Turmoil, No More

For the past few days I have been in turmoil about what I should do about my APQS Liberty. It is 5 years old and since day 1 I have had issues with my wheel/table adjustments (everything else about my machine has been perfect for the most part). Anyways I was planning on sending my Liberty back to the factory for it's LONG over do "Spa Treatment" this summer, it needs it's grease box repacked, needs a new hook assembly, the mother/daughter boards checked (because I started having problems with my stitch regulator increasing stitches on it's own), my needle bar needs a minor tweak etc...basically a little pampering will do it a world of good.I want to do it in May because I can block some time out easier with my customers since the snow birds will be gone and business slows a little.


Ok so the spa thing is not what has had me in turmoil. APQS announced this week that they have a newtable/carriage system for their machines called "Bliss" from what I have learned and read it will address all the wheel tweaking/table truss issues that have been an issue for me since day 1. The problem is that it costs $3K for the upgrade :0( and altough this sounds like it would solve all of my issues with drag etc... I was having a hard time with the cost. If I was planning on keeping my Liberty for decades than this would have been a no brainer. But I would really like to upgrade to a larger APQS machine (maybe the Freedom SR) in 4-5 years and then eventually add the computer upgrade to it. So if I add the Bliss system now it will take me that much longer to save for the larger machine.


I started asking questions about the edgerider wheels for my Liberty, I got ALOT of great feedback from friends at the APQS forums and decided that I can achieve the smooth as silk glide at a much cheaper cost if I just change out my wheels and make an adjustment to my table's truss. Then this will allow me to have the $ to send my Liberty back to the factory for her spa treatment. It will be like having a new machine when she gets back together and I can have some fun practcing my custom quilting this summer. And while she is gone I will have time to piece some quilts of my own.


Oh and having the taxes done and between the state & feds actually getting some $ back which also eases turmoil, LOL

Blogging

I am new to this whole blogging thing, just started  last fall, thought it would be something fun to do. The more I learn about it the more I am intrigued. The more blogs I visit the more I want to add to my blogs, to make mine have more personality. Widgets, badges oh my! The things you can do can make your head dizzy. I have seen several blogs set up to look like scrapbooks, really cool and as soon as I figure out how to do that, my blogs will get an instant face lift, lol :0)

 However it might take a while since I am computer challenged....when I was in high school many years ago I had to take a computer class, it was so boring, we had those old Mac "dinosaurs" that only had the dreadful green text color and the only thing we were being taught was how to write code. At the time this seemed very boring to me, so much so that I use to sit in the back of the class drawing in my sketch book (my senior year every other class of mine was an art class ;0)). Who would have thought, that computer class would have actually come in handy now. 

It's a good thing my DH is a computer geek, except whenever I ask him to do something for me computer related he keeps telling me he doesn't write code :0(  But he has come in pretty handy, I mean he created my business website for me and hosts it and maitains it on our own server, saves us alot of $$ and I am able to have as much content on it that I want. If only I would have paid more attention in that high school computer class...that's the moral of this story kids, those classes in high school you think you will never put to use in your real life, well pay attention because you most likely will!!!!! 

Why is it....

Why is it that when you go to use something, half way through it stops working? I have a Shark Pocket Steam Mop that I use for cleaning my tile floors. I love it because no chemicals or cleaners are needed to use this except water. It does a fantastic job and sanatize too. Ok so here is what happened, I was about 3/4s of the way done with cleaning my tile and the light goes off on it (the light is how you know that the unit is heating the water and working properly). So it no longer is making steam, I unplugged it used a different outlet and still nothing. Ok so it is broken, I looked in the manual under the troubleshooting and it says to call customer service, which I did the next day. I was on hold a very long time just to speack with someone. They said I would have to pack it up with all of the accessaries and send it back with a check for return postage. They also said that it will take 8 weeks for me to get it back :0( So what am I suppose to do with my tile floors until the thing gets fixed?


Also on the subject of floors, my vacuum cleaner is on it's last leg as well. It is a bagged wind tunnel and the on/off switch is worn out. So to turn it on you just plug it in to the outlet and it runs, to turn it off you unplug it. Not very safe way of doing it. Been wanting a new one for some time but would like one that is bagless, and one that doesn't have a filter in the dirt cup. Had one of those and let me tell you it was a huge mess every time I had to empty it.


As you can guess we seem to go through alot of the floor cleaning appliences. Before the steam mop I went through 2 Floormates (the first one after about 1 1/2 yrs stopped doing a good job so I bought a new one and that one never worked well from day 1) which is why I bought the Steam mop. I have been happy with it for about a year but now this happens. As for the vaccume cleaners well, we go through these as well. Over the years I have had bagged, bagless you name it we have had it..They all seem to work fine for a while then they loose suction, a pain to empty, or the switch wears out. Oh we have also gone through several Dirt Devil hand vacs...my first one lasted several years but the moter finally gave out on it so I purchased a new one, Had it for about a month before it broke. :0(


It's not that I am a clean freak or anything, I do clean my house every week so these products don't get over used, but they do get used. When I was growing up we had a Kirby vacuum cleaner that was 25 years old! and that thing was a work horse, all you needed to do to it was change the bag and replace the belt every so often. So what happen with the products they are making now? Why can't they last more than a year? Why is it that we have to keep buying this stuff that keeps breaking down?


I wonder how many of these products are sitting in the junk yards/filling up the land fills?  Yes this weekend we are going out to buy a new steam mop and a new vacuum.

Happy Easter!!!!

I hope everyone has a Happy & Blessed Easter.

I was very busy on Saturday, I made 2 aplle pies, a cheese cake, and pieced a small wall quilt. Then I blogged a bit, hung out with the kids and DH and we finally got around to hanging the gecko wall art  that I posted a couple of posts back.  Here is a pic of some of what I was up to....

One of the apple pies crust got a hole in it during baking but boy do they smell good. The quilt pattern was a free on-line pattern from the Moda Bake shop called "Flower Patch Quilt" It is 32" sq and only use 1 Moda layer cake and 1/4 yd of a cream tonal fabric. However if you decided to do this pattern there is a typo in the instructions. It says to cut your 10" sqs into 1 6" sq etc... but if you look at the pic they provided it should be a 5 1/2" sq, 4 1/2X10" rectangle and a 4 1/2X5 1/2" rectangle. Then everything else will fall into place like it suppose to be. I used the Moda "Gypsy Rose" layer cake. All of the fabrics I had in my stash and the cream tonal I used has enough of it so I can use it as a baking for the little quilt and there is enough fabric left over from the layer cake to do some applique in the center of the quilt and use the scraps for the binding.

The reason that I did this quilt was so I would have a small quilt to practice some custom on in a couple of weeks. In the past couple of years I haven't done any custom at all just the pantos for the customer quilts. So I am out of practice and need to PPP (practice, practice, practice) so I can improve in this area. I think the quilt challenges at the APQS forum has got me wanting to stop out of the box and expand my comfort zone a bit. If nothing else just to have a little fun.