Be the change you want to see.

This morning and got up earlier than I usually do on a Sunday. I had an appointment starting at 11:00 a.m. for a 2-hour training on the embroidery machine at the Maker Nexus We just recently joined. I got my breakfast, and got dressed, was mostly ready by 10:00 which i was proud of. Got there with 15 minutes to spare, also proud of that. It's just over in Sunnyvale so not very far, but it was the first time I'd driven for myself.

I met Carmen the teacher for this (they call em BOSS classes, you're THE BOSS of that specific machine sounds like!) She got my badge, showed me the process for badging in and checking in checking out & where we were going to be working.

I got a lot of relief for my anxiety on trying a new thing from the fact that I could literally use the bathroom there. And as it turned out I needed to this morning though I'd eaten something last night for dinner that I don't usually eat and that had its usual consequences!

The machine I was learning on is a 15 thread embroidery machine, circa 2004, so not a touch screen but it does have a computer screen, you transfer designs to the computer on the embroidery machine by uploading the pattern to a thumb drive maximum size two gigs. Which part of me goes lawl and part of me is like of course 2005.

Carmen showed me a variety of samples: printouts that she and other people had done for patterns and also stitching samples that people had done. It's got a lot of possible subtlety to the end product. If the pattern design is done well then the end product is quite lovely and detailed. But it's all in the question of how good is the design that you bought. Or created, Once you learn the design software. Which is beyond the scope for me to buy that design software that they're using, the company wants a thousand bucks for the license. Hence why I will be using the maker Nexus copy of the software.

She showed me a few examples of here's how you access existing patterns that are already uploaded to the machine, here's how you get a pattern off of the laptop to the thumb drive to the embroidery machine and then download it which sounds a lot easier than it actually is. The user interface for the embroidery machine is elderly and non-intuitive, it's definitely usable but it's going to take practice to get it to do what you want.

The easy part relatively speaking is the mechanical nature of the machine. Rethreading the machine is just more complicated version of how I thread my sewing machine. The bobbin thread only requires one additional tiny gesture to anchor the bobbin thread into what she called a pigtail it was a tiny metal curlicue that comes off of the space where on my machine the bobbin would just have a little gap that would feed the thread but they need a lot more control I guess with this particular embroidery machine. We did rethread one bobbin so I could see how it was done It's a fussy process but doable and she showed me the tools that make it a little easier, I have some very fine needles that are meant to be used for threading seed beads, and my jewelry supplies and she was using one of those to bring the thread down from the embroidery thread cone through the home mechanism and then through the last place that it needs to go so that the machine will pick it up and will use it appropriately. So the mechanical stuff is not even all that difficult It's really going to be the programming and finding my way through the interfaces of unfamiliar software and unfamiliar control panel.

One of the designs that was already installed on the pattern design software would make a beautiful Burning Man patch. It was a kind of a fluid,free form heart with two almost touching curlicues at the place where the heart comes to a point at the top? and it was just like the legs and arms of the symbol for the man and inside the heart it said you are so loved! I might just knock a few of those out as prototypes for friends to get started.

At some point I'd like to create some custom patches for friends and family, and I'd like to do some business that I can use to decorate my blue jeans. I think ivy or flowers like a climbing line or morning glories would be delightful and ridiculous!

We finished up with the class about a half an hour early, right around 12:30. I had a good size breakfast so I wasn't hungry, and my friend Tox had offered me to come over and harvest some of his veggies. He has a hydroponic garden.

It was my first time seeing it. Wow, what a hydroponic garden! He had peppers growing all the way up to the top of the trellis and he had basil that was taller than me and he had tomato plants occupying the entire side yard of his house like you could not walk back there because they had grown over the pathway! He has a small sage bush, but like just the basil and the peppers themselves alone well worth the trip I got five or six cherry tomatoes, and multiple different kinds of peppers. Thai chili peppers in this luminous red a different varietal in yellow, tinged orange? And I accidentally broke off some branches that included green peppers so I'll probably do those up as a separate batch of vinegar chili peppers for Jeff, and then have a different batch for the yellow and a different batch for the red. He had long Chipotle peppers that were nearly as long as my forearm! Giant healthy beautiful untouched by insects beautiful peppers!

Now I understand better why my husband wants to do a hydroponic garden.

Unfortunately San Jose is better for that kind of gardening endeavor. It has a delightful microclimate that is perfect for tomatoes and figs and quite a few other Mediterranean things. But something about just coming a few miles further up the peninsula to the town where I live, and conditions are radically different.

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Came home to be reminded that my adopted Seester was visiting Jeff today! So while I didn't get all the deets of some recent adventures she's been having, I did get a nice check in and short visit at a social distance on our back patio.

While I enjoyed her company I agree with her about the fact that since pandemic and shelter in place has started it's been hard to get me time. I am a lot more of an introvert, Jeff is more an extrovert, and my seester similarly needed time that was just for her, without her spouse: so not 24/7 in the same space as him, I think that's more accurate. And I agree with that and Jeff agrees similarly, that he needs time without me. While that hurt once upon a time it doesn't anymore. It makes a lot more sense now.

Thanks for listening, it helps a lot to be able to clear my head by dumping what happened here. Today was an unusually eventful day, and this weekend was an unusually eventful weekend!

Time to go try and put some words in on my October writing project which is a little bit less than daily but all words are good words in this case!