Saturday, February 12, 2005

Enough whining and angst...

One suggestion I'm going to make: Do not let your husband's into your sewing rooms/studios.

And, if you must let your husbands in.... don't let them put mouse catching gluetraps in your room.

I was out of town for a weekend, and Steve saw one of the little creatures scurry out of the family room, around the corner, and he thought into my sewing room. OUT come the gluetraps... distributed wherever he thought there was a likely chance that a mouse would tread, and a dog snout would not go. (we won't even talk about the scene when border collie encounters glue trap...)

The mouse was caught; the glue traps did not disappear. Seems his highness can put them down, but won't pick them up again. And their location was listed as a national secret not to shared.

Last week, I cleaned the mess up. Like I said, I was having some design conflicts... needed to think and look at fabric at the same time. Cleaning filled the billed. I sorted through the items that were sitting on my chair... folded the fabric and put in the shelves/drawers where it belonged (except 2 pieces I need to consider. Those I put on the sewing table), put the trimmed slivers of scraps (schnibbles) in the mesh bag for the birds, threw out the papers, found the ruler I'd been looking for.

I went on to the rolling cart next to the sewing table. Again, put the projects in their appropriate baskets, folded and put away the fabric, found a spool of thread I'd been looking for and put that on the sewing table.

On to the floor. Picked up more schnibbles and put them in the mesh bag, swept up the loose pins, dog hair, threads and various twiddle that accumulated, and put that in the trash. Found a book that had dropped behind the cart. I'd been reading an article in there, so I put it on the sewing table.

(confessions: I never seem to completely clean this room. 90% of the things get put away, the other 10% get put on the sewing table, then pushed aside when I want to start working. This room still needs work).

Next the ironing board. It was performing it's normal task of holding about a 1-1/2 foot high pile of various things. Moved the iron onto the sewing table, folded the fabric sitting there, except for the possibles for this project (those, ofcourse, went on the sewing table), filed away the magazines, and pinned up the sale coupons. Finally, I put the ironing board away behind the door.

It wouldn't sit right. It was kind of wonky... and when I moved it, it made an odd noise. Like plastic scraping on the floor. Like my ironing board is caught in a gluetrap.

MY IRONING BOARD IS CAUGHT IN A GLUETRAP!!!

If this happens to you, DO NOT grab a pliers and try to carry the gluetrap and it's "treasure" out to the garbage can. An ironing board is too big. Besides, you didn't want to catch it.

I dismissed the temptation to grab the gluetrap with my pliers and carry it and it's capture to the trashcan. The ironing board is too large. Besides I hadn't wanted it trapped. But I did use my pliers to try and pull trap off. Note: the plastic is only used as a carrier... it's not strong enough for a fight with a pliers. So now I have a piece of gluetrap on the pliers.. and I still have gluetrap on the ironing board foot. humpfh!!

I carefully pry the gluetrap off the foot, ... and realize that there is still sticky stuff stuck on the ironing board foot. And now there is some on my hands, too.

I grab the bag of schnibbles and try to coat the foot with these. They stick to tables, walls, floors, and clothing... surely they will cover this sticky mess. Well, partially but not completely. And now my sticky fingers are beschnibbled.

Finally, I cut a scrap piece of batting up, wrap the foot like I learned in first aid class, and set it back down. It's level, it's not sticking. All is right in the world of the board.

As for myself... peanut butter is a great unsticker. and the birds really appreciate getting their schnibbles with a little snack.

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