MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS *C* Camping Signs, Carpeting and CCC at the Cat Scale

I am going to start off the new year with posting three of our motorhome modifications at a time. I will post repairs, modifications, or neato things we have found for RVing.  I have lots of pics in my files so I will do them in alphabetical order.

Underneath that stuff, I will post my regular daily stuff..... kinda sorta fun, eh?

So here it goes, we are up to the letter C now!

MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS 

STARTING WITH THE LETTER C

Carpet Cleaning:

I know many folks do not like carpeting in their RV.

I do.  I like taking my shoes off at the door and walking in stocking or bare feet. I like warm comfortable floors when it is damp and icky and cold outside.  I like getting out of bed and walking around in my jammies and bare feet and not have to put on slippers. That is just me.

And I try really really hard to keep our 20 year old carpeting in good condition in our motorhome. Yup, 20 years old.  It is a grey and blue and cream berber and has held up really well, with people, dogs, and grandkids.  And cleaning.

Twice a year I use our big steam cleaner on it. It is a big round extractor canister type, with a good amount of suction to not leave a lot of moisture behind.  Besides a bit of carpet shampoo, I also I use a couple glug-glugs of a cleaning product called Nature's Miracle Stain Remover and a packet of Oxyclean.  Nature's Miracle is available at our local Piggly Wiggly grocery store in the pet aisle or also at the Petco chain stores.       http://www.naturemakesitwork.com/home/index.php

Although we didn't have any pet stains, I find it to be a great all around cleaner and stain remover. It took out a big coffee/creamer stain from a spilled cup that I did not see until it was all soaked in. It works great on clothes too so I keep a bottle with a sprayer by the washing machine and use it as a pretreatment. Takes out old stains that normal detergent or Shout won't even touch.

With such light colored carpeting in our rig, we try hard to keep it nice and never wear shoes inside.  Even for Steve when he is driving, he removes his shoes as he comes in the door and puts on soft soled moccasins that are never worn outside, especially at fuel stations etc.  Otherwise spilled diesel fuel in the truckers lanes at stations get tracked in on carpeting and will never come off.  He wears leather gloves too when fueling up, so he never has oily diesel fuel on his hands when coming back in or touching the steering wheel.

Here is a pic from the kitchen facing to the front of the rig....

I lift up the dining chairs and end table and coffee table to put them 

on the loveseat out of the way 

until everything is dry the next day. 

I think it will hold up for a few more years. If Steve had his way, it would all be ripped out and new laminate or vinyl planks would be put all the way through.  Nope... no thanks. 

Just this last year I put this oriental runner rug in here. It does help with trapping the dog hair and some of the dirt catches in it until it is vacced up.  Mainly I put it in here because I bought a different pattern for the house and this rug had nowhere else to go. hahaha

Camping Signs:

Many people like to put out camping signs when at a campground.  We do too.  I know some folks say that perhaps that opens up an invitation for someone to go to your house and rob it, knowing you are gone.  Oh well, that is what our alarm system is for I guess and we live 2 blocks from the police dept. and 4 blocks from the sheriff dept. and we have two wonderful widow neighbor ladies on each side of us who notice every little thing.  

Many years ago, in Steve's first marriage, his parents gave them a custom sign with the name Pfundtner on it.  It was just about the only thing Steve got out of his divorce (besides two wonderful sons!)   Hmmmm  she didn't want the sign as much as she didn't want the guy?  Her loss, my gain!

I touched up the paint, added our first names together, and added new stain and some coats of polyurethane.  I made it OUR SIGN, and cherish it.  I was thinking about adding the state, Wisconsin to ours. Maybe next time it needs new paint?

It usually hangs from the front of our rig over the spare tire cover with two American Flags holding it up to the tire mounting bracket.  Sometimes we hang it from the numbered post in the campground if it is close enough.

Our daughter Erin gave us this one for a present one year. I hang it from our awning and it rotates in the breeze.  Kinda purty, dontcha think?

