Stitch in time........

8:20 am - Wednesday - April 1st - Wittmann, AZ - 62° F, 52% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the east by northeast.....heavy cloud cover today with a forecast high of 82° F.

Back in the summer of 2018 after we had left Smuggler's Den Campground to spend a month on the property of our friends Tony and Janet I began to stitch several cuts in our artificial turf which I had intentionally cut so it would fit around our concrete picnic table in our site at TVC (Tahoe Valley Campground) in the summer of 2016.  When the old picnic table was removed I just used Gorilla Tape to put the small area of turf back together, and it worked okay, but after a lot of rain the tape would begin to come off.  With time on our hands in September of 2018 I decided to buy some sail thread (I wrote about that here) at the local West Marine store and begin to stitch those cut sections back together......

Back in September of 2018

.......I laid out the turf upside down on the grass next to our site at Tony and Janet's home, and began the slow, arduous task of undoing my mistake from two years earlier.....I should never have cut that turf!  Over a couple of days I managed to get about half of the stitching completed, but our time was up in Southwest Harbor, so I decided I would finish it when we got back to SoCal.....yeah, right!  My process was to first stitch the sections I had cut back together, then apply clear silicone caulk to the stitches to protect them from the elements, and then cover each seam with Gorilla Tape.....

.....and for the spots I stitched that process has worked out quite well.  The seams have held, and are still solid after 2.5 years.  On the sections I had not stitched I just reapplied a new round of Gorilla Tape.  So, fast forward to January of 2020 when we are leaving RORVR after 9 months.  As we were folding up the turf to insert it in the trailer those unstitched seams pulled loose from the Gorilla Tape, and it became obvious that I would have to finish that long delayed project.  That date with destiny came Tuesday morning.  I rolled back the edge of the turf where the remaining cuts to be stitched are located, pulled off what remained of the Gorilla Tape, then began to stitch the remaining cuts, determined I would finish this undesirable task in one sitting, and I did......

....I probably laid down around 200 'whip' stitches in all, and I got it done in about 4-5 hours.  Above you can see the entire area I repaired Tuesday, and below is a close up of the 'whip' stitches on one section......

......once all the stitching was complete I laid down a bead of the GE clear silicone caulk over all the seams......

The seams are caulked

......once the GE clear silicone caulk has cured I will reapply Gorilla Tape to the newly stitched seams, and then roll the carpet back to right side up.  It only took me 4 years to correct my bad decision back in the summer of 2016.

By the time I put my materials away I was around 4 pm, and I was tired, but it was a good tired, and now one more thing is crossed off my 'TO DO' list.  I watched a few more episodes of 'Luke Cage', plus another episode of 'Outlander' (season 5, episode 2) with TLE, and it was time to call an end to Tuesday and head for slumberland.

TLE and I continue to be asymptomatic, and continue to do well.  The Arizona numbers are shown below.....

.....Arizona numbers are still not alarming.  Here are the numbers nationally.....

.....NY has 1,550 of those deaths and almost 76,000 of the national cases, and continues to be the national epicenter.  The rural areas of the U.S. continue to be way less affected than the large urban areas.  Most states have just single, or double digit deaths reported, while a few have triple digit deaths.  World-wide numbers how 889,213 cases, and 44,323 deaths.

We get a little stir crazy now and then, but once I can immerse myself in another project it goes away.  Of course, the list of projects is diminishing, but "I'll worry about that tomorrow" to quote Scarlet O'Hara in Gone With the Wind.

Thanks for stopping by!

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