The plan for today was simple. Go to the storage unit, pay the rent get my quilts come home and quilt. See very very simple. It should have taken about half an hour out of my day. The first bit did work. I got to the unit and paid my rent. Then I noticed the van had a flat tyre (one of the maybe 3 week old tyres). Poop (no that wasn't the first word that came to mind but I try to keep the blog clean). OK, I can't change the tyre myself especially as I know the wheel nuts have just been put on by a garage. Maybe a pump will do the trick. The lady manning the storage place has one, but it didn't want to work for me, so I set off for the nearest place I knew I could buy one. Fortunately just around the corner is a little tyre shop who charged me 10 pounds to change the wheel for the spare. I did consider letting them look at the flat until they said driving on a flat won't damage the tyre. Really?! I also noticed the jack wasn't rated to lift the van, but we got away with it so I paid up and headed some where with more of a clue. So far the half hour job had taken over and hour.
I don't like vehicles doing odd things so I really wanted to know why I had no air in the tyre and ideally I wanted to get a new tyre back on to the van, I don't know how old the spare is and I didn't fancy doing much driving on it. There was a 15 minute wait to be seen but my regular type place quickly found the problem, a puncture. They had been fairly certain the tyre would have been damaged by being driven on while flat (I tended to agree) but after checking it carefully it appears I got away with it. It was less the 1/4 mile, slowly and very carefully so I didn't bump the wheel or rub the tyre. They have repaired the puncture and the tyre is back in place. All in all a half hour trip took 3 hours. Ouch. On the other hand I would rather it happened here than out on a trip.
I did manage to get some quilting done today, and my machine seems to be settling down a bit now after it's major surgery. It feels very strange, and sounds even weirder but it's good to be back quilting. Hopefully tomorrow will go more smoothly, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Hi Ferret, I was lucky enough to be there and hear the change when Mark filled the box with grease. When my Millie was delivered in December I did wonder why they included a bag of 'putty' in the kit, so now I know.
How did it look this time? I changed it last year after the class and took lumps of black. Yes black! Hopefully this year it was more grey and less lumpy.
I think the work he did on the top end has made the most difference. Noises the machine has had all it;s life have suddenly gone.
I'm amazed how much we use hearing in sewing. I was working on a panto over the weekend and could tell the moment the bobbin ran out by the sound of the stitch not being made.
I think we use all our senses but we don't always realise it. Certainly in class the sound of the machines is a significant teaching aid. From uncertain sewing to machines with faults.
Driving I use my nose a lot, but as I am still getting over the cold I didn't place the odd smell as flat tyre :( Yes it really is that distinctive.
Ferret, bearing in mind your machine was upsidedown at this point your grease was mostly grey when he opened the box but when he stired it up adding more there was some black that emerged from closer to the moving parts. All to be expected I guess.
I went to a dressmaking class with Gill Arnold and she said she could tell from the sound the overlocking machines made whether ladies had put their machines in the car the night before and they had got colder than those that had been loaded that morning. Amazing our sense of hearing.
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