Husqvarna YTH 22V46

 

I've had this mower for a couple of years (bought it used) and it's always run like a champ.  The only thing I've done to it since I bought it was change the oil, spark plugs, and air filter.  I also switched out the blades for mulching blades.  A few days ago, I was mowing and the mower suddenly stopped running.  It behaved as if I had tripped a safety switch.  The local repair shop wanted a $35 pick up fee plus $$$$ bench time, and said they would have to keep the mower for two weeks.  Two weeks!  You know how tall my grass would be in two weeks?  I decided to see if I could solve the problem myself. 

Because of the sudden way the mower stopped running, I decided it wasn't fuel.  Plus, there was gas in the tank and it hadn't been sputtering.  So, not fuel.  Had to be fire, right?  I thought I would start with something easy, so I disconnected the battery to see if it would reset any tripped safety switch.  No joy.  (The battery tested fine, by the way.)  Next, I decided to change the one and only fuse on the mower.  Easy and cheap, right?  The owner's manual said the fuse was located behind the dash.  Indeed it was.  Way, way, way behind the dash.  This mower has the battery box in the rear, under the seat, and I found the fuse under the right fender after I removed the battery.  So, "behind the dash" meant tucked up under the rear fender.  

The new fuse didn't solve the problem.  Rats!  

The solenoid was located right next to the fuse.  I'd never had a solenoid go bad on a riding mower.  But, it was easily accessible.  It was electrical.  And it would be a cheap part and easy to replace if it was bad.  

I put a screwdriver across the two screws you see in the photo above and the starter spun, which meant the solenoid was bad.  If you decide to bridge the two screws with a screwdriver, be prepared for a couple of sparks and please don't burn down your garage!  Safety first, people.

Removing the solenoid was easy.  I disconnected the two nuts with lock washers attached, removed the wires behind the nuts, unplugged the two connectors under the wires, and removed the bolt that holds the solenoid to the mower body.  A local auto sports shop had the correct solenoid for around $15.  

This is what the nice, new, clean solenoid looked like.  Installation took only a few minutes.  After I installed it and reconnected the battery, the mower fired up and was ready to go.  

The moral of this story: Don't trust the manual and don't be afraid to get your hands dirty.  Time to mow!  

Someone To Love

Elliott, my husband for nearly four decades, died at the end of October 2017. He was a good man in every sense of the word. He was patient, caring, fun-loving, generous, and always smiling. He never stopped looking at the world with wonder. He loved making music, getting his hands dirty, and being a pilot. He told me time and time again it was important to be loved, but it was more important to love someone. Toward the end of his life, he said he regretted leaving me without someone to love. As I told him, he didn't need to worry because I will always love him and if he sends me someone new to love, I will know it and I will love the person he sends just as fiercely as I love him.  Blue skies forever and ever.  

Sewing Softies

Lately, I’ve been sewing soft toys for the pediatric ward of a hospital and for two groups which assist foster children. These were a lot of fun to make and a good way to use some of my accumulated fabric.  (Not to worry.  I have plenty of fabric left.) 

The chickens were made from either flannel or bubble fleece.

I used cotton for the mice.  The photos show them before and after they were stuffed.  

My 90-year old mom, who taught me to sew, stuffed these and sewed them closed.

The fish were cotton on one side and light blue bubble fleece on the reverse.

Some elephants were flannel and others were fleece.

There were cotton and fleece snakes, flannel dogs and cats, and more flannel chickens.

If you would like to sew softies for a charity, you can find patterns here:

Chickens - RedTedArt.com

Mice - SewCanDo.com

Fish - Lauri-NanaNews.blogspot.com

Elephants - MadeByEnginerds.blogspot.com

Snakes - MakeIt-LoveIt.com

Dogs - JenniCanKnit.blogspot.com (No pattern. She made a stuffed ornament)

Cats - TheCraftedSparrow.com (I omitted the tail)

Happy Sewing, Everyone!

Singer Built-In Retractable Foot Controller

In the post about my Singer 201 and its cabinet (http://box344.blogspot.com/2014/12/singer-201.html), I mentioned it had a built-in foot controller which the previous owner replaced because it didn't work.  Recently, on the Vintage Singers Yahoo group, there's been some discussion about a built-in foot controller, so I thought I would tell you a little more about the controller which came in my cabinet.

The controller was installed under the bottom drawer and this is what it looked like when it was in place:

There's a notch carved into the side wall of the cabinet and there's an arm which sticks out of the notch.  Keep in mind, you're looking at this with the cabinet turned upside down.  The arm is where your right foot would be if you were seated at the machine.  

