So where did the week go?

Monday it was back to work again and boy has it been hard! I returned to a full mail box and a lot of stuff to deal with, so at least the first week went really fast, but there has been little time or, let's face it: energy, left for quilting. The last couple of weeks I have seemed to be able to whizz through one sewing project after another: two new quilt tops, a bag and two sets of new curtains (none of them for me, yet...), but this week, just a little half-hearted quilting.

It didn't actually help that my sewing machine started to act up. No sooner had I left some well-meant advice for Lily about cleaning sewing machines (as if I'm an expert...), and read about Kathy's machine problems, before my own started giving me grief (something going around, perhaps). In came the q-tips and the hoover, all loose parts were removed before all the dust and grime was removed. Oil was added, new needle, tension disks cleaned - all the tricks of the trade (at least the ones I know about...) but the thread kept breaking. OK. Too small a needle, perhaps? Change of needle. Thread broke again. Well, this was a quilting thread I had had for a while - maybe it was too old? Out and get some new thread. A yard-long seam - oh, this is going well! No. Thread broke again. A new round of cleaning and re threading. New attempt. The thread got shredded in the tension disk area. Turned tension way down, then back up again. Re threaded the machine and started sewing again while holding my breath. One long seam. OK. Another. OK. Gradually I let my shoulders down and started breathing normally again. So today I did actually manage to get all the green strips quilted with parallel seams. The mystery of the sewing machine...

- I don't know what happened, but some speck of dust causing trouble, I expect. Or maybe the machine heard me muttering about having it replaced...
Anyhow, I'm on my way now, and tomorrow I'll do the flowery areas with some kind of swirly pattern. The more I've been working on this Olympic quilt the more I keep thinking of a swimming pool with marked lanes for the contestants, so maybe I should change the name to "Swimming in Flowers", "Pool of flowers" or something like that?