We like walking around the campground and seeing people's signs and sometimes where they are from.  It is sometimes an ice breaker to chit chat a bit.  People usually like to try to pronounce our name, and usually murder it. haha! 

Cat Scale and CCC Cargo Carrying Capacity:

This pic is kinda sorta funny.  Right after we bought our Safari, we went to a Cat Scale to weigh our rig. Steve told me to go inside and find out how to use the Cat Scale.  I went inside and she said just hit the button.  So, I went to find the button.  Well.... the button is situated up high for semi drivers to reach!  What did I know, it was the first time we were ever weighing our rig!    And Steve just happened to snap a pic of me trying to figure it out! 

Our UVH rating is 18,600 (Unloaded Vehicle Weight)
Our GVWR rating is 28,000 (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating)
GCWR-32,000 (Gross Combined Weight Rating)


And...
We weigh in with full water, fuel, and propane tanks and 2 people at 22,000 pounds without our gear when we first bought the rig.

We have about 8,500 pound capacity available from empty. Even with all our tanks full, (propane, fuel, fresh water and waste water) we still have around 6,000 pounds of CCC cargo carrying capacity above that.  It is very important to never overload your rig. Your chassis, handling, tire inflation and most of all, the brakes depend on you not overloading your rig.

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Sad to say, the crud has overtaken me again. I hope Steve doesn't get it again. Last week we both had the digestive crud flu bug that was going around. This one now is the respiratory one that has nailed me. My breathing was labored, and because of my lung damage, I can easily get down and out while pneumonia sets in.  I got up at 5 am and sat in a hot steamy bath for a while to help loosen things up.  Today has been up and down and just about flat out dozing on and off.  I tried sewing for a while, but do NOT sew when under the influence of sinus medication!  Almost everything I sewed has to get ripped out.  

On a good note, the Packers just won the playoff wildcard game.  Next week they head to Dallas! 

~GO PACK GO~ 

Harvesting a Bumper Crop of Rugs from my looms...

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I just took a bumper crop of rugs off my looms in my studio. 

It was a "Harvest of Rugs"   

(please note, this is not an ad to sell these rugs, 

they are already spoken for by a gal named Jean in Lodi, WI) 

I thought I would share with you some of the work I do in my weaving studio, located in my home.  I have four large rug looms, a 60" wide blanket loom and a variety of other smaller table looms, spinning wheels and antique circular sockknitting machines.  It's a real Fiber Fest around here, I tell ya!

As for the rugs, the process of unrolling 3 or 4 or 5 rugs at a time from a loom is a heart-quickening event for me.  Seeing them for the first time in their entirety, flat out the way I envisioned them as I wove.

When weaving a rug, the weaver really only sees about a foot worth at a time as you weave it.  Each time the warp is advanced to get more space to weave on, the finished rug is rolled down and underneath, unseen until the run is completed and cut free.  It is the final step to a lot preparatory work.

  (see the side view photo of a loom below -  the warp string comes off the back of the loom and passes through the harnesses and reed where it is woven, then the rug curls down and around a beam to make a roll of finished rugs) 

BACK OF LOOM                                                            FRONT OF LOOM

Here are some closeups of the rugs in the group photo above, 

and I will explain how each one is made.

This first rug is woven in a twill pattern for the threading... and I just place in fabric in random stripes. 

The special twill threading pre-deigned on the loom makes the diagonal patterns. 

The striping is random and is sometimes called "Hit N Miss" fashion.  

For perspective, the rug is about 6' long and 30" wide.

The next set of rugs are made from flannel sheets-- a set of blue ones and a set of green ones.  There was enough fabric to make 2 rugs of each color.  The flannel weaves up nicely and makes a thick rug.  For the stripes, I used a thin strip of burgundy white and tan fringey selvage.  More about fringey selvages with the next rug down the list.   And Allegra gave these rugs her "Butt Stamp of Approval"!

