Cars, Quilts, and Knits

I got back to Seattle late Wednesday afternoon (the 19th) and headed to the Airbnb. The little studio space in the other half of DD#2’s duplex wasn’t available, so I stayed at a different one a few blocks away.

The backup camera on DD#2’s Jetta stopped working a couple of months ago. She had made an appointment at the dealer to have it looked at and asked me if I could take it in for her on Thursday morning so she didn’t have to miss work. I had nothing pressing on my schedule, so I didn’t mind sitting and waiting while they looked at it. Unfortunately, all they could tell me was that it was a break in the wiring somewhere between the dash display/radio (which still works) and the camera, and that to take it apart and hunt down the cause would be a day’s labor at $150 an hour.

I have lots of thoughts about vehicles right now, none of them charitable.

The husband is willing to take a stab at fixing this camera issue, but the car has to be in Montana for him to do that. More on that in a moment.

I spent the rest of Thursday visiting various stores on my list to pick up mundane necessities like socks and underwear. I went to Half-Price Books and found up a blacksmithing book for the husband. I am familiar enough with Seattle that I am quite comfortable keeping myself occupied during the day while DD#2 is working.

Friday’s schedule included a trip down to Puyallup, about 40 miles south/southeast of Seattle and not too far from Pacific Lutheran, where DD#1 went to college. I know this area, too, and there was a quilt store I wanted to visit.

The Quilt Barn in Puyallup is a lovely store, chock full of all sorts of fun things for quilters. I bought two new Handi-Quilter longarm rulers for the Q20 and a wool/cotton quilt batt.

I also stopped in at Joanns, where I hit the motherlode on the remnant rack. I had gotten an e-mail earlier in the week from the quilt store here in Kalispell. They put my serger class on the schedule for June and decided to go ahead and make it a monthly event. We had talked about doing that, but not until the fall. It really doesn’t matter either way to me as I have plenty of ideas for additional serger classes. The remnant rack at this Joanns had half a dozen pieces of juvenile knit fabrics that will be perfect for making up samples for future classes. Kids’ clothing doesn’t require much fabric. (And any grandchildren that might come along are going to have plenty of cute Grandma-made outfits.) The quilt store owner and I talked about fabric for the classes and she knows some of it will come from Joanns as she doesn’t really want to carry a line of knits.

[I related all of this to the husband later that day and mentioned that I had not planned on teaching serger classes, but here I am, because this, apparently, is how the universe has decided I should spend my summer. Whatever. I just go where I’m told.]

On the way back, I stopped at Ikea, another Half-Price Books store, another Joanns, and got some lunch. I try to time my trips so I miss the worst of Seattle traffic, although it’s never great no matter the time of day. DD#2 met me at the Airbnb and we ordered in pizza for dinner.

My original plan had been to stay in Seattle until Monday. DD#2 had some other stuff going on, though, that she needed a break from, so between those things and the car issue, we decided that she would come home to Montana for a week. She’s telecommuting until this fall and can work from anywhere. We left Seattle Sunday morning. She followed me to Spokane and then continued to Kalispell. I stayed in Spokane overnight because I needed to stop in and visit with the BMW dealer and also retrieve my sewing machine from the quilt store where I had left it for service.