Technical Tantrums and Other Fun Ways to Spend Your Week

The following section contains an explanation for my week+ absence based on a petty first-world problem.  Feel free to skip down to craftiness after the asterisks.

I am a little naive at times.  When my RSS reader (Reeder) told me that it would continue to work after the demise of Google Reader, I believed it. I didn't confirm that it would indeed work closer to the planned date.  Nope.  Imagine my surprise and dismay on July 2nd when it didn't. Blerg! Apparently, they're working on it but it wasn't going to be ready in time. ( I find it important to add here that I am not a total Luddite; I have embraced new technology faster than the average bear, but I'm rarely a first-adopter and I am cautious regarding change.  I still don't like the new Flickr....)

I went looking for a replacement, hopefully temporary, as I love Reeder - I had it all set up the way I like, I was happy with the interface, and it synced across all my devices.  I wasn't crazy about Bloglovin' but the Feedly app wouldn't let me login on my phone.

So then I spent a day and a half importing all my carefully curated feeds manually into Bloglovin'. I was then too tired and annoyed to read any of them for a few days.  And when I sat down to delve in, I hated it. I would even say I loathed it. It changed my settings randomly, wouldn't adapt to needs and ways of doing things, and it wouldn't import some of my feeds for seemingly arbitrary reasons.  I threw my hands up, closed the computer, and stewed.  I tried the mobile app.  Hated it, too.  Had that existential blogger moment where I questioned why I even bother to blog or read blogs, and in the grand scheme of things, what does it all mean???  I moped, offline, for a few more days.

Then, missing the interaction and inspiration (and my damn hockey news!), and blindly hoping that they'd already found a solution to Reeder, I returned to the desktop. Alas, no. But I spend another day manually importing my precious feeds, (and adding several more that I don't really have time for...)  into Feedly.  While it's not Reeder, it is more adaptable to what I'm looking for and how I use RSS.  I could breathe. It'll do.  Faced with an overwhelming total of posts in the 4-digits, I spend another afternoon going through each feed to clear out posts prior to when I'd checked out of the interwebs last week.  That brought it back to a manageable level. That's where I left it last.  Manageable.  Though I still worried about how to read on the go, which is how I do most of my non-comment/lurker reading.

Imagine my delight when the phone app for Reeder has been updated to work with Feedly. And all is right  moderately okay again in my blogging universe, though I still have some catching up to do. Phew.  Sometimes, technology is not worth the paper it's printed on....

******* (These are the asterisks I meant...)

During my impromptu blogging hiatus, I threw myself into sewing.

A July bee block for SimplySolids is done. It was very fun to do, though she'd warned us to be conservative with the fabric.  I didn't want to end up short so I made a little template for each row, save the last one, and used it to cut a triangle from each fabric ahead of time, and religiously trimmed each seam so that it would be easier to line up the pieces.  One pink triangle got a little cheeky but I didn't notice it until I'd already packed up the block for sending. I can see it in the photo but I'm hoping it's not a disappointment to my bee mate...

On my own bee quilt, I have almost all of the blocks (just two to come in) and I've started working on the sashing and border strips.  The sashing strips are 4.5x16.5" and are made from the scraps left over from the blocks. It's much farther along than this photo but I still have the top and bottom "border" strips to do. I've even made the binding!  I'm really enjoying this whole process.

I also finished up the charity quilt made by our guild but I'll save that for another post!

There were rumours this week of looking for a summer job but visiting family and a nasty chest cold that's left me worse than sotto voce (in fact, zero voce!) has quelled that idea.  I'm spending a lot of time watching movies, knitting socks, and glaring at people who ask me questions they know I am unable to vocalize an answer for and then make fun of my hoarseness. (That's right, Dad - I'm writing at you! Now, quit giggling.  It was funny when Seester was the voiceless one, sure, but you've gone too far... "What? What was that? Heeheehee."  Too far, sir.  :-P )

Details.

Sometimes, things go swimmingly.  Your points all match, your sewing machine makes you feel like a rock star, all your tools are enhancements to your work, and your skills grow by leaps and bounds.

Other times, not so much.

In the interest of always keeping things real, I'm sharing some of my recent Not-So-Great Moments in Quilting.

These blocks, for instance.

I signed up for the Lucky Stars BOM at Don't Call Me Betsy and had not yet sewn a stitch. I love the precision and results of foundation paper-piecing. I've done a lot of it and usually get pretty good outcomes... I finally cut out all my fabrics, making sure I had a good mix (it's mostly hoarded Lizzie House, some Rounnieres, and a little bit of Architextures) of values and colour.  I wanted to do the smaller size of blocks because I didn't have a specific project for them and therefore, didn't want to commit scads of fabric to it.  I trim religiously and didn't rush the piecing but seam bulk affected my results.  After a couple of goes with the seam ripper (and its paper-tearing consequences), I called them "close enough" and washed my hands.  These are not perfect but Seester is always telling me to quit picking on my own stuff.  I'm letting these ones go.  I'll try harder with the rest. (It's not the patterns - they're great - this is totally a problem existing between sewing machine and chair...)

