springtime follies

That's Bob the chimney sweep up on top of the house yesterday afternoon.  Not actually cleaning the chimney of soot, but cleaning out the animal that fell in there!  We could hear something moving around in the stovepipe that hooks to the woodstove, but haven't yet removed the critter.  The hope was that dropping the chimney sweeper thing down would force the animal to the bottom of the chimney where there is a cleanout hatch in the basement.  But the plan failed when the sweeper thing got hung up partway down.  Then all was quiet for a long time, until this afternoon when I am alone in the house and I can hear some movement in there again.  At this point, there's not much more we can do except check the hatch periodically.  This is not the first time we have had creatures in the chimney.  And see right next to the stones, there is a little board that looks like a patch on the overhang?  That's where the squirrels created their main entrance last spring.

This morning I have been working on the longarm (and not accomplishing much due to thread problems and way too much time with the seam ripper) and listening to some past programs on American Patchwork and Quilting radio.  There is a lot of good information shared there and it's all available for free to anyone who is interested.  Just now I listened to the program from 2/27 and learned a lot about hand dyed fabrics and how to handle problems with fabric dyes that run.  This is a good reference article on colorfastness.

I'm feeling bad for local baseball fans this afternoon, it is the home opener for the Twins and it is 45 degrees and windy!  Brrr!  I am really hoping for some heat soon to get my rhubarb growing faster, I have found a good recipe for rhubarb bread pudding that I want to try.  We have enjoyed some asparagus from the garden already, too.

a laundry lesson

I had one of those 'I can't believe this happened' moments recently after I washed this quilt.

It had been on our bed for awhile and was due for some cleaning. I don't wash my quilts very much, and I don't often pre-wash the fabrics before cutting and sewing. It was made of good quality fabrics that came from Bear Patch, designed by Kaye England and used for a class I taught. I should have taken a close-up picture of it after that first wash so you could understand my dismay. There were reddish dye splotches all over the light colored areas. Horrors! I was so disgusted that I just folded it up and put it out of sight.

Last time I was out running errands, I stopped at a WalMart to look for Shout Color Catcher sheets (our local grocery store, Soderquist's, doesn't stock them).

That purplish blob in front of the box is what happened to the plain white color catcher sheet after it went through another wash with my poor quilt. I also threw in that cloth just to the left which is another 'dye magnet' cloth that had been sort of off-white before it went in this load. It is a re-useable cloth, as opposed to the Shout product that is intended as one-time use. The Shout sheet is more like a paper towel/softener sheet.

Well, I couldn't be happier with the result--

No trace of excess dyes running where they aren't supposed to be! I really had not expected this to work as well as it did, but I am now a True Believer! If you want to give it a try, I even found this offer for a free sample. I have no idea how these products work, especially since the dye magnet cloth seems just like a piece of ordinary terry cloth, so maybe that's really all it is and I could just save a few cents and toss in a wash cloth. I was pretty amazed at the dark color that showed up on the Shout sheet, so I think that probably makes the expense justifiable!