Four years later, I’ve finally purchased an Ebook reader

Aynaria 2 Comments

Well… after almost four years of stonewalling I’ve finally gone ahead and purchased my Ebook reader.

If you take a look back, you’ll see I first mentioned Ebook readers in 2010. Yeah… it’s taken that long for me to purchase one. However, I really couldn’t drag my feet any longer.  I already have three bookshelves that are 6′ in height. Those are full and I’ve been adding books to a smaller bookshelf. No…  I had no more excuses. I couldn’t say that I could not make the purchase. The money was there. I’ve been setting aside money for ‘fun stuff’ for years and have rarely taken advantage so I thought it was time to cash in.  I don’t like bills so this was paid in full. When it comes to priorities, I’m definitely not going to be spending money for a want if I really can’t afford to do so. That would be stupid. You see how long I held out, right? Four years. Nope…I don’t play  when it comes to finances. My wants never trump what I truly need.iPad 4 16gb

Wednesday afternoon, I purchased The Apple iPad (16gb) with retina display; 4th generation. No, I didn’t the iPad Air. That would feel even less ‘book like’ than the traditional iPad. 

I loved these commercials and I must say that I love most Apple products. I have a Macbook Pro, and have purchased other products from them because (for me) they simply work well.

1 TB Seagate Wireless Plus

Since it’s a good possibility that I’ll run out of storage space, eventually I’ll purchase an external wifi hard drive. I’m currently looking at the 1TB.

  • 1TB Seagate Wireless Plus
  • USB 3.0 adapter with detachable USB 3.0 cable
  • Compact USB wall charger
  • USB to DC cable
  • Quick start guide
  • 3-year limited warranty

Being an Amazon Prime member has  opened my virtual reading to a whole world of possibilities and I’ve eagerly taken advantage of what Amazon has to offer. I’ve already read three books (all free) from Amazon and I’m currently reading #4. I haven’t checked out iTunes iBooks yet, but I will.

Poisoned

Thus far (from Amazon) the above book, Poisoned, has been my favorite.

Poisonous mists settled in the lowlands 17 years ago, rendering ninety percent of the land uninhabitable and killing over half the population. Most blame their misfortune on industrialization or the fey, but some curse Snow White, the princess who was born poisoned.

As the only person who can survive entering the poisoned woods without a gas mask, Snow White has dedicated her life to studying the poison and finding a cure. This obsession draws her deeper into the woods and its secrets, where nothing is as it seems. When Snow White saves a man who should never have been saved, she unleashes an evil more horrifying and destructive than the poison.

Now that’s an interesting take on the classic Snow White story, don’t you think? This is not a long book, 28,000 words or 128 pages. I was finished reading it in 1.5 hours.  While I’m still not comfortable reading using an eBook, I realize that I need to transition into reading at least some of my books this way since I’m running out of shelf space. Because of that I refuse to read books the regular way for the next few weeks. I will say now that I’m on my fourth virtual book it is getting easier. I guess you can teach a middle aged lady new tricks. 😉

A few of the Passion Play costumes

Aynaria 4 Comments

These are a few costumes I designed/sewed for Passion Play 2014. Naturally, I forgot to take pictures of most of the costumes, and only remembered as I was heading out the door with these outer garments. If I make costumes again next year, I’ll try to take better pictures.

Passion Play Costumes 2 4.19.14
Passion Play Costumes; washed and pressed and ready to be delivered to our Lutheran church.

While there were several long hours involved in making sure everything was ‘just right.’ I must say I really enjoyed the process and because of that I did receive some commissioned work. Even better the people are willing to may my quoted price. I don’t undersell myself.

Itching to stitch, but no time today!

Aynaria 2 Comments

The past two days my daughter has had play dates at our home. We spent most of the time outdoors. My goodness, was that fun but I didn’t accomplish anything that I’d planned for my four days off of work. Based on how extremely busy I was the fact that I did squeeze time to do any machine embroidery is impressive.  I did find myself hopping on the computer to check out a few errors and learn about my new machine. But other than that, I was offline keeping my technology interaction low.

Since it’s one of the newer models (I believe it was released in January 2014) there is not too much information from ‘real folks’ writing about the Brother Designio Series DZ820E. I guess, I’ll do my part and document what I do. Hopefully, it’ll help those who eventually purchase one of these machine embroidery machines for themselves. From what I’ve been reading it’s the same as the Brother PE770 ( that’s the brand I initially planned on purchasing) but with a slightly different appearance and a few extra goodies tossed into the box.

Machine Embroidery: Error Message – Brother Designio Series DZ820E; Check and rethread upper needle

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Earlier today, while attempting to embroider a new design, I stumbled upon an error message that said something like this…

Brother Designio Series DZ820E Error Message

Check and rethread upper needle

If I’d thought about it, I would have taken a picture of the error message, but that was the last thing on my mind. I just wanted to fix the issue. I must admit it was a bit frustrating, each time I attempted to embroider. The upper needle would jam resulting in a nest of thread wadding up underneath the side of the hoops. Perhaps I’ll run into this error again.

 

 

The Fix

Change the sewing needle! After inserting a new needle into my Brother Designio Series DZ820E embroidery machine I was embroidering! The past two days I’ve encountered two error messages with my new embroidery machine.  In each instance the issue was user error. 😉

Brother Designio Series DZ820E Peacock 2
Design I embroidered from Urban Threads

 

Proud Peacock from Urban Threads is what I embroidered. It’s size is 3.19″ X 6.50″. It took 24,972 stitches to complete. Now that the design is finished, the only thing left is to sew the item that I have planned for this project.

