I really didn’t mean to be this long between posts. I managed to take a week’s vacation during the week we had mid 90s temperatures. And we had smoke from some wildfires up north, to make it even more unpleasant. I really didn’t get anything done. I do have two skirts put together that I need to hem. I gave away some machines during the Sew Purty workshop and am still happy they are gone. So far, I’ve managed to avoid looking at sewing machines. I am trying to convince my stepson’s girlfriend to take up sewing as a hobby. I think she might enjoy it, but I don’t really have the right machine for her. The Singer 237 would be great but I just can’t part with it. I’ll see what turns up.

We went to the Toledo Boat show. Got there late and I didn’t even make it over to where the boats were. It was smoky there as well. We just don’t seem to have a lot of interest in going anywhere these days. We are still trying to get some work done on the house and there are a few small things that have been finished up. It just never ends.

I am writing a column for Low End Macs about Palms. First column is  here. I have a second one almost ready to go. And I started a funky little website for my Palms at Pocket-retro.org. I didn’t want to bore folks here with my Palm chats. It was sort of interesting picking it back up, because my Palm was like a time capsule from 2008. I’ve brought it up to date, picked up maybe five more devices, but keep going back to the Zire I used to use. There seems to be a certain amount of nostalgia for them. To be honest, it’s a relief to be disconnected from the internet for awhile.

And, in the more things I am collecting category, I have another dulcimer! This one was $40, which is the main reason I decided to check it out. It turns out to be a kit from Dulcimer Shoppe, home of the McSpadden dulcimers (which are considered THE dulcimer to have). It’s a high end walnut plywood and was built in 1976. It’s really a nice instrument, although I don’t think it’s as nice as my Ron Gibson.

I am signed up for a workshop mid September with Stephen Seifert in Portland. He’s considered one of the best dulcimer players around and known as an excellent teacher. He does many of the videos for the online school I subscribe to, Dulcimer School.  So this will be a fun thing for me and something completely different. I just want to play well enough to amuse myself and Lon.

The weather is supposed to stay on the cool side and I just might take a little time to work on one of the sewing machines I haven’t messed with yet. I would like to see if the National Two Spool works. And I would like to spend a little time sewing with the Davis Vertical Feed. And then, the Necchi needs attention. I am taking Tuesday off next week, so maybe I will accomplish some of this during the long weekend.

It’s a baby blanket I made, following Janet Szabo’s instructions. And I didn’t have a problem with the instructions. I had a problem getting the pieces cut square, which affected everything else. And the minky is a knit, which meant that I had to use an electric machine (I used the Viking). It wasn’t as  bad as I originally thought, but one edge in particular looked bad. I was ready to cut it up and resew the whole thing. Then I decided to try sewing a few lines around the edges. It looks better. I will try this next time with two pieces of flannel and make it a bit smaller. It’s cute material and certainly ready to handle baby puke and pee.

No new machines this week, which is a good thing. I still haven’t tried to sew with the new machine. We are supposed to do the yard sale this week, so I’ve been trying to see if I can come up with anything else to add to it. I just get burned out so easily. The truck died on us yesterday, so I had to reschedule my doctor’s appointment and an appointment at the vet’s for Jack. Jack’s back legs are weak and this started about a week ago. He’s an old cat and still managing to get around, but I hate to see him struggle. Will have to reschedule everything when we get the truck sorted out.

I ordered some beans, to be planted at the new place. I really am excited about the idea of being able to grow hot weather crops. I had no idea how tired I was of dealing with this climate, until I started thinking about growing  black eyed peas and watermelons. These are from Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center. I gave Quinn most of the seeds I’d bought for a planned move to the coast. I guess I’m not out that much if I never get a chance to plant these. I always buy seeds, but really can’t grow anything here. There’s the maple in the front yard and there are big evergreens blocking sun in the back yard. I hope this is our last summer here.

Cute doggie picture before I go. This is Gary.

We had a walk through with a real estate agent today. Just trying to get an idea of what else needs to be considered. I am going to try my hand at painting again this weekend. I want to finish up the main bedroom. We still have about half the inside of the house to paint. Yard sale was pushed back another week.

Didn’t feel well mid week. I think it was some nausea and back spasms at the same time. I didn’t know if I was over it, so felt the need to take a full day off. I do feel much better and I got a small amount of sewing done. I do enjoy sewing on my hand crank. I need to spend some quality time with the Davis though.

