Happy Leap Year Rambles!

Here we are, ready to be scandalized by the coming of another month! At least it will be The Best Month in all of Months. I might be biased because I love spring and the daffodils it brings~  wiggling impatiently  I have a flower of a different sort for you though.

before

after

Egads, did anyone expect a FINISH? I didn't! :D  I enjoyed working on this one once I really got started on it.  The top flower was finished over two nights of stitching quietly after my poor, sick husband went to bed early (he's fine now).  I was in such a happy hurry to take the pictures I didn't even give it a bath to get the fabric ink off.

Technical Details

• "June: Wild Roses" freebie pattern by Ellen Maurer-Stroh, found here
• 2 over 1 on 14-count ecru huck towel
• Finished size: 4.50 x 4.50" (11,50 x 11,50 cm)
• Started: October something, 2015, Finished: February 23, 2016. At least 12 hours. 
• How did I not track the start?!

all together now

Halfway there!  I do so enjoy seeing all the flowers together.

actually fabric pen

I have July's flower (larkspur/delphinium) kitted up.  Well, most of it.  Though I love all the blues in the world, my floss collection is sorely lacking in that area!  I managed to find four that were missing in a store that doesn't carry the full line of DMC but still need to find four more.  There are a LOT of colors in this one, eep.  Is it going to be a repeat of violets?!

before

after

And here we have progress on FFIII.  Only one letter managed this month; tsk tsk.  I guess slow and steady will win the race for this project.  I am okay with that... for now.

And finally(ish) thank you all, I didn't realize the Great Singer Adventure would be so interesting. :) I am not a sewing machine wiz by any means; everything I am doing now is thanks to the World Wide Web of information. When I first learned to sew, it was when I was but a tiny Rosey. My grandmother attempted to teach me on my Mom's antique Singer treadle machine. My mom also has an electric one but my grandma felt that it was best to start on a treadle because the speed can be controlled better.  I must admit I was not a good pupil at that time! I was (still am, you know!) a tomboy and haaated to sit still and quiet for more than a few minutes at a time. I have a small "quilted" Barbie blanket and Barbie dress that I made when I was probably around 5-6 years old, but that was about it until I took Home Ec. in high school.

Anyway! The work done this time! I was brave and attacked the tension assembly! This... was terrifying. It still is.

before

I don't know what that take up spring is doing up at the top of assembly!  It does nothing there!  And that "gap" is supposed to be horizontal, not at that weird angle.  But, here's the kicker, it sewed a beautiful stitch despite having zero tension control.  Also, something you can't see in this picture, the little tension indicator (the thing with the + | - on it) was at the BOTTOM of the assembly.  Not really sure what happened there either.  It was all assembled in the correct order but almost like it was just put on to keep it together.  Which is possible, I suppose.

bath time!

Putting the little parts in a bath of rubbing alcohol really makes me happy.  The little cups fruit comes in make perfect bathtubs and Q-tips are great scrubbers!

after

Looks much nicer!  That said, something was wrong with the actual tension after I assembled it; it was much too loose and nothing I could do would correct it.  My beautiful stitch was gone.  :(  I was so disappointed and frustrated when I saw this.  I put the machine away for a week.  There is a way to fix it but I knew that if I attempted it while upset I'd really have a disaster on my hands. I have at least learned a lesson in patience! This weekend, after I had consulted with the Internet and Mom-of-All-Knowledge, I tried again with a different fabric, needle, and thread.  Voilà~! The pretty stitch was back.  Apparently one shouldn't attempt tension setting on a piece of thick polyester from who knows when.  A small scrap of cotton gingham helped immensely.  Yay!  I will extra special fine tune it when the rest of the machine is done.

before

after

I also took off the face plate at the very front of the machine and cleaned out the doodads and whatchamacallits in there.  It wasn't too awful; just a bit of dust and old oil.  It only took four Q-tips!  The fresh oil really, REALLY made a difference.  In fact, it may have contributed to the happy stitch returning.

I'm inexorably moving ever closer to the most dreaded task of all -- rewiring.  When playing around with the tension, the machine would randomly lose power.  That's scary.  Luckily there are some amazing tutorials out there and if I can install a ceiling fan, how hard can a sewing machine be...?  eep

Wow, okay, I will stop now! I also have a finished crochet project and worked more on that silly curling scarf.  I'll talk about them some other time haha. :D  Run away now and save yourselves!

