Rachelle Keller

The first piece we turned out from the Big Bad Barudan: My iPhone hates me sometimes when it comes to taking photos but it was easier than finding either one of the other cameras! The horseshoe design was already loaded into the machine's memory and we kind of wanted instant gratification so we stitched it out first in black, then I moved the pantograph slightly up and to the left and reran the design in white, giving kind of a drop shadow look. Not much, but hey, the machine did what it was supposed to. Next came one of our own designs. It was intentionally two-color, but I had forgotten how to tell the machine to change colors so it stitched the entire piece in all black (bottom). This wasn't bad, not the effect we wanted, but it also worked well. I remembered how to program the color sequence so we ran the same file again, this time with two colors (top). That went VERY well. But it would be a couple of weeks before making another attempt because we had some life- and energy...

We're heading back to the ol' busstead after an errand and Big Al makes a U-turn—I wasn't paying attention, I was probably tweeting from the iPhone or something—and we end up at a small furniture store. Big Al has been looking for a work chair for some time now. The old office chair, “kills my ass” and so did the folding chair, and the folding recliner, “sat back too far”. We looked at chairs, too big, too small, not sturdy enough, too expensive… (Ahhhhh!) You could almost hear the angelic choir as a golden beam came down from the sky and shone on this chair. Not too big, not too small, brand new, and a decent price. New furniture is great although, personally, I hate shopping for it. Worse than shopping for it is getting it home. Have I mentioned that we have a Hyundai sedan? WTF are we going to do with that chair now? Well, he left me inside with the crazy Chinese owner who had to tell me about the whole business, his great prices, and, “Tell all your friends to come here...

I had already forgotten about my post a month or so ago about buying the Big Bad Barudan and the bus remodel. We've had a lot going on since then three events and the end-of-season inventory and clean-up for our NHRA trailer. It was nearly a MONTH before we got to try out the Big Bad Barudan! Of course by then my memory on exactly how the machine worked was not all that great. Of course it isn't easy to distract me…nope, not at all. Luckily I can work from written instructions. Give me a user manual and even if there are errors, sooner or later I will figure it out. This time was no exception. However, it probably took me an hour to thread two colors of thread into the machine. Once it was done, it was done right and I haven't had to mess with that since. The very first files I stitched out were very successful. A horeshoe looking thing, and a wing. That was all I was able to do at the time. Now another couple of weeks have gone by and we made another attempt. All went well...