I’m waiting for a hand crank to show up for the other 28. I ordered it from Canada so will likely be here next week.

Still haven’t tried the Two Spool in that base. I can’t find the wood screws for the hinge pins, so I’ll have to buy new screws. I do want to try it out and it would be so nice if it fits that base.

I found a home for the 99k! I will be taking it across country, but it will be great to get it to someone that will use it. It’s a nice machine. I fired up my other electrics this weekend. I’m going to do a baby blanket using Janet Szabo’s instructions. I’m using minky and flannel, which means I have to use a zig zag. I removed the bad capacitor from the Viking and it works again. I’ve decided that I am going to sell that one. It’s a good machine, but it’s likely other pieces may start to fail. And I’m also selling the 401, which I just don’t care for. I’ll be left with the Necchi Supernova and the Singer 237. I’m planning to take the Necchi to the shop for an overhaul. I’m not happy with the stitch quality and I still can’t get the cam stack to turn correctly. I could work on it, but that would take away what little time I have for fun projects. Right now, I’d rather have some time to sew. The Singer 237 still stitches perfectly.

I am going to turn that Singer 28 head back into a hand crank. An original Singer hand crank turned up on Ebay, so I bought it. I took the machine outside the other day and it is really grimy. I need to clean it up before I start putting things together. I will need parts for it, but will pick those up as I find them. The other big expense will be a case for it. Once it’s together, I can decide if I want to keep it. I think it would be nice to have two hand cranks. So, I have been trying to make some decisions about what machines go with me.

We are about to paint the main bedroom. We had help cleaning up the area around Lon’s desk, which has been really cluttered. The house looks so much better. I can’t wait until we start to move out some of the bins we’ve packed up. We still have some painting to do in the living room and kitchen/dining room area. Then we’ll have the inside and outside of the house completed. Still pulling together a garage sale. This is all very stressful, but it’s amazing to think that the end might be in sight.

I am one step closer to getting this to sew again:

I took a gamble on that machine, then another gamble on the canister fitting it. I am still amazed that someone found a canister, even more amazed that it works in this machine. There are a few more pieces I need to pull together and I will need needles for it before I can test it out. I went to Scrap this weekend and bought up a bunch of small wooden spools of thread. Looks like I have plenty that will work.

And I had fun with the handcrank! I bought some scrap fabric and probably paid too much for this batch with feed sack reproduction fabric. Part of it was cut into strips and I just put it aside. I wanted a project for the handcrank and thought of making small nine patch squares. These still need to be trimmed and probably are not the best patches I will ever sew, but I had a lot of fun with it.

I thought about buying parts for the Singer I had, to turn it into a hand crank. (To be honest, I’m pretty sure it was originally a hand crank. It has hinges instead of hinge pins, which usually means it was in a base, not a treadle.) Then I ran across a Singer with a decal set I couldn’t really find. Next thing you know, I’m watching it move cross country via Fed Ex. The seller, jwinktreasures5, from Ebay did an excellent job of packing it and it made it safely here today. I think this will be fun. I plan to make a sling for it, for easy carry. And I can take it into the living room and sew while hanging out with my husband. And I may still get the parts for the other Singer, now that I have a better idea of what I need.

AND, she sent me a goodie box! This is fun stuff too.

The machine needs to be cleaned a bit and the finish is chipped. It seems to run smoothly. I probably won’t get to try sewing with it until the weekend. I need to get back on track and work on the house this weekend too. No more fun piecing quilt patches. We just really need to get packed up and get this place on the market. I am looking forward to moving but not so much towards the getting ready to move which seems to have been going on forever.

I won’t have this one until next week though, so will wait to add pictures. I’m getting a Singer handcrank, 1892. I have this Singer that I’d thought about turning into a handcrank:

Then I discovered that the bag of parts I have does not really seem to go with this machine. I could make some of them work but it will require more parts. I plan to keep this machine and have a treadle base that I could use with a little modification. And then I found a hand crank on Ebay that I fell in love with and that is that. It has an interesting set of decals.

I want to start a quilting project. The problem is that we are still getting this house ready to sell. There are things I can’t find. I had the idea this morning of doing quilted potholders. Appleturnover.tv on You Tube has two tutorials doing these. I thought I could do one on each machine, start to finish, and label which machine I used to make it. It would give me a chance to get a feel for the machines I haven’t used as much. And these are small projects, quick to finish. I’ve been buying scrap fabric from Ebay, and I have some batting that I used on my free motion potholders. I think this could be fun. I discovered the other day that my new cabinet works nicely to cut quilt pieces:

Finally, here’s a picture of old seldom seen, Loretta. It’s just hard to get a good picture of a black dog. She is a good girl but has really slowed down over the last year. She is a rat/mouse killing machine though.

