There I fixed it.

Ever heard of the website There I fixed it? It's a site for posting unorthodox ingenious ways of fixing things, sort of fixing that is, some are brilliant some are downright life threatening.
I channeled a little of the ingenuity tonight. My husband starts his new job tomorrow so at 11pm he comes in wearing his new work trousers wanting me to put them up. My eyes and I were tired, the trousers are black and the light in my sewing machine not working so I came up with this.



It worked. I have to get the machine serviced, there's a couple of niggly probs, the light and the lcd screen is fading. The mechanic is sure he can repair it. I've had the machine for over 10 years and it has done a lot of work in that time.

I heard on the Grapevine that Janome was in receivership, a little research on the matter shows this is not true. A Janome dealer under the name of Janome Sewing Centre has gone into receivership, involving a total of 2 or 3 stores. Apart from carrying the Janome name and acting as a Janome dealer, it has no impact on Janome Australia. It is sad though, especially as I a link to one of the employees at one of the affected stores, we once worked for the same company at different locations. We have the same first name and worked at locations that people used to get mixed up. A few times I had customers abuse me for promising to put an item away for them, calling me a liar when I didn't know anything about it. I would just ring the other store saying "Hi Cheryl, this is Cheryl" and then ask if she had an item put away for the particular customer, the answer was always yes. I then had the pleasure of informing the customer that they had rung a different store.

My husband bought himself a new car today, a second hand Hyundai Tarjet. He did start of wanting a twin cab utility, then thought about a van or a station wagon, finally settling a cross between van and station wagon that seats 7. I can walk bent over from the drivers seat to the back seats without having to climb over anything, something I could have used in the past "don't make me come back there", I never did because it meant getting out of the car to do it. The handbrake is strange, push a foot pedal to put it on and pull a small lever in the dash to put it on.

Things are changing around here, from tomorrow I will be the only breadwinner in the family, until next Monday that is. My husband has a new job, this one is 10 minutes from home, working the same hours, which means no more being woken at 5.30 by his alarm. It has highlighted the fact that we now need another car because he drove a work van. We are looking for a twin cab ute.

My car is too small to be really useful as a family car, we can't take the bikes out in it, the esky just fits in the boot, but not much else. Even when we had the larger car we still had to take 2 vehicles on family outings that we wanted to take the bikes to, his work van only seated 3 and was getting very squeezy with 3 adults. He has seen the light, he is looking for an auto, so that I can drive it too. I can drive a manual but don't like it, frankly it scares the jeebies out of me. Last time I drove a manual car was last year and I made him drive almost an hour to pick me up because I refused to drive it in peak hour traffic. It means there may be no new lounge for us this year as we had planned.

Until we get it I have to drive him to work or if he needs it he has to drive me or I will need to catch a train. Catching a train means I'd be back to up to 4 hour commutes each day, instead of just over an hour driving to and from work.

I am excited for another reason too, my 18 year old daughter has asked me to teach her to sew, she has gone through my patterns asking which would be easiest for her to start on. We've chosen a pajama pattern. Starting on it today.

Earlier I put on a long rant, thought better of it and then took it down.

But I'm still a bit cranky, I've got a pinched nerve and I just yelled at my son because he's being annoying.

Yesterday I was asked to do a favour, put names onto a couple of towels for a wedding gift, I agreed even though I knew it would be a hassel to find everything I needed to do it, including the digitising program which had been removed from the computers during cleanups. After agreeing I was told it had to be done same day. I had plans to see my son's soccer game, lately I haven't been getting many weekends off, I was not going to miss that. Finding everything took time and it meant I missed out on doing the things I like to do on Saturday night, I'm not a party animal but there are tv shows I like. Was up til the wee hours working on the towels, they were finally done by about 1 am and then there were other things I needed to do, like load the dishwasher and other miscellaneous things. I got to bed after 3 and took over an hour to get to sleep, I had to be up before 9.30 because that is when the person I was doing the towels for told me she would be over.
I got up at 9 just in case she was early but then she didn't turn up til after 12, telling me she decided she didn't need to get it so early. I just stood there and took it, I've got to learn to stand up for myself and not feel guilty about saying no. I was trying to some housework when I got a pinched nerve in my lower back was going to have a hot bath but instead went to bed. I did manage to get a short nap in before being woken by my son who wanted to show me the potatoes he just dug up. Told him he can cook them for my dinner and took a nice hot shower. I'm feeling more human but am in need of chocolate, a cup of tea and a blanket. I'm milking the pinched nerve for a while, sent my daughter to the kitchen to get them for me.






My morning wasn't that unproductive, while cleaning the kitchen and sorting my machine embroidery bits and pieces so I can locate them easier in future I came across a bees wax candle making kit, so rolled myself 2 candles. The kit cost $5, each candle took about less than a minute to roll up, to make the wax soft enough to do so it just needed warming with my hair dryer. So 2 minutes of sheer crafting pleasure has given me 2 yummy honey scented candles that I can eat if I wish. Or I can just chew on the real honey comb I have in the pantry.



I also melted some wax left over from a beautiful vanilla scented candle, poured it into a candle glass and placed a tea light in it while it cooled. When the tea light is burned out I'll replace it with another.