Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Water Woes

I've been quiet lately with a lot of things going on both at work and home.  However, I felt the need to share this one...

Our neighbor has been trying to put a well in for a few weeks.  They are down to about 400ft and still no water.  Our well is only 250ft deep and we have great water.  It really comes down to WHO you use for digging a well.

Anyway - the well-driller next door decided the next route was to do hydro fracking.  This is a standard method that's been done for years for water wells, but apparently there are no real "rules" around how close you can be to an existing well without impacting it.  On Friday, they started hydro fracking and the only reason we knew was because my husband was home that day.

We thought everything was fine until we woke up Saturday morning to discover that our clean, clear water was now murky grey.  The hydro fracking opened up a fissure into our well and disturbed everything.

Thankfully, we still have water in the well, but we were pumping it out continuously over the weekend to try and clear out the muck.  The picture below pretty much tells the story.

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Thursday night we had nice clear water and Saturday morning you couldn't see through the glass.  The picture of the glasses was taken this morning (3 days after the water was put into the Saturday morning glass) and the sediment in the water STILL hasn't settled.

We ran the well all day Saturday and Sunday, which is why the Sunday night glass is somewhat see-through.  On Monday, the well driller came and put in a temporary filter such that we can use our water again.

We honestly don't know if our well looked as murky when it was first dug or not.  Our builder ran if for a week straight just continuously dumping the water out of the well to flush out all the junk.  We weren't trying to live there at that point, so it wasn't a big deal.  Now that we live in our house, it is a big deal when you don't have potable water.

Thankfully, both the well-driller and our neighbor are being very good about this and making sure that our water gets fixed.  We spent the weekend using bottled water and doing laundry at a laundromat versus in the house.  An inconvenience, but was OK for a weekend.  I'm definitely happy to have decent water back.  We still have to test every few days to see if the unfiltered water is coming in clean yet, but we have the filter (free of charge) in place until the water is clear.

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

A Bit of Quilting...

Its been a while....

again....

Time has been getting the better of me again and its been almost two months since I last posted.  I seriously don't know where the time has gone.  It seems like I was just home visiting with my older sister, but that was at Halloween which is 6 weeks ago now.

To show how things have been going....

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This was what happened one morning...before I had my coffee or tea.  I was trying to take the slow-cooker out of the pantry and the cat treats when all over the place.  It was a fairly easy pickup since most of the treats landed on the lid, but it just goes to show that coffee needs to come first before anything else.  :c)

I have done quilting and even finished a quilt!  I know... crazy that I actually finished something this year.

It didn't take long to quilt this one once it was loaded onto the frame.

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Even as I was quilting it, I could see the texture starting to show.  I really like this panto and its great for a kids' quilt.  Its called Celebrate.

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Of course, right when I got to the last line of quilting.... the bobbin thread ran out.  And it wasn't even the start of the last line, but with only about 20 inches left.  Grrr!

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Here it is all finished though.

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The angled view on the frame gives a nice view of the quilting and texture pre-washing.

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On this particular quilt, I didn't know the baby's name, so I only put my standard generic label onto the binding.  Instead of doing a label on the back of the quilt, I embroider it right into the binding.  Its less obtrusive I think and it would be pretty hard for someone to remove it.

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After washing, the quilt has that beautiful crinkled look to it.  I love this batting (Quilter's Dream Cotton in their Supreme Loft).

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I also really liked the backing on this one.  The polka dots were really cute for a baby quilt.

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And one last shot of the texture along the length of the quilt with the fading sun of a winter afternoon.

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Hope everyone is doing well and getting ready for Christmas!  It will be here before any of us know it!

Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations