tangled threads

i've been living the slow stitch life, working away at the binding on "citrus season," but none too quickly. it could have been done in a day or two, if i hadn't kept taking internet breaks to tool around quilt blogs (still gathering info there) and check in on instagram.

last night we were heading into LA and i knew with the traffic we'd be in the car well over an hour, maybe two. since i wasn't driving, i brought along my handwork. i ran into some snags right off the bat! 

somehow, when i made my securing knot at the end, everything got tangled up. i worked on it for a minute, but i still had a little tiny knot in one side of the thread once i got the major tangles teased out. it seemed like it was tiny enough that it wouldn't hold me back. i didn't want to waste the thread or start over with the whole threading the needle and securing process, so i proceeded to try using the thread as is.

mistake.

i barely got it secured to the quilt before more problems arose involving worse tangles and i had to just scrap the whole thing anyway. when am i gonna learn an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? just fix problems up front when they occur. that would have saved me time if it didn't save me thread.

a stitch in time saves nine.

or a fix in time saves nine (minutes)?

 

palm trees and red lights, bumper-to-bumper

LA traffic is no joke! any time we have to go anywhere inland we are in for a slow crawl. doesn't matter the time of day. this trip wasn't too bad, actually. it wasn't always stop-and-go and there were occasionally spaces between cars. it was still over an hour, so i had plenty of time for more stitching despite losing some with the snarled, snagged threads.

further down the road, as i was tying off my thread length, i didn't leave enough room for myself. silly me. i always try to eek out as much of the thread as i can and sometimes that comes back to bite me. my thread snapped as i was trying to tie it off. i was then left with two little tails that needed to be tied together, which is not the most secure way to do things. and it was so fiddly! took me a couple of minutes of licking threads, squinting, and trying to get them to knot together.

traffic was looking better on our side than across the barricade by then. anytime we go anywhere, i usually add 30 minutes to the estimated travel time to give myself wiggle room. this time we didn't have any spare time(because traffic was bad when my husband returned home from surfing to get me). however, the maps app estimated our arrival time pretty accurately this trip, which was really lucky.

we made it on time and had a lovely evening with the two girls at the los angeles temple, followed by persian food for dinner.

i got maybe another quarter of the stitching done on the road. should be able to finish it up soon.

side note: here's another thought i've had about my blogging/quilting interface, an idea echoed in a comment juliann made to me about blogging because i quilt vs. quilting because i blog - i'm trying to document my quilt process in this space. to me, that means i capture and share small moments like this to talk about. taking photos to share along the way that i wouldn't take just for myself personally is different to me than making things for content. i saw this thread situation that occurred organically as a chance to share one of the small things that goes into quilting, to show that it's not all smooth sailing, that i make mistakes and have troubles, too. then i found myself taking photos of tangled or broken threads and traffic. this has to do with wanting to examine and share part of the process rather than focus solely on the finished project. (if you're a professional who needs to make for content, that's fine! i'm talking about my goals as a hobbyist who doens't want to get too lost in this space.)

thanks to those of you who have engaged the blog talk with me. it's nice to know i'm not alone in my musings.