Off days

I have taken some days off from work, looking forward to days of pottering about at home, shopping for Christmas and visiting friends, but wouldn't you know it: I woke up on Monday with a runny nose, and thigs hab beed gedding steadily worse since then. My mother called a little while ago and thought she had gotten the wrong number, she didn't recognise my voice.
Needless to say, there has been little shopping and visiting so far, but a lot of pottering about...
Yesterday evening was spent curled up under a quilt watching old Seinfeld shows. I had several projects within reach, but couldn't be bothered to do a stitch in either knitting, quilting or embroidery project - I'm usually unable to just sit and do nothing with my hands, but for once it was just what I needed: Some quiet time, doing nothing.

Apart from the stuffy nose I'm more energized today, and have been quilting on a little something for a new arrival. I finished the top during the weekend, and cleaned and prepared my sewing machine yesterday, making it ready for a serious quilting session. Or so I thought. I had found the perfect salmon pink rayon thread to go with all the colours in the quilt, but within the first inch of stitching it snapped. I rethreaded the machine and tried again. Same result. I tried quilting on a quilt sandwich I keep by the machine for testing tension and stitches and it worked all right. Back to the quilt. The thread snapped. "Oh, well it was an old spool, maybe it's too old, I'll try another one." I found a pale yellow that might work - not as well as the salmon one, but still... Same result.
I thought I had cleaned the machine thoroughly yesterday, but I removed thread, needle, spool and all and used a can of compressed air to blow behind the spoolhouse and lo and behold, a small clot of dust and grime popped out. Everything was put back together again, and the quilting was just fine, salmon thread and all! There has been a lot of discussion in my guild about using compressed air to clean sewing machines. Some say that it may be harmful to the machine, pushing dust into areas where you can't get at it, but I don't know, I have found it helpful at more than one occasion, so I guess I will continue using it...