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.
I finally got to the point where I had time to run down where the DNA dog testing on Jackpot went missing–for me, anyway. Sure enough, the Maine vet had the report and emailed it to me.
I sent it on to the amazing foster person–who is Irish–as I thought the new owners might like to have it. And I sent it to Glenna Tucker at Sweet Pups Nation Rescue and Sanctuary as Jackpot had two litter mates.
The DNA is NOTHING like I expected. I thought Jackpot a hound/terrier mixture–a “Feist” dog. Nope. There is a pointer bird dog, but no outright hound in the mix. No beagle or Basset hound. And no terrier either.
The foster person who took Jackpot from me and helped get him to a happy home has kept in touch with me, and she sends me current pictures from time to time–as she did this time after my email as Jackpot recently spent a long weekend with her. She is happy that she helped me get to South Carolina and to land on my feet here–and she was so much a part of making the move happen so that I could handle it as it was so, so hard for me to give up this adorable little dog.
Jackpot is about 7-8 months old now. She wrote the following:
“The little love bug has landed on his four feet too, smothered in love. He was back for a long weekend; it was so good to see him. He hasn’t gotten a whole lot taller. I think he’s stretched though; he seemed longer; his coat is so soft, a little thicker; he has grown into his funny ears. He’s still the same cautious, mad, fun, snuggly, adorable little dog, maybe slightly more mature, and his itching has completely disappeared. He is still a baby. He’s in heaven. The last photo, his ears were up, pointy, makes him look so different.”
Look at this trickster look. And note the snuggly blanket and the toys.
You can see the depth of his soft winter coat here. I want to leap through the frame and love on him.
The pointy ears. LOL. He’s such a sweet, sweet boy.
I’m delighted that his itching has stopped. He had a lot of detoxing to do, but he got and is getting what he needs.
Here is the DNA profile. Note the strong Akita on one side. There is a “mixed breed” marker, so maybe there is some hound/terrier there.
Anyway, I was so happy to get this Jackpot update.
I’ll tell you. It’s been going to getting settled in my new home, spending time with my families, and learning my way around.
It’s all good. I’m good. I’m happy!
Here’s one angle of The Big Room:
The dining room table went out this week to get refinished–so I have a work table in its place for the 4 to 6-weeks it will take.
The Plantation Shutters will come eventually, and they will cover all the big double windows. The sliding door will remain uncovered. It faces to the back screened porch. The road curves around to the mailbox kiosk–which is a whole new experience for me.
My box is 16B. The narrow dark space is where one can post a letter.
The big boxes below are for packages. One gets a key to the big box in one’s mailbox. Once inserted, the door can be opened, and the key stays in the lock–by design.
Our normal post person was away a few days, and apparently the substitute got keys and packages mixed up. I opened the box with the key in my box, and the package wasn’t mine, which, LOL, I didn’t realize until I sliced open the box at home and found bubble bath and a child’s toy. I tracked down the address and delivered the package to the correct owner as the big box was now open. What else could I do with someone else’s package?
Meanwhile, the package I had been expecting was said to have been delivered. Ummm. No. It was a potpourri mixture for the guest bathroom–so after several more days, I put in a request to Amazon to send a replacement as the package had “gone missing,” and they agreed to send a new package without charge.
When the normal post person returned, I met her, and we had a nice chat. She had BOTH packages for me. Now what to do? I loved the potpourri, so I asked Amazon to charge me for the replacement box.
After a few tries, I gave up. The system just does not allow for one to pay for a replacement box. So now I have this luscious potpourri in my bathroom as well.
Here’s my main meal today–meatloaf. a medley of roasted veggies cooked Tuesday, and fresh roasted cauliflower. And, yes, that’s fresh raw milk!!!
I am working upstairs bringing the sewing areas to rights and hanging pictures and quilts around the house.
AND, attending a series of wrestling matches where a grandson is participating.
It’s been a wild time for me since I left Maine in mid December. For sure. The time seems much longer than a month. But this time has also been filled with joy and laughter and FAMILY and the sale of a beloved Maine home and the purchase of what will be a beloved new home in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.
I am still pinching myself that I am actually here and not just visiting. And there is so much to enjoy and to learn. There is also a lot to do to settle in here.
I have loved live oaks with their mossy draping since I was a child and went with family to St. Simons, Georgia, for a treasured week at the beach. Here’s a pretty live oak on Isle of Palms (IOP) where both of my sons live.
The IOP beaches are so lovely. Here is a picture just north of the inlet between Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island. That channel is deep and the current is very strong; it’s a place where dolphins in deep water will drive schools of fish right up on the sand banks in order to eat them. Locals call this area “Breach Inlet.” The low-tide pools just above the breach provide endless investigation for children and adults.