Then I was prepping some quilt-as-you-go stuff for  a guild meeting at the end of June.  It was going well, I thought, until I went to put my free-motion/darning foot on the machine.  And that little pin that keeps the foot steady, makes it go up/down, and rests on the needle?  Gone.  Nowhere to be found. And of course, I lent out my spare foot to a guild-mate who'd never tried free-motion. Blast.

I went rummaging.  Paper-clip?  Nope.  Too bendy.

I found a picture-hanging nail!  Much sturdier, with a little stopper, too.  Nope.  Too short to reach the needle bar.

Longer finishing nail.  Perfect length - reaches the needle bar. Sturdy.  Sew, sew, sew, happy as a clam, Ka-chunk.  Why? The nail keeps sliding back through the hole and off the needle bar.

Final solution?

I found a refill eraser for a mechanical pencil. Nail through eraser, through hole, through picture hanger. Worked like a hot damn.  So there's your emergency darning foot fix.  Does in a pinch.

I've since picked up a new spare.  I don't trust that eraser.  Something about its very nature tells me it'll try to undo what I've done... ;-)

Ciao for now!


PS:  I am having a really difficult time with getting my photos to look right ever since Flickr did their update...  Anyone else get it figured out yet?  They just don't seem to show up the right way on the blog, as if the resolution is off.  I tried it using bigger pics, too, but I'm stymied!

Busy. Compulsive.

Ha! We all knew that "three posts a week" thing wasn't going to hold up for long. :-)

In all fairness, I had other things taking up my time.  Like teaching, and spring, and play rehearsals, and vehicular accidents (no injuries!), and general life stuff.  Priorities.  We all have them, so no apologies, no obligations.  However, other than keeping up with the hockey news, I haven't been reading anyone this past week.  So you know what I'm doing tomorrow. :-)

I have been sewing, amazingly enough.  A paper-piecing workshop at last month's Modern Guild meeting led to a scrap-busting explosion of hexagons in my living room. This is what 400 of them looks like.

All from scraps. Randomly pieced.

Yeah.  Since I ran out of my purchased hex papers about a week into this, I ended up making a crap-ton (yes, a crap-ton!) of my own.  You can read more about how on the guild blog here.

I still have some edges to fill in and a border to do but I'm pleased so far.  It's going to be a table topper.  You'd think after all of this hand-sewing, I would have mad skills when it comes to the whipstitch. I should have a wicked whipstitch. But nay, good folks, nay.  It still looks a little like I did it with a chicken bone for a needle and with my eyes closed.  Oh well, maybe some day...

I was working on this piece at my other guild meeting (there are two different guilds in town - I belong to both) and a fellow member, whom I'd never met, snarked me, "Well, that's just compulsive!"  Fair enough - there is a nugget of truth in that, my mother would certainly agree with her, but handwork helps me focus and keeps my hands busy during stretches of time where my attention would otherwise wander, like the occasional guild meeting, and I'm therefore less likely to run around like a four-year-old dragged to a tupperware party for lack of a babysitter. To my credit, I did not snark back, because I don't know her and wouldn't want to inadvertently offend her while trying to crack a joke to prove I have a sense of humour. (However, blogging about it might have devalued that credit somewhat... Oops!) I couldn't help but feel though, while not offended, that there was a different way to offer that opinion that didn't make it a personal attack.  "I personally don't have the patience for something like that" or "I can't be bothered to do hand-sewing or something that small" or even "that kind of thing is not for me" would all have come across as more supportive or polite than the undertone of "there's something wrong with you!" implied with the word compulsive. 

Of COURSE it's compulsive.  Look at this.

I had a pretty good laugh about it.  I'm fairly sure she didn't mean any harm. I'm not generally bothered by criticism. In fact, I think constructive criticism is key to growth and development, and our tendency to over-nice each other, particularly in the quilting community, detracts from our ability to deliver or accept such criticism without taking something personally.  What made me laugh was that the comment wasn't even about the work (too  many colours, poor whipstitching, inaccurately cut or sewn hexagons, or not to someone's personal taste), but that the statement was a value judgment on ME, and not the work. Now, I get called crazy all the time, (there probably IS something wrong with me - lol) but usually by people whose first names I know, and who I have an established rapport with.  I have called fellow bloggers crazy in a loving way, particularly when they are exceedingly prolific or unjustly hard on their own work. I guess I've become more aware as a teacher that what we put out there can have a impact on people.  Imagine if I'd told another artist, a potter, that pottery was a useless art, or a child whose room is covered in pink, purple and sparkles that only losers like unicorns (or apply it to weightier subjects that I won't get into here). It might roll off them like nothing, or it could stop them from enjoying something that had previously.  For the record, I think pottery is amazing and the skill level some people have achieved is staggering. I also have no problem with unicorns, though I don't embrace them as strongly as would your average person on the street.  And I LOVE constructive criticism. It helps me get better at the things I do.  I could not survive as a teacher without giving and getting constructive feedback. But this has been a reminder for me not be conscious of applying value judgments in that criticism. 

I guess you can say I DID learn something from the comment after all. 

I've got other things I've been working on but that's what's tickling my mind today.  Hope you didn't mind the musing.  Maybe it gave you something to chew on.  

Have a wonderful Wednesday!