Money money money ......

I crawled under the house with the termite company guy during the yearly inspection and what do I find? The water heater is leaking. So there's more money to be spent this summer. I don't have a clue what it will cost. The worst thing is, the darned water heater is under the house in the crawlspace, so you can't install a regular one, oh no, you have to buy a short squatty one that will fit in a limited headroom area. Rats.

You also can't get a bigger size because its diameter is limited by the width of the crawlspace door, which I found out the last time this happened about 10 years ago. I was hoping to install a larger water heater then to have more hot water capacity, but no such luck.

Boy, it just keeps on this summer. As I told my hair stylist yesterday, I feel like handing over my wallet and saying "Here, take what you want." Wouldn't you think an electric water heater would last more than 11 years? That's the service life we got out of the last two. My mom's gas water heater was installed at least 25 years ago and it's still going strong. What's the difference? Does everyone else get this length of service out of an electric water heater?

The status of the dragonfly

Here is the new picture as promised. You can see two small patches basted in place above the left wing. I've been sewing this morning but decided to stop for a while and thought I'd go ahead and photograph it anyway. I have around 20 background patches basted to the freezer paper foundations and awaiting applique, which will cover about a third of the remaining left side, wrapping around the top dragonfly wing.

I keep thinking I've made great progress, then unfold the piece and go, "Well, uh, not exactly." This piece swallows great hunks of time effortlessly. In case you, dear reader, have forgotten how far I have left to go, here is the illustration of the completed picture:

When you start something like this, you are either optimistic or crazy in the head. Haven't decided which yet.

Dragaonfly applique

Just a quick update - I've completed the first dragonfly and have cut out and basted (frezer paper applique prepped) about 15 green segments above it. I'm halfway done! WOO HOO!

Pictures later.

Car (money pit) - redux

News flash after my oil change and service check - I need to buy a new battery too. And flush the coolant system. Money pit - oh, yeah.

Cars - money pits on wheels

Even if you have a good car, the ones that don't break down and strand you, that aren't always in the shop, cars cost money - big money - to keep up. This is in spite of attempting to be an conscientious car owner who sticks to the schedules, maintains the vehicle as recommended, watches out for problems.

I just dropped over $600.00 for tires. I can't type the number without wincing. I had to buy new tires just two years into the life of the Dunlops I last installed because the car is out of alignment and ate them. What I had was rough ride and enough road noise to make it hard to hear the radio! It's caused by the tires not being oriented perfectly parallel to the axis of the car, causing the tire to go down the highway slightly skewed relative to the track of the car. It does nasty things to the tread, and drastically reduces the tire life.

Now, the question is: why is a car that is only driven in a moderate manner on well-paved roads that badly out of alignment just two years after the alignment was supposed checked and corrected? I haven't hit potholes, I haven't bumped curbs, I haven't driven on gravel or dirt. Well, if I had that answer, I would be one of the "Car Talk" guys. I suspect that it wasn't correctly aligned in 2006 when the rear differential was replaced under warranty. (Names are withheld to protect me from accusations of slander - but the work was done by a place that should really know Subarus - clear enough?) I'm not bouncing around on dirt roads and climbing over rocks. This problem shouldn't have occurred.

So, in addition to the cost of the tires, I have to take it to a frame shop and get it aligned and the suspension checked tomorrow. I also need to get the oil changed. There's another $125 gone.

And, oh, yes - I started hearing a noise when the air conditioner was running, and it wasn't a belt, pully or bearing - it's the sound of the compressor slowly going south. I'm going to run it until the a/c dies - this is enough money for one month.

How time flies!

Was my last post really August 14th? Wow, the last nine days just flew by! A lot of stuff going on here, not much of it sewing until yesterday, unfortunately. The cat went through another bout of stomach problems, like she has twice before. A vet visit ($264.00!!!!) and ten days of medication later, she's like new, but mercy, she's well on her way to becoming the six million dollar kitty! We, including the vet, don't know what brings this on, but it's like little kitty gastritis, and if you catch it early enough while she's in the merely thowing up stage (you can imagine what comes after that but you really don't want a description, trust me on that) and dose her with steriods and ten days of Flagyl, she straightens up and doesn't get dehydrated. If it goes too long, there sub-cutaneous rehydration and anti-nausea medication and lots and lots of misery for everyone.

She has had the sub-q hydration twice before, in which they inject saline beneath the skin where it's absorbed into her system, in lieu of putting in an IV. Much easier on the kitty, but she looks like a fur-covered hot water bottle. I'm sure it's not painful or perhaps even uncomfortable, but she acts so put-upon that I can't tell how bad it really is. Luckily we caught her condition before she got to that point.

I saw a couple more houses, and the short answer is - no, nothing will work for us. One broke my heart: it was advertised as 2138 sq. ft., so we drove by to take a look; it had only one short step at the entrance, a beautifully landscaped yard, and it was gorgeous. So far, so good. I called my realtor on the quick and set up a showing. Unfortunately, the listing agent not only fibbed about how big the house was, her listing information gave me the ability to look up the house plan on the Frank Betz design firm website and find out that it's only 1750 sq. ft. Hey, what's almost 400 sq. ft. between friends???!!!!!!! Makes me so mad I could spit.

