How Time Flies...

...when you're having fun.  Not.

This week has been a whirlwind of activity like I have never had in all the years I have been out here.

Today has been a bit of a bind really, as I have been mending things.

First, my printer decided it would not recognise the ink cartridges.  It's an Epson printer and would like me to only use Epson cartridges.  However, as just one set of these actually costs more than the printer did (!!!!!) I buy replacements from Ink Worldwide.  Normally this works fine but, on the odd occasion, the printer goes all twitchy and refuses to recognise them.



This is the printer (above). Normally it is in the other room, connected by Wi-Fi (see how technically advanced we are here in BOB (Back-Of-Beyond).  Be amazed! However, I brought it into the kitchen, next to the table where I work, so that I didn't have to keep trotting backwards and forwards like My Little Pony to try and solve the problem.



(Well it had to be a crochet pony, didn't it)

First the printer wanted me to change the yellow cartridge.  Which I did.  Then it said it just didn't recognise the cartridges - no telling me which one.  Eventually (after spending hours trying various solutions from the NET) I found that the black cartridge also needed replacing.  After that it worked fine.  So that was the morning....!!!!!

In the afternoon I thought I'd have a look at an old sewing machine I bought in England last year.  My machine is good, but won't tackle more than 2 thicknesses of cotton lawn, so I got this one (which is heavy-duty) from eBay.



 I tried it out and the cotton kept breaking... a tension problem, of course - seems to happen to me every time!

Anyway, I was determined to try and fix it, so spent several hours trying first this, then that ...

• Re-threading the top and spool threads
• Changing the needle
• Taking out the entire bobbin race, cleaning it and checking it
• Altering the bobbin tension

...and, of course, every time the thread broke, I had to re-thread, so by the end I was pretty sure it was threaded OK.  But still no luck.

In the end I found the main problem - the thread itself.  It was an old reel that I had come by with another machine that had been tipped, and the cotton was soaked in oil. Of course, it is dry now, but I think the cotton must still be a bit 'sticky'. I changed to a nice, smooth reel of Sylko and all was OK.  Well, almost.

Now the machine was sewing all right but not feeding the material through the needle very well,  I eventually found there was a feed dog problem (the machine has a turn knob to adjust the position of the feed dog teeth for different thicknesses of material) and somehow I must have altered this.

Now I have a second machine for those heavy-duty sewing jobs that I could not tackle before.  

Heaven is a warm sewing machine.

... and a glass of red wine to relieve the tension in those poor neck muscles that have been bent over the printer all morning and the sewing machine all afternoon!