitch is much easier for me than cast-on stitch, and so this had all the markings of frustration, but without the frustration. Cute, huh?

Today's is easy, but I haven't started it yet. I've noticed she gives us an easy day to follow the harder stitches.

As I mentioned yesterday, we're moving north to Pahrump today. The weather is forecast to be considerably warmer, and so we're looking forward to it. The kitties like Purr-ump. There are more birds there...and cactus...and our space will back up against the desert, so there might be more opportunity for walking. And they're so happy about our move they even agreed to share our tandem laps this morning.

We're not in a big rush to get out of here this morning. I'm not sure when check-in is at the next place, but we'll hang out here until check-out time and try not to arrive too early. 

First, breakfast, and then I'll stitch the day's inchy. It has to be a better day, right? But here's the thing: nobody died yesterday, and so really, it was a good day.