Sorry, Candi

Well, To make a long story short, I took my embroidery machine to another machine mechanic for a second opinion, down in Parkersburg. Later, after I did some more errands then arrived at home - 3 hours after dropping it off, Mack called me and said my machine is ready! I said "Already? What do I owe you?"

His reply: "Ninety Dollars"

He also informed me that the other mechanic had obviously not even taken the machine apart to look inside. Since I got a very strong sales pitch on a new Janome 11000, I assume he (the first mechanic) just wanted to sell me a new machine. I will never set foot in his shop again. Even though he has a lot of really cool classes there.

Oh, Man

My Designer One stopped working. I took it for repairs and found out the computer in it has died. All it will do now is straight stitch or zigzag. It will cost around a thousand dollars to fix. Now, I'm trying to decide between these options:

1. Get the computer replaced for a thousand dollars.

2. Start shopping for a new embroidery machine.

3. Survive without an embroidery machine since I already have three sewing machines, a serger, and two long arms.

Comments?

Little Girl Caplet

I made this for my chiropractor's daughter, Evelyn...I just fell in love with this little caplet pattern, and it is sew easy to make, and everyone just dotes over it. Sharon asked me to go to a show with her in September, and I am going to make sesveral of these and my snugglies to take with me. Since this cost me about 2 bucks to make, I think this will be a pretty popular item, becuase I can sell it reasonably priced....it is also relatively quick to make, so I won't have to price it too high for my time. It takes about 3/4 yard of fabric, so I can buy remnants...and there are ALWAYS fleece remnants...and fleece is ALWAYS on sale for 40-50% off, so remnants are about $2.50 a yard! The teddy bear embroidery design is a free retired design from bunnycup.com.

Brown Eggs for Sale

As many of you know, Paul and I are raising Chickens, and we frequently have more eggs than we can possibly eat by our selves (we get between 10 - 20 eggs a DAY). So, we sell our eggs. Now, I made this sign to hang out on the picket fence in front of my quilting shop. When I'm in my shop and I have eggs to sell, I'll hang this sign out. We'll see how that goes.

The eggs are really really good, and we sell them for 1.50 a dozen. That's about the going price down here. But we saw a show about eggs on the history channel recently where they showed a guy in California who pretty much raises his chickens just like we do - free range and high quality feed. He sells his eggs for eight dollars a dozen! Down here, people would tell us to keep our eggs for that price!

Recycling pet food bags

I found this dog food bag in a ditch when out on a bike ride recently, and since I had just read about this cool way of recycling feed bags, I made this little shopping bag out of it. The feed bag has to be made of that woven plastic stuff. Then you just cut it apart and make a tote out of it. This one is small, because some of the bag was unsalvageable. But you can make them pretty big.

Sew, from now on, I will be buying our chicken feed, cat food, and grain for the goats in these types of bags so I can recycle them....LOL. And, if any of you are buying animal food in these type bags, please save them for me!