A Star is Born

Not quite as exciting as cosmology or even celebritology, but I managed to get a stuffed animal (or rather a stuffed star) done in a few hours this morning.  I mostly wanted to see if the sewing machine was still running prior to taking off to the repair shop.  While the pattern ended up being a bit wasteful, and perhaps I should have made it a fish or a small whale, I had kind of set my mind on a star for my co-worker's daughter.  I'm not really sure if I would say it is a star or a starfish (obviously starfish don't have faces, as my daughter pointed out...).

Here are some of the steps along the way.  (I had planned on using embroidery thread but found it was completely unsuitable for the needles I had and this material, so I just doubled up on standard thread.)

The moment of truth

Ta-da!

Just add stuffing.

I think it came out pretty well all things considered.

Anyway, I ran over to the sewing machine store, and the man there said that since the tension was fine, there was no point in my spending the money to open the machine up, especially since over-oiling the machine won't do any good.  He suggested I just keep using it until it seizes up again.  So that was kind of anti-climatic and maybe a waste of time, but I can say he's honest (and I can carry on with these various projects).  I bought some additional needles for the machine, since I didn't have any spare ones, and I guess I will at least change needles before I start in on these quilts (or rather quilt tops).

Since I still had the ZipCar, I came back to the Home Depot at Gerrard Square and picked up some cinder blocks.  The goal is to block off this area under the deck where the raccoons had torn off part of this lattice work.  It won't stop them from reaching the garbage from the other direction, but this plus the chicken wire around the lower part of the deck plus not leaving food scraps out is meant to move them along to someone else's back yard.  I think they are still lurking around and we certainly still have squirrels, but I don't think they are camping out under the deck they way they used to.  Fingers crossed anyway.