It's About to Heat Up

This has not been as productive a week as I had hoped. I was working on the Haralson bag on Tuesday afternoon only to discover that my printer—a Brother laser printer—apparently does not understand the command to print at 100%. The Haralson bag units that were cut from the printed pattern pieces were smaller than they should have been. I didn’t bother to check when printing because I assumed that printing at 100% meant the pattern would have printed at 100%. Nope. In order to get the pattern to print at the correct size, I have to tell the printer to print the pages at 106%. 🙄

I am sure it’s a problem with the printer and not the pattern itself. Noodlehead patterns are some of the best out there and other people have made the Haralson bag with no issues. I rarely print patterns on my printer—I’ll either have the patterns printed in town or I’ll cut the units according to measurements given in the pattern—but this bag has some non-rectangular units.

Arrrgghhh. I still want to make this bag, but I am trying to muster up the motivation to go through the whole process of prepping the pattern and cutting the pieces again. I might have to put this project in time out for a few weeks.

Yesterday was even worse. I got a recall notice for the Jeep a few weeks ago (replacement fuel line fitting), so I called and made an appointment at the dealer for 9 am yesterday morning. I was told this was a 90-minute repair. I asked to have the oil changed, too, which added another 30 minutes. I get a couple of free oil changes so I thought I would use one. The dealer is 45 minutes away, in Whitefish. I took my knitting and my iPad and planned to sit and wait while they did the work.

Around 11 am, the service guy who checked in my Jeep came out to the waiting area. I was expecting him to tell me the car was done. Instead, he told me that it was taking a bit longer than expected and did I want to leave and come back? I said that I was 45 minutes from home and my husband was pouring concrete over an hour away. The service guy offered a ride to anywhere in Whitefish or—possibly—Kalispell. I said I would see what I could arrange.

[Kalispell peeps, that was the reason for the cryptic Facebook message.]

In the end, I decided it was too complicated to try to get to Kalispell and then have to get back to Whitefish, so I stayed and waited. I waited for a total of 5-1/2 hours. The service guy who was helping me finally confessed that when it came in, my Jeep was assigned to a tech who was already working on another car with a major problem, so my Jeep sat. When the service guy realized I was still waiting, he went to find out what was going on. He got a manager to reassign my car to another tech to do the work.

I finally got out of there at 2:30. Traffic was nuts, and I still had to stop at the grocery store—also nuts—to get a case of apples for the husband. It was 4 pm by the time I got home. What a complete waste of a day. Both the dealer and Jeep are going to get some pointed feedback from me about that. And the husband said that next time, he’ll just change the oil himself.

Today is a new day. I’m going to write up and submit my teaching proposals for Sew Expo 2025 this morning and then go to sewing.

It rained a bit overnight, but I think that’s the last of it for a while. We’re going to be under a ridge of high pressure with temps in the high 80s and low 90s for the next week. That should make the plants very happy. I’ll have to get my garden chores done early in the morning.

The baby robins are getting bigger and noisier. There are three—I counted open beaks during feeding time—but usually I only see two:

The poor parents spend most of their time getting worms and bugs to feed these hungry babies.