Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Still No Water

Life without running water is now in its second week. Amazing about the stories I have heard from friends. Some are horrified and there are some that actually grew up with no indoor plumbing. Everyone has a water story though. I am so hoping that someday this will be my water story. I think the worst is not being able to clean things like I would like. Dishes is really the worst. I actually can not cook as I would like to because so many things require the use of water in the cooking and of course the clean up afterwards which sometimes requires a bit of water to clean the pots and pans. No I have to keep it all simple.

Bathing is actually not the worst. At its worst a sponge bath requires very little water and even a shower can be taken with between 2-3 gallons of water if you turn off the water after you get yourself wet, shampoo your hair. Then rinse and turn off to condition your hair and then one last rinse. In and out of that shower fast as you can. Humm I am one that loves to linger under the warm water so I am saving lots of time with the ultra short showers.

The rest of life is still pretty normal. I am darned busy trying to get the t-shirts tamed into the quilt I am making. I got them all laid out finally. Since the designs come in a huge variety of sizes they are kinda like a puzzle that needs to be set in a certain space. They are currently residing on the family room floor and yesterday I began the process of removing a few at a time to apply sashing. I now have the first group together and today will try to tackle as much as I can. My goal is to have the top completed in the next day or two. The quilting is gonna be a piece of cake as it is an allover loose meander. The biggest thing with that is the large surface that I need to fill.

Friday, January 25, 2008

No Water - Day Five

It is getting frustrating to have to be thinking about water so much. I do not want to think about where I am going to get the water to wash the few pots and pans that are dirty to fix meals.

This morning I actually scolded my daughter for dumping the dogs water out of his bowl down the sink. She could not find another bowl for his food so dumped his water. Usually this would be just the normal routine.

I stayed up late last night and finished fusing all the interfacing to the rest of the t-shirts. I counted again and there are 87 t-shirts to cram into a quilt that has to be 120x115 or smaller. That is gonna take some good planning and that will be what I will try to figure out today.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

No Water - Day Four

Ok it is finally getting really old now can someone please turn the water back on? Nope I guess that is not gonna happen. We now have a 55 gallon water barrel in the garage with a pump to hook into the plumbing (not my idea). This morning with the barrel only about 1/3 full hubby and two kids got quick showers and that is the rest of the water!

Last night when I was trying to cancel my appearance at the group quilt project because I needed to figure out what to do my friend insisted I take a shower at her house. Today that is just what I did. Boy does a hot shower feel good when you cannot take one whenever you want. I also filled up two 7 gallon containers at her house while there and that is all the water we got today. I do have about 8 of the gallon drinking jugs left so we have plenty to drink but not much water for anything else.

On a lighter side I am making progress with the 80 something t-shirts and now have well over half pressed to interfacing. I am still trying to figure out how to even begin with the math to lay them all into a quilt........................no of course they are not all the same size, with over 80 the quilt would make a nice cover for a football field if they were all the same size.

I do hope to have the t-shirt quilt finished by the end of next week Then the next one will be another custom.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

No Water - Day Three

In our modern world we all take so much for granted. Consider for instance water in your house. You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom. First you relieve yourself and flush the toilet. Next you take a warm, or hot shower, soap down in the wonderful water, wash your hair and maybe shave or whatever you do in that shower. Then you brush your teeth and likely rinse out the sink a bit. Now you head for the kitchen and make your morning beverage using water from the sink. When you are done you rinse things out or pop em in the dishwasher. During the day you use your water any time you want, wash your hands, get a drink, pop a load of clothes in the washer and so forth.

Well what if you woke up and there was no water. That is what happened to us on Sunday! First there was very low pressure coming from the pipes and Dear Husband took a shower, we did get water to make coffee but the trickle stopped coming entirely. Next we called the water company and they came out and checked their meter. Yep there is pressure there but none at our house which is up the side of a hill. We live at high elevation and it is very cold. The bottom line is that the pipes underground are frozen. We are not alone as there are others in our area in the same boat. Basically we were told until the ground thaws there will be no water coming thru those pipes.

Now instead of waking up and going thru the usual routine it is all about my water. I no longer flush the toilet every time I go. Nope the tissue goes in a plastic lined basket and I flush only if I have to with a bucket of water and then only as little as it takes. The toilet tank has about 3 gallons but with a bucket can I use less than one gallon. I only want to flush when absolutely necessary because the water has to be obtained from the neighbor half a mile away and I only have small containers (for now). To brush teeth I only wet the toothbrush and use bottled water to rinse my mouth and pour only enough on the toothbrush to get it clean. Coffee is made form bottled water from the store. I got 10 one gallon jugs of water on Sunday so that should tide us over for a bit. Well the dishwasher was not run on Saturday night so it is full of dirty dishes. Today I am gonna try to wash them by hand using as little water as necessary. For now we will be using paper plates as much as possible until we get a larger container filled. Hubby got a 55 gallon water drum yesterday but that needs to be filled and a pump attached so we can get the water out of it. Just taking that to be filled is gonna be fun as 55 gallons of water weighs well over 3oo pounds and that drum needs to be carried in the house one we get it filled at the neighbors.

