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By Madame Purl, on July 29th, 2010
Remember my lovely sewing machine from Monday’s post? My dear friend that I have cared for – oh for around 15 years. Not a scratch on her – just needed a tune up and good cleaning. Well it was apparently packed well.

But it showed up cracked down there.

It’s been tagged and put in the queue to be fixed – which should be about a month – so in about a month we would will know what other damage has been done to her. The good news is I took out the insurance, so if they actually still make the parts it can be fixed. If not, I’ll have to go from there.
I know it’s just a sewing machine, but it makes me sad. I should probably mention this was the very last birthday gift my father bought me before he passed away suddenly the following February. I remember the exact conversation when I told him this was the one I wanted. I shopped and shopped – testing them out and decided on this one without the computerized front (which was a newer thing at the time). I figure a mechanical machine would last a long time. Well… there you go – thank you UPS for tossing things around.
By Madame Purl, on July 28th, 2010
Remember this roving…

So 4 ounces has become approximately 550 yards of this lace weight yarn.

Not exactly what I expected. It’s more brown than I thought it would be, but still lovely. I’m thinking the next 4 ounces should be socks – a nice 3-ply. I don’t think I need anymore of this in lace weight.
By Madame Purl, on July 27th, 2010
Slowly.

I have not been a slacker though… much. Coming soon – Lace weight handspun yarn (I think 550 yards – but I need to put it through the meter), a pair of socks, and a slug.
By Madame Purl, on July 26th, 2010
Years ago…before the knitting, before the spinning, before the embroidery, before the weaving… I sewed. The only thing I did was sew. I took sewing classes from beginner to advance making a suit even shirts with matching plaids. Then I moved onto pattern making even able to make a pattern with just a string and finally I had skirts that really fit correctly.

In the heyday of this sewing phase, I was gifted by my folks this Pfaff Varimatic 6091 and since the mid-90′s it’s been traveling around with me. About 7 years ago I decided it needed a cleaning and tune-up and took it to a Pfaff dealer. Well fast forward and in the spring I found the pressure foot was sticky. I took the cover off with the light bulb and found the grease turned to glue. Hmmm… well, it’s time for another cleaning, tune-up and a basic factory reset – so it’s flying off today to the Pfaff TN service center to be worked on by their trained professionals. They said I should see it back in a month. I guess they have a little backlog going. I have a little sewing to do, so I’ll be anxiously waiting to get her back.
By Madame Purl, on July 20th, 2010
The phlox is very happy this year.

I’m not sure what I’m doing or what I’m not doing, but carry on phlox.


You’re looking gorgeous.
By Madame Purl, on July 17th, 2010
Friday some friends and I headed out to Midwest Fiber & Folk Art Festival. We had a great time at their new venue. We all came home with new goodies. The bag was a freebie and a very nice one indeed.

I know I don’t need any more fleece… but this BFL in deep mulberry purple. Then there were also yarn acquisitions. Yum!

There were also a few patterns, little treats bought, and visits with friends. All and all this a good day.
By Madame Purl, on July 16th, 2010
For our anniversary DH and I decided to go to Chicago for a few days. We stayed right downtown on MI Ave and were able to walk to the museum district. We had a mission to see Lyuba – the woolly mammoth – who is currently visiting The Field Museum. 
She was gorgeous.

We also saw Sue.

And you can’t miss the man eating lions of Tsavo.
We ended up spending the whole day at The Field and I don’t think we saw it all.
The next day we went to the Shedd Aquarium. That was very interesting as well, but since it was Saturday it was really busy. The penguins were quite funny as usual. They seem to like to ham it up when they know folks are watching.
We had a very nice time. Chicago is doing a wonderful job with their green space and saw lots and lots of butterflies and moths on the plants.

If you want to see more pictures – you can find them here.
By Madame Purl, on July 15th, 2010
Sorry for the delay… DH and I went to Chicago for the weekend and by the time I got back I fell under the weather. I’m starting to fell better again and to top off a nice morning, I arrived home and found the fleeces… here a day early. Yippee!!!

Of course the wool kitties love the new additions. Everything looks lovely this year. Julie and I had one big fleece split and blended half with Angora and half with Alpaca… then we split those. Those combos turned out lovely.
By Madame Purl, on July 7th, 2010
Poor Emma – she is just about healed, but still has a little kitty acne on her chin. She’s not the most cooperative patient, so when we noticed she got another spot on her upper lip we decided to break out the collar. Now she doesn’t wear it all the time, just until her medicine dries. She was observed cleaning off the medicine furiously – not good for two reasons – (a) she it needs to dry on to work and (b) should not be ingested. Plus it makes it doubly worse as she is a drool machine when you put the meds on. Not a good combo. No wonder it’s taking forever to heal.

Honey also has a developed the acne… what a pain. She is however a better patient and is healing much quicker.
By Madame Purl, on July 6th, 2010
Moving along… I was able to finish the leaves in the area, the beak, and the eye. I especially like the way the beak turned out.


I then switched to do the leaves and acorns in the corner. You can see I went wild again with the French knots.
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