Saturday, September 20, 2014

No Sewing

The past week and a half there was no time for sewing.  Happily, I did manage to finish up several tasks that had been bugging me.

On Monday I cleaned the garage and Jim and I made a trip to the recycle centre.  Wow, I sure like how the garage looks, quite a bit neater.

I also invited S. and her sister and her daughter in law to come and raid my stash of knitting yarn.  It has accumulated over the years to fill several bins in the garage, some drawers in the sewing room and a shelf or two in the sewing room cabinet.  There were some real finds in there: balls and balls of White Buffalo yarn, bought at a bargain in Woodwards in Lethbridge in the 70's and never used.  (There's a lesson here: buy yarn ONLY for a particular project, not on spec.  Same goes for quilting cottons.)  There were a few projects near completion, one in particular: a lovely sweater/coat in beige with intarsia in a varicoloured yarn.  Very pretty, but going to turn out to small for me to wear.  I started that in 2008.  I didn't like how loose the knitting was on the suggested needles and so I moved down a size.  In the meantime I, myself, moved up a size.  The discrepancy was too large to overcome and I couldn't think of a good solution.  Giving it to someone who would finish it and enjoy wearing it was the best way to go.

Tuesday I went to R.D. for my biyearly mammogram.

Wednesday and Thursday I worked on cleaning our car, a 2000 Toyota Camry, which had not had a cleaning for over a year.  It was surprisingly still not too bad.  The exterior had been washed by rain showers a few times.  Plus, it's that ubiquitous silver colour that was so popular about that time, and that doesn't show the dirt too badly.  The mats were the worst part.  I put them on the patio and vacuumed them thoroughly.  Then I scrubbed them with a strong solution of Folex Instant Carpet Spot Remover, and rinsed them again and again with a power washer.  When the rinse water was coming off fairly clear, I hung them up on the clothesline to dry, sidewise, with many spring clothespins.  It worked like a charm.  They were cleaner than they had been for years, and were dry before suppertime.  The Folex worked many times better than the Bissell rug shampoo I usually use.

Friday I finally got around to washing windows.  This was a wonderful week to do that; the weather has been super nice.  I had washed windows earlier in the summer but there were the two windows by my sewing machine that hadn't been cleaned for over a year, and one in our bedroom.  What a treat to have clean, sparkling windows.  And especially, to see the white vinyl sills clean again.

This morning I scrubbed up all the bird shit stains on the balcony flooring, and rinsed it all with the hose.  Ahh!  Looks very good for now!

What a lot can be accomplished if I just stay away from the sewing machine for a while!

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