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All new stuff

Our little side business expanded last week. Screenprinting will still be our main focus and the heart of our business. We added embroidery. This big huge machine is on a table in the spare bedroom. Many hours this week have been spent learning how to design and get things to the embroidery machine. I've messed up several things. I bent the mess out of the pressure foot. A lot of the time, I've spent deciphering the instructions. They were written by Japanese people whose first language is not English. The sentence structure and wordage is off in a lot of places. "Enable to find instruction in the manual." Translation: You can find instructions in the manual. "Frame move." Translation: The frame is about to move; remove the hoop or you'll bend the preesure foot, dummy. (Lesson learned the hard way.) The instruction manuals are full of other things along those lines. It makes for interesting reading, but not so much fun when trying to find how to do something.

Along with the new machine, came new software. Moving from one version to the next upgrade of a piece of software is not such a big deal. They gave me the next up from what I had and soon I'll be receiving the newest. I'll be moving up 2 versions within a month. I also am trying to learn the embroidery machine software, which is not easy. The good thing is that every new piece of software that we bought is compatible with each other. I can transfer files from one to the other without an trouble at all. I feel quite sure that after a few weeks, I'll be much more confortable with the machine and the software.

My biggest mistake, beside bending the presser foot is sewing the back and front of a t-shirt together. I was going to pick out all the embroidery and redo it, but I quickly found out that it would take so much time that I could have more quickly walked to Memphis and picked up another shirt. I won't be doing much embroidery removal.

This has just been one of those weeks when we've been so busy, but feel like we've gotten nothing done. The Baptist Association is hosting a crusade this week and I just feel like all my time has been sucked up, leaving my no time for laundry, cooking, and cleaning up. We've also got over 600 shirts at the shop that need to be printed. Where does all my time go? Maybe someone is saving some of it for me.

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