Sunday, February 22, 2004

Sewing, Quilting, and Embroidery Shopping in One Big Place

I went to the PCM Expo in San Mateo today. I always get a sense of overload when I walk into one of those shows. I started by filling out my door prize card, but alas, no free goodies for me. I did a run through of all the vendors and took note of what I might want to come back to and then had an overpriced (and not very good) hamburger and soda. They had some free seminars throughout the afternoon so I sat in on one about doing cutwork and hardanger on an embroidery machine. It was very good and I learned of yet another type of project I want to do. After the seminar I roamed the vendors again and did some shopping. One booth had a lot of fabrics that were from Japan and some that looked Japanese. I bought some beautiful textural cotton with Japanese print to make a handbag out of. I also bought some fat quarters and a couple patterns to make small wall hangings. I like quilting, but I just haven't been able to devote time to making a large quilt. I also bought some yarn to make some fashion scarves from the one booth selling yarn. There a huge yarn show in Oakland this weekend (Stitches) and I was thinking about going. But since I've just added at five more projects to my list, I really didn't need to buy yarn for more projects! Besides, I went to Stitches once and that really was overload. I'm fortunate to have three good yarn stores within reasonable driving distance, so it's not like the show is my only opportunity to buy yarn and supplies. And of course there's the internet. But although I have no problem buying fabric without feeling it first, I don't think I could by yarn unless I knew exactly what I was buying. Yarn definitely has to be felt first. I didn't buy anything else at the show. I was tempted by the embroidery designs, but the show prices didn't match what I can get on the internet and since there weren't any that I just had to have, I passed. I also had to ask myself what I would do with the designs. I really liked a set of salt water fish, but what would I do with them? One might be ok on a sweatshirt of T-shirt, but after that, what do I do? A wall hanging quilt? No, it'd look too much like something hanging in a sewing machine store. Besides, I have other real quilts I'd rather make and display. The other reason not to buy the designs is that I have software to make my own designs. I'm just too lazy to do it - or rather I'd like to think I'm just too busy doing other stuff to sit down and spend time on it.

I decided not to go to Stitches tomorrow - and there will be no sewing or knitting projects tomorrow either. The project of the day will be to work on the hallway walls, skim coating and priming, and maybe also sanding the floor. The project yesterday was installing a dishwasher. We bought a Miele and put it in last night. The old one did not want to come out. After much yanking and pulling, it finally relented and we found out why it was stuck. A bit of now misshapen metal on the top had a nice, screw-size hole in it. When we screwed down the plywood for the countertop, the dishwasher must have been in place, and although we didn't intentionally put any screws where the dishwasher was, one must have gone a bit sideways. The new dishwasher is very nice but the configuration of the racks is quite a bit different than the old one. It will take me a while to get used to it.

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