Gifted Gorgeousness, TUSAL, and the Usual Rambles

help yourself

Hello, hi, howdy~ I hope y'all had a suitably romantic Valentine's Day, or do as we did, and mostly ignored it because we were in for some snow, yay!  I did find it a useful excuse to make cookies. :)  My husband loves sugar cookies and I have found this recipe to be just the perfect softness.  I do have to bake at a lower temperature but that's just my Specific Oven Persnickety.  They are glazed with this recipe.  I make these several times a year as I have quite the collection of cookie cutters; almost every holiday is covered. :D  And since it was a decent amount of snow (finally), I stocked up on snow ice cream again!  It's so nice to fish out of the freezer in July after an afternoon of mowing!

click me!

before

after

Here we have my contribution to Gifted Gorgeousness -- progress on Rathian, yay! I am glad to have done as much as I have on her, especially now that I'm past all the color issues. If you're new to my blog, this is part of a little gift for my husband.  It was originally just going to be the Mr. and Mrs. but silly me mentioned how cute a cube would be... and "doomed" myself as my husband's eyes lit up at the thought. :)  I enjoy making the patterns and stitching them up though!

growing, growing

I have also worked more on the speaker cozies, also for my husband. I seem to keep putting it off to do random other things (luckily he's such an understanding guy who knows the draw of books... video games... computers... something sparkly over there...) but every time I come back to it, I wonder what kept me away! They're such simple motifs and the pattern is pretty much engraved in my mind at this point. Here we have several little inner sections completed.

click me, too!

February "strings"

And here is my TUSAL update, completely untimely (didn't want to give it its own post). I must have a talk with the Moon.  It is being most unhelpful this year by falling squarely halfway between my normal posts.  I realized as I uploaded this image I hadn't taken a picture of the yarn ORTs.  There weren't many even though I did do something yarny!

guess how I took this picture

Tada! Here we have some fingerless mitts, completely finished no less! The lady who runs our little knitting group/class wanted to teach us the magic loop method. This is a way of knitting small projects on a single (long) circular needle. It's very handy but it does. Not! WORK! on super tiny things... like thumbs.  Perhaps if the actual needle parts of the circular would be only 1" long...!  I struggled through it on the first glove but decided that was for the birds and bought some double-pointed needles (DPNs) to finish off the second glove.  That was an adventure in itself as I have never messed with DPNs before.  I am one step closer to becoming an octopus.

At first, I wasn't too thrilled with the design of these gloves and originally intended them to be just practice and then they'd go off to the donation bin.  But they are absolutely amazing for cross stitch!  I always have cold hands and these provide enough warmth while letting my fingers be free to deal with the needle.  They're even great for sitting at the computer.

Technical Details

• "Uno" pattern by Annika Abbott, found here on ravelry (not a freebie), very well written.
• #9 29" circular, #8 DPNs.
• Yarn: Red Heart Classic Solid, light berry.
• Small size (6-7"), did a shorter starting rib (calls for 8 rows; I did 6). 
• Started February 1, finished February 8, 11.5 hours for the pair.

Lessons Learned
(hopefully)

• How to make cables, they're remarkably simple (C3F, C3B)!
  
• How to make a thumb gusset (M1R, M1L)!
• How to cast off with ribbing -- this totally baffled me, more than the gusset!
• Magic loop -- PULL THE STITCHES TIGHT ON ENDS! (!!!)
• DPNs - grow a couple extra arms for the first round!

Have I talked enough yet?  No?  Here, have one more item of interest.

bobbin case and hook assembly completely removed

I have been slowly puttering around with my Singer find.  On Saturday, I took apart the bobbin case and hook assembly down to the base and gave it a good cleaning using this great tutorial.  Only 65 years of gunk!  And quite honestly, not nearly as bad as some of the horror stories I find with Google image searches!  I used rubbing alcohol (carefully, as it will apparently do nasty things to the finish of the machine) and about five million Q-tips.  There's still a little bit of fuzz but it's noticeably cleaner around the hook assembly hole!  There's actually an uncoated surface down there!  It got fresh oil to make it slide around happily.  The bobbin case was a bit fiddly to get back in as one of the clips refused to slide over the little groves on the retaining clip.  Luckily I am (mostly) patient and eventually wriggled it into place.

all shiny and clean

And the feed dogs!  Oh my goodness gracious I was a bit grossed out by how much crud was in the little grooves.  It soaked in the alcohol for a while while I cleaned everything else and then got multiple passes with toothpicks.  It looks much nicer now.

One part done!  :D  I think I will next brave the tension assembly.  It's a scary part to me.  The machine stitches very well as is but the thread take up spring thingy is not quite positioned right.  I don't want to mess up a lovely stitch but something needs done so I'll spend some time reading up on how to disassemble and tweak it.

Hopefully your eyes haven't glazed over! :b  I think I will stop rambling now and let you get back to your life!  Have a lovely day!