YES ! ! !

Busy day today. Beloved Hubby was home and our new cable box arrived. Of course, it didn’t work with our current set-up, and we had to de-wire and re-wire half the house, it seemed. On the plus side, cable and recording now work in the Salon, and I got to sweep behind some rarely-moved crates. I also found a small stash of fabric in a box behind some stuff, and sorted that out. 

And we finally found the recharge cable to my tablet ! That’s been missing for weeks, and we were about to buy another one. It’s good we didn’t – ‘cause thanks to all this wire-swapping, I needed a new printer cable. Amazon.com to the rescue, a new green one should be here Thursday. Yes, we paid an extra 25¢ for a green one, solely because I wanted it. Told you I’m not a nice person. 

I could have passed the early evening peaceably sewing up a simple denim skirt for Tia, but I found a shiny penny in the parking lot of 7-11 when I went to harvest snack chips for everybody, and since I immediately passed the penny on, felt really lucky. So after putting away a more than healthy amount of chips, I hooped up a double – a piece of the Vilene fabric-y stuff under the new plastic-y, and pulled up the star design again. Installed a fresh needle and white bobbin thread, ‘cause I wanted to see how that worked. Yesterday’s projects / failures were all made with embroidery thread in the bobbin. Since free-standing lace is usually made to be double-sided, most designs give the stitcher the option of bobbin weight or embroidery weight thread in the bobbin. I felt these changes might give me a chance at completing that beautiful star, from what last night’s failure research taught me. 

At the halfway point, it looked vastly better than yesterday’s version. Heck, right out of the gate, at about the two-minute mark, it already looked better (the star takes about 40 minutes to stitch out). Penny and new needle, please don’t fail me now !

As you can see, they didn’t ! I danced around with the hoop for a good three minutes, I was so happy. Yes ! Now I know how to use my resources to their best advantage. And it won’t be long before I start wondering when to order another 200 sheets of plastic-y wash-away stabilizer film !

Even the back is pretty. Ever look at the back of commercial embroidery, see how a bit of the color stitches is lining the back white bobbin stitches ? The difference in thread weight does that, and it’s cultivated even in home embroidery, so the bobbin thread doesn’t show in front. The back of the star is lined in blue, but is mostly white, and it looks like frost. I’m so happy. . .

But dinner’s been delayed while I dallied. Later, everybody ! 


PS - Beloved dealt me a break - it's fried chicken special night ! And on my way back from getting it, I found a pair of sunglasses in the road. Looked them up - they're not exactly designer, but they're by A. J. Morgan, in a multicolored chevron design called Topsy, from 2014. Worth about $15., in perfect shape, if a bit dirty. Lucky !