Little Critters

In this land of cold and snow we have to be careful what we store outside since winter is below freezing for months at a time. Sewing machines are not too happy to be frozen as this can solidify oil and grease and wears on the finish of the older black Singers in particular. This past weekend I bought a Bernette 234 serger that had a little surprise waiting for me.

I arranged to meet with the seller at a half way point and we simply exchanged the serger, cones of thread, and a Bernina walking foot for cash now in her hand. The machine had to sit in my car all day while I worked a Saturday shift. When I got home and plugged it in I could see it was pretty dirty but I pushed the foot control to find it still stitched so it went back in the box until the next day. Sunday afternoon I got it out and looked it over. I had this model before and had trouble with it not going really fast but the new owner, Jane, said she was fine with that as she wasn't into fast these days. My newer Bernette 234 serger would go really fast but I needed to clean it up first. Feeling fearless, I turned it over and took off the bottom plate so I could get to the mess underneath. Here's what I found:

Little nuts saved up by some little creature

My my, someone has been busy! When I mentioned this to my husband he thought it had to be a mouse because there were no marks from gnawing on the plastic, something a squirrel might do. Yuck. The bottom plate actually got washed with Dawn dishwashing detergent and came out very nice but I needed to clean up all of the oil and mess on the rest of it. It does seem a little strange that the usual accumulation of threads and fluff from a serger wasn't present but oil spatter was. I took off the front cover so I could see where oil might be coming from and found this:

Under the front cover there were even more

Now everything was going to get a very thorough cleaning. It sure cleaned up nice and needed very little adjusting. This little lovely is going to Haiti, getting picked up soon so it will be a carry-on on a late flight. It will no longer be subject to freezing temperatures but might need to guard against rust in such a warm and humid climate. When I sent a photo and note to the last owner of the serger she was shocked with the news about all of the nuts and then confessed it had been in the garage last summer. Now she wonders what else was out there and maybe there would be surprises in them, too. Yes, indeed.

Bernette 234 serger all cleaned up