 

Machine Embroidery: Error Message – Brother Designio Series DZ820E; Can not recognize the data

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Yesterday, my Brother Designio Series DZ820E arrived. Of course, I wanted to open it up immediately, but I was hanging out with my daughter. In fact, my daughter finally asked me to open the box. Besides hanging out with my daughter the honeybees kept me occupied (for a bit) so I didn’t get to test out the new embroidery machine until last evening.

My first design was testing out the text letters that come pre-loaded on the Brother Designio Series DZ820E embroidery machine. I selected the letters to spell my daughters name. It stitched beautifully without any issues.
Brother Designio Series DZ820E Error Message 1

However when I loaded a design from my computer to a flash drive and then tried to upload to my Brother Designio Series DZ820E I ran into problems. It wasn’t recognizing my files.

I received the following Brother Designio Series DZ820E error message…

Can not recognize the data. The data may be corrupted.

Brother Designio Series DZ820E Error Message 2

Thankfully, yesterday, I’d seen someone post this same message at the machine embroidery forums where I’m a member.

The Fix

What was the problem? My flash drive was too large, it was 64gb. From my what I read the flash drive needed to be small, no more than 4GB. Some people also stated that they needed to insert the flash drive while the machine was off. Earlier today, while I was out I stopped by the store and purchased a 4GB flash drive. I loaded my file onto the flash drive and was able to retrieve my embroidery file. Hooray!

 

Here’s what I made with my Brother Designio Series DZ820E.

Brother Designio Series DZ820E - Ducky 1
Embroidering with my Brother Designio Series DZ820E

Ok, so it’s hard to tell what I’m making at this point, right?

Brother Designio Series DZ820E - Ducky 2
My Brother Designio Series DZ820E is a bit faster than my old (Brother SE400) sewing/embroidery machine. It still runs as quietly, just like the other one.

Keep watching and it will become clear. Can you figure it out yet?

Brother Designio Series DZ820E - Ducky 3
One lucky duck…

No? Well that’s fine here’s what I made! I’ve always loved ducks. This is the Rainy Day Duck from the Embroidery Library. It’s free until 4/30/14. My only dilemma is trying to decide his final destination? Perhaps he’ll appear on a bag, t-shirt applique (for some deserving youngster) or perhaps he’ll adorn a quilting block. We’ll see…

Adventures in Beekeeping; Picking up my package honeybees

Aynaria 2 Comments

This morning, at 8:00 a.m.

 

Getting the honeybees

 

I was at Miller Bees, picking  up my package honeybees.

Millers Bees - Bee Chapel

Do you see that? It’s an actual beehive!

Package Honeybees - 300

There were 300 package honeybees set out in a large garage; Italians and Russians. I picked up my two orders of package honeybees and off we went. There were about 10 honeybees on the outside of the wire cage, but I told my daughter we’d be fine. They weren’t aggressive and they were trying to surround the queen.

Honeybees - Package Bees Installation_Queen
There’s the queen. This is a recycled photo from last years honeybee installation

The queen is new to these bees and so she’s in a tiny cage within the crate. If you want to read the story behind the above photo, go here, in that post I write about last years installation of my the package bees that were installed into a Warre hive. Last year, I was a first time beekeeper.

Honeybees - closer look.04.29.14
See the honeybees on the outside of the little cage? They weren’t concerned with us at all and they were busy trying to get inside the cage and stay warm.

It was a chilly morning, so these bees weren’t quietly moving about like the bees last year. They were in a tight huddle.

Checking out my Honeybees
Getting a closer look at our honeybees. On average you receive about 12,000 – 15,000 per honeybee package. These honeybees are calm, hopefully they’ll continue to be this way.

This morning, I believe it’s too chilly to move them into their new home. I’ll wait until early evening to move them into their new home. Here’s hoping they stay!

Machine Embroidery: Brother Designio Series DZ820E

Aynaria 5 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about sewing, but the recent flurry of activity making costumes for my Lutheran chuches Passion Play has pulled me in again.

Currently the last pieces of the costumes are doing their final tumbling act into the washing and drying machine. Then they’ll be pressed, hung, labeled and sent off to church where they will wait until this evening  at that time they will clothe the backs of the actors who will be wearing them for this evenings Passion Play performance. I must say that I’m thankful that the Passion Play is behind me.

Embroidery machine thread
Machine embroidery thread

Now that that chapter is closed, it’s time to open up another sewing chapter, but to do that I need to stop dragging my heels and upgrade my sewing embroidery machine…

Brother-Designio-Series-DZ820E-Embroidery-Only-Machine
Brother Designio Series DZ820E

Say hello to the Brother Designio Series DZ820E Embroidery Only Machine! It’s an upgrade of the PE770 that has been available from Brother, but with a new look and quite a few extras tossed into the mix. This embroidery machine also has a bigger hoop size; 5X7. Hopefully, I won’t outgrow that too soon. My old embroidery machine actually did sewing/embroidery but this one is embroidery only. What will I do with my old machine? I do believe I’ll be giving that one to my daughter. I’d planned on doing this last year, but since I held off upgrading my machine she had to wait also. My newest machine should be here on Saturday. The machine embroidery I’ve wanted to do embroider was naturally a width I could not do with my current sewing/embroidery machine since it would only embroider up to to 4X4.

I must say, this new embroidery machine comes at a perfect time. I’m off of work this coming Monday & Tuesday. I can’t say that I’ll have a ton of time to embroidery since my daughter has play dates (both days) at our home. Whatever was I thinking about, eh?

No Sleep ‘Til

You want to know something? Besides a two hour nap (yesterday afternoon) I didn’t go to sleep at all last night.My brain as to wired! I guess, I’ll crash sometime today after I get home from work.