Saturday, December 1, 2012

Let There Be Light

One thing all quilters need (especially at my age) is good lighting.

Since my sewing room is, in reality, a master suite, we felt we couldn't do too much structurally in the event we may need to move to a new home. Not that we are planning that, but you never know what life throws at you, right? So, even though I would have loved to put in some mega overhead lighting, we left our old ceiling fan as is and I rely on one of the quilter's best friends, the Ott light. I have Ott lights everywhere. And still, it wasn't enough light in my sewing room unless it was a very bright, sunny day. Okay, maybe I need to schedule cataract surgery, but I'm not rushing into that without some kicking and screaming.

I've had Lasik eye surgery and I imagine cataract
surgery is similar. 
I belong to an online machine quilting group and one of the gals mentioned replacing the regular bulb in her ceiling fan with an Ott light bulb. It had never occurred to me that there was a screw-in type Ott bulb, and on my next trip to Joann's I noticed that they had them in stock and (even better) they were on sale! I picked one up and installed in when I got home. It works great--lights up the entire room with day light. I can see!

This bulb replaces up to a 100W bulb. It screws in like a regular bulb. It's not pretty , but it does the trick!


The package says the bulb is "instant-on" but I have found it gets much brighter after a minute or two
.
The fixture is a limited edition Hunter ceiling fan in an old  Pfaltzgraf pattern: Wild Rose, I believe. It was purchased for our previous home (but never installed--maybe you can relate?), so somehow it ended up in this room and is totally inappropriate for the decor.  
You can see the bulb here on sale at Joann's right now.

I looked everywhere for pulls for the fan and suddenly it dawned on me that I had a whole big jar of them!
Mr. Moosebay found the little washers and the rest is history. 


2 comments:

  1. I never thought of using an Ott light in the fixture!! I have the same problem in my sewing room. It's in the basement and without changing out the fixture there isn't much I can do. This might be the solution.

    BTW, I just saw The Scream at the MoMA in NY a couple weeks ago. So cool to see.

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  2. Thanks for sharing the ott light information. A trip to Joanns is in my near future. I love the spool pulls, so ingenious.

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