Blogger meetup with Elizabeth from SEWN

At Gwen Couture fabrics
For my final day in San Diego, I met up with Elizabeth from SEWN.  We first met at PR weekend Philly in 2010 and have seen each other, even if only for a minute, at each PR weekend since.

I recognized the fabric  for her skirt in the picture above--she bought it in SF at PR weekend and sewed it up right away! I don't remember who I was with who also bought that fabric but it was popular.


Gwen Couture entrance
First we hit up Gwen Couture in La Jolla.   The selection is really small--this may be the smallest fabric store I've ever been to-- but a lot of good stuff awaits, including one of the eyelets I bought in Hawaii at Kaimuki (same price as Kaimuki, too).

I know it's not surprising that I bought some great RPL ponte knit in eggplant and navy, but what is surprising is the alphabet knit I bought.  I can see this as a great tee to wear under a cardi, plus it's incredibly soft. And check out that metallic piping!


Antoinette has been looking for a black and white striped knit--would either of these work?

Then we went to Discount Fabrics.  I just learned there are two locations in SD, one of which is in an old movie theater.  We went to the one on W Morena, near-ish the Sea World.   This store reminded me so much of Cloth World--in NJ, Cloth World was (to me) the predecessor of Joann Fabrics.  Cloth World had tons of round tables with bolts of fabric along the circumference, and Discount Fabrics does too.  Kind of a blast from the past--they even had HBO fabric circa 2007.  I picked up a stretch lace and a knit.  I want to make the raglan sleeved shirt KID MD made a few weeks back.

We had lunch at a BBQ joint and had a fun convo.  Thanks for meeting up with me, Elizabeth.  You can read her post about the day here.

Later I went down to the Children's Cove in La Jolla to look at the seals.  The seals are controversial for reasons I won't go into here, but I've loved them since first laying eyes on them in 2004.

There were TONS of them on the beach last night. Tons and tons of them.

Look at them all!  If you think it's a rock, it's most likely a seal.

yeah

La Jolla palm trees


I watched most of the sunset before running back to my room because it was suddenly so cold.

I got up at 3:45am today to make my 6:25am flight, and only had 3 hours of sleep last night. I'm off work one more day then go back on Friday. It feels so weird to be home, like I haven't been here for months, not two weeks.  Spring has sprung!  But now, sleepy town...

Be well!

That Viking 6570 is smoking, and not in a good way

ETA:  Here's a pic of the sewing machine that smoked, courtesy of Michele's husband Wolfgang:

Original post:


Good morning from La Jolla! I had a lovely day yesterday with my friend Michele. I don't think I've seen her since 2005, so it was a real treat! After meeting for lunch we spent the afternoon at the San Diego Zoo.

She told me to say "zebra" instead of cheese. :)

and here she is saying Zebra!

We carried umbrellas as it was raining in the morning...it insured it would not rain in the afternoon. Such a pleasant afternoon too. The last time I was at the SDZ was a hot sunny day in 2004. The cooler weather and overcast skies made the zoo so much nicer!

After the zoo we went back to Michele's house where she cooked me dinner. She is a gourmet chef and made a scrumptious dinner of her own handmade pasta and meat ragu sauce, with a salad of goat cheese mozzarella, tomatoes and basil from her own garden.  This meal was at my request--I remembered her cooking it the last time I was there and loving it.
Delicious!
And for dessert, homemade brownies with crystallized violets.  YUM!    I felt so lucky to see her again and spend some time just chatting and catching up.

Michele has a red (yes, red!  Such a pretty machine!) Viking 6570 sewing machine purchased on ebay. She calls it Scarlett.  She sewed on it a little while and had it serviced last year but had not used it since the servicing.  I had heard others write about sewing machine cams before, but had never seen one in person.   I learned a lot:

• finally saw a cam in person
• learned that Viking and Husqvarna are the same brand, just depends on your location
• first time threading a machine where you don't exclusively thread right to left.
• first time winding a bobbin where the bobbin winder was on the bottom right side of the machine
• first time winding a bobbin where I didn't have to unthread the machine first (that is super handy!)
• first time inserting a bobbin where the bobbin case is not the drop-in style.

So I was able to :

• thread the machine
• wind the bobbin
• sew a straight stitch
• sew a zigzag stitch
• find the manual cutter for the bobbin and the needle threads

It was solidly stitching and seemed like it could be a workhorse sewing machine.

It had a switch on the right side for the needle up/down function.  There was nothing in the manual about it, and later realized the manual was not for her model of sewing machine.  I thought it might mean inserting the needle in the fabric for you and raising it up when you're done, but it didn't seem to do anything (later I learned it's to determine what position the needle should be in when you stop sewing--I had noticed the needle was always up when I stopped sewing, but didn't know that was the reason why).

So then I asked Michele if she wanted to try it herself, while I was there, to make sure she could do all those things too.

As she was reaching for the wheel on the right side of the machine, the machine suddenly goes "pop pop" and starts SMOKING.  What a foul smell too!  I unplugged the machine and carried it outside where we stared at it wondering what just happened!

Then we googled and found this thread which says her 6570 smokes when she uses the needle up/down function but not when she "turns the feature off".    I think I switched the switch downward.  It must have been in the up position while I was doing my tests.  I guess turning the feature off means setting it to neutral, I don't know because the manual is not for her model of machine.    I had no idea that something like that would happen!

