It's been long enough....

So, my last post was waaay back in January. At that time I decided it was time to take a break away from posting and from this blog for a short while. Here we are in August and the Pacific Northwest is in the midst of a Heat wave. So much fun. I was really hopeful that we would actually not get into temperatures in the 100s. The heat arrived over the weekend and Sunday was day 1. It's been 100+ degrees since then. Yes, I'm a whiner, leave me alone!

The problem with temperatures over 90 degrees is that our old, old house holds the heat and it is downright miserable. We do have a couple of window AC units that we keep in key areas. One being the TV room and the other in the bedroom. Once the house heats up, it takes several days for our house to cool down to make sleeping or general living comfortable. Also, being a woman in menopause I'm experiencing sweating in brand new ways. It's awful.

Anyway, since the day is shaping up to be hot I'll be spending time inside today. Yesterday I was all over the place running errands and joining in on a prayer meeting for Operation Christmas Child. All good things really, but then I had to come home :( The rest of the afternoon found me in the TV room playing a game on my kindle and watching miscellaneous shows on Prime. Oh and I baked up some rustic bread - that doesn't help the kitchen that much.

What have I been doing up until now? Besides trying to get my head straight - I had the opportunity to go to Global Connect in Orlando, FL. It was an amazing time of fellowship with our OCC brothers and sisters from around the US AND world! That cool time was at the end of March and into the first of April. Afterwards, my friend and I tagged along with our OCC Area Coordinators on a little road trip to Savannah, GA. That was a fun trip! We spent three nights in an Historic Inn located in the historic part of the city. It's been said that one of the floors is haunted.....Okaaay. 

Some of the things - 

Took a Trolley Tour

Shrimp & Grits on the water front.

Ice Cream at Leopold's. I guess it pretty popular. which I can believe since the line went down the block and our wait OUTSIDE was around 45 minutes.

I wanted to go to Sweet Potatoes Kitchen. Waaaay back earlier this year I was watching Jolly on YT and the guys went to this restaurant and it looked so good! 

On our way out of Savannah to the airport we had time to stop at Waffle House. 

So that was the biggest thing that happened this year! Other than that, the regular farm stuff keeps happening. Piglets, garden, and piglets... OH and we also processed another 25 meat chickens and had a couple of hogs processed. 

In my last post I had lamented about my sewing machine and how it has been acting up. It was disappointing to see things not working like they should - especially since it was just serviced. So, I still worked on some projects despite some things not working. After a few weeks of sewing my machine really started to go haywire. It started to make a clunking noise while I was sewing. This is unacceptable! I continued to sew for a few more days, but it was not getting better. After some searches on YouTube I landed on a video that went through how to take apart a Viking Sewing Machine. Thank you YouTube University! Over the course of a weekend Tom and I took apart my sewing machine once together and I found that there was a lot of thread wound around the part where the thread is taken up and and down (I'm not technical). It seems that after all of the times that the thread has broken it got stuck inside the machine. Something that never occurred to me. I spent quite a while cutting away the thread and clearing it out. Once I was finished I got the machine back together. Afterwards I turned it on only to find out that even MORE things went belly up! This is when I decided to take my machine apart by myself and investigate what might have happened. As it turns out, the plug that goes into the circuit board was not properly seated. Whew, I thought we might have really ruined my machine.  This is what happens when simple things go fancy. Stupid circuit boards!

Anyway - machine is up and running again and I was sewing again, like crazy! Here are a couple of quilt tops that I finished. Over all I finished three quilt tops and made a tablerunner. 

My Stash Buster Quilt

Another Stash Buster that I pieced together on National Quilting Day. 

I also made a few tote bags for Operation Christmas Child, but that task is on hold until I go through my fabric again and set aside more fabric for more bags.

Also, in this year, Tom was laid off from the company that he started with last November. To be honest, I wasn't terribly saddened by that. The company had created the position for him because they were excited about what he had to offer, so he was hired to be a Design Engineer/Inspector. Well, he did a lot of work on a project that is a little bit of distance from here and it wasn't in the best shape overall. The job was a train wreck and Tom was able to identify some issues that should have been caught by past inspectors, but wasn't. It was up to him to get the people involved in the job to understand what needed to be done. In the end, some people were unhappy that Tom was doing his job and that was kinda rude. Fortunately, he didn't work on that project for the last couple of months he was with them. In the end, they didn't get contracts that they hoped that they would and wound up needed to cut a couple of positions. Yep, not sad about that place.

That was at the end of April. Since then Tom applied for quite a few jobs and got a couple of interviews. The first one I didn't have good feelings about and I'm glad that they went with someone else. The one that he did get is a small company that is located not far from where we live and the atmosphere of the office is super relaxed and everyone (that I met) is so nice! Before he started work there we were invited to join the team at a Portland Thorns game - we aren't soccer people, but thought it would be a fun outing on a Friday night. He is in his second week with them and he really is enjoying working there. He has his own office and has been working on a few different projects and even went on a field trip yesterday. He is fitting in and is enjoying the other people in the office too. The good thing is that they have quite a few projects that need to be worked on and the timeline for the projects is pretty relaxed. Kind of a get it done when you get it done kind of feel. I have visited for lunch once and got the tour and talked to a couple of people. Once lady is a quilter :) She invited me to go to a Clark County Quilter's Guild meeting. Ummm, that's too social, no thanks. She said that they also do a thing called sit and sew on Zoom. I could do that one! Anyway, I'm feeling really positive about this company!

