We’ve had two days of heavy rain off and on–with flood warnings late last night.
However, this morning dawned bright and sunny, and there is no sign of flooding around me. The “low country” drainage seems well planned in my neighborhood.
There will be more rain today though as another storm moves through this area. Low tide is late afternoon, and I am hoping for a chance to take a walk on the beach later today when I go over to my older son’s household for a family birthday celebration.
There are MANY Starbucks tucked all around this area, many with drive-up lanes. There is even a Starbucks in my local Harris Teeter grocery store. But a medium latte is almost $6. And it would be made with commercial dead milk and some sort of fake “honey” mixture or “sugar” syrup that might quite possibly rely on corn syrup in some form.
I have a large Bialetti espresso pot though–and also a collection of smaller ones for individual servings. At some point most days I make a big pot, to which I add my raw milk and raw wild honey.
LOL. I have NO TROUBLE drinking the whole pot of this delicious, rich coffee over the course of a morning or an afternoon after lunch.
I also have a milk frother/steamer, but I have not wanted to heat my raw milk as that would kill its nutrients.
Next week is going to be fairly busy for me: among the events will be a needed haircut, a trip to a local store to retrieve the every-two-weeks raw milk delivery, and the arrival of the longarm.
And the completed Traverse BOM rows are growing–though I will now have to wait for the next fabric delivery to finish this quilt. There are four more rows to make, each separated by a solid 2-inch strip of fabric. I will take pictures when I’ve finished what I can do at present as I have laid out the rows on the upstairs rug in the large room.
Maybe, unlike rural Maine, more urban areas have lots of walking paths. Here it is easy to walk because off-road paths criss-cross this neighborhood and wide paths run alongside the outside roads. These walking paths, wide and level, are EVERYWHERE. (Bikers tend to use the streets.)
And, this is the low country, so there are also water features that are used to drain and hold water everywhere too. At the entrance to Moore’s Landing, my neighborhood, there are two cache basins and fountains that run most of the time. This kind of movement of water helps prevent mosquitoes and, maybe, the growth of algae (?).
Also, unlike where I lived in Maine–which was out beyond the town–there is regular trash and recycling pickup. Big brown trash barrels are collected weekly by Mt. Pleasant town, and the blue recycle barrels are collected every two weeks by Charleston County. Mt. Pleasant town, which is huge, is a part of Charleston County, which is even bigger.
The barrels are placed with the handles facing the street, and the trucks can pick them up and empty them without a person touching them–it can all be controlled by the driver in the truck who operates the levers that lift the bins. This past week, the brown trash barrels were picked up on time and homeowners put them away. But the blue recycle bins remained a few days longer. I think the truck driver forgot our street. Calls to Charleston County produced the eventual pickup, however.
I am looking forward to walking the trails in nearby parks–and to visiting the beach again to walk. I am getting to the point where I will have time for walking in areas beyond my neighborhood–as the moving work load is mostly done.
But rain is coming later in the morning. I don’t mind–it means I don’t have to worry about watering any of the dormant grass–assuming I can even manage to undo the tight hose bolts the movers closed on BOTH ends of two hoses by linking them into a big circle so there would be no loose ends.
I have to say I like solving problems like this hose problem though. Maybe two sets of pliers? Maybe a son or grandson…
Here’s a problem I could not solve though. My DIL was replacing this chair, and I asked her for it. Isn’t it the cutest, sweetest little chair–one just meant for my sewing room?
My DIL warned me that the chair was not holding its height and would gradually slide down to its lowest level.
Maybe that low level would be ok?
Nope.
Maybe I could fix it?
I went online and discovered that chairs with hydraulics gradually lose their air over time and will slide down to their lowest level. Who knew? The first, easier, fix involved tape for traction and a hose clamp to prevent the chair from sliding down.
Nope. The whole shaft would have to be taped with a hose clamp at either end maybe.
The next fix involved taking off the wheel apparatus and placing a metal or PCP pipe over the shaft–centered on the pipe with washers if the overlaid pipe had too much play on the chair shaft. The chair would then hold in a permanent height–set by the overlaid pipe. That would have worked–but I had no way to cut a metal or PCP. So…
Nope.
