Learning to maintain a sewing machine

One of my annual rituals has occurred. All summer I habitually take only cold showers – the last warm shower I had was back around October last year. But the weather has been turning slowly cooler as autumn shifts into gear here, and I decided it was time to use the hot water tap once more. So I’ve moved back into my warm shower phase for the coming winter.

Today I also learnt some things about sewing machine maintenance. My wife has been sewing up a storm, making doggie bandanas to sell at my market stall this Sunday. She wants to have as much stock as possible made by then. So her brand new sewing machine has been getting quite the workout.

Today it stopped working and we had to figure out why. She pulled apart a few of the routine things that she does when winding and loading a new bobbin, but a thread was stuck coming out from the bobbin area to the sewing platform. We tried to pull it out with a pair of tweezers, but it stayed fast. I had a look underneath the platform and found a couple of other metal parts around the bobbin holder that looked like they might be removable, toggled a couple of catches, and pulled them out. This allowed me to tweezer the stuck thread out from the bottom.

Reassembling the bobbin assembly took a bit of figuring out, and once done the thread wouldn’t rethread in the right places. So I pulled it apart again and inspected the various components, trying to figure out what was going wrong. It turned out the bobbin thread was incorrectly placed and jammed between two metal sheets, rather than threading neatly through the intended slot. So ew removed the bobbin completely and my wife rethreaded it. Then I reassembled all the bits and pieces, and presto, it worked again.

I got hands covered in oil – there’s a surprising amount of oil inside a sewing machine! – but also a new appreciation for the mechanical intricacies of sewing machines, and some experience with fixing problems with it. So that’s pretty cool.

I also spent some more time preparing comics for the time when I’ll be away next week. And went on a walk with Scully and my wife to get some lunch at a local bakery. It’s curiously quiet going to for a walk in the middle of a weekday.

New content today:

More voting ethics

This morning was the second lesson on the voting topic in my Ethics class. We discussed the idea of a public plebiscite to decide if fossil fuels should be banned to address climate change. The questions asked the children to think about how people might vote if they were an owner of a coal mining company, or if they had family members who worked in a coal mine and could lose their jobs, or if they were concerned about the environment. The idea was to get them thinking from different people’s points of view, to understand why someone might vote either yes or no. And then we talked about whether a decision like this should be made by a public vote, or if it should be made by government officials without a public vote.

It was an interesting discussion. Also, I think I have almost all the kids’ names learnt. We’ll see in a couple of weeks when I have them next. I’ll miss next week’s class because of my planned holiday trip.

I worked more on getting comics buffered for the week away, and took Scully to the park for a bit of ball chasing and running around.

For dinner I made quiche with potato and cauliflower in the filling. We’re moving into the pre-vacation phase of using up all the vegetables and other perishable food, which always results in some interesting hodge-podge dinners.

New content today:

Hitting the golf course again

I haven’t played golf on a full sized course for several weeks, but today was the morning. I got out soon after sunrise, with the morning dew still on the grass. The season is changing as we move into autumn, with sunrise coming later, and the mornings (and days) getting cooler.

My driving today was pretty good – I’m very pleased with the improvement in consistency since I had that lesson before Christmas. But putting let me down. On one hole I landed a tee shot on the green, but then proceeded to take 4 putts to sink it, scoring a 5 on the par 3 hole.

Here’s hole 4, with ball tracks through the dew showing my putts. The tracks coming from the bottom are both short chips onto the green, so the left ball needed just one putt, but I needed two putts for the right ball. The tee for this hole is visible in the background across the creek gully.

Hole 4 Lane Cove

Back home I worked on new Darths & Droids strips, setting up a buffer to last through next week when I’ll be away on that short holiday.

Not much else to report.

New content today:

Outschool class 2

This morning I taught my second class on Outschool. It was another session of the class on Human Vision. Again I had only one student, but I don’t mind that as it’s good to get comfortable with small numbers of students before having to handle multiple all at the same time. This time it was a boy, and he seemed to to enjoy the class.

I spent much of the rest of the day assembling the batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips that I photographed yesterday. I’ve also been helping my friend with his Bisecting History Twitter project, by finding interesting events for different dates. We’re putting in quite a bit of research for this thing. And I’m incidentally learning the relative timing sequence of various events that you don’t normally think of as related to one another, such as certain books being published in the same year as certain wars or scientific discoveries, and so on.

Not much more to report. I’m pretty much racing to get everything done that I need to before heading out on a road trip holiday with my wife next week.

New content today:

Churning Irregularly

I spent most of Sunday working on Irregular Webcomic! strips. In the morning I finished writing the new batch, and then after lunch I spent the afternoon photographing them all.

In between I went for a long walk with my wife and Scully. Normally we do a big walk on Sunday mornings, but she went for a morning tea with her mother and brother today, so we did the walk after lunch.

