Shopping, Ripping & Thanking

:Shopping: Well my friend the ex-sewing machine dealer called bright and early Saturday morning to help my diagnosis the problem with my sewing machine. The timing is off! Apparently it has been out since I had it serviced in August. I'm wondering how the couple of skirts I made are going to hold up since apparently, even on a straight stitch the hook has been cutting the needle thread - it's just more pronounced anytime I was working with the needle to the left of center. I have a couple of options for getting it fixed: ::1:: send it back to the guy who created the problem in the first place; ::b:: ship it to the Distributor (which would take about 6 weeks); or ::2:: wait for my friend to get home from Georgia and fix it. He will be here in 3 weeks. I decided to go with waiting for my friend to return and I made my hubby stop by WallyWorld yesterday to look for a back-up machine. I bought a little Brother CE-4000. It's okay and will definitely work in times when my machine is busy, needs service, and for the rare times when The Princess wants/needs a project. Prior to stopping at WallyWorld, we stopped at my favorite local yarn store ~~ Great Yarns! I love Great Yarns. It is the only Indy yarn store I know of that will pull all the die lot for your project and not make you purchase it all in one day. Pretty cool huh? Anyway, I picked up the rest of the Cascade Quatro for a sweater I swatched for this summer, I also picked up a pattern I had asked them to get for me and enough yarn to make the twin set - so much for not spending any money for while. :Ripping: On a sad note - it would appear that I'm going to have to rip the sleeves on The Man Sweater. They are just too long. I thought I would be okay - apparently my row gauge is way off! I measured the sleeve against his arm last night - the sleeve looked like it would be a little long - there is a high wool content in this yarn - so no shrinking. But I still have more than 10 rows to go on the sleeve cap shaping and it's way too big! So, Rip I will and then I'll swatch again and drop to even smaller needles - I'll have to check, but I'm pretty sure I'm already at least one size smaller than the pattern calls for - UGH!!! :Thanking: Thank you all for the kind comments on my Pink Quilt for the Kim's Block. I'm hoping that it looks okay in the final quilt - I'm sure it will. ::Serena:: can't wait to see your finished block - do you blog? ::Carolyn:: when are you going to start blogging? I can't wait to see some of your finished projects ::Sharon:: just tell Sophia that that is an empty box (they always get the empty boxes to clean as well as empty ice cream bowls and the last bite of my breakfast during the week (when it's oatmeal or cottage cheese). Love what you're doing with the fur :) ::Patricia:: Thank you. I look forward to seeing your finished block too :) ::Erin:: I'm really enjoying your blog. What is the story on your SO's blog name? I love hearing what we all come up with to avoid putting our families on the web!