Sunday, November 12, 2006
Zipper, Dryer & Quilt Squares
This is how I spent my day: I woke with a rubber band headache, which vacated my brain of any thought. So, what do I do? I accept the challenge to fix a zipper on a winter coat. The only thing wrong with the zipper was the pull. It was missing, the weak link. But, it wasn't just the pull; it was the loop of metal that held the pull in place. Soldering on a loop didn't work. The solder wouldn't stick properly. The epoxy I wanted to try was for plastic, not metal, and it was dried out. No good. Finally, I dug through my beading supplies and found some tigertail wire, which I looped through the hole in the zipper slider. The tigertail is thin enough to allow the slider to slide freely. I threaded a couple of beads onto the tigertail and used another piece of wire to hold the tigertail and beads in place. Voila! New zipper pull.
Onto the next job with my vacant brain. I decided to try to rid the clothes dryer of the rattle it's developed. I removed the front of the dryer, which is affixed with twelve screws in three varieties. The rattle was coming from one of the flanges inside the dryer drum. We've had trouble with a bolt coming loose on one of the flanges before, so I figured this was the cause. No such thing. All the flange bolts were tight. I put the dryer back together. It still rattles.
Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, my brain became occupied with thoughts again and I moved on to the quilt squares. I've been making a quilt for my oldest son for two or three years. There are 45 squares in all, plus there'll be setting strips for the top. I had 9 squares left to piece and finished these today. I'm not a geometric kind of gal when it comes to my artistic endeavors, and all these quilt squares are geometric in nature, so I've been lax in getting this project done. (Obviously.) I'm also a perfectionist and lining up all the corners on these squares has been a bear. It's nowhere near perfect and that bugs me. Just like the zipper pull. (Why did a heavy-duty zipper break in the first place?) Just like the rattle in the dryer. (Why does it insist upon rattling?)
Is it too much to ask to have little things work properly? At least the rubber band is gone and my brain is back to normal.
Onto the next job with my vacant brain. I decided to try to rid the clothes dryer of the rattle it's developed. I removed the front of the dryer, which is affixed with twelve screws in three varieties. The rattle was coming from one of the flanges inside the dryer drum. We've had trouble with a bolt coming loose on one of the flanges before, so I figured this was the cause. No such thing. All the flange bolts were tight. I put the dryer back together. It still rattles.
Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, my brain became occupied with thoughts again and I moved on to the quilt squares. I've been making a quilt for my oldest son for two or three years. There are 45 squares in all, plus there'll be setting strips for the top. I had 9 squares left to piece and finished these today. I'm not a geometric kind of gal when it comes to my artistic endeavors, and all these quilt squares are geometric in nature, so I've been lax in getting this project done. (Obviously.) I'm also a perfectionist and lining up all the corners on these squares has been a bear. It's nowhere near perfect and that bugs me. Just like the zipper pull. (Why did a heavy-duty zipper break in the first place?) Just like the rattle in the dryer. (Why does it insist upon rattling?)
Is it too much to ask to have little things work properly? At least the rubber band is gone and my brain is back to normal.
Labels: artistic endeavors, broken stuff, dryer, fixing stuff, quilt squares, vacant brain, zipper