I have been fooling around with this:

This is why picking up a $10 head is a bad idea. I was originally thinking it might be a good parts machine for someone, then got started on trying to get the pieces to make it work. The bobbin cost as much as the head. I bought a shuttle for it, which I’ve managed to misplace. (It was probably a bad idea to tackle a project with my office all torn up for painting.) I ordered a bobbin/shuttle combo which will be here next week, as well as a bobbin winder. Which will bring me to the next question, what will I do with it? I don’t know if the Chinese hand cranks will work on it. I like the crank on it, but I doubt it’s practical. It might fit in my empty treadle base. If it does, I guess I just let the other machine heads fight it out and see which one wins. I have the New Home head, which I need to try out. (It’s another $10 head, that I had to purchase the shuttle and bobbin for. It still needs the front bobbin cover.) I have a Singer 28 that was cleaned up and needs to be put back together. And I could use the Singer 99k in the treadle.

The other issue is whether I paint it. I probably should as there are big chips knocked off it. It still seems very dirty. I am thinking about trying kerosene to clean it up. The vibrator screw won’t go all the way down and that also seems to be very dirty. I also need a presser foot for this. I do have a couple of White rotaries, so figured I could use a foot off one of those. I really should take a look. I guess, if nothing else, someone will have a really good parts machine some day. I do think I will eventually wind up with a hand crank. I really like the Singers with the Victoria decals. I don’t really have a bucket list of machines right now, but I would happily pick up a hand crank or a nice chain stitch machine if one came my way. I like to actually use my machine, even if I don’t do anything but sew practice pieces to look at the stitches. If I finally get to retire, there are a lot of projects I’d like to do. Oh, and the other $10 head I have will likely be even more expensive and take longer to get working. That’s the National Two Spool that is missing the canister.

It’s been a long week, as they pulled the plug on George and he died on the first. Since he was caretaking our other place, there’s a lot of issues to sort out. We have temporarily stopped work on the house and are working on an office trailer that we need to sell. My office has been torn up for three weeks now. I need to do some touch up on the paint and we need to put in floor boards as Quinn missed about half the room. But, I had to move in some treadles as I just couldn’t take it any more.

It just feels better to have them in the office again. I managed to pop a capacitor on the Viking. Was interesting because I was sewing along, heard the pop and saw smoke, but it kept sewing with my foot off the foot controller. I pulled the plug and shut it off. I’ve read that this is not a critical piece as it’s designed to prevent interference from the machine. I am going to pull it and see if that’s true. I think I am going to find someone that wants it. I’ve played with the cams a bit and it’s a good machine, but I just want to use the simpler machines these days. After spending time lifting my full sized, heavy machines, I am starting to wonder if I shouldn’t hang on to the 3/4 sized ones. I am pretty sure that Singer 28 head I have was a hand crank at some point. It has hinges instead of those heavier pins to connect to the treadle base. That White VS is another candidate for a hand crank. I could put my 99k in that spare treadle base I have. Just not sure what to keep yet. I have my core four (Singer vs, 127, Free and Davis) and a couple of heads to keep. I do want to keep the Necchi and keep working on it. Am not sure which other machines to keep. I am thinking about keeping the Singer 237 as an electric. Mostly, I really want to spend some time and cut out quilt blocks so I have something to sew. I managed to find my cutting board and ruler, so I am ready to cut.

And I picked up these:

These are Kai 10″ Professional shears. I have been using Fiskers and thought I should get a good pair of scissors to replace them. The reviews on these were great. I haven’t used them yet, but will write a full review when I do.

And, just to add some sort of animal picture, this is Gary. He loves being my office dog. The only problem is that he gets possessive of the room and has growled at Lon for coming in. So I have to trade off, so that he knows he doesn’t own this room. He is a sweet dog and is getting better about sharing.

I am not getting pretty stitches from my Necchi. I just asked the Facebook forum for help. It still needs to be thoroughly cleaned. It looks like the needle bar wanders over from the central position when stitching. I have tried to sew a little on it every week, sometimes daily, so that the oil will penetrate and start to loosen it up. I think I’ve sorted out the tension issues. I like the machine and want to use it for projects. The Singer 237 simply makes better stitches at this point.

