Some updates

I spent all day yesterday scouring the web for articles on adjusting my tension and photos of what bad tension looked like trying to figure out exactly what was wrong. I threw in a scrap of the poinsettia print that I am using to back the monkey wrench quilt and finally, amazingly, got my tension worked out to perfectly even stitches on both sides of my fabric. I was thrilled.

Then I put in the fabric for the coffee cup cozies and when I took them over to the ironing board saw that my tension had somehow unadjusted itself to the same raggedy mess it was before the four web pages and hour's worth of work. Sigh.

At that point I searched for what to do when your tension won't stay adjusted, and pretty much concluded that the inside of my machine is a dirty, lint-covered mess, so the tension knobs can't even work properly because they keep slipping. I hope this is the problem as a new sewing machine is not in my budget this time of year.

My mother-in-law has agreed to loan me her baby for awhile until I can get mine in to be professionally cleaned. A really spiffy Brother machine that you don't even have to use a foot pedal for and that threads itself...and all sorts of fancy stuff that I don't know how to work. Hopefully the learning curve will be small because I still plan to try and complete my challenge list by Monday even though I am cooking a large Thanksgiving meal tomorrow and hitting the dreaded mall for Black Friday.

And one last note...remember how I wondered at the end of my gift card holder post if the couple would even get the joke? I got my official thank you in the mail earlier this week. "Thank you for the bear and the gift card." The bear. Yep...they had no chance of getting the joke if they didn't even think it looked like a dog. I am definitely the crazy lady who gives adults stuffed animals as wedding gifts. Spread the word.