Preface to a Tuesday Sewing Day

Greetings, and Dear Cynthia,

I am so sad that Cass Street Depot, the only yarn store in Fort Wayne, is now closed. It is where I learned how to knit color using two hands. It is where I started using needles smaller than size 8, by choice! It is where I bought the supplies to knit my first baby his little red jacket and his blanket having moons and stars all over it. Where are people going to go for classes to learn some nice, complicated knitting? I'm doing what I can over here to keep the local places going, though I can only stash so much, and the bottleneck is clearly my hands/knitting needles, and NOT my lack of supplies..... Anyway....so sad!

I'm knitting today, but because it's Tuesday (sewing day), I'm giving myself the liberty of talking about something other than knitting. Here is a window -- the "before" picture, which you've probably seen before:I fixed the honeycomb shade a few weeks ago, so now it hangs level and goes up and down nicely, as a shade should do...

I removed and washed the valences. They are waiting to be sewn into something new, something better (or at least humor me on that when you see the new ones finished). The new valences will require a valence rod, so I put one of those up on each window (two windows total). I measured the location of the valence from the top of the ceiling. Of course, the windows are not both the same distance from the ceiling. I'm just dealing with it by making sure the distance from the valence top to the ceiling will be roughly the same in each case. I put marks to indicate where to drill the holes. I drilled the first three holes. I didn't drill into any wood behind the wall board, which means I will have to use wall anchors. I only had three wall anchors. So, like most projects require, I went to the hardware store to get more. I decided that two holes on each side of the window will be sufficient to hold up some lightweight valences (three seemed like overkill). They are a little bit higher than the top of the window, which I've found to be an effective way to make the window look taller, more dramatic. And so, now I'm ready to hang the new valences, whenever I get them done. My goal is to have them up by next Tuesday.....

We're having a nice and easy day today. We don't have too much going on, and it's just good to have a slower day. It just feels like we've been really busy lately, though I don't have much to show for it. I'm actually "enjoying" (term used loosely) getting caught up on some things around the house, and my kitchen counter is cleared. (Now the trick is to keep it that way.) It's beautiful weather outside, so I have the doors open and am enjoying hearing the sounds of things outside.

I hope this finds you having a good day, too!

Warm regards,
Laura (YarnThrower)