Honolulu fabric arrived today, with a story.

On May 4, a Saturday afternoon, Shannon and I shipped my Kaimuki Dry Goods fabric in a medium flat rate box to my parents home in NJ.

The tracking showed it left Honolulu, and then....nothing!  Scheduled delivery date May 7.

Today the fabric showed up, May 17.

My mom wrote, "When we got home there was a big box on the front porch. It said $9.75 due. It had tape around it that said "received in damaged condition." I hope everything is there. Certainly this is better than nothing."

I asked for pictures of the box, and for them to open the box and determine what was inside.

My Dad wrote, "Here is what we received.  This is the outer box."



I blurred out the address.

Dad continued, "This is the inner box. It came wrapped in a plastic bag. The bag has some kind of fluid on it in the upper right hand corner. When I opened the plastic bag the inner box appeared to be sealed and unopened. In fact it took quite a bit of effort to pull the box open."

The navy blue circle eyelet is the most expensive fabric I've ever bought, at $23 a yard.

Dad continued on, "When I opened the sealed inner box these 5 fabric samples were inside. The cat fabric and the blue check fabric have a darkened corner from some kind of sticky fluid that you can see in the pictures. They all have this fluid on them in varying degrees. When you touch the sticky area the fluid comes off on your hands. It appears to be the dried residue of pineapple juice. Mom and I both got it on our hands and it washed off easily in hot soapy water."

I laughed out loud, pineapple juice! Yes, I thought about keeping the fabric in the plastic bag and jamming it in the box, but it seemed like I could pack the box better without the confines of the bag.

Another message from Dad, "After sending you the first email I went and looked in the inner box again and I found these three patches.  There is some sticky stuff on the paper on which the patches is mounted but the patches themselves appear to be clean."

The tracking still shows it left Honolulu, then nothing.

How Hawaiian, my fabric, with pineapple juice.  I love it.  It's a happy ending for my $176 purchase.   I'm so excited it is here!   :)

I need to get to sleep soon, I have a very big day ahead tmw!  Big weekend, actually.

Aloha!  Be well!!

My fabric haul from San Fran, Honolulu and San Diego

Here's all the fabric I bought on my travels, except for Kaimuki.  Kaimuki wouldn't ship, so Shannon and I mailed the fabric from the post office. Tracking shows it made its way to a sorting facility in Honolulu, then departed Honolulu, and then....nothing..  May 7 estimated arrival date.  Today is May 12.  So...I'm giving it another 2 weeks to show up.  I mean, it has to show up.  I paid $23 a yard for some of that fabric!!!


The haul

Here's what I bought at Discount Fabrics in San Diego with Elizabeth.

Black stretch lace, purple cotton knit, because I want to make a shirt like KID, MD.

Funky alpahbet viscose, purple and navy luscious double knit, and metallic piping from Gwen Couture.
Gwen knows how to package-she wrapped the fabric in tissue paper first, and then put it in a plastic bag. And she included those "Made in USA" labels--how great is that??  Such a neat surprise.

Here's the motherload from Stone Mountain and Daughter:

Sweater knits, double knite, cotton knits, knits knits knits.  The black knit is black on one side and sort of an indeterminate color on the other.

More double knits including elusive turquoise; stretchy sequins and pink flower ribbon.

I saw my parents for Mother's Day today.  Dad showed me his sewing area in the basement.

LOVE how he's annotated his serger.

Lilacs from my parents yard. I love them! (my parents and the lilacs).

Anyhoo, I am feeling completely overwhelmed, but that is a post for another day.

Be well and good night!

Finally! My Pattern Review 2013 San Francisco Recap

View from my hotel room

Finally darlings, it's the Pattern Review 2013 San Francisco Recap, Kyle style.

Thursday:  Dinner and registration.  Sadly I took no pix but I finally got to meet PR member marec who has commented on so many of my pattern reviews.  Very cool to meet her and meet some new folks too, plus catch up with my PR conference peeps.

Friday: Vogue Fit Goddess Sandra Betzina spent much of the day talking about fit. Of note, you don't have to make a muslin of the whole garment, just your "problem fitting" area.  Interesting.

Me in McCall's 6078 and J Stern Design Jeans, with Fit Goddess Sandra Betzina

Loved that Sandra brought muslins of a shirt, a Chanel jacket and her Craftsy pants in all sizes.  I learned the size C Chanel jacket fits with really no alterations, and the C pants fit well in the butt and waist (say what??  that's awesome!) and just need to be taken in a little at the hip.

Here's one of the many pattern exchange tables:


I brought 19 patterns. Broke my promise to not take any but I only took one; the Colette Clover pattern. I could not resist a $20 pattern that I was planning on buying!

Lunch was with Rose in SV (so happy to see her again!), SunnyGal Beth (so excited to finally meet her and tell her how I love her invisible zip tutorial. Plus she provided loads of Oahu recommendations!), Neefer (so nice to meet you) and moi with my stitched-at-the-last-minute "Keep Calm and Sew On" bag.

We had fun with the step and repeat.

me and Bonnie


Jacqui and Deepika in the PR downloadable Summer Street Dress 
Fri night was the big group dinner out.  There were loads of raffles.  Look at what Elnora won!

Yes, we walked back to the hotel with Elnora's new pattern peeking up out of her bag the whole time.

Saturday: Saturday we broke off into smaller groups for shopping.
Jacqui tears into the knits aisle at Stone Mountain.
Like Lee mentioned in her recap, I too suddenly had the urge to see Stone Mountain and Daughter fabrics after Sandra Betzina mentioned the store every few minutes on Saturday. Marci drove a carful of us out there!   Thank you Marci!

Thankfully that was our first stop, and was several other carfuls first stops as well.

Lee and I had a nice chat in line. My cord jacket is Simplicity 2508. 

Here was the line.

This was the only fabric I bought in SF, for which I was very proud.


Amity (who had so many nice things to say about my blog!) and her Minoru jacket



Me and Deepika, founder of Pattern Review

Me and Claudine, I think we were the only Jersey girls in attendance.
Next we hit up Discount Fabrics:

This is where they had $2.98 denim!

But I was pacing myself and didn't buy anything.

We had lunch in Berkeley; Janice, Marci, me, Jacqui, and Connie.
Then we went to Lacis which is a museum and supply shop.

This is what I bought at Lacis:


But Lacis had all sorts of things, including "heads" for making hats.

Then over to Blue Moon where I didn't buy anything, then Fabrix, where I bought zippers that were 25 cents each. I thought the metal zips were a great bargain, and would be good for when I finally get around to making zipper pouches.



And then there was Britex.  It was my sixth fabric store of the day, with four floors of fabric with prices in the luxury range (like, $49, $79, $99 a yard, and UP. Elizabeth said she saw fabric there for $249 a yard.  Two hundred forty nine dollars!  a yard!).

At that point, I was fabric fatigued. as usual. I was also feeling quite smug. I had only bought 15.75 yards in SF. But now that I have concluded my grand fabric tour of Hawaii and California, and add the numbers: 15.75 Stone Mtn and Daughter in SF
9.00 Kaimuki Dry Goods in Honolulu with MushyWear
9.50 Gwen Couture in SD with SEWN
2.50 at Discount Fabrics in SD with SEWN
The total = 36.75 yards.

Sigh. Still better than 47+1 free yard  in NYC last year.

Thank you to Bonnie, Connie, Kathy R and Deepika, and all volunteers who made it such a great weekend!

PR weekend is in Austin next year May 2-4, I totally encourage you to attend!  Start saving and planning now.  TexStyles (and Leslie in Austin) will make sure we have a blast.  I guarantee it.

Other resources:
PR weekend 2013 Flickr pool

My recap of PR weekend 2012 NYC
My recap of PR Day 2011 Austin
My recap of PR weekend 2011 Chicago
My recap of PR weekend 2010 Philly

Blogger meetup with Elizabeth from SEWN

At Gwen Couture fabrics
For my final day in San Diego, I met up with Elizabeth from SEWN.  We first met at PR weekend Philly in 2010 and have seen each other, even if only for a minute, at each PR weekend since.

I recognized the fabric  for her skirt in the picture above--she bought it in SF at PR weekend and sewed it up right away! I don't remember who I was with who also bought that fabric but it was popular.


Gwen Couture entrance
First we hit up Gwen Couture in La Jolla.   The selection is really small--this may be the smallest fabric store I've ever been to-- but a lot of good stuff awaits, including one of the eyelets I bought in Hawaii at Kaimuki (same price as Kaimuki, too).

I know it's not surprising that I bought some great RPL ponte knit in eggplant and navy, but what is surprising is the alphabet knit I bought.  I can see this as a great tee to wear under a cardi, plus it's incredibly soft. And check out that metallic piping!


Antoinette has been looking for a black and white striped knit--would either of these work?

Then we went to Discount Fabrics.  I just learned there are two locations in SD, one of which is in an old movie theater.  We went to the one on W Morena, near-ish the Sea World.   This store reminded me so much of Cloth World--in NJ, Cloth World was (to me) the predecessor of Joann Fabrics.  Cloth World had tons of round tables with bolts of fabric along the circumference, and Discount Fabrics does too.  Kind of a blast from the past--they even had HBO fabric circa 2007.  I picked up a stretch lace and a knit.  I want to make the raglan sleeved shirt KID MD made a few weeks back.

We had lunch at a BBQ joint and had a fun convo.  Thanks for meeting up with me, Elizabeth.  You can read her post about the day here.

Later I went down to the Children's Cove in La Jolla to look at the seals.  The seals are controversial for reasons I won't go into here, but I've loved them since first laying eyes on them in 2004.

There were TONS of them on the beach last night. Tons and tons of them.

Look at them all!  If you think it's a rock, it's most likely a seal.

yeah

La Jolla palm trees


I watched most of the sunset before running back to my room because it was suddenly so cold.

I got up at 3:45am today to make my 6:25am flight, and only had 3 hours of sleep last night. I'm off work one more day then go back on Friday. It feels so weird to be home, like I haven't been here for months, not two weeks.  Spring has sprung!  But now, sleepy town...

Be well!

That Viking 6570 is smoking, and not in a good way

ETA:  Here's a pic of the sewing machine that smoked, courtesy of Michele's husband Wolfgang:

Original post:


Good morning from La Jolla! I had a lovely day yesterday with my friend Michele. I don't think I've seen her since 2005, so it was a real treat! After meeting for lunch we spent the afternoon at the San Diego Zoo.

She told me to say "zebra" instead of cheese. :)

and here she is saying Zebra!

We carried umbrellas as it was raining in the morning...it insured it would not rain in the afternoon. Such a pleasant afternoon too. The last time I was at the SDZ was a hot sunny day in 2004. The cooler weather and overcast skies made the zoo so much nicer!

After the zoo we went back to Michele's house where she cooked me dinner. She is a gourmet chef and made a scrumptious dinner of her own handmade pasta and meat ragu sauce, with a salad of goat cheese mozzarella, tomatoes and basil from her own garden.  This meal was at my request--I remembered her cooking it the last time I was there and loving it.
Delicious!
And for dessert, homemade brownies with crystallized violets.  YUM!    I felt so lucky to see her again and spend some time just chatting and catching up.

Michele has a red (yes, red!  Such a pretty machine!) Viking 6570 sewing machine purchased on ebay. She calls it Scarlett.  She sewed on it a little while and had it serviced last year but had not used it since the servicing.  I had heard others write about sewing machine cams before, but had never seen one in person.   I learned a lot:

• finally saw a cam in person
• learned that Viking and Husqvarna are the same brand, just depends on your location
• first time threading a machine where you don't exclusively thread right to left.
• first time winding a bobbin where the bobbin winder was on the bottom right side of the machine
• first time winding a bobbin where I didn't have to unthread the machine first (that is super handy!)
• first time inserting a bobbin where the bobbin case is not the drop-in style.

So I was able to :

• thread the machine
• wind the bobbin
• sew a straight stitch
• sew a zigzag stitch
• find the manual cutter for the bobbin and the needle threads

It was solidly stitching and seemed like it could be a workhorse sewing machine.

It had a switch on the right side for the needle up/down function.  There was nothing in the manual about it, and later realized the manual was not for her model of sewing machine.  I thought it might mean inserting the needle in the fabric for you and raising it up when you're done, but it didn't seem to do anything (later I learned it's to determine what position the needle should be in when you stop sewing--I had noticed the needle was always up when I stopped sewing, but didn't know that was the reason why).

So then I asked Michele if she wanted to try it herself, while I was there, to make sure she could do all those things too.

As she was reaching for the wheel on the right side of the machine, the machine suddenly goes "pop pop" and starts SMOKING.  What a foul smell too!  I unplugged the machine and carried it outside where we stared at it wondering what just happened!

Then we googled and found this thread which says her 6570 smokes when she uses the needle up/down function but not when she "turns the feature off".    I think I switched the switch downward.  It must have been in the up position while I was doing my tests.  I guess turning the feature off means setting it to neutral, I don't know because the manual is not for her model of machine.    I had no idea that something like that would happen!

I just found this thread on the PR website about the 6570 smoking after 5-10 minutes of use...

This post has lots of pix of the 6570 including the needle up/down switch on the side in the 5th picture.  You can see the up/N/down, where N is neutral, I guess.  I think I had left the switch in the down position.  UGH!

Also found some posts on line about smoking meaning the capacitor has burned out.

Anyway, if you have ideas, let me know in the comments.  Has your sewing machine ever started smoking??

I'm sorry I broke your machine, Michele!    I've sewn for 25 years and nothing like that has ever happened to me before.

Now I'm off soon to meet Elizabeth from SEWN for some fabric shopping!

Meeting Shannon from MushyWear!!

Aloha peeps!  This post is full of "first time for me" items.

At Kaimuki Dry Goods

Saturday was very special because Shannon from MushyWear flew from Maui over to Oahu to visit me!
Yes!
Her write up of the day is here.

Shannon is warm, patient, kind, gentle, incredibly easy going, a real sweetheart.  And not only can she sew professional RTW-style garments, but she can pop the cover back on your side mirror when you, you know, knock it off when you try to squeeze your full size rental into a tiny parking space...but let's go back to the beginning.

I felt so lucky when I asked Shannon if she would be willing to come visit me on Oahu and she said yes. What a gift!

So here's how it all went down:  We had breakfast at my hotel and it was just so cool to finally meet and have loads of time to chat.  And I might have talked her ear off!  Like Shannon mentioned on her blog, we went to Kaimuki Dry Goods at the recommendation of Beth from SunnyGal--mahalo Beth!.  (Christiana, you asked about fabric on Oahu.  Kaimuki is pretty close to Waikiki, but not in walking distance.  I had a car so we drove but it might be possible that TheBus goes there (yes, the bus system is called TheBus). 


In the Hawaiian print fabric section of Kaimuki, with a minky quilt hanging in the window

Kaimuki is definitely the fabric store for fashion fabric.  All sorts of gems await in this store--an excellent selection of knits (and you know I love knits!), rayons, cottons, eyelets in patterns that we had never seen before, gingham galore, novelty fabrics, Japanese fabrics, and even a bit of flannel.  And they had loads of minky (while i've never sewn with Minky, I have a friend who churns out baby blankets as fast as her friends have babies, and she would die at the printed minky selection!)  I really enjoyed perusing the selection.  They even had cool patches, which I use for decorating underwear.  It's hard to find patches that aren't big and aren't too child like.  Also lots of good notions.    Definitely the store to go to for fabric on Oahu.  It is a bit pricy but it seems like high quality stuff. Everything in Hawaii is expensive because it's all shipped in.


Insert joke about "buying fabric with a moving truck in the background" here 

Next we went to Fabric Mart.  Now, this is Fabric Mart Hawaiian Style.  It's not the Fabric Mart that everyone blogs about (that Fabric Mart is in Pennsylvania).  If you need a Hawaiian printed fabric, then this is the store for you.  It was a bit overwhelming for me.  (Christiana, this store is maybe 10 min driving from Kaimuki.)




Then we went to lunch, also on SunnyGal's recommendation (and that is where I knocked the cover off the side mirror in a too-small space in a parking garage that had lots of inconveniently placed concrete poles.  Honestly, I'm not used to driving a full sized car and I really laughed at myself when it happened).

After lunch we were going to go to the North Shore to see the turtles on the beach and check out Haleiwa, but the GPS was saying it was going to take a hour to get there, so we went to Liliha Bakery instead,  which was highly ranked on Trip Advisor, to get the cream puffs.  We both got the chocolate ones, just one each.  We should have bought half a dozen and split them.  SO GOOD.  And this is when we were able to pop the cover back on the side mirror.  I didn't want to be doing that in front of the valets at the hotel, women driver stereotypes and all that.


Shannon was totally understanding about then stopping at the PO to ship my fabric back to the mainland.  (Long story short, Kaimuki doesn't ship).  Let's hear it for the flat rate boxes with the peel and stick sealant and for automated postal centers that let you ship anytime of day or night!   By then the Waikiki traffic was really crazy and slow going.  But we made it back to the hotel to sit on the balcony and eat the cream puffs and watch and listen to Waikiki before heading over to the airport for her flight back to Maui.   I swear I saw her flight leave, from the balcony of my hotel room.    I waived!

We covered so much ground: blogs, blog names, blog history, our own histories, our families, sewing, fitting, tv shows about sewing, etsy, Hawaii; it was great!  And throughout the day I showed her the tweets and comments I was getting on my blog about her--she's a sewing superstar!

Shannon even brought me two gifts:  a Maui t-shirt, which I wore on the plane today--it fits great and is super comfy--I know it is destined to become a favorite--actually it already is one--and an original MushyWear Made in Maui bag!!   I treated her to some wonder tape from Kaimuki, which she's never used before, and I want to send her some special fold over elastic.  :)




Love that label!!

Thank you Shannon so very much!  for flying over, for the gifts, and for spending time with me!  and again thank you to Beth for the recommendations, it was like you were there with us in spirit, guiding us to all that fabric!

So this morning I said goodbye to Waikiki,  flew to San Diego and am here for 3 nights....

but still, aloha!