Some Christmas Spirit

I hung all my porch lights on Friday afternoon, screwed in the light bulbs, plugged in the extension cord, and—

Nothing. I checked all the connections. I changed out the extension cord. I tried a different outlet. I went along each string and made sure the bulbs were in tight. Still nothing. The husband came home and did his own troubleshooting and he couldn’t get them to work, either.

I did not want to box up seven boxes of lights and take them back to Home Depot. Yesterday morning, I looked at the product page on the Home Depot website. There were 500+ reviews and a 4.5 out of 5 star rating. What did these people know that I didn’t?

It turns out that almost every single reviewer had the same issue. A few took their strings back to the store, but most people said that the key to getting the lights on was to screw the bulb in much tighter than expected. I took down each string of lights, one by one, and brought it into the house. After the string warmed up, I plugged it in, unscrewed each bulb, screwed it back in until it lit up, took the string back outside, hung it up, and connected it to the previous string. Wash, rinse, repeat.

They do look nice, though, especially with the fresh snow.

Those lights have been emblematic of my last couple of days, which have been less than productive. I made a to-do list and vowed that I was going to work on one thing—and only one thing—until I could cross it off as done. It was an uphill slog. The sewing machines were being cantankerous. (The industrial Necchi really doesn’t like that Klum House canvas.) Simple tasks like putting in zippers confounded me. I was finally able to break through and finished the last couple of Christmas gifts, including this stocking:

This was a custom order from one of my cousins. I had never made a stocking before. I worked largely from this tutorial, with some modifications. The designer sewed the lining and outside fabric together, which left raw seams on the inside. I sewed the outside—interfaced with some fusible fleece—separately from the lining, then matched them with wrong sides together, thus hiding the seams, before sewing on the flannel cuff. It all went together smoothly and quickly.

I threw up the Buttercup Made online store a little over a year ago with few expectations. And then 2020 happened. I let the store languish, but this fall, I got several orders for inventory and a few custom requests. I know I don’t want to go into full-time sewing production, but I am going to list the rest of the pillowcases and aprons already made up, as well as this stocking. I’ll consider custom orders, if nothing else, although I am done making Christmas items for this year.

[I received an e-mail this morning which was clearly a scam, as it was someone looking for large quantities—dozens—of several of the pillowcases and did I take credit cards? I sometimes get those from the Big Sky Knitting Designs website: “Could I place an order for 500 knitted hats and do you take credit cards?” No.]

Obviously, there has been no quilting on the Q20. I did get the king-sized quilt top basted together on the church fellowship floor Friday morning while I waited for the piano tech to work on the piano there. I have no idea when I’ll quilt that top, but at least it’s ready to go. The same tech is coming to work on my baby grand tomorrow morning. I usually have it tuned in October, but we were occupied with a wedding this year.

I located the stack of prototype Noon and Night blocks and have those ready to make up into quilt sandwiches so I can experiment with threads and quilting.

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The husband has pictures from the bridge concrete pour on his phone. I’ll get them transferred to my computer today so we can all see what he’s been up to. We should have a date for the barn slab pour soon, as well. Our fire department had a training session yesterday morning for the newer firefighters on how to respond to chimney fires, and he helped with that. We’ve had a few calls for chimney and structure fires recently as well as several one-vehicle rollovers on icy roads—and no surprise that some of those cars had California plates. Welcome to Montana.