Just hanging out and doing a little fixin'

What have you been up to for the last week or so?  Me?, Oh, I've been dabbling in this and that.  First, I'm finally working on a quilt for a customer.  It's an older, "vintage" well loved, and threadworn quilt.  She asked if I could repair the missing patches and the binding. It took a bit to collect some fabrics that I could use to fit in with the time period.  Thank goodness for the Goodwill thrift store = we have a clearance center here in town, so after a few trips and about $5, I had a fair collection.  The patches that I need to replace are similar to the pieces in a double wedding ring pattern, but they are taller and slimmer.  So far I've hand stitched 20 into place.  I'll be shopping for some binding material next.  The quilt is a tomato-ey red, so hopefully I can find something suitable.
Then there was the laptop thing.  Against my better judgement, I've been letting my son use it when he has a buddy over so they can both have a computer to game on.  It's been getting a bit of abuse.  Then last week, I tripped over the AC cord.  I've done this before on another laptop and what happened is it broke the inside part that the plug goes into.  My IT guy said it would probably be about a $100 fix.  Since the budget is not going to let that happen soon, I did without it for the better part of the week.
Then desperation struck.  So, Sunday afternoon, I turned it over and after taking out about 15 screws, the hard drive and another panel, I got the base off.  After locating the offensive little part, I found it was not broken, but the metal leaf spring inside had been pushed in.  I got out my trusty pink screwdriver.  It has several retractable bits, and one is a small punch.  It was the perfect size to fit into a little hole and push that spring back into place.  I reassembled the thing in reverse order and felt really good about the fact that I did not have any leftover parts.  With my fingers crossed, I plugged her in.
IT WORKS !!  YAY !!  I guess I'll get to use that $100 for bills after all.

Today was our weekly sewing club with the Dorchester Seniors.  We had planned to do a Jelly roll race and today was the day.   After some good laughs, and a few threats of sabotage, the timingk"judge"  said "GO."
The race was fast and furious.  There was minimal conversation.  The competition was tough.  And 45 minutes later - I was done :)  I won first prize.  My student finished in 60 minutes and won 2nd prize.  I am so proud of her!
I won a kit to make a Christmas Santa.  I can't wait to start it - stay tuned.