Friday night when I went to bed, my laptop was trying to recover from the brain-washing I gave it Friday afternoon. It wasn't quite a "format c colon" (only you old computer geeks might get that), but it was close.
By morning, it had come out of its coma, and I ran some other updates that finally got it performing as it should. Thank goodness! I had digitizing work to do. Spent most of the day running back and forth between the porch (where my laptop was) and the sewing room. The challenge in digitizing embroidery designs is that it is not a "wysiwyg" (another geek word). Punching hundreds - thousands! - of threads into the weave of fabric alters the shape of the fabric; it pushes some stitches outward and pulls others inward. What looks like a perfect circle on the computer screen sews more like a flattened circle at the embroidery machine. This means that the computer design needs to be elongated/stretched so that it comes out round when sewn. It's something of a crap shoot. I did three different test-sews, and never got it right yesterday.
I worked on the design again this morning. On top of the push/pull problem, other things needed adjusting. I'd been working on it half the morning when the telephone rang.
It was our son. He and his family have a new camper, and took it out on its maiden voyage this weekend. When they packed up to head for home, the truck would not start. The problem seemed to be with the ignition key. Our son wanted us to go to his house, get the spare key, and bring it to them. So I quit what I was doing, and we hit the road to their campsite, three hours away.
We were about 30 miles from our destination when The Son called. The truck key had suddenly started working. They were hitched up and ready to roll. We did a bat-turn in the nearest parking lot, and pulled over to wait for them. They'd gone camping with another family, and that other family was transporting two of the grandkids because there wasn't enough from for everybody in The Son's truck. We met up with them all in the parking lot, took custody of the two grandkids, and joined the procession home.
Back at the son's house, I sat on the tailgate of The Husband's truck and played with the Rotten Little Baby while the other adults unhitched the camper. (She finally got a tooth, and you can see it when she grins.) I gave her a short strip of duct tape, which entertained us all for a few minutes.
After I got home, I tested the embroidery design again.
It's better, but still not right. :-/
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