Quilting interuppted!!!

So I had every intention of having Happiness is...finished so that it could hang in the Quilts and Vines show last weekend...well my machine had other ideas.  The needle fell out, bent the hook retaining finger into an "L", and lodged a broken piece of needle in the hook assembly. Yes that is a lot of techincal words that I now completely understand.
So I had my trusty employee aka Loren come and see what he could do. We removed the broken pieces and called APQS for the replacement parts. The new parts came a couple days later and we retimed the machine with the new parts and there still was a horrible clatter going on plus the fact that I wanted the needle to stay in and overtightened the screw so much that it broke off in the needle bar--so we called the service department to make an appointment. Tuesday morning I left at 6AM for a 9:30 appointment--we put the packing box in the trunk just in case they couldn't fix it while I waited.
But have no fear--Amy the service lady at APQS had my machine purring like a kitten in 30 minutes!!! She put in a new needle bar, dremmeled off a bump on the new hook retaining finger that was making the horrible clatter, and retimed it to perfection!! She then seatbelted in the back seat of the car and I was all finished!!
So of course I couldn't just go right home--I took the long way home and had my own little Iowa shop hop. Stopping at 5 shops on the way home. Had a neat little trip all by myself!!!

I had an afternoon of quilting time in before the major interuption--photos to follow....

So now that I am a week behind again--I zipped off Happiness is...to catch up on customer quilts.
Hopefully soon....will keep you posted.