Hot Tubs and Hot Projects!

if you are on Facebook or Instagram you may have seen this photo come through your news feed yesterday.

Or maybe not.  Because these days I can’t tell what Facebook chooses to send through your news feed, and if you have a business page like mine, Facebook is decreasing the presentation of business pages, showing less and less of our posts – unless we pay to have them seen by you.

One thing you can do to make SURE you see my posts is to make sure you have not only LIKED my page, but clicked FOLLOW, and gone even a bit further – click SHOW FIRST so that I am not buried so far down in your news feed that you never make it to where they choose to put me as a business page. 

Of course, it also helps to click like, and comment on my post, or comment to other people’s comments so that Facebook algorithms can determine that “Oh, she really wants to see this stuff.” And send you more.

And IF you have clicked FOLLOW and clicked SHOW FIRST you may have seen my post about these fun Diamond Tile blocks, featured in the May/June 2018 issue of Quiltmaker Magazine – on news stands now!

Do you recognize any of these?

I brought home a good sized bag of wonderful Gerald Roy scraps Cathy gifted to me during last month's 3 guild tour in Illinois. 1998 on the selvage! I was over the moon in love with these fabrics when they first came out, and there are still several yardage pieces in my stash just waiting for the right project. Classic never goes out of style.

Some of the pieces are small, some larger – but I thought it would be a fun way to use them if I combined them with other fabrics in my Diamond Tile blocks.

And then there were 7!

The far left block uses 2 of these pieces – the gold and the fun purple print as the cornerstones.  And in keeping with the decade, I threw in a gifted piece of Y2K fabric as background.

The center top block used one of the Gerald Roy fabrics as the large center square.  These are going to be fun – the center square is large enough to even fussy cut something if you want.

I’ll be posting my progress on these fun little blocks, and if you would like to join in for yourself, pick up a copy of the issue and dig right in.

I’ll be using the hash tags #addictedtoscraps and #diamondtilequilt. Tag your posts so I'll see what you are sharing.

This is an “unofficial” sew along – you can decide how many blocks to make and how you are going to set them.  I’ll be kitting a bunch of blocks up to take with me on the road – I leave for Napa, California on Friday.  

I’m not sure how *I* will set them yet, but it is likely there will be sashing involved – who wants to match all of those corners and points?

There is no deadline on these – just a sew at your own pace, and they would make a great Leader & Ender project if you, too are done with this year’s Checkerboard Rails challenge and are just looking for something to fill in the blanks until our new challenge is issued in July.

Hot Tub Acrobatics!

Friends Rick & Mona came up yesterday afternoon for THIS cabin addition – Remember they adopted our old hot tub last October because we needed one a bit bigger that sat deeper?

This is a long saga – it started back while I was in Illinois, the details coming by phone and by text while on the road.

We had ordered a hot tub via Amazon.  Simple.  Basic.  Deep, Not so many jets, all seats – no lounge chairs.

Delivery was delayed and delayed and delayed and upon a phone call, Amazon agreed to give us a shipping refund.

And then during the delay – the hot tub goes on SALE on their website.  A call to Amazon went round and round and round to honor the sale price since it hadn’t been delivered yet.  What would they rather have?  Us refuse delivery and simply re-order it at the new price?  So….the sale price was granted.

Then with delivery, one minute it is in New Jersey, and a few hours later – just a few…suddenly it is at the depot in North Carolina ready for pick up.  Is it here?  Is it there?  More calls to find where it really was.

Luckily the Hubster was in town and could go with the trailer to pick it up.  Yes, this is the right one, the label on the outside matches our order number.  Right serial number –—NO LOUNGE it says right there on the big orange sticker that can't be missed on the side of the tub.

Upon getting it home, and wanting to check under the shrink wrapping for any damage issues, the wrapping was peeled back in the corner to reveal ---Oh NO!  A LOUNGE! (And way way many more jets than the one we had purchased.)

Another call to Amazon.  Someone at the facility put the wrong outer sticker on this tub after shrink wrapping.

“This is not the tub we ordered.  We specifically ordered NO LOUNGE SEAT”

I can just imagine that Amazon was at a loss for what to do next – unhappy customer, wrong item, huge semi truck shipping bill, and more to pick it up and take it back and deliver the right one.

Another discount off of our sale price was offered, and with a sigh – we accepted.  We were tired of this runaround as well.  At this point any hot tub (at a discount) is better than no hot tub.

The hot tub has sat off to the side of my driveway at home – still on the trailer, waiting for the weather to improve enough that we could pull it up the steep 11% grade of the lane way up to the cabin.

As I am being driven to Ottawa, IL after my Chicago area gigs were done I get a phone call and the Hubster is laughing hysterically. (And I can imagine much fist-pumping going on as well.)

He found the hot tub listing of this model so he could read the specifics – offered by Costco.  This thing has Bluetooth speakers, a bazillion stainless steel jets – and was several thousand dollars MORE than the tub we originally ordered (That had been knocked down to free shipping for the delay, and sale price refund given, plus another refund for the hassle of sending the wrong thing so we would keep it and not send it back.)

And that brings us to YESTERDAY!  Click to play:

2 winches (Mona manning the one on the RZR) a man-made skid and roller log contraption, and a whole lot of ingenuity and man power! This was an amazing process to watch.

It was a long ordeal getting the hot tub to where it needs to be, and this is a LONG 8 minute video with photos and video clips included, but it is now on the deck – beautiful sight!

The moment of peril!

Rick is on the deck, Dave on the deck behind the hot tub, Mona bravely running the winch on the RZR.  I got off lucky with camera duty.

And did you see that it went from drizzle to rain to freezing rain --- and not long after – snow flurries!  This is a weird spring.

I am not complaining about that lounge chair!

Yes, the deck is reinforced.  There was a hot tub here before, and we are adding more to account for extra size and weight of this monster.

It will be a few weeks before we are up here again and can have Lee of “Handy Dan the Fan Man” fame (Remember, he got rid of the ghosts in our ceiling fans last year?) come and hook us all up.

At some point the plan is to build a gazebo type roof over the tub for all weather use – who knows when.

Evening hand stitching after all was said and done.

Miles of scrappy red binding yet to sew...

It’s a going home day.  I think we’ll be able to work in a Quilt-Cam before I leave on Friday. How does Wednesday evening 8pm Eastern sound?

I’ll let you know for sure as the day gets closer.

Quiltville Quote of the Day!

Here’s to good friends and all they add to our lives!

Have a wonderful Sunday!