today may be the day

After waiting 6 weeks to quilt something, today may be the day I'm finally back in business.  Fingers crossed.

I've ordered three different sets of encoder wires and they all did the same thing.  The machine would follow the design, but only stitch every once in a while.  Not so helpful when you want to quilt a quilt.

About 3 months ago, the place where the black wire plugged into the big, black box that runs the whole quilting machine on the track, the drive box, came undone.  Inside the black box, the place where the black wire plugs in broke off.  I was able to plug it back in and tape it back in place.  It seemed to be working fine, but would come untaped because the wire was heavy and every time the machine moved from side to side, the wire would wiggle and pull and sometimes get caught on the batting under the machine.

After getting some advice from 'people who know about such things' I was advised to replace or repair that part in the black box.  Well, the drive box costs $4000 new and $2500 refurbished.  The only problem is, the machine is 6 years old and they don't sell them new anymore.  Nobody around here fixes things, the local sewing machine repair guy fixes the working parts of the machine, not the computer parts and my son knows how to program a computer, not fix the actual computer that gets broken.

So, I'm hoping that the part that I bought online for $250 will actually work.  The lady I got it from owns a sewing machine shop and says this is an older model but should still work for me.

If this doesn't work, I have one last option.  There is a guy in Yuba City who will do house calls and who will work on the machine in your home.  I'd like to keep that ace in my pocket just in case because that might require taking a day off work.  Although my students would probably appreciate a day away from me right now.  This week I haven't been too patient with them.  Having a week long migraine starts to wear on you.  And then not being able to come home and do fun things doesn't make it any better.

We are working on some new curriculum at school and the girl who comes in to help me with grading has been working on setting up everything for our department for the past two weeks.  That means I've been bringing home all of my work and grading for about 2 hours every night.  I'm ready for things to start working, for this headache to go away and for things to calm down at school.

Or maybe I'll trade in the quilting machine for a motorcycle!