Engine System Service Due

Well yesterday was slightly eventful but turned out to be s really nIce day in the end. It all started with an engine warning light coming on in the car on the way to work. It had only been into the garage earlier in the week so we decided to turn around and take the car back to our local garage to see if they could correct the issue without us having to call out a recovery truck. They did manage to fix it without too much trouble - they had put in too much much oil during the service.

In the meantime though I had had to call into work to say that I wouldn't be able to make it. I may as well enjoy my day off if I'm getting one even it is completely unexpectedly. I booked to have my hair done which I was really pleased about as otherwise I was going to go next Saturday morning at 8am (I have another day off next weekend which I will tell you all about next week) and so I spent a lovely day being pampered and doing some sewing too.

I went home to have a lovely long shower and sew whilst watching a really old TV series (Cold Feet) that I have on DVD but never normally get the chance to watch as it is pretty girly, before going out to have my hair done and to collect the car after it was fixed. I started off with seeing some more of my rows together of the patchwork seat cover that I am making. This is as far as I got with the second set of rows for the patchwork befor my machine stopped working:

Once I got to this point my machine started not releasing the bobbin thread properly and started to eat the fabric into the underneath of the machine. It has done this a few times before and I have sorted it (with the hep of my hubby) by taking off the base plate of the machine, removing the bobbin and cleaning out the bobbin holder to get rid of any lint that had got stored in there. This time I had tried this and still couldn't get the machine to work. It was still doing the same thing of eating my fabric into the underneath of the machine.

I wasn't sure what else I could do the fix this so I decided to start cutting the pieces for my chicken instead of sewing and see if my husband could see something that I was doing wrong when he got home. I have cut out the larger pieces now - the only bits that I have not yet worked out how to do is the comb, wattle and beak as I am still not 100% sure of how to do these.

Once I had been to collect my hubby from work in our (now fixed) car I asked him to take a look at this. He found what we thought was a really large amount of lint underneath where the bobbin sits in my sewing machine. We removed this with tweezers - it did look a lot like a big tube of lint stuck well down into the bottom of the machine and then re-attached everything as it should be. I tested my machine and his now seems to be working fine. By this point it was fairly late so I have not done any more sewing with it since its test.

After more searching online last night it would seemed that we have removed the oil wick from my machine. I do think that this must have been damaged anyway as there was a small piece of plastic that also are out with it and the wick itself seemed to be really discintigrated. The machine should still work ok without this I believe but might need servicing regularly in order to keep the machine oiled. Hopefully if I can get it serviced soon this might be able to be replaced as well.

In the evening last night I did manage to make one more egg for the easter basket meaning that I have have 4 (almost) complete eggs. I just need to sew in the ends on this final one.

I think I will try to increase the pattern slightly to make some larger eggs. Doubling up the yarn on one of them worked ok but I think it would be good if I could also increase the pattern a little and make some slightly bigger eggs as well.

Finally this morning I have been getting ready to go to Wembley to watch Bristol City play Walsall. I don'T really support either team but I did live in Bristol for a while and my hubby's Dad also supports Bristol City so it seemed like it would be a good day out.

Luckily Bristol City and Nottingham Forest both play in red and white so this morning I found some scarves that I had knitted a long time ago but had never quite got around to sewing the ends in. A couple of minutes sewing this morning ensured that the ends were finally finished and these are now ready to go and be used at the match today.

Come on you reds! I know that chant as it can also be used by both clubs! Let's hope it's a good game.

Yesterday was definitely an eventful day but turned out to be very nice really - the after effects of one service fixed and now another one required for my sewing machine. All in all not too bad though - I definitely feel like I made the most of my unexpected day off, even without my sewing machine for a portion of the afternoon.