Humpty Dumpty and the In-Laws
Not a new punk band, rather a description of my week.
Started the week out at my mother-in-laws in Connecticut to attend the funeral of my husband’s aunt Gloria Outwater (Schrader). In addition to the strong women in my birth family I’ve had the pleasure of knowing a number of other strong (and strong-willed) women, Gloria was one. She was feisty, stubborn and did not suffer fools lightly, all things I admire in a person.
While there I got to see a crazy quilt that has been in my husband’s family for generations dating back to the mid 1800’s:
The embroidery work on this quilt is amazing. Each woman in the family was responsible for a square or two and most appear to be dated. Paul’s aunt Phyllis backed the quilt with blue velveteen fairly recently.
When we got back to Portland Paul adjusted the dog feeds on my sewing machine. Turns out you have to take the whole bobbin assembly apart to lower the feeds. I had one job – keep track of the little screws. I was 80% successful. One was REALLY small. Like the size of a grain of rice.
Paul put everything back together without the missing tiny screw and found the missing part in the catalogue and where he could get one (all without any foul language). I decided the next day that I would try to use the machine while waiting for the part – it’s just one tiny screw and where it was it seemed like everything would stay in place. DO NOT DO THIS.
I had to take everything all apart again to “unseize” it. At least I only advanced everything by hand to test it out to see if it would work – not using the foot pedal and without paper or anything under it. In the meantime I actually found the screw! It must have gotten caught up in my clothing – I found it on the floor in the bathroom the next day. I have now put everything back together again for the 2nd time. But now the needle seems to be too far to the left…