I am hating this new blogger interface.

My new baby!

As I write this, 4 o'clock on the second day of autumn, it is 98º outside. There are farmers in their fields, harvesting their corn and soybeans and kicking up dust and plant particles into the atmosphere, and these tiny bits of crap are finding their way into my house and onto my skin. (I don't fault the farmers. Please, no hate mail.) My skin is in flat out rebellion, I tell ya. Every year, my allergic dermatitis gets worse. This year, it's my knuckles that are red and flaky and itchy, in addition to all of the old red, flaky and itchy places: wrists, ankles, top of foot, odd places on my fingers, and elbows. The non-permanent irritations have been on my hips, front thighs, and shins. Least my face is still purty.

So far.

We are lucky here in Lovely LAconia, in that we have had almost an inch of rain in the last two weeks. My friend in the next county to my west said they have not had rain for six weeks. Lucky, too, in that there is a front moving through this weekend which may bring rain, but will assuredly bring us our normal seasonal temperatures of 78º daytime and 50-something at night by Saturday.

One more day.

Also? My new sewing machine arrived late Monday, the last delivery from a huge FedEx truck. Thank goodness I am married to a mechanic, because the thing needed to be assembled and fine-tuned and I couldn't even loosen a bolt myself. (Couldn't even find where he hides his ratchets and sockets and pliers.) (Because, of course, all of my tools have migrated to better pastures.) And thank goodness I had another machine, set in an industrial table, to use as a go-by. I pity the poor homesewer that gets one of these and doesn't have the hand strength or a handyman handy, as there were no assembly instructions. At all. My one complaint.

What can I say? I love this machine! I read as many reviews as I could find before and after I ordered this one, and one of the complaints was the noise of the one horsepower clutch motor. Noise? To me, that sound is as sweet as any Beethoven symphony! Ooooh, the power! She is mine! Bwahaha!

And the table is too big. Well, yeah. It's a big powerful machine in an industrial table.

And it goes too fast! Excuse me? Then why did you buy this one in the first place?

I hate having to stop and wind bobbins in the middle of my project! You can wind a bobbin as you sew, knucklehead!

The stitches are perfect, and at 2000 stitches a minute, just fine for my needs. Straight stitch and zigzag, with 5! needle positions. I love that I can backstitch at speed and not break a needle. This machine is manufactured in Thailand with Swiss-made parts. It is labeled as a TacSew. I saw Bernina Tacsews, the exact same machine, for sale online for $3400. I paid about $1700 less than that. (You do the math.) Yet mine still came with the Bernina guarantee and the Bernina brochure.) I am looking forward to working on this baby for many, many years to come.

Of course, I wish I could have bought this machine 20 years ago and know that it was made in Switzerland, but times change and this is the world I live in now.