Sunday, November 10, 2019

Along for the ride

It's been eons since a road trip with my sister. Today I packed up the towels for delivery for Bonnie's studio open house, and opened my phone to maps to put in the address of the studio. Instead, I called my sister. She said she would "just eat this sandwich and jump in your car."

First, my driving. I go where I'm told. I have no sense of direction, I have not knowledge of where things are in relation to others. And yes, I drove twelve or fifteen thousand miles a year to art shows, and never was late, in twenty years. Including the pit stop for a new radiator, on the way to the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Occasionally Jan said stay in this lane, or move over a lane. Then she said "exit here," on US224. I sprung to attention. "But the map program had me on 71!"

"Aren't we going to Seville?" she asked. I affirmed. Maphead (as I've called her for fifty years), said "well, then, we'll take 224." Don't ask me about the time she took a farm road between fields to reach a camp ground in Pennsylvania, "because this is the way we came ten years ago." She still was in her twenties, at the time.

She spent the trip down telling me about her difficulty in finding the repair man, among the several who maintain her quilting machine, who would focus in on the part she knew was the problem. One replaced everything in the thread path, one re-timed the machine to an inch of its life, one did I don't remember what. 

Yesterday, in desperation, she called Jerry, who maintained our machines back in the weaving days. She found him in and took the sewing head up to him in Cleveland. She had to wait an hour, and would have waited several. 

When he finished the problem he'd come into the shop for, and started on hers, he undid all the previous fixes, then announced the basket needed replaced.  "That's what I've told them!" Jan announced, relieved.  The basket is the part of any sewing machine that houses the bobbin. She knows how the machines work.

Already today she has been in her studio and quilted a small quilt, just to see that once again her machine quilts perfectly.

And on the way home we talked about my 'burning desire" (family joke) to open a web site to sell towels. An interesting desire, these days when I have no wholesale accounts for supplies and little hope of securing them. But, you never know. Our last business began as an acorn, too.

My plan is to contact my old computer guru and run my plan past him. I've researched several web site hosts; I wonder if he will think I have found the best of them.

Photo opportunities these last several years have been botched by my stays in rehab facilities. So today I detoured after dropping Jan back home, to see what is left.


Here is the interlaced arch over Truxell. I am way too late this year.


Here is an oak, a little further along the road, and not yet bare. And here is the outcome of my plan to overwinter a mandevilla, or three:


I do not have enough windows suitable for situating any mandevilla. My helpers reminded me mandevilla and cat do not mix. I briefly consulted my phone, and learned the two emerging and half frozen Gerbera daisy buds would not harm my cat. That is fortunate, because as leaves turn crisp and can be broken away, Toby does.












41 comments:

  1. You are so amazing, Joanne. Since I've always been afraid of driving, I'm marveling at how accomplished you are even if you say you don't have a sense of direction. I do love the color on your Gerber.

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  2. I didn't know that Mandevilla was harmful to cats, I should learn more about it.

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  3. Sounds like you and your sister could get lost trying to find each other, but it all works out in the end. Glad she finally got her machine fixed.

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    1. Actually, I would stand still and be found. Have done it that way.

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  4. Jan sounds like she's got a photographic memory.

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  5. I am like you, Joanne. I really do not have a sense of direction. Somehow though, I never get lost when I'm driving in the area where I lived when I was aged 5-11. Of course there are rivers and the ocean as landmarks and that helps. My ex-husband is like your sister- he can find his way back to a place in the middle of nowhere after years.
    What are we going to do when the real sewing machine guys are all gone? I can't imagine.
    I'm so glad that you and your sister can still get in a car and GO. That's awesome.

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    1. Alex and Jerry used to have the finest hole in the wall shop in the world. They sold industrial sewing machines, sergers, machines that just made button holes, machines that just did one thing or another. And maintained them. It was like heaven, back in our weaving days. But Alex got too, too old, and has retired to Florida, with his wife. And Jerry and a couple of less talented guys run the shop now, mostly machine maintenance. Jerry hears and sees what is wrong with a machine. Real sewing machine guys are thinning out, fast.

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  6. I would love to buy towels from your webpage.

