Maybe I Need to Get Out More

For several reasons I have gotten to be sort of a recluse here in the devil's playground. My house holds many bad memories for me & I don't really like being here but over the past almost 3-1/2 years I have noticed that it takes a huge amount of effort for me to go anywhere.  Our cupboards will be almost bare before I will grudgingly go with John to the grocery store to pick up a few things.  If it weren't for medical & dental appointments ... which I literally force myself to go to ... I would probably not go anywhere.  Even going out in the yard or onto the porch is becoming a rare occurrence.  Sometimes John & I will go somewhere & on the way to wherever it is I will realize that it's been a week or more since the last time I was out.

Psychiatrists would probably say that this is not a good thing but I am not staying in because I'm depressed or because I'm afraid of what's out there in the world.  I am actually quite comfortable.  I enjoy my own company.  I have plenty of interests & things to keep me busy.  There are times when John & I go places but there are other times when we plan to go somewhere & then as the time gets closer we decide to just stay home.

Weirdness abounds in the devil's playground  : )

What has prompted this introspection?  I was sitting here this morning, drinking my cup of tea & reading blog posts, when I glanced out the window & saw this.

The sight almost took my breath away!  The sky was so dark & ominous looking to the south & west but the sun beams were streaming in from the east & just making everything glow!  This one particular maple tree was amazing!  The photos don't do justice to the real thing but they will give you an idea of the sight that was before me.

As soon as I noticed all this beauty I grabbed the camera & went out on the porch.  I was met with the most lovely weather & gentle breeze.  If a moment in time ... without a few feet of snow ... could be perfection, this would be it.  That is how long it lasted, too ... just a moment.  Surely God nudged me to glance out the window when I did in order to share this gift with me.  What a blessing!

Yesterday I decided to go upstairs to see if I could get my treadle working.  The last time I used it ... probably a year ago ... the tension was way off & no matter what I did I could not get it fixed.  There aren't any sewing machine repair guys here in the devil's playground.  John has been suggesting that we take it to Lexington or Louisville to have it serviced but transporting it in the SUV would be rather tricky assuming it would even fit in there.  I purchased a cheap sewing machine from Walmart last year just to use for zig-zagging around the edges of my cross stitch fabric & I have grudgingly been using that to sew things.  I hate it with a passion.  Anyway, I decided yesterday to open up the treadle & give the tension another go.  I feared that the tension would be the least of my worries, however.  The treadle sits in front of a window where the sun streams through all the livelong day & I feared what this may have done to the oiled parts.  I opened it up, threaded it, & took a scrap piece of fabric to see how bad things were going to be.  To my amazement it purred like a kitten & the tension was, as my British friends would say, spot on!   Another blessing!!!

I was still a bit leery.  I mean honestly, it couldn't be this easy!  I proceeded to sew up one of my stitching finishes.  I chose something I wasn't in love with just in case it got ruined in the process.  The sewing went very well!

I finished the stitching into a little pinkeep ... or maybe an ornament.  It could be either/or or even neither/nor.  Basically it's a little pillow stuffed with sawdust.  I decided to "do a Marly" & glue the seam closed using Liquid Stitch.  I knew I had bought a tube of this product not long ago & I also knew it would probably be in the pie safe with a few other supplies/accessories for my crafting pursuits.  I looked in the pie safe.  It wasn't there.  I then looked around the diningroom where some of my crafting supplies reside.  Nothing.  I looked inside the dry sink & inside the china cupboard.  I knew I wouldn't have put it there & I indeed came up empty.  I looked again in the pie safe. Nothing.  I then went upstairs.  I looked around the craft room.  Nothing.  I looked inside craft boxes.  Nothing.  I then went into the guest bedroom where ... you guessed it ... more crafting supplies abound.  Nothing again.  I opened the hallway closet that is used to store some other crafting supplies. More nothing.  I went back into the craft room & looked inside the treadle drawers & inside the sewing box.  Still nothing.  This was driving me crazy!  I KNEW I bought that Liquid Stitch when John & I visited Walmart a couple weeks ago.  Where did it go?  Now I was going to have to drag myself to Walmart to buy it again!

I went back to the hallway closet & grabbed a bottle of Aleene's Tacky Glue.  Marly did not say this was a good substitute but what other choice did I have but to jump in the car & drive to WM which was not going to happen.  Well, let me tell you what Marly did not ... Aleene's Tacky Glue is not a good substitute for Liquid Stitch.  Not a good substitute at all.  It was, in fact, totally useless.  I ended up having to stitch the opening of the pinkeep/ornament/little pillow together anyway.  Because I have avoided finishing anything for such a long time, my big Herman Munster hands felt like they were all thumbs.  The finishing looked a bit TOO primitive.  I decided to add some chenille trim to the edges.  This was another Herman Munster experience but it turned out pretty good in the end. 

On Tuesday I started an old Mary Garry design which stipulated the use of some rather funky DMC colors.  I looked up finished stitchings online & all the photos I saw looked as though the person doing them had substituted some if not all of the colors. Naturally the winner of Miss OCD for almost 59 years running now (me) could not do that. I had to at least try the colors that Mary painstakingly decided were best.  Things looked pretty good until I got to where I needed to use the white & flesh colored flosses.  They were totally lost on the background fabric I chose.

You can't see the white/flesh colored threads in this photo because I had already removed them.  I had decided to take before & after photos & this is the before one.  I decided to overdye the whole shebang by dipping it in a coffee mixture & baking it in the oven a few times.  The after results are somewhat iffy.  I'm not even going to show you a photo of what this piece looks like now. Hopefully the end result will be a good one & I won't have totally ruined things.  

Notice the black buttons & shoes?  I stitched these on yesterday before I took the photo. I noticed that I did not have black floss included in the group of flosses I pulled for this design.  An oversight on my part.  I opened up the pie safe to get the black floss & do you want to take a guess at the first thing that caught my eye?

ARGH!!!