BAM. some stuff on pinterest. been working hard, work work and etsy work, no real days off. all sewing all the time. took four days "off" jobjob to work on etsy...real deal photoshoot with awesome folks for a summer lookbook/better listing pics, swap meet table, made commissions and presents for folks that helped with photos. been a busy couple of weeks, heck the whole month has been really busy. more later, got a lot done. inspired and stoked on home stuff.

woke up at 6 am to the sounds of dog vomit. love it.
just couldn't get back to sleep after that, dogs were restless and once they're up, THEYRE UP. theres no going back.

once i took care of all the animals dogs n cats alike, i sat with a cup of coffee and found myself real bored. i was wide awake and had two and a half hours to kill before work.
decided to do some work in my sewing room after i knocked out some chores.
on monday i'd replaced our stock kitchen faucet with a fancy upgraaaayyyyyyde

i needed to do the massive pile of dishes from cooking dinner so i could take a pic of the change.

i'd freecycled a nice 200$ ikea faucet a long while back, and decided to install it. its really designed for a deeper countertop mount and not stainless steel sink mount, but whatevs. i like it and the ONE DAY that we have concrete countertops it'll be awesome.

dottie is always a funny combination of snuggly/wild in the mornings, she wants to be with you and right next to you, even if she's playing with her toys. she kept jumping up onto my cutting table and gradually pushing her way over onto my sewing table and into my lap.
shes such a prisspot, if you make her a special place to lay down when shes in a mood like that then she'll totally use it and leave you be. but it has to be a real bed kind of space, and it has to be close to you. haha.

did a little tidying up, minimal and kind of obnoxious tidying (like winding bobbins and putting them all away NEATLY) and then knocked out a quick cycling cap in a really lovely springy fabric. this is a small portion of the fabrics from baskerville, i busted out a big stack of cool knoll fat quarters.

i have to work much earlier tomorrow so i doubt i'll be up as early, but i'm off work at a decent hour so maybe i'll get the chance to sew again!

saturday after work i came home and started the makes of a cookout. roasted sweet potato to make veggie burgers and made a quick grocer run for a few other staples. came home and took the dogs on a good walk, trying to wear them out so they were less attentive to guests while eating.

finally, this rv is out of a neighbors backyard! its been there, unmoving, since i moved into the neighborhood over a year ago. always wanted to see it out, since it looked like it was in decent shape.

another missing pup, with odd key adornment.
after our walk i made a batch of cookies, steamed some kale for a cold kale salad, and finished prepping and making the veggie burgers.
they were a mash of roasted sweet potato and cannelini beans...def gonna add some quinoa and garlic for flavor and texture next time.

even though they were panko-breaded and lightly "fried", they were a little mushy and kind of weird, but still good.
stayed up til the wee hours of the morn by the firepit, the birds were singing at one am! why so early???
finally went to bed. woke up the next day, easter!, and threw some wood on the embers that were still hot from the night before. fire cranked right up.

got to working on the 'bago while the dogs played out back, last monday it failed the state safety inspection for a leaky exhaust manifold gasket on the drivers side and a pinhole manifold leak on the passenger side. our plan was to find new manifolds and replace em, seal up with new gaskets.
first things first, we needed to get the old manifolds off to make sure we were replacing them with the right things.

man, things sure were rusty down there.

ye ol' pipe-on-the-end-of-a-wrench for leverage was key...we ended up shearing off a couple bolts (not ones we cared about, thankfully) because the nuts/bolts had rusted together so terribly.

attacked the passenger side first, since it was the easier to access of the two sides.

found the hole in the manifold, you can even see a little crack forming around the outer edge of it.
after exerting much energy to get nowhere, we decided it was time to bust out the air compressor and impact driver. serious business. welllll...we needed 1/2" and 9/16" sockets that fit the impact wrenches 3/4" drive...and i only had 1/4" and 1/2" drive bits. bummer.

you can see the level of bummedness on Andrews face, thinking about how many stores would be open on Easter for tool sales...

a hat and some liquid courage later, he was stoked again and ready to brave the non-open stores. finally, after many stores, found the right drivers and knocked things right out. zip zip zip, dun son.

the outer bolts for the manifold fasten into an area full of antifreeze, so when andrew pulled an outer bolt he started a stream of coolant...had to drain the radiator at that point. ha.
but finally, it was off.


then came the task of locating a new one. um, that has turned out to be way easier said than done. i called the three major auto part chains, looking for parts, gaskets and asking other questions, to be told by the napa rep that she "doesn't work on cars so she doesn't know." that was pretty funny...called summit racing and dorman (who makes the headers that everyone sells) and couldn't find an exact fit anywhere. i guess the motorhome application parts are very few and far between. that said, i think we'll just get ours welded/fixed and clean it up. ceramic coat or hi temp paint, work with what we have and keep looking. we could do headers, but then that means adding dual exhaust and new mounts, which is just another project. something to think about, but not now.
monday i knocked out so many chores before noon that it was crazy!
i shampooed the rugs on the stairs, started a bunch of laundry, installed a new faucet in the kitchen, and kept plugging away at organizing my craft room.