Now as for laundry. It will be the Laundromat for now. Of course there were lots of dirty clothes when the water stopped and we are a family of four. I have instructed each family member to get together a weeks worth of clothes and a few extras and I will go wash them at the Laundromat. At least I can dry them at home in our dryer. I have always taken for granted just tossing my clothes in the washer when I wanted to. I just hate laundromats as I had to go to them as a child for years. They take up so much time and of course you always arrive just after someone that takes most of the washers and that means waiting. Well I will see how that goes. Guess I will be bringing my applique with me so work on while the clothes spin.

Well the bright side is that it is the water not the power. It is winter here and cold outside. We heat with a wood burning furnace that has an electric fan to blow hot air into the house. It looks like a fireplace. We cut the wood from our property and there is plenty of it. Pretty much that is all self contained so we have heat. We have lights and all the appliances work including my longarm machine..................than goodness.

Yep not having water is darn inconvenient and later I am gonna have to go get more water from the neighbor. I will heat some on the stove and take a sponge bath and wash my hair. I have not washed my hair since Saturday and it is getting pretty darn oily. At least I know how to take a sponge bath. I was hunting for our camping shower this morning with no luck. I need to find that valuable little item as it holds 2.5 gallons of water just enough to wash my hair and soap and rinse down. It sure beats a sponge bath.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Back To My Routine!




The custom heirloom is finally finished, off the machine, photographed and back to its home. I still have not tallied up the hours I worked on this but it is for a good friend and I am glad I did it as I really got to try new things, stretched myself as far as I could and I am really happy with the final results. Now back to other things.................whew!
I have been busy the past week. I have a custom quilt on the frame now that will be my first finished quilt of the new year. The one in the photos was mostly done in 2007 so I am not counting it in this years tally. Guess that means I am now behind on the number of quilts I wanted to quilt but not so far that I can not catch up fairly easily. I am almost done and hopefully the next few will be quick ones as they are allover designs not custom...............see what I mean about catching up.
I spent the entire morning cutting up t-shirts for a customer quilt. I was given 83 of the t-shirts and now have a huge pile of t-shirts in pieces and parts and a nice neat stack of 83 cut pieces of neat designs to incorporate into the quilt. This one will be a real adventure for sure but I am up to the task. The next step in this process is to try to figure out the placement...............no they are not all the same size so this will be a real challenge but I know I can get it done. Then once that is done I am sure the rest will be a piece of cake................or so I hope.
With this new year and reflecting on what I really want to accomplish I am so hoping to be more creative and begin to get some of my stuff finished and into shows. I seem to have a problem with stalling on each project and have a million finished tops. Well not a million but in the near future (say a month is near enough) I want to get them photographed and chronicled so I can watch my progress. I think one finished every two months works for me. That is a doable goal.
I have been brainstorming on some new ideas and think where I need to begin is with a drawing journal of my ideas and then go from there. It seems like at this point in my quilting career what I need is a quilting journal that has all the drawings, colors, and fabric samples in one place so I can work on the ideas till they are just ripe for beginning my quilts. The biggest factor here is time and I might just have to schedule regular time for this series exclusive to other things.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

2008!

The new year is finally here and I am ready to go! I do have a list of goals for the comming year. I do not call them resolutions as those are too hard to stick to so I just call them goals.

Mostly my goals are centered around orginization. My personal sewing studio had gotten to be a huge mess. One of the biggest problems was lack of space. Over the holiday I took out a huge oak computer table that was hogging tons of space. It had no storage space either and my computer had broken over a year ago and I have been using my husbands computer so goodbye table. It has a new home in my daughers room and she is delighted. I put up some more wire shelves and am still in the process of cleaning.............just need to keep at that a little at a time and get that space back into shape.

Another goal is to work on UFOs. I am going to pull them all out, photograph them and try to get at least 6 of them finished this year. My first project to finish will be my current project of the log cabin quilt and I hope to have it finished by the end of feburary.

I want to try to do a greater number of customer quilts this year and am gonna up the hours I work on them as well. I am going to try to work from 20-30 hours on customer quilts each week.............mabye more if I get busier.

To start off the year I have been working on the forever custom heirloom quilt and finally got the borders finished today. Now I need to go back and do a little more detail in some of the blocks. I also need to remover some stitch in the ditch I had done as the first step in quilting this. I had some tension problems with the Bottom Line thread and just want to fix that. Once that is done I can call this one finished. I am going to try to get it done tomorrow if I can.................just one final push and it will be off my frame for the last time!

I have an idea for an art quilt that I NEED to start on. I think I am gowning to work in a series on this idea. I will likely begin this first quilt in the series soon.

My last goal is to begin painting again. I have some new paints, and easel and some canvas so I just need to find the right subject and time and get started. The thing about painting is it is so quick compared to quilting. I am hoping to be able to work out some landscape ideas in paint and maybe do some quilts on the same themes.