Now WHAT is Fringey Selvage you might ask?  Well, it's simply recycling at it's finest!  Factories make huge rolls of fabric, and the selvage edge is sometimes nothing more than a long rope of fringey stringy ends that they cut off the ends of the rolls before shipping to fabric retail stores.  The factories normally dispose of this stringy rope into the landfills.   

Some innovative weavers came across it and said: "Hey, let's see if we can weave a rug outta this!"   It is now commonly purchased in large bales from these places and snatched up by the creative rug weavers to have a new life as a rug, instead of rotting away in a landfill.   Jean in Lodi had purchased a batch of this fringy selvage- enough to weave this rug.   Every other row is selvage and every other row a narrow strip of cotton sheeting to add body and oomph to the rug.   Kinda a retro 60's shag look, huh?

Next rug up on the list is probably Norwegian, Scandinavian or some other Slavic county in origin of the design, I am not sure.  I call it an "Arrow Rug".   The borders are accented with carefully twisted sections of contrasting rags to create the arrow designs.   I have done a few of these now, and they are striking. 

The two contrasting fabrics in the arrow rows have to be only half of the thickness of the regular rows so the rug is even.  I pre-twist them ahead of time and insert them in the loom to line up the arrow points.

I really like this next rug,  it's from light yellow, blue polka dot, and turquoise cotton fabrics in a pattern.

This is a longer runner too.  I sometimes weave till I run out of that specific fabric.  Repeating the colors in a harmonious pattern.  The colorway reminds me of a summer beach seaside cottage.

(also approved by my photography assistant, Allegra) 

I like weaving rag rugs with cotton fabrics.  These next two long runners have some random placements of prints from floral bed sheets.  Again, recycling the fabrics is much better than setting in a landfill. 

Here is the whole stack of rugs ready to be shipped off to their new owner....  

This represents many hours work.   

From carefully warping up the looms  (putting on 350-450 strands 100 yards long of string, winding evenly under tension with no snarls).   Then time is spent cutting up the fabric rags, planning out the rugs, calculating the amounts of each color and ratio of what is needed to make a pleasing rug.  Finally, winding up the shuttles and weaving in the header or hem yarns.  THEN you finally get around to the actual weaving, which can take from 2-4 hours per rug on average. 

Now, this next tidbit is what I do with a short section of rags, too small of an amount to weave into a rug. 

I weave a tote bag, and braid the handles right on the loom as I weave the bag.  

They are a secure part of the bag and not just a sewn on strap.  

Next I sew the side seams and add a button once it is off the loom. 

I use this one for my laptop case!

Here are a set of rugs that I made using a whole different technique called "Clasped Wefts".   It makes a wonderful patchwork design... by starting one color of rag from one side of the loom, and the other color of rag from the other side, then I "clasp" the rags around each other and send them back to their respective sides of the loom again.   Each time I change the color, I clasp in a new section of the rug... creating blocks or patches!   (p.s. these two rugs ARE for sale) 

Now on to another technique that I am just beginning to work with.  

These last two rugs are just pure fun!  I have one done and just started another.  

Again, this is the fine art of recycling and keeping things out of the landfills.  A colorful sock knitting company takes all the irregular and mistake socks and slices them up the length of the sock and trashes them!   A weaving friend in New York, by the name of Hilary, has been able to procure them to weave into rugs.   Once woven into the rug in various spots, we have dubbed them "Caterpillar Rugs"!  Aren't they just the most interesting rugs?     Hilary's shop is :   http://www.crazyasaloom.com/

She sent some to try. I gave them the name of Hilary's Hilarious Caterpillar Rugs!~ 

I think I will tie colored fringes on these instead of a sewn hem like my other rugs.  They sure are fun!  

These will be for sale once I complete them. Available in my Etsy shop:

http://kareninthewoods.etsy.com/

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