Fishing

I'm back from a fishing vacation but only a vacation from writing as I still thought about sewing machines. Although we caught our limit of walleye and sauger, it was more about having fun together out on a boat in glorious weather:

Right outside our cabin on Rainy River

On the way up north my sister and I brought our knitting but I was too quickly done with my ball of yarn (what was I thinking?) so when we stopped for lunch I popped into a thrift store and picked up a bag of yarn for a dollar. Look what I knit up with only part of that yarn:

Slippers!

In Grand Rapids, MN, we stopped for lunch on the way home and just happened to find a yarn shop where we picked up Red Heart Scrubby cotton for making wash/dish cloths. Although I've been knitting up dish cloths for some time now, the texture of the Scrubby yarn is pretty neat: the cotton variety has just enough to mildly exfoliate but not scrub your skin off. For only $5 I think I can get 3-4 out of that modest skein of yarn.

With my bargain yarn I'm also going to knit up a hat with a large skein of Prism yarn but that has jump started a whole resurgence in using up left over yarn from my own stash. We have a craft and bake sale at church in December in conjunction with the children's Christmas program and that has me thinking about knitting up a group of slippers, mittens, hats, etc. for the sale/donation. I'll never have time come fall but I do have some I can spend on these hot nights when we are reluctant to spend it outside.

What has been happening with my sewing machines? While we were gone I answered an ad for a vintage sewing machine in a compact cabinet. I'm such a sucker for those small footprint cabinets so while up north I arranged to pick up this gem on Sunday afternoon:

Cute compact cabinet

Excellent Japanese branded Helebrant sewing machine

While we has our grandsons over to help with some odd jobs they found this sewing machine in the garage and had a great time seeing if it could make all those fun stitches. Grant said "Hey, there's a sunglasses one!" and I did a double take:

Stitch selection dial with "sunglasses" at the top.

With no adjustments, here's how it stitched.

Could be! It's such a nice machine and only a bit stiff in the beginning. It came with a printed manual and a whole slew of accessories:

Extra feet and tools fit in plastic box

Manual with vintage dress patterns

All of this fits so nicely into the drawer in the pull-out seat with room for lots more. Along with all of the iron-on patches, there were a couple patterns that were a hoot: a wedding dress that was undated but looks like 1969. The other "mod" dress pattern looks way too familiar so it's