I just found this thread on the PR website about the 6570 smoking after 5-10 minutes of use...

This post has lots of pix of the 6570 including the needle up/down switch on the side in the 5th picture.  You can see the up/N/down, where N is neutral, I guess.  I think I had left the switch in the down position.  UGH!

Also found some posts on line about smoking meaning the capacitor has burned out.

Anyway, if you have ideas, let me know in the comments.  Has your sewing machine ever started smoking??

I'm sorry I broke your machine, Michele!    I've sewn for 25 years and nothing like that has ever happened to me before.

Now I'm off soon to meet Elizabeth from SEWN for some fabric shopping!

Meeting Shannon from MushyWear!!

Aloha peeps!  This post is full of "first time for me" items.

At Kaimuki Dry Goods

Saturday was very special because Shannon from MushyWear flew from Maui over to Oahu to visit me!
Yes!
Her write up of the day is here.

Shannon is warm, patient, kind, gentle, incredibly easy going, a real sweetheart.  And not only can she sew professional RTW-style garments, but she can pop the cover back on your side mirror when you, you know, knock it off when you try to squeeze your full size rental into a tiny parking space...but let's go back to the beginning.

I felt so lucky when I asked Shannon if she would be willing to come visit me on Oahu and she said yes. What a gift!

So here's how it all went down:  We had breakfast at my hotel and it was just so cool to finally meet and have loads of time to chat.  And I might have talked her ear off!  Like Shannon mentioned on her blog, we went to Kaimuki Dry Goods at the recommendation of Beth from SunnyGal--mahalo Beth!.  (Christiana, you asked about fabric on Oahu.  Kaimuki is pretty close to Waikiki, but not in walking distance.  I had a car so we drove but it might be possible that TheBus goes there (yes, the bus system is called TheBus). 


In the Hawaiian print fabric section of Kaimuki, with a minky quilt hanging in the window

Kaimuki is definitely the fabric store for fashion fabric.  All sorts of gems await in this store--an excellent selection of knits (and you know I love knits!), rayons, cottons, eyelets in patterns that we had never seen before, gingham galore, novelty fabrics, Japanese fabrics, and even a bit of flannel.  And they had loads of minky (while i've never sewn with Minky, I have a friend who churns out baby blankets as fast as her friends have babies, and she would die at the printed minky selection!)  I really enjoyed perusing the selection.  They even had cool patches, which I use for decorating underwear.  It's hard to find patches that aren't big and aren't too child like.  Also lots of good notions.    Definitely the store to go to for fabric on Oahu.  It is a bit pricy but it seems like high quality stuff. Everything in Hawaii is expensive because it's all shipped in.


Insert joke about "buying fabric with a moving truck in the background" here 

Next we went to Fabric Mart.  Now, this is Fabric Mart Hawaiian Style.  It's not the Fabric Mart that everyone blogs about (that Fabric Mart is in Pennsylvania).  If you need a Hawaiian printed fabric, then this is the store for you.  It was a bit overwhelming for me.  (Christiana, this store is maybe 10 min driving from Kaimuki.)




Then we went to lunch, also on SunnyGal's recommendation (and that is where I knocked the cover off the side mirror in a too-small space in a parking garage that had lots of inconveniently placed concrete poles.  Honestly, I'm not used to driving a full sized car and I really laughed at myself when it happened).

After lunch we were going to go to the North Shore to see the turtles on the beach and check out Haleiwa, but the GPS was saying it was going to take a hour to get there, so we went to Liliha Bakery instead,  which was highly ranked on Trip Advisor, to get the cream puffs.  We both got the chocolate ones, just one each.  We should have bought half a dozen and split them.  SO GOOD.  And this is when we were able to pop the cover back on the side mirror.  I didn't want to be doing that in front of the valets at the hotel, women driver stereotypes and all that.


Shannon was totally understanding about then stopping at the PO to ship my fabric back to the mainland.  (Long story short, Kaimuki doesn't ship).  Let's hear it for the flat rate boxes with the peel and stick sealant and for automated postal centers that let you ship anytime of day or night!   By then the Waikiki traffic was really crazy and slow going.  But we made it back to the hotel to sit on the balcony and eat the cream puffs and watch and listen to Waikiki before heading over to the airport for her flight back to Maui.   I swear I saw her flight leave, from the balcony of my hotel room.    I waived!

We covered so much ground: blogs, blog names, blog history, our own histories, our families, sewing, fitting, tv shows about sewing, etsy, Hawaii; it was great!  And throughout the day I showed her the tweets and comments I was getting on my blog about her--she's a sewing superstar!

Shannon even brought me two gifts:  a Maui t-shirt, which I wore on the plane today--it fits great and is super comfy--I know it is destined to become a favorite--actually it already is one--and an original MushyWear Made in Maui bag!!   I treated her to some wonder tape from Kaimuki, which she's never used before, and I want to send her some special fold over elastic.  :)




Love that label!!

Thank you Shannon so very much!  for flying over, for the gifts, and for spending time with me!  and again thank you to Beth for the recommendations, it was like you were there with us in spirit, guiding us to all that fabric!

So this morning I said goodbye to Waikiki,  flew to San Diego and am here for 3 nights....

but still, aloha!