i also FINALLY introduced myself to my three-ferrari neighbor. asked for permission to go into his yard to look at his cars, something i've been dying to do FOREVER. it was super intimidating because he has an eighties conversion van in front of his house covered in war conspiracy/pow/mia/anti government stickers and i've never seen any of his SEVEN cars or one motorcycle move...seemed like a scary conspiracy theory shut in, and thats just a smalltalk headlock i don't want to get into.
turned out to be a super friendly dude, and i'm really glad i got over my percieved fear.

he was on his way out the door to run errands when i caught him, but he was very obliging. the yellow ferrari is usually covered, but it was really windy monday and the cover was mostly off.

i really wanted to believe that they were all real, but srsly who has three ferraris and a falling down house?
i could tell by looking at the fiberglass work and the paint that they were definitely all kits. then later comparing them to realdeals on the internet, there were definitely small differences between the models. its funny to me that building three kit ferraris is still cheaper than owning one real one. haha.

either way, they are still cool looking and i'd drive the shit out of one.

and it would be tight. no matter what. probably less to insure, and cheaper to maintain.



i took a ton of photos of them, you can really see the "kit" of the testarossa in this pic...

it almost looks like a block of wood painted red as a portion of trim. haha. oh well. theyre awesome and i'm so glad i got to see them.


the 328 gts is my favorite, but the f355 was the best looking "kit" of them all. i bet its honestly just because its usually covered. uv rays are a bitch!
after i got to tour his backyard unattended, i finished up my own errands. took dot with me to a fast ace hardware run.

she loves to surf the car when i drive. sketchy.
hung in the yard with the dogs later in the afternoon, the weather was just so glorious. even though the pollen was killing me, i just wanted to sit in the sun.

dogs even got a chance to take a dip in the kiddie pool yesterday, the morning was very warm.
and here we are, back to work.

if i'm not totally bushed, i'm gonna try to make a hat a day this week. usually at night i'm just beat after work, so we'll see about that.

aye carumba. the weekend always goes by too quickly.
bummed that new plugs didn't start the bago, andrew had been reading the "dodge motorhome" bible, going over all the potential problems that would cause the engine to turn over and sound like it was catching, but not actually catch.
replaced the old ignition control and still nothing. while he was bent over replacing the ignition control module, he noticed a disconnected wire right under the dash. plugged it up and VIOLA! the bago started right up. D'oh!

it was idling SUPER high, like dangerous blow up revving, leaving black carbon deposits on the grass under the exhaust idling high. adjusted the carb a bit and seemingly hit a good balance.

andrews hair blowing in the engine wind reminded me of a fancy perfume commerical or some fabio ad. hahaha.
we had to remove part of our fence to get the bago back into the driveway, so we did. i had to run out to tuckers 1st birthday party but HAD to take a victory lap first...went for a short cruise around the neighborhood.
came home and gift wrapped as fast as possible, went to tuckers robot themed party.
super fun, he's a really cool little kid.

he got to demo a whole cupcake!

hung out for a few hours and enjoyed the midday sun. came home after he opened his presents and took the bago for a drive myself...when we moved we'd accidentally let the inspection lapse and we needed to re-up it and that job was falling to me.
we even drove it to get mexican later that night! still having that awesome issue where the lights flash off when you hit bumps...haha gotta resolve that.
monday morning i woke up bright and early and took the bago to a shop in ashland that inspected larger vehicles.
turns out we've got a couple exhaust leaks to fix before we're legal beagle, but i think we'll order some headers for it this week and fix it ourselves.
excited, headers seem like a breeze and its so fun to drive the bago around.
my 30th birthday last year was a little weird, kind of a bummer with good intentions, so i'm hoping for a good redo this year. maybe involving an rv trip.

found a bunch of paintballs in the yard when we were moving the bago around to get it out...nice!
our neighbor diagonally behind us likes to fire off rounds in our direction when my other neighbors dogs bark. tight!

its the second time i've asked him to chill out on the paintball action, when i went to his house his whole porch was covered in beer bottle caps and the same brand/color of paintballs that were in our yard.

left him a polite note asking him to stop, again.
noticed that my subaru is having a hard time lately...gas mileage not suffering but every now and then its real hard to start...just wants to crank and crank without firing.
when i bought it, the previous owner noted that it had a small oil leak at the rear main seal...no biggie, we're talkin a quart of oil a month. the whole engine bay is covered in oil, though, and its really smoky and oily.
i started to notice a residue on the back of the car...and sure enough i'm smoking...not from the exhaust but from something under the passenger side of the car.
so i'm looking into some options for repairing it...engine has 321k miles already, so its way overdue for a rebuild, but i think i might just reseal it for now. if i could pull the engine i'd ideally like to put in new timing belt and rear main seal, do head gaskets as well and maybe oil pump seal.
just the basic gaskets that leak. we'll see how that goes.