It's a little bit of a process getting used to being home alone again. I guess partly because since I retired Tom has had two jobs and was let go from both of them after a few months. So, I guess part of me is trying to get into a new routine (again) and trying to be grateful that Tom has a new job that seems to be a good fit. For now Tom is still taking care of the animals in the morning and after dinner. At some point I will take over the care and maintenance of the piggies and the chickens/water fowl. Oh and Carl too. 

Going forward I will be posting a little more often. I think I'm over my major funk that I was in earlier this year. 

Taking a break

This week I am going to take a break from posting here and focusing on getting things done around the house. 

There is a bit of a problem with my sewing area. Not so much the area, but my machine. It seems that the straight stitch setting doesn't want to work anymore. Then I figured out that my 1/4" seam allowance setting wants to go in the opposite direction. Which means the seam allowance is a perfect 1/4" on the left side of the needle. So it still works, but it also is on the "wrong" side. I mean I could probably get used to it, but it would take a lot of mental gymnastics for me to unlearn doing seams on the right side of the needle. I would rather not have that happen. 

My initial sewing cabinet set up

The kitchen island now cutting table

Final Set Up

So, my sewing machine is a Husqvarna Viking Lily 545. I have really enjoyed this machine. A LOT!

Honestly I can't remember when I got this machine. It has been at least 20 years since I bought it, possibly longer. 

This machine has been so great! I'm just sad that I didn't get to use it nearly as much as I would have liked to. For the first several years after I got this machine I could only sew occasionally. Weekends and sometimes after work. Even then there were more times that I had other things to do than to sit down and stitch some fabric together to make a quilt. Now that I'm retired I made/finished a few quilts and made a bunch of tote bags for OCC. Even then, I only sat down  to sewing during the cool months - when outside work was not as desirable. 

The idea that this machine has a couple of problems, minor ones at that, makes me feel like my days with this machine are numbered. Sure I can use a couple of tricks to make so I can keep this machine, but when do I call it quits with this machine? When more things break down? The reality is that I don't use hardly any of the stitch functions on this machine. Although I have used a couple here and there for fun. 

I'm torn, but I might have to give this machine up. The one good thing is that I can take it to Montavilla Sewing in Portland and have it looked at for free. If the circuit board isn't the problem, then maybe I will opt for a trade in. I've been researching sewing machines and checking out prices. I'm not interested in paying over $1,200 for a new machine - this one cost that much. What I need is something that offers the basics and a couple of Special Features. Unfortunately the special features on machines is mostly standard. I've landed on the Juki Exceed F300 Home Deco. I might make a trip over there tomorrow. I'm not 100% sure yet. Portland is not my most favorite place to go to. 

So, I'll be "away" for a the next few days. Maybe a little longer, I still feel like I'm catching up around here and need the extra time to get things in order.

January 13, 2023 - Day 43

Today started off with a walk. As some point I hope that I am getting out early to walk at least 3 days during the week and once on the weekend. That's all I can manage right now given that my sleep habit is really messed up and I don't get as much sleep as I would like (or need). My other goal is to start running again, just a little bit. Maybe work up to a 5k distance again. We'll see...my mind is willing, but my body says slow down lady...why are you thinking about running again?!

This morning after dealing with the critters I got some blackberry whacking in again. This time I moved over to the old barn foundation. It's been overrun by blackberry vines for a few years. It's time to do something about them and try to reclaim the foundation. I started to whack the blackberry vines back during late summer last year - while little Zeke and his sisters were small enough to go underneath that mess and find fallen berries. 

Before

After

It's hard to tell the difference of the work that I got in this morning. It was nice to work on something different, but not far from the big shed. 

I would like to repurpose this area into some sort of animal area. I'm not sure yet. It has been so long since I last saw what this area looks like without the brambles, so I'll dream once I can get the canes all cleared out. Also, I'll need to find a way to keep the blackberries under control. 

The rest of today will consist of picking up my Azure Standard order. This will consist of 25 pound bags of grain ingredients for my DIY Chicken Feed. Probably should make a trip to the grocery store too. I haven't cooked much this week, but I am out of fruit and we need some milk. Maybe next week I'll get into the kitchen and bake some bread. We'll see.

January 10, 2023 - Day 40

Tuesday!

Another not so exciting day, but very productive :)

Filled the morning with laundry, because that's fun. Then to the feed store to buy more piggo food. This week's trip I decided to buy another Giant Rubber feed pan to use for water for the "free range pigs." The last time I bought one - about a month ago or so I was having a terrible time getting ONE pan out of the nested stack. This time was no different. I'm pretty sure that I was the one who bought the last one. So I took the stack (of four) to the register and said "I only need one!" I didn't want to injure myself trying to get one unstuck, because that would happen. So I let one of the ladies works there try to wrestle one out. It took her a good amount of time, but she did it! I would have applauded her, but felt that would be too much. So then I placed my order of two Champion Hog and two Alfalfa pellets. 

We all know what comes next - having to wrestle those bags out of the car, but I waited until I fed Big momma and the boys to get those out and loaded into the bins. UGHH...

I'm happy to say that I was successful once again! I didn't immediately hurt myself, but that came later after I was finished with chores and hanging out after dinner. So much fun. I have to say that as I write this I am feeling tired and ready for the week to be over! Actually no, but I am feeling a little sore. 

I guess I better stretch more ;)