On my mind today: Fixing little things before they become big problems. A bit of background to this one: I called the landlady today to talk with her about a few things that need to get taken care of before they take off for Canada in the middle of May. One of the things was the window in the winter garden that refuses to open. The other windows open two different ways, like this, tilted open at the top:

or like this, wide open from the side:

As an aside, the windows are on the very short list of things I’ll miss about Germany if I ever get to live in the States again. I love, love, love the windows. Windows, rolladen (the outside shades over the windows which are standard fare here), and the Autobahn are just about it on that list of “things I’ll miss.” Anyway, the window in the center of the winter garden would open about an inch, and then wouldn’t budge. After a lengthy, roundabout conversation with the landlady about it, in which she even tried to tell me that it worked when we moved in (as if we’d damaged it somehow since then), I gave up and told her I’d show her husband what I meant on Friday when he shows up with the plumber.

Later, I tried to open the window again with a bit more force. I didn’t want to risk really breaking it before, and maybe not even being able to close it at all if I was ever able to get it open, so I didn’t want to be toooo awfully strong-arm-ish about things, but heck, she’s already decided we’ve broken it, so I figured I had nothing to lose by being a bit more manly with it. Turns out it will open, you just have to fiddle with it, and it will only open wide from the side, and won’t tilt at the top. As far as I can tell, it has exactly the same hardware as the other windows, so it should open from the top as well, which leads me to believe that it really is slightly broken and it’s just not high on the list to get fixed properly, if it’s on the list at all. Read the rest of this entry »

Share This

The carefully chosen palette for my next current project has been sitting there on the cutting table since I took a picture of it to share, over a week ago (it has now entered “current” project status, as you’ll see). It’s not that I don’t want to work on it, I do, other things keep getting in the way, including my own “quilt design block.”

Short “house” update: the heating/hot water system is working about as well as it’s probably ever going to work, after the plumber’s visit last Friday during which he finally figured out that a 5″ section of copper pipe was almost completely blocked by water deposits and cleaned it out. He’s coming back though, with the owner and a service person from Vaillant, the manufacturer, to replace the section of pipe, and figure out why else it’s not performing up to par. And of course, it’s a bit hard to tell if it’s going to heat the house to my satisfaction in winter anyway, since it’s the end of April and it’s not exactly cold here right now.

Other than that, there are various other things, some small, some not, that the owners need to take care of for us before they take off for Canada in mid-May. I’m still making weekly trips to the hardware store for this and that, and yet another trip to Ikea is probably on the schedule for this weekend. I did get a really great office chair for a lot less than I expected to spend there last weekend, so that was an unexpected pleasure.

Back to this project on my cutting table. I’ve been thinking about working on it more than actually working on it, and part of the reason for the delay before actually setting rotary cutter to fabric has been due to a niggling little feeling that something’s not quite right. I did make templates for a couple of pieces, and actually traced one of them onto the border print, but I wasn’t keen on taking that next step, so I kept turning my mind to other things. I finally decided that the lovely border print was the big problem and had to go, because it’s just not fitting in with my (admittedly slightly foggy) vision of the finished product.

After that flash of insight late last night, I was determined to progress today in the studio, and I had all day to do it in since I had nowhere to go. I spent all morning drawing trying to draw appliqué designs for the spaces that I’d planned to use the border print for, only to be soundly defeated by fusible web by early afternoon. I HATE that stuff! I don’t know why I ever bother with it, truly. I didn’t even get past peeling the paper off of it after fusing it to the appliqué piece. I could only get some of the paper off, and the rest stuck terribly and never would come away. Into the trash bin it went.

Still determined to get something done today, I started cutting, and threw eight pieces up on the wall. I looked at it and lost my nerve, or whatever it was I had left at that point. Maybe I just didn’t know what to cut and place next color-wise. I decided to break into the Hoffman Watercolor Wraps that I bought for this project before the move, and play with the colors, since the embellishments that will go on the quilt will be made of these fabrics. This is how I spent a very happy hour or so in the late afternoon:

There were 160 different bali fabrics in the eight tubes that I bought, and I sorted and played and pared down until I had 128 left. I thought maybe I’d have a better direction in mind if I could visualize more of the whole thing, or at least more of the whole color scheme. The row on the left is winter/spring and/or air/water colors and the row on the right is summer/fall and/or fire/earth colors. I hope. I think it helped the whole design process a bit though I’m not entirely positive, but I do feel better now. It’s possible that I feel better because I played with all these fabrics and colors though, and not necessarily because I’ve made any great design decisions!

The appliqué patterns I spent the morning agonizing over may become quilting designs, though I’ll hit the Arts & Crafts shop tomorrow for a different kind of fusible web and perhaps torture myself some more at a later date if the design really needs the appliqué. Hopefully life will allow me a bit of studio time tomorrow to see if my color play today opened the floodgates to design heaven. At least it’s officially a “current” project now, since I have cut into the fabric.

Share This

The electrical fun continued yesterday, after a semi-warm shower (no, the heating/hot water system isn’t really “fixed” yet, though the plumber is here again this afternoon, and I hear that a service man from the manufacturing company will come on Monday to look at the system. Sheesh.) which made me feel slightly better about the world after the midnight millipede visit. So here’s the before pic:

(except that it’s really an after pic because I forgot to take one while the light was still attached to the ceiling, which is why you see it on the carpeted floor ) The light itself is less than three feet wide in an 18′ x 24′ room, hence the feeling of sitting in a cave.

Anyway, remember that I said the new light wasn’t heavy, and that I could therefore do it myself? Wrong. I swear the sucker was almost as heavy as the big chandelier in the dining room! I was already halfway into the job by the time I figured that out, so I just finished it, but it was hard!

I did have to have GuitarGirl help me hold the heavy part up to the ceiling so that I could wire it, and LittleOne was here to hand tools and parts to me while I was up on the chair, so truthfully, a little help was needed. It was good for the girls to see that you can do these kinds of things yourself, and maybe you need a little help, but that help doesn’t have to be in manly form.

Two hours after beginning the job, I had a new light hanging from the ceiling in the studio:

It’s a modern looking thing, for sure, but as long as I have light, I don’t much care what it looks like up there. It is kind of cool though, since it’s about nine feet long overall, plus the two and a half foot extension on the end, and then there’s the pendant light as well.

All in all, the output of the new light is only 35 watts more than the old one, but the old one really was past it’s prime and might even be a fire hazard anyway. The new light has seven spots that are 20 watts each, plus the hanging pendant light that’s 35 watts, and the lighting is spread out over more of the room area, so it’s a bit better than it was. I even managed to position the pendant lamp right over one of my tables.

I’ve ordered new bulbs that will hopefully not be so yellow, and not lose so much light out the back either. If that doesn’t work, I may have to spring for the daylight halogens that I managed to find online yesterday, but they’re a bit pricey, so I thought I’d try the cheap ones first!

Still on the list of electrical to-dos: lighting for the design wall area, switching the ceiling lamp in the kitchen for the one in the master bedroom (they’ll look better that way), and installing an combination outlet/switch (as opposed to just a light switch) in ITMan’s bathroom so he can plug things in in there. sigh A woman’s work is never done.

Share This