Sewing is done! At least for now. There is still lots to do, but not at the house. The remainder will be done at the yacht club on those rainy days. My big sewing machine is in the storage unit down near the boat, and my home machine is sold to the in-laws. In fact, last night I had to sew some velcro the old fashioned way, by hand.
But holy crap did I get a lot of sewing done. I made bags, lots and lots of bags. Bags with handles, some without, and some with drawstrings. I made so many bags, I am not even sure what I am going to do with them all. The below pic is what is left over after sorting through all of our stuff, and putting them in bags. These ones are currently empty, but I'd imagine they'll find a purpose before long. There are 14 of the yellow bags. They are made from an old sil-nylon tent fly that was stored in our first boat when we bought it. Each bag is large enough to hold my hiking boots, with a drawstring. I really didn't need that many, but they were easy to make, I had the material, and I'll bet dollars to donuts that at some point I am going to wish I had a couple of more.
Then I made liners for our new sleeping bags. We buy our bags from Bushtukah in Ottawa. They seemed to always have the least expensive bags. These jumbo ones were $26.00 ea. And at that price, we just replace them every year. Much simpler than spending a couple hundred on one and having to take care of it properly. Our boat is not really set up for proper bedding, so these bags work great, and then they get stuffed away every morning to free up the salon. Anyway, the liners are made from the extra sheets from the house. We don't have any beds anymore, so didn't really need the sheets.
I sewed 8 - 3" strips of velcro on the sheets and the sleeping bag to attach them. That way they stay where they are supposed to. This will keep the sleeping bags relatively clean, and we only need to wash the sheet regularly. I made two sets for each bag, I wanted more, but ran out of sheets, so this will have to do for now.
I designed and put together a padded bag for our netbook. This is the only computer we have left. It has shown itself to be so useful, that we just didn't feel the need to have a full size laptop. The only thing I can't do is play games. But I run Auto CAD on it just fine. All of our electronic charts, and everything else, no problem. The bag also has a pocket in front for the power cord, mouse, and external drive. We store a ton of movies, music, documents, and tv shows on the external 1TB drive.
I also made an, "important papers" book. As recommended by one of the blogs I follow. This binder is made of a waterproof material, the rings are 550 para cord, so they won't rust or rot, and the pages are the plastic protective covers. I just slide our important papers in there and they are relatively protected. It zips up with a pair of YKK zippers, and has a velcro flap for extra protection. This will hold everything we need for a customs visit, passports, registration, insurance, etc....
I also made covers for our Black Berry playbook. We use it for a back up internet machine, for playing games, etc... Its easy to carry to the coffee shop for checking in on the world, or weather reports. And my E-reader. It currently has some 750 books or so on it. Looking forward to the days where I sit curled up in the cockpit for hours, nestled into a good read. These covers are made from water repellant canvas, but they are really just a light protection. They just fold over with a velcro flap. Abrasion resistant.
There are a pile of other things too. But they are all down at the storage unit now. So next I move onto the solar panel mounts and the bimini frames before some wood work. Its a pain in the ass figuring out how to make it all work, but I keep playing with it. I'll post about the panels and frames when I get them finished.
On top of all this, we have managed to get 3 truck loads of boat stuff to the storage unit. 1 truckload to the in-laws of things they bought from us, plus they are storing a couple of small things. Emptied the shed so the new owners can start putting their things in there. Got the bicycles ready for the season, and changed the truck over to its summer tires. Etc, etc, etc...... And only 4 weeks to go before we are homeless. More daunting is the fact that we are supposed to be moving onto the boat in 9 weeks, and I haven't even been there since January. The weather man really needs to get his shit together. Its turning cold again early this week, and warming towards the weekend, hopefully for the last time. First lift in at the club is in four weeks, and there is no way we would be ready for that. We get lifted in on the 12th of May, only 6 weeks to go. Move it soldier....................
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