Finally

It has taken several months of selling but I finally have all of the sewing machines with cabinets in the house or sold and I got my car back in the garage. My goal is to get the cars back in the garage before the first snowfall but we had two small snowfalls with no real accumulation but I knew my time was coming to an end soon. A storm and drop in temperature is coming this week and that was where I drew the line in the sand. We had a dishwasher installed yesterday and it had been taking up its share of space so with its removal my car was ready to go in. Here's the happy result:

Both cars in the garage!

Now before you get too excited for me, know that I bought another table model on the same day. I saw an ad for a Singer 301 and, wouldn't you know it, in a school cabinet with matching seat. I asked if it came with the cradle and even explained what it would look like but they weren't sure. Between having the dishwasher installed and picking up the Singer 301 I stopped at the car wash because it was going to be the last chance before real cold stepped in and car washes stopped. I gladly added the Singer 301 in table in the back of my clean car, not sure what I was going to do when I got home. Two sisters were selling it, deciding it was time since the original owner had passed away six years ago. Besides, one of the sisters already had mom's Featherweight and she was happy with it, still using it, too. I demonstrated the cradle before we hauled it upstairs and into my car and they were fascinated, not knowing it would simply lift out with the push of a lever. Yes, it was very clever of the Singer designers!

How the cradle works but with a different cabinet: see lever on left?

Once home, I got it cleaned up and checked out but found I needed to rewire the foot control. One of the sisters told me it just kept running when she plugged it in so I figured it needed new wiring and it certainly did. As the cord entered the foot control the rubber covering was worn away so bare wire was rubbing bare wire so it made a full circuit, keeping the motor running constantly. Once that was corrected with all new wire (same foot control, same plug end), I plugged the machine in and ran it for awhile. Okay, but not great, so I kept cleaning the interior although it wasn't particularly dirty.  What did the trick was cleaning off the old grease on the metal gears, three sets of them with feed dogs, handwheel to motor, and main gears on top. Triflow is a no-no on this type of gear and will slow them down, according to Bill Holman who worked on Singers all of his professional life. It's true: I've had to go back and remove the Triflow grease because it slowed down a Singer 201and replace it with (gulp) petroleum jelly. Yup, that's Vaseline by brand name. Man, she took off! It made all the difference. sometimes simple is better.

My newest Singer 301: ain't she sweet?

And finally, I have the story of an Etsy package that took a long time and the long way to get to its destination. I'm always happy to get a notice when I sell something in my Etsy shop so when a lovely calendar tote was bought by Kim, I packaged it up right away and sent it to Ohio.  On November 24 I get a message from her asking if I had sent it yet. What? I sent it on November 17! From there I sent her the tracking number and we were almost mesmerized as we followed its path. From Des Moines to Cincinnati, back to Des Moines, to St. Paul to Cincinnati to Indianapolis to Minneapolis where it stayed from November 24 until I sent out an inquiry on November 29. I apologized to Kim and she was very good natured about it and even took a photo when it finally arrived on December 2:

Kim's package when it arrived.

She loved the tote bag even if it took over two weeks to arrive. What could either of us say? It did finally arrive. Sometimes you just gotta love it. Finally..