I ordered a new chair from Amazon as I could not find one locally for a price I would consider. Sewing chairs at JoAnne’s were $300 plus!!! And office chairs at Staples were also expensive and so…”officey.” This chair was $138 with tax!!!! Lovely. But it had to be put together. So I spent a quite lovely hour doing that task while sitting on the upstairs rug under a good light.
And now I’m very happy! The chair is very comfortable, the arms can be slid up and out of the way, there is lumbar support for a lower back, AND I had fun putting the chair together.
I am really enjoying having my machine facing this outside window. It is easy to open the shutters, which swing open into the room, to open a window to let a breeze inside. And in the late afternoon, a time when I mostly sew, I can see families out walking with children and dogs and visiting with others they see along the way. There are a lot of dogs and children here, too.
The Traverse quilt is coming along–here are two sections on what was my temporary design wall.
Now these sections are on the rug out in the big room as I will soon have other sections to joint these two.
The final 4 rows and batches of fabric for Traverse will arrive from Sewtopia in a few weeks now. And while I wait, the longarm will come next week, and I’ll quilt the two quilts that are waiting for it–and trim and bind them.
I so looking forward to diving into all the saved projects I have acquired.
Yesterday I SEWED in my organized and (mostly) ready-to-use upstairs sewing area. I say mostly as the design wall is “in progress” and the longarm arrives February 16th.
I love having my sewing machine right in front of these windows which look out to the neighborhood. (The Plantation Shutters were installed yesterday morning, and I love them. They control light so easily, with just a touch on one slat in each panel, and are so modern and uncluttered.) It is dusk outside, but I have plenty of light for sewing with all my portable lights.
My second machine is set up on the short wall behind me, with my bulletin board above it. This machine is set up with the walking foot for installing bindings or sewing a grid onto a smaller quilt. The hallway to the big room is to the right, and a closet is further to the right on the other short wall–so more storage for the bins I have with cut strips and blocks.
To the left is the wall that will become a design wall.
I began my new sewing adventure yesterday by making the 5th row on the Traverse BOM project designed by Tara Faughnan and hosted by Sewtopia. I have the fabric for three more rows and will catch up with those first thing. Sewtopia is shipping the rest of the rows in a few weeks in one package. Getting hold of the fabrics has been hard for Sewtopia this winter.
Here are a few finished blocks in a wide row that will use two rows to make its design. I am testing to see if my blocks are perfect as the row has to measure exactly to all the other rows.
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The stairs to the upstairs areas stop at a landing where I hung this quilt on the right side. This area is filled with light.
This picture is too dark, probably from the top bar of the shutters, but there is a lot of light in this space. This picture shows the truer colors in this quilt–which I designed some years back in a class taught by Amy Friend.
There is a long wall flanking the right side of the walkway into the larger “game room” area where the longarm will live when it arrives on the 16th. There are blog posts on all of these quilts. The quilt on the far left is made from a block and fabric palette created by Latifah Saafir as guest designer for The Color Collective. The quilt on the right in an improv method designed by Tara Faughnan for The Color Collective. The “four season” quilts in the middle were inspired by Sarah Fielke in the book by Sarah and Kathy Doughty, MATERIAL OBSESSIONS 2.
The “game room,” which is dark, is next. The longarm will go here. To the left is a closet and beyond it the utility room that houses the ac/heating systems. All three quilts represent work done in The Color Collective seasons.
On the opposite wall I set up the serger, and there is a bookcase flanked by storage units that store items that will be needed in this room. The longarm is coming with an overhead light bar that will help with light in this room. The New York Beauty quilt is my design, and the diamond quilt is a smaller version of a quilt designed by Tara Faughnan in The Color Collective. The larger version is hanging in the downstairs hallway.
The hallway door on the left is a closet that houses my fabric stash and beyond is my sewing room.
I’ve been working hard in the last few years to whittle down my stash, and it all fits easily into this closet. The top right shelf on the right is filled with projects I need to make but have not started.
There is a very nice bathroom opposite this closet.
I brought the very comfortable queen blow-up bed with me, and it will be easy to set it up in the sewing room if I have overflow guests. There is the downstairs guest room, and the grey couch in the tv/sitting room is a queen sofa bed, but more privacy would be available for a guest upstairs.
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