Yesterday’s Vampire

Yesterday I had to have a Vampire Day.

No I didn’t dress in Georgian attire and so suck some blood, but I did have to spend the day in a darkened room and hiding from the sun lest it turn me to a pile of ashes.

Basically, I had a migraine. Even light hurt.

But today the migraine is gone, swapped for a backache, though that was less swapped as paid for.

After day of doing nothing because I couldn’t do anything, today I have caught up.

I’ve shortened a load of curtains for my daughter, I’ve been to the supermarket, prepared a casserole for tonight’s dinner, planted up a load of pots for the front garden, and placed them out – which is what lead to the backache.

So now, I’ sitting down to blog, and catch up on some stuff on the internet stuff I couldn’t face yesterday. So, not much to say today, but feeling good, and wanted to share that.

Arrangements

With the curtains up in the conservatory, and my back playing up, I’ve been working back down in the conservatory.  It’s been much better, I get the support of a decent desk and deskchair, and with the curtains taking the edge of the direct sunlight, it’s workable.  What this means is that I don’t finish work with either a headache from too much sun or a backache from sitting on a sofabed all day. 

I knew it would take a while to get things set up as I wanted.

The console table I had trouble with is now behind the sofa, holding my personal laptop (I’m working off the works laptop in the day). This now means that I have a working area that I can walk away from at the end of the day and then I’ve got somewhere safer for my personal laptop, instead of slipping it under the sofa.

It also means that the boxes of my books that have been behind the sofa have now been tidied up and put under the consol.  This means they are away from the radiator – not that warmth has been an issue. And that we have easier access to the CD rack and the bottom of the bookcase that end of the room. 

Still have to place my laptop over the scratch though!

But it’s working out, I’m getting comfortable, and that matters.

Curtains

As mentioned in previous blogs, I decided to make curtains for the conservatory. I ordered curtain lining  off the internet, and it arrived last week.

Knowing that this wasn’t going to be the most difficult make ever, I wanted to give one full day to it, when I could make the most of natural daylight.  Today was that day.  I got the first curtain made okay, then tried to start with the second and the machine wouldn’t sew properly.

The machine made a grinding sounds, the material wouldn’t pull through and it simply didn’t work. I tried to lift the material away and couldn’t because there were too many loops of thread holding it down.  Of course I cut them cleaned it out and tried again. 

Same thing.

Cleared the threads, checked it all over, all looked fine.  Tried again.

Same thing.

After the fourth attempt, I decided to do a fuller sweep. I cleared al the threads, but then one wouldn’t come out. So, I had to unscrew the footplate, get a brush to clear out the accumulated dust and try and figure out what was causing the jam. It seems it was that last thread that was causing the problem. I got it got, finished the clean-up, reinstated the footplate, and tried again – Success!

After an hour of the most basic machine maintenance, I actually got it running again.  More importantly I finished the curtains.