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  7. Hari Om
    Dang, I could so sort a website for you... but doing it from here would be not so straightforward. Mostly you can set them up yourself in as easy a few steps plus a couple of more advanced steps. You could do worse than read this page - they recommend the one which came to my mind, which is Shopify. Your towels are awesome and there would defintely be a market for them! YAM xx

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    1. Maybe you'd work for towels. I'll be in touch. I've already read your page, and I'm on the same page.

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  8. Sounds like you and your sister have road trips down to a science!

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  9. Road trips always stimulate my mind and creativity.

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  10. I love such trips with a friend or relative! Good adventures!

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  11. I enjoyed hearing about your trip and your plans.

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  12. Filling the bobbin was the only thing about sewing that I ever mastered.

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  13. Your towels are wonderful. I'd buy if you were selling. Good luck with your plan.

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  14. So glad you and your sister had this lovely time together! And that her quilting machine woes are solved.

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  15. Its good we have GPS these days because I'm like you, I have no sense of direction. I even like with Google maps if you use them to navigate you that you can mark where you park. I've seen many a people roaming parking lots looking for their vehicles. I hope you can get it together for your online web shop for towels. I think it would be profitable.

    betty

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  16. That arch of trees must be wonderfully shady on a summer day. I hope you manage to get a website up and running, your towels are very popular.

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  17. Your towels photograph so well with such a lovely range of colours that setting up the website should be simple, and feedback will be glowing. Go for it!

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  18. I can get turned around in a mall and not know where the heck I've parked my vehicle! I'd much rather drive through the countryside than have to navigate busy highways and cities. However, I can read a map! I don't think my own kids could do that - they just depend on their phones. Curious to see how the website idea goes, Joanne. -Jenn

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  19. You never give up, Joanne; you are always moving forward. A web site for your lovely towels sounds like a great idea. Have you ever thought of doing table runners also. I say this because I just bought one that looked like the pattern on your towels. Unfortunately, the one I bought had a flaw in the center. Right away I thought of you. “Joanne would never have allowed this”. It is still pretty, though, and I will just put a candle over it to hide the flaw.

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  20. I also am directionally challenged - thank god for google maps!

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  21. you can't always trust the GPS. my sister and I were headed to an estate sale out in the country and after following directions getting deeper and deeper into nowhere it said we had reached our destination. it was a field with no buildings.

    it took my two tries to get my sewing machine fixed. I explained the problem to the first guy but whatever he did only lasted about a week and then the same problem started happening and finally got to the point that I couldn't get it to work at all. the second guy fixed it. needed a new belt.

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  22. I too have no sense of direction and it hurts my head even placing myself mentally somewhere. But I charge on. With Emily my GPS minder. I dropped Wayz who tried to drown me in the ocean a few times, inventing bridges that weren't there.

    Onward charge Joanne, selling your cloths a marvellous idea. Have you tried Etsy?

    XO
    WWW

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    1. Yes, I used Etsy the last time I attempted to restart. A great disappointment! Expensive to maintain and even more expensive to disentangle myself.

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  23. If you get a website set up, you will have tons of positive reviews from all of us! Let us know, will you?

    So did you holler 'ROAD TRIP' when you picked up your sister?? lol

    I don't know who I'll take my sewing machine to when my old guy is no more. He's been retired for many years and I'm thinking he doesn't have many years left.

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  24. When you have to tell the repairman what to repair.

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  25. When Leo was still driving he did the driving and I did the directions. As long as he obeyed absolutely all went well.
    Good for you getting up a new project!

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    1. I can imagine the disagreements. Unless there were none.

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  26. How do you like that...the secret to commenting on your blog is, apparently, using my laptop and my old blogger profile. Doesn't work on my ipad. Where there's a will there's a way. And your sister probably knows how to get there, too. My sister is similar. I am picturing your tree arch on a beautiful summer day, deep greens, cool shade...

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  27. I wonder if it is because I will not use New Blogger. I do not want to find out!

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  28. Very annoying when you know exactly what's wrong with something but the repairers fixate on the wrong thing and aren't any help at all.

    I'm very good with maps, I can locate myself easily. Jenny's not so good and usually leaves the map-reading to me!

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  29. Sounds like it was a truly successful trip.
    (Table runners with fringe too?)

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  30. I like the nickname 'Maphead'. :)

    I think selling your towels over the internet is a good idea. I suppose it's really all about optics when it comes to appealing websites these days. May your 'guru' be of good help!

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