TV & quilts for the June GVQC show

The call came last Wed. from the delivery people that are going to deliver our new HDTV. When do we get it? The next day? No, Tues. What? After the Oscars? So we wait. Next year those wonderful outfits will look lovely.

But I have gotten a few projects done. I'm just finishing up a bit of hand quilting on the "Northern Neighbors" wall hanging I started in Alaska. I'm quite happy with it. I used a pattern from a magazine and machine pieced and appliquéd it. Then I took the sections with animals in them with us on our Alaskan adventure and did the hand quilting. I bought the border fabric in Alaska ... they have some WONDERFUL quilt shops. Chuck will tell you I didn't miss seeing any of them nor did I pass up the wonderful opportunities they offered. This is Chuck patiently waiting outside one of them.

When I got home I pieced the other blocks and after putting it together tried my hand at machine quilting parts of it using rayon thread and also metallic threads. I used some old table linens from my grandfather and my mother. They are thread bare, so are great for the occasional laundering and preserve the monogram. They feel good when doing the hand quilting!

I bought a pattern for a small wallhanging of a dog sled team that I thought Cindy would like and she now has it hanging in her office at work. I'm going to show it, too.

Oh, whew! The power just went off for a couple of minutes and I was afraid all was lost. It wasn't!

And the other entry I'm putting in the quilt show is the reversible picnic tablecloth I made using food on one side and red & blue prints on the other for patriotic holiday picnics.

TV

We decided to help the economy and update a very old TV with HD, so very shortly before Christmas we treated ourselves with a 42 inch Vizio LCD TV, which fits perfectly on our 39-3/4 inch shelf. It was ... notice the past tense ... beautiful! Chuck was so happy to see all those sports players sweating up a storm. We bought it at Circuit City, which has since gone belly up.

About the middle of Jan. we started having a few problems and we called Time Warner (TW) our cable provider, who fixed the problem, even though they never saw exactly what was happening on the screen. They came over at least 5 times and redid wires and checked connections and really worked their magic. But we kept having picture issues. Of course we would turn off the TV and finally we were told that the next time the problem occurs we should leave the TV on and call TW because they could read our cable box from their office and reset it. They did, but told us they were not getting bad readings. And whatever they did worked ... for a 1/2 hour or so. Mark, a technician who was here a few times, came back again & rechecked ... again. When he hooked it up this time he said, "Whoa! This isn't our problem!" He finally saw what we were experiencing.

Next I called Vizio and they ran me through a few paces ... unplugging the TV, holding the power button, plugging back in with & without cable. Nothing worked. The next step was to take digital photos of what we saw and email them to Vizio, then wait 48 hours, call them back and after they could evaluate the situation from my email pictures to either send someone to repair the TV or send us a new one. So today I called ... after quilt club.

They looked at my pictures and we are getting a replacement TV! No arguments! Except it will not be new, but reconditioned and the warranty will start from the day we bought it in Dec, not when it gets delivered in 7 to 10 days. So we will see, but I hope it was just one lemon we got.
I really have lots of praise for Time Warner. They were excellent about sending out technicians to try and help us and in the long run it wasn't even their problem.

Now I'm going to relax by going to my quilting room and work on finishing my "Northern Neighbors" quilt. Perhaps I'll even do a little laundry, while I'm in the area. Sometimes I have to do some housework.