Water Woes

Good morning, my friends. It started as an ordinary day...playing word games, checking email, perusing the news to see if the United States is at war with Europe yet. (Just kidding about that last part...sort of.) When I'd had my coffee, I asked Mike if he'd like breakfast first or if I should write my blog post first. He opted for breakfast. And everything was going along fine until I went to wash out the bowl emptied of pancake batter (pancakes on the griddle by then). When I turned the faucet on...nothing. Not a dribble. Not a gurgle. Nada. Zilch.

Well. This can't be good. We checked everywhere in the house for any leaks. We found nothing. Mike walked around outside to check for any obvious leaks outdoors. Again, nothing. As I'm writing this, he's down at our pump house checking the pump. And as I'm writing, I don't have an answer to this conundrum, but I expect I will by the time I reach the end. I'm almost hoping it means a pump replacement since that would be an easier fix than some leak in the long lines that lead from the well to the house. It's always something, isn't it?

Okay, so let's talk about something else for a bit, shall we? It was a nice day off yesterday. I did some sewing, but mostly I was lazy. Erik and Mae and I had a very nice morning at the Beaverton Farmer's Market. We got most everything we wanted. I was on the hunt for rhubarb, but it's a little early for that. Instead, I scored a half dozen Willapa Bay oysters and two pounds of Willapa Bay clams. We had those for dinner last night. With the oysters, we made our own Oysters Rockaway.

With the clams, I made Linguine Alle Vongole. This is so yummy, and pretty easy to make too.

But I'm getting ahead of myself because I had two whole days of sewing since we chatted last time. You might remember I had the "Snow Happens" runner sandwiched for quilting.

Friday afternoon I went to work on the quilting. That white metallic thread performed beautifully. It broke one time...not sure why. Otherwise, it gave me no trouble. I did some meandering in the snow at their feet, some meandering falling snow above their heads, a looping meander in the narrow white border...

And some easy snowflakes in the diamond border.

Here's how it looks from the back.

So that didn't take long, and it was ready for binding.

Before I turned out the lights in the sewing room, I made up March's block for "The Sewing Room" BOM. This one is a sewing machine. It says "my machine" at the top. She had several options for sewing machines: Janome, Juki, Husqvarna, Pfaff, Singer, Brother, Elna, but sadly, no Bernina. My travel machine is a Pfaff, but I decided to go with the generic "machine" option. I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings.

And so Saturday was our farmer's market day. I stopped off at the grocery store on my way home to pick up a few things we needed to get us through the weekend. When I got home, I went to work hand-sewing the binding on "Snow Happens." It didn't take long, and I had myself a finished quilt. It ends up at 30 x 17 inches.

Here's how it looks from the back.

Since I knew rain would be returning today, I spent the rest of the afternoon filling the bird feeders and then taking a little walk around outside. I noticed one of the mini iris is blooming in the barrel where we plant our cherry tomato. These are little gifts left to us by the squirrels, one guesses, because I didn't plant these.

Also, the poppies are coming back in both barrels. I'm always happy to see they've survived the winter.

Also, all five peonies are showing signs of life...another happy discovery.

The kitties have been loving these past several days of good weather. I caught this picture of Smitty out in the catio. I always bring in the towels and kitty beds in winter. They're wet all the time, and so I might as well. Recently I put them back out, and so the kitties have been enjoying their time outside more.

For today's sewing, I'm going to finish off the little Catmint piece.

I'm pretty well settled on the two border fabrics shown below. The white leaves in the piece on the left is actually a metallic silver. It doesn't photograph very well.

I selected a gray paw print fabric for the binding. But I'm not sure about that. I might stick with the darker blue. What do you guys think? Please think fast because I'll probably finish this today with or without your input.

And what the heck...I guess I'll use this one for the back. I have about a fat quarter-sized piece, and so it seems a good time to use it.

And that brings me to the exciting conclusion of our water woes. Mike showed up a few minutes ago, holding this in his hand.

See that round thing on the right? It's a capacitor, and you can see how it's all corroded. It's what starts the pump and makes it run. He's pretty sure it just needs replacing. The item he needs is available locally for $100, which sounds cheap in contrast to the price of a new pump. This is one of those times when I know I married the right man.

Okay, so with that update, it's time for me to get a move on with my day. We did manage to eat our breakfast, but clean-up will have to wait. Sounds like a good time to do some slow stitching. It'll help calm my nerves. I hope your day is starting out better than ours. We'll probably be back to what passes for normal by this afternoon. And, hopefully, we won't go to war with Canada in the meantime. Just kidding, Canada...sort of.