I picked some different music to listen to while working today. Normally I go for something in the rock genre, or perhaps movie soundtracks if I want something without lyrics to be less distracting. But today I went for Beethoven – the 6th and 9th symphonies. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to these, but I just felt like it today.

New content today:

Holiday Saturday

My wife is on three weeks leave from work, beginning today. She kicked it off by doing a bunch of sewing for the dog bandanas she’s started making. I asked the market organisers for one of the markets I do if I can take some of her bandanas to sell along with my photography, and they said that would be fine. So next time I’m there we’ll see if we can sell some of them.

I worked on Irregular Webcomic! strips today – starting to write a new batch of comics. I want to get this batch completed before we go on a short road trip in just over a week. We’re planning to drive up the coast and spend a few days away with Scully. We found a nice hotel that allows dogs in some of the rooms, so that should be cool.

I went out with Scully to the fish & chip shop for lunch today. We went out to my favourite local lookout spot to eat and watch the view.

And that’s about the whole day.

New content today:

Multitasking Friday

So many things:

  • Took Scully for a long walk this morning to distract her from the fact that my wife was going to work without her. She gets upset if my wife leaves home and leaves her behind – but is okay if I take her out for a walk, and get back home and my wife isn’t here.
  • A bit later I took Scully to doggie daycare, which was the reason why my wife didn’t take her to work like usual.
  • Got home and started working on some comics.
  • Realised I was supposed to do the grocery shopping today! Raced off to the supermarket.
  • Had some sushi for lunch. Since I was out at the shops at lunch time now.
  • Worked some more on comics.
  • Went to pick up Scully from daycare.
  • Went out for dinner to the local pizza place with wife and Scully
  • Now doing inter-calary fortnightly games night online with the guys. We’re playing Draftosaurus.

New content today:

Run, Forrest, Run!

I went running today for the first time since Monday last week (10 days ago). I intended to do a run earlier than this, but circumstances conspired to keep me busy during the cool mornings. It was a warm sunny morning today, and I felt out of practice and like I was going very slowly. I was prepared for a bed time…

But I was surprised when I finished the 5 kilometres and found my time to be 27:58, which is my best time on this particular route. So that was pretty good!

More comic writing work today. I need to get ahead in the buffering because my wife and I have a short road trip holiday planned in a couple of weeks.

New content today:

Voting and baking

Today was the second Ethics class of the year, and the first proper topic after last week’s introductory lesson. The topic is voting, and we started with a discussion of two students who wanted to be elected to the Student Representative Council at their school. One wants to tackle several thought-out issues, while the other just wants some cricket nets installed in the playground so he and his friends can play cricket – probably to the detriment of everyone else who will have less playground space. The first fears the second is more popular and so might win the election.

The discussion tackled the questions of whether it’s okay to vote for someone just because you like them, rather than thinking about their policies, and whether everybody should be allowed to vote, even if they don’t care about the issues. We had a lively discussion, with the kids bringing up various points, such as criminals being allowed to vote. It was really good, and again after last week I was pleased to see that this group is so much better behaved than a few of the kids I had last year.

At the end of the class, as they were leaving, I overhead one of the girls say to another, “That was the best Ethics class ever! Usually they’re really boring.” So that was pretty satisfying! I’m really looking forward to this year of classes with this group.

For dinner tonight I made a special fun dish: miso baked cauliflower.

Miso cauliflower bomb

The basic baked cauliflower is pretty straightforward. The real pizzazz comes form the garnish. Cashew honey cream and pomegranate:

Miso cauliflower bomb

Toasted sesame and sunflower seeds:

Miso cauliflower bomb

Chopped green chili and mint leaves:

Miso cauliflower bomb

The cauliflower cost I think $1.69. The garnish ingredients were over $10. But delicious!

New content today:

Refilling the buffer

Today I dedicated to making new Darths & Droids comic. The buffer of completed strips got pretty empty over the past week as I spent a lot of time working on my Outschool class material for yesterday’s class. But now that’s done, I can get back into the comic production pipeline.

In other news, a friend and one of the the co-authors of Darths & Droids has launched a new Twitter account, called Bisecting History. The concept is to find pairs of historical events such that one is exactly twice as old as the other, to the day. For example, the launch fact, posted yesterday on 1 March:

Today, The Office (US) is as old as the Dilbert comic strip was on the day that The Office first aired. Down to the day, each span exactly 5821 days.

Here at BisectingHistory, we find all the crazy coincidences that arise from folding history back upon itself.

And today’s tweet for 2 March:

Today, one of the most influential video games of all time, Doom, is as old as colour TV was when Doom was first released. A span of 9944 days ago, and 9944 days before that – each just over 27 years. Who else feels old armed with this knowledge?

He has some really interesting ones lined up for the next month, so take a look!

New content today: