In about five hours, I’ll head to the airport to pick up Mel for QuiltCon 3. If I were a super hostess, I suppose I’d be spending this time doing things like arranging flowers and making radish roses, but I am so not. There are clean sheets and new pillows on the guest bed, and I managed to find a set of towels that at least started out life the same color even if they don’t quite match now, and there’s food and drink in the kitchen to stave off starvation and thirst at least long enough to make it to a restaurant. That’s about the extent of my hostessing skills.
I did go out at lunch yesterday and get a new ironing board cover. Most people who come visit do not see my ironing board, but most people who come visit are not quilters. We don’t have anything as ambitious as last year’s big crazy project planned this weekend, but we will be doing some sewing and pressing. My ironing board cover is disgrace–when it got to the point that it started to wear through, I just put a couple layers of muslin underneath and kept going, so it’s seen more use than any ironing board cover should be expected to endure. Now it’s got a hole a couple inches long by an inch wide right in the center and is mostly not the original color due to repeated exposure to high heat (and a few fusible accidents didn’t help, either).
Unfortunately, the new ironing board cover sucks, at least when it comes to using it with a very hot iron, which it what I’m working with most of the time. I popped the new cover on last night and started to press seams open on some quilt blocks and had only done a couple when I felt the iron dragging, as if I’d gotten fusible web on it, except I wasn’t using fusible web. I looked at the sole plate and it did seem to have yuck on it. I did a couple more blocks and the problem got worse. Then I realized it was the lines on the cover–I like a grid so I can line up long seams with it and make sure they’re straight–the lines were printed with something that was melting onto the hot iron. Unbelievable. Did the manufacturer not anticipate that a customer might want to use their product this way? It’s not as if I have a special inferno heat setting on my iron. Stupid cover. So I stripped it off and will just have to reveal my true slovenly ironing self to Mel.
(Much as I do not recommend the JoAnn Sew Essentials Sewing Guide Cover & Pad–and evidently JoAnn is not too proud of it, either, since I couldn’t find it online– I do heartily recommend Dritz Iron-Off Hot Iron Cleaner. I used that and my iron was ready for action on the old cover in just a few minutes, all glide-y and happy once again. I plan to order a new June Tailor Press-Mate Ironing Board Cover to replace the one I have–I hope it hasn’t changed for the crappy since my last purchase.)
And now I need to get dressed and go to Nia practice. Practice, not class, because my instructor is away so we will be unsupervised. Since I’m the one who’s got the key to the studio (I’m so responsible and trustworthy, you know), I really do need to show up.
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