It Was One of Those Days

Friday night I didn't get much sleep and on Saturday morning I headed over to my cousin's workplace to help her move some equipment to its new home. It took about half a day, but I had a good time chatting with everyone who came to help.

When I got home, I was exhausted but after a nap I attempted to work on another piece of garb, a surcoat for Jack's knight trial. Theoretically, this should have been a one day job.

But thread kept tangling on the satin stitch. No fear though, I kept chugging away.

While I was working on that, I figured that I would let my embroidery machine work on some minature blackwork blocks that I've had it in my mind to use in a wall hanging. I found a beautiful fat quarter and let her stitch away.

The first one came out perfect.

The second one tangled when the thread spool came off the holder. To get it out of the machine, I had to cut a hole in the fabric. >:( Meanwhile, the satin stitching caught the back of the surcoat and had to be ripped out and restarted.

Now I was using a fat quarter, which means I had EXACTLY enough to do EXACTLY nine of these.

I dug into my stash and found another fat quarter that I liked, cut it into 9 equal pieces and stitched another one, which I promptly cut a slice out of while removing the cut-away-stabilizer. >:( >:(

By now I'm starting to think that I'm just going to have to cave and buy half a yard of a batik in order to have all the backgrounds match on these blocks, because I'm down two fat quarters and I have no blocks to show. And the tangles on the satin stitching continue... and then the bobbin runs out.

While my embroidery machine was stitching the fourth block of the night, the thread snapped, the sensor did not detect the breakage, and the thread wrapped around the inside of the machine. I seriously don't even know how this happens. Seriously.

That leaves me with no embroidery machine, as I couldn't get the tangled threads free. >:( >:( >:( >:( Also, no quilt blocks and no extra fabric to try again.

If I can't get it untangled tomorrow, it will have to go to the shop at Haberman's for repairs. Ugh. Triple Ugh.

Back to the surcoat, hoping I can at least salvage some work for the evening. I attempted to wind a bobbin, and the bobbin thread wrapped around the bobbin holder instead of the bobbin and had to be cut away.

This is pretty much where I completely gave up and cleaned a bunch of stuff around the house (I do that when I'm angry.) After I calmed down I planted myself in front of the Tiger's Game for some slow stitching.

At last update

As of tonight

As you can see, I was finally successful at something. I am rapidly approaching 25% done on this project. Most of the background is half stitches and it stitches up quickly.

I also cooked dinner but warned Jack that if he got food poisoning that it wasn't my fault. I'm just cursed today. He was brave enough to eat dinner anyway, so I guess we will see how he feels tomorrow.

I'm off to bed now, hoping that I wake up tomorrow in a better mood and can untangle my embroidery machine.

Linking up to Slow Stitching Sunday@Kathy's Quilts