Here's a closer view which shows you the part number on the controller:

Viewed from the top (after I removed it from the cabinet), you can see how this worked.  There's a little rounded nub on the end of the arm (it's at the lower edge of the next two photos) and that's what you would have pressed to engage the controller.  Pressing down on the arm also allowed you to slide the entire arm into and out of the cabinet so it would retract when you wanted it out of the way.  The top photo shows the arm extended and the second one shows it retracted. 

I kept the controller because one of these days, repairing it might float to the top of my "to do" list.  If anyone knows where the wiring should run in the cabinet, please let me know.  It was wadded up next to the controller when I bought the machine so I'm not sure what route it ought to take to get from the controller to the machine head.

Happy Sewing Everyone!  

700 Dogs and Counting

Most of E’s flying in the past few years has been for an organization we’ve blogged about before – Pilots ‘n Paws. On January 29, 2017, he flew his 700th dog. He flew to North Carolina, picked up a mom and her four puppies, and flew them to Maryland, where he met Natalie and Steve, who flew them to their rescue group in New Jersey. These dogs were rescued and fostered by our friend Pam, who has saved many hundreds of dogs.

Natalie, Steve and E

For the flight, E wore a new zippered fleece pullover I made for him. The dog bones on the front yoke made it appropriate for this flight, I think.

Happy Flying and Happy Sewing Everyone!   

E's New Pants

A couple of years ago, E emerged from surgery with a medical device which sits almost exactly at his natural waist, sticks out about an inch, and needs to be protected from scrapes and bumps. If it were located a little bit lower or a little bit higher, he could wear all of the pants he wore before the surgery. But, it isn’t and he can’t, so we began looking for pants with a rise high enough to cover the device. (The rise is the distance from the middle of the crotch to the top of the waist band.) Unfortunately, the commercially available pants we found weren’t nearly high rise enough. Nothing to do but make a pair, right?

A few years ago, a blog I like (MalePatternBoldness) had a jeans sew-along using Kwik Sew pattern 3504 and I remembered it seemed fairly easy to follow. The pattern contains several sizes and I copied the one closest to E’s size onto pieces of tracing paper and used the tracing paper pattern to make a pair of trial pants from an old flat sheet. The photo above shows this pair as a work in progress.

The trial pair needed a lot of adjustments, mostly because I was adding so many inches to the rise. When you lengthen the rise as much as I did, the waist no longer sits anywhere near where the pattern intends it to sit and this affects the size of the waist, the size and placement of the front and rear pockets, the taper from the hips to the waist, etc. I incorporated the adjustments into the tracing paper pattern and made a second trial pair of pants. The second pair needed some adjustments, too, so I made more revisions to the tracing paper pattern. The next pair of trial pants fit reasonably well and I used the revised, re-drawn, amended, adjusted, much abused tracing paper pattern to make a pair of pants from a medium-weight cotton twill. (I also re-drew the adjusted pattern onto a clean sheet of tracing paper, to make my life a little easier the next time I use the pattern.)

Here’s a view of the front at the waist. 

The pockets are a snazzy snake skin patterned fabric. 

The yoke in the back came in handy because it allowed me to fine tune 

the fit in the back around the waist and hips. 

And here’s how they look with E inside. (They really don’t pull at the crotch. Honest! I didn’t notice they looked like this when I took the photo and I don’t want to wait for E to get home so I can take another photo. Trust me: They look fine.) 

By and large, I’m happy with these and so is E. I would recommend KS 3504 regardless of how much sewing experience you have. The pattern instructions were easy to follow and the jeans sew-along on the MalePatternBoldness blog has lots of good photos which show how to use this pattern, too.

Happy sewing everyone!

Thanksgiving Pumpkin

Pumpkin muffins, anyone?!?!?

The day after Halloween, I bought a pumpkin for $1 at Walmart and put it in the garage where it's cool. Today, the day before Thanksgiving, I chopped it into six chunks and stuck it in the oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. After the pumpkin finished baking, I let it cool for a few minutes, peeled off the skin, and ended up with a heaping two quarts of pumpkin flesh pieces. 

After a few minutes with the potato masher, the pieces were reduced to a nice mash.

We used some of the mash to make pumpkin muffins, which are excellent. We set some aside to eat with dinner tonight, saved two cups to make a pumpkin pie tomorrow, and froze the rest to add to soups this winter. We're definitely getting our money's worth out of a $1 pumpkin. 

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!