Here’s a live star fish.
The sand dollar below is still alive. They die in a few minutes if they get out of the water. So, many get trapped by a retreating tide, even if they bury themselves in the sand.
I am looking forward to when I have more time to explore the beaches and the many parks and trails here. But as I said, there is a LOT of work to do with a major move. There is the packing and organizing what is coming, of course. And then there is the unpacking and realizing what is and isn’t going to work in the house. But there are mounds of paperwork and errands to do as well: setting up house utilities (power, gas, water), wi-fi, the ADT security for which the house is already wired, a local bank account, and switching to a medicare advantage plan that covers Charleston County. I had to organize the state taxes on the house, a SC driver’s license, SC plates for the car, and finding and making appointments with new medical people. I’m still working on getting all the house warranties in place. I’ve also had to learn my way around, which has been made easier by the WAZE app that pretty much takes me wherever I need to go–in traffic that is much heavier than what I was used to in rural Maine.
The HUGE moving van (90+ feet) came from New England last Saturday, and it held my possessions and the possessions of two other moves–one nearby and one in Florida. (The brown grass is Centipedegrass–it will be lush and apple green in a few months.)
Here’s my house–and it has all the spaces I need for my sewing/quilting passion. The upstairs has two rooms that will house my longarm, my sewing machines and serger, and all the fabric and sewing notions.
This floor plan mirrors my house, which has the garage on the right. And the internal organization of the rooms is slightly different, but all the rooms are there. That storage loft is, I think, where all the air-conditioning and heating equipment is located. I have 3 bedrooms (the upstairs one will be my sewing room) and the downstairs flex room will be a tv room. The smaller closet in the master bedroom is going to be a little office. There is awesome storage all over the house. I will put the longarm in the game room space.
My refrigerator, washer, and dryer come on Saturday, so Saturday night will be my last night with my older son’s family. I have so enjoyed my time with this family–and with visits to my younger son’s family. My bedroom is mostly ready for me to move into it–I still have a lot of pictures to hang or to store propped on the wall there, but there is no rush to decide where to hang pictures or which ones to store.
I’ll include some pictures of the inside of the house when things are more settled. The guest bedroom and the upstairs are a disaster at the moment. But I like bringing order to chaos. And I can’t wait to set up my sewing spaces.
This post will be my last post in Maine. Next week, after getting to Charleston, SC, hopefully on Sunday, I’ll work on changing the name and regional focus of this blog. I’m thinking of something like “Living in the Low Country” or “My Low Country Adventure.” If YOU have ideas for a catchy new blog title, let me know in the comments?
The movers will be here Wednesday and Thursday, and I am mostly ready. I will leave here Friday to meet my two sons in Portland. They are flying in to drive me to Charleston. With my mast cell disorder, it isn’t wise for me to try to drive myself. What if I get triggered along the way and have a bad reaction? I will bring my own food in a cooler, but triggers can happen with chemical smells created by too many people sharing in a small space all their body and laundry products. Or, in a hotel room that likely gets sprayed to control insects and/or has residues from cleaning and laundry soaps.
The second contract on my Maine house failed late Tuesday last week. But I’m moving anyway. I have an excellent house caretaking team here, and all agree that I should just go ahead and leave the house in their capable hands–so I don’t have to hang around here all by myself (again) during the upcoming holidays. Thus, this Christmas I will be with family after many, many years of being alone in these winter holidays.
I want to be with my family–and I’m very much at peace with this decision to go. The house will sell when it sells, and it will sell at some point. It is a beautiful house–and I have loved every minute of living in it and living in Maine and living in the Camden community.
Somehow I’ve erased by mistake my favorite picture of the house and garage. Oh my! But I used my favorite fairly recent picture as the wallpaper on my iPad Pro, so I was able to at least get a screenshot of it, though I could not get rid of the time stamp from last year.
Here’s the house from another angle.
I will miss the lush green of a Maine summer, hikes through beautiful woods filled with ferns and the smell of fir trees, the cooler temps, the SNOW, the bracing sharp clean air, the very different and beautiful light changes in a place so far north and east, the stunning sun rises and sunsets, the dark sky filled with a huge moon and bright stars, many vistas from high hills that look out over the bay… I can go on as Maine has been a gift of the soul.
But I’ll be regaining family and a kin network that is much closer, access to a beautiful beach, a place filled with parks and nature walks, a new house to make a home, and a whole new adventure. I’m excited about the change and the new explorations to come.
Here’s one more picture, but there are many on this blog taken over the years.