This was a killer because in all other aspects it was perfect, a beautiful house, and if it were just a little larger, I would have made an offer. The finishes were top drawer, the layout was good, it was just wonderful. Thanks to the Frank Betz website, I copied the floor plan into a drawing program and arranged and rearranged scale models of our furniture, but it wouldn't work. What with his home theater (as my mother once commented, "Why is your living room all about the electronics?") and his computer room and my home office (which I am not willing to part with!), and all the furniture his father built that we don't want to get rid of, there simply wasn't enough house.

We saw another house under construction in a small town about 15 miles away that was still small but closer to the right size; however, we didn't want to move that far out of the city and give up the conveniences to which we have grown accustomed. I may have some problems about where our house is located, but you can't beat it for proximity to everything you need.

And, the builder who wanted so much for his house (the barrier-free design that fit us to a tee....except for outrageous price) keeps calling and calling, even after we told him it was just too expensive and we couldn't go that high. I don't know exactly what's going on with that, but I have an idea.

His houses were fairly unique in the area, on flat lots and without steps, and because barrier-free design is so rare here he was able to charge a premium and get it. Then the housing market slowed down, and his new subdivision isn't taking off the way he expected. He doesn't build on speculation; most of the houses are contracted before they're started. Without a ready market of people lining up to pay oodles and oodles of money, the subdivision is languishing, and that doesn't look good. He may not be hurting for money yet. But he wants the front of that development filled up and successful looking to lure more buyers. He has figured out we are a prime candidate for his houses and keeps pursuing us.

Of course, if he were to lower the price to a reasonable cost per square foot comparable to the rest of the builders, he might well make a sale - and to us, too. As it is, he continues to try to charge the premium amount in a slow market, and it's not working. It seems like he's willing to do anything except bring his price more in line with the local market. Oh, well.

I also saw a terrible townhouse which was in such bad shape it immediately sent a prospective buyer scurrying right back out the door. It had a pot-sized burned spot on the laminate kitchen countertop that the seller hadn't even had bothered to fix. When I say burned spot, I mean a 10 inch circle of laminate melted all the way through to the particle board! Combined with the scratches and dings on the cabinets, the state of the walls, the cheap carpet, the laminate flooring where there should be hardwood at that price, it was a horror.

So.......we have pretty much suspended the house search. It ain't gonna happen. At least not this year. Rats.

One the quilty front, I completed a little more of the dragonfly applique. One body and one wing done and part of the second wing in process. It's slow, but nice to be back on track.

And I bought a quilt kit. Now, that is so NOT ME. But I saw this design in the July Fons and Porter magazine and had to have it.

To stash or not to stash?

That's a question indeed! I know most of us have a bunch of fabric in some state of organization in a closet, box, bag, or pile somewhere. And we probably add to it regularly. But when you pull out this stash of fabric to select pieces for a project, does it have what you need?

Sadly, I must say mine doesn't always. Through the years I have collected both large and small cuts of many fabrics, as leftovers from former projects or purchased to augment my selection. I seldom buy large portions of any one fabric unless it is for a specific purpose. Money and storage capacity are the limiting factors. So, when a pattern requires more than a yard or so cut, I may not have enough of any one fabric to fulfill the demand.

I also seem to never have exactly the colors in need. Tonight I pulled fabrics for the Golden Autumn pattern from the current issue of McCall's Quilting magazine. The border and blocks called for 1 7/8 yards of a green texture print. Unfortunately, the only green I had in near that quantity is rather too light a shade to complement the remaining selections. So, I will probably visit my local quilt shop with fabric samples in hand to select a better option.

If I were to start a truly scrappy quilt design I would probably have many, many possible fabrics to use. However, when I approach my stash closet with a particular planned design in mind, almost always I find that I am lacking in at least one of the required colors or patterns. This is true whether I've been frequenting the shops or not. I find that when faced with the bounty in the average quilt shop, I can never remember the particular weaknesses in my collection to supplement the selection so this doesn't happen. I may be seduced by a new fabric line, but I can't guarantee that my reaction may be subconsciously provoked by its similarity to other fabrics that I have known and favored in the past - maybe I just repeat my selections without expanding the options. No matter how imaginative I am in selecting augmentations for my stash they always fall short.

So, is it even wise to keep a stash at all? Why not purchase fabric as required - it would certainly save closet space! That's a question I don't have an answer for. For every project that began with a design idea or a store display quilt or a magazine photograph, there is the quilt that came into being because a fabric called to you to be coordinated and cut and combined into a thing of beauty. And sometimes those very vocal fabrics have been living in your stash closet, waiting patiently until they spoke just the right words to your creative side.

So I put it to you - to stash or not to stash?