In other sewing machine news, I picked up a shuttle and bobbin for the New Home. It’s still missing the faceplates, but I should be able to test it out. I will likely try and find a new home for it. I ordered a shuttle for the White vs3. I will still need a bobbin, but understand bobbins and shuttles are hard to come by for this machine. I decided to pick up the shuttle while I could. I’ll clean it up and make sure it runs, then find a new home for it as well.

I am having my office painted at long last. It was Quinn’s room and an awful dark blue color. This is a lighter blue and really makes a difference. The problem is that I have to move things out of here and I work in this room. All the treadles were moved out yesterday but half the room is still full. I am going to shuffle things around. I think I can use my library table as a cutting table if I get all the stuff off it. I just have too much stuff out.

And that brings us to Plan B…we have talked about where we want to go when we sell this place. We look at houses and sometimes Lon finds one that he really, really likes. We do some planning about what it would be like to live there. But it’s taken too long to get the house on the market and the place sells to someone else. We have a new plan B and it’s a very interesting house. It’s been on the market for close to two years, so we might have a chance at it. I would love to get this place on the market by spring but it all depends on finding help to make some progress. We have the help of one of the best guys we know right now and he can get a lot done when he’s not working. Would be so nice to be done with this part.

And last note, our friend George, who watches over our other place, had another heart attack last week. They didn’t think he’d make it to Monday but he is still hanging in there and making a little progress every day. If he lasts another day, they will take him out of the induced coma. George has been a real challenge at times and there were periods when we didn’t want to see him again. Since the first heart attack, he’s been making an effort to do right by his friends. I hope he makes it through this. He still has a lot to make up for. And please, if you aren’t married or in a legal relationship, do a living will. His partner has been through a lot because the hospital has to let his adult children make the medical decisions. She’s been there for him when they weren’t, but she has no legal standing.

The type of post that only a sewing machine “collector” could love! I think the motor could stand to be cleaned and checked. It’s a bit noisy. But here is my test run:

The red is the top thread with white or maroon as the bobbin thread. The tension is right on, even doing a satin stitch. The FMQ goes faster that I’d like, but I’ll work on that using a treadle. I don’t have a case for this machine but I think it just earned the cabinet. I’ll use the 66 in one of the existing treadles for now, until I find a permanent one to use.

I have been thinking about the nice batch of sewing machines I have. Right now, I’m not seeing anything that interests me. But, when I was considering buying a Necchi, two popped up. I would have liked the BU, but am happy with the Supernova. The camstaft was frozen, so I have been working on unsticking it. A bit of heat seems to be doing the trick. When I wanted a Davis, one showed up at a nice price. It really seems to work out. Now it’s true that I hadn’t been looking for machines for a long time. And maybe there were some great Necchis when I wasn’t looking for one. I like the way it has worked out. I will need to play around with free motion quilting a bit more this weekend. Need to pick up the front yard first.

And that is another thing, I’m tired of living in the suburbs. It’s a comfortable house and it’s easy to get to the stores. I am so tired of having to deal with the neighbor’s dogs when I let mine out, or the neighbor that thinks our front yards should look like a golf course. I am not interested in that. I am interested in growing food, which I can’t do here because we don’t have a place that gets good sun. It’s a new year. Maybe there are changes on the horizon.

And just like that, there were six!

This is the machine I was actually looking for, when I found the Free. I have been fascinated by Davis Vertical Feeds for awhile. I’ve seen them for sale in Portland, but didn’t have the money or wasn’t sure I really needed one at the time. I want to get into quilting and these are supposed to be excellent machines for quilting. When this one came up, I did not hesitate and picked up it during the week.

The base is in decent shape, although there is a ding in the coffin top:

The machine is in very good condition. Serial number dating on Needlebar indicates this is probably from 1892.

We are going to look at the beautiful decals on this for awhile.

The machine seems to be in good shape and turns freely. I did not have a replacement belt, so won’t get to sew with it until one arrives. I ordered a spare belt this time and I ordered needles for this. It takes a boat shuttle and I am trying to order a few more bobbins for it.

And the walking foot:

Bobbin winder:

And tensioner:

There was a story on the ad about this being Great-grandma’s machine from 1858, but that clearly wasn’t true. Not so much as a pin in the drawers and no attachments. Still, I’m very happy to have it! It’s a beautiful machine and I think it is a great addition.

More details when I can actually sew on it.