I have been so busy since Tuesday doing the last packing and organizing. But here’s the progress on the 1 1/2-inch blocks from the Cotton+Steel project of the last two years. The two patches have all been sewn into four-patches.
And here are the four-patches being joined into strips that when sewn together will make a 4 1/2-inch (unfinished) block.
Four blocks make an 8 1/2-inch bigger block.
But then what?
I can set these blocks with sashings. Or, even, wonky-sashing settings. Perhaps that solution would depend upon how many blocks I wind up with–though I can augment somewhat from the bin of 1/1/2 C+S strips.
Or I can set them all together–or at least some of them–to make some sort of medallion center.
However, due to the lack of CLEAR darks and lights, the above bigger joining seems somewhat incoherent to me. So I’m NOT going to go this direction.
Right now with the move, I might be able to carve out enough time in the next few days to make all the 8 1/2 inch blocks, which I’ll put back into the bin holding the leftover C+S pieces and blocks, like a good pile of Churn Dash blocks, the 2-inch squares, and some other odd leftover pieces–some sewn into pieces that can be used somewhere.
I’ll try to post again when I am in Charleston. Meanwhile, enjoy this season of dark nights and starry skies and all the gatherings you might have that hopefully include good food and much cheer.
I am not a particular fan of LED lights. They take some time to heat up, for one thing. At least the LED spotlights in the ceiling of my quilt room take time to fully illuminate.
BUT, a clear pattern has emerged where the non-LED bulbs in the dining room chandelier have pulled a lot of voltage, so over time that high voltage load will burn out the dimmer switch–which first grows way too hot to the touch. It is very scary to touch a switch that is…hot.
This is the third time that I remember where the dimmer switch had to be replaced. And this time the electrician told me to replace the “regular” light bulbs with LED light bulbs.
Off to Home Depot I went, where I discovered a box of eight LED lights in either “daylight” or a softer white–for about $15. I came home with daylight, which may be too bright, but they can be dimmed too.
The lights are bright right away as well, so this light dimmer switch issue may now be solved.
Plus, the lights themselves have this kind of funky, but cute interiors (hidden by the lamp shades) that feature three bars that light up and are very bright–made more bright by the “daylight” choice.
I have learned a LOT during this move I’m making to South Carolina.
Two events started this knitting project: (1) I mailed to Charleston the EPP hand-sewing project I had put together to work on until I can move into my Charleston house as it would take up too much room in my car AND (2) when sorting “stuff” for the move I found a bag of cotton yarns I had purchased so grandchildren could learn to knit. But, the three covid years didn’t deliver grandchildren to my house in Maine who wanted to learn to knit.
I really love to have hand work to do at night–so I started knitting these cloths for the kitchen. It is a good project as my stack of these cloths, which I use to dry my wet hands, was growing low and some cloths were getting worn and shabby looking.
I’ve finished the top three cloths now and am working on the fourth one.
The 4th cloth is being knitted in a moss stitch, which I’ve never made before now. I like the seed stitch (see the aqua/purple cloth), and the moss is the same except one starts with even stitches (seed with an odd number of stitches) and in moss one knits TWO rows that are identical and then two rows that start by knitting a purl into a knit and a knit into a purl, as with the seed stitch.
You can see the moss stitch creates wonderful texture.
The other two completed cloths are just a garter stitch (all knitting all the time)–and all of these choices (garter, seed, moss) give a heavier texture to these cloths, which I think is needed.
I have four more cotton balls, and they are all solids, so I will have fun with both the seed and moss stitches that create so much texture.
I finished watching all 16 episodes of the South Korean drama series EXTRAORDINARY ATTORNEY WOO Tuesday night. It is hosted by Netflix.
What a treat!
Attorney Woo is on the autism spectrum. She has a photographic memory and is a genius with regard to South Korean laws. But, as she is autistic, it takes some time for her colleagues to appreciate her amazing skills as she is very different than they are.
However, over the 16 episodes, her colleagues not only learned to appreciate her, they have grown to love her and to work together to protect her. Happy endings are part of comedy and romance, and at least some courtroom dramas, and this series brings all these threads into a satisfying ending by the last episode.
The first two episodes set up the characters and then the series just takes off and soars. Each episode features a different legal issue and different issues for an autistic woman to learn to manage, but each episode also shows how the characters stretch and grow. A full range of emotions is present, and I often found myself laughing out loud or feeling really sad about how things are developing. And one learns a fair amount about South Korean culture along the way.
There are subtitles. But I think it is worth reading them in order to experience some of the very good foreign tv series that are now available on our streaming platforms these days.
There will be a season 2.
Below, is a link to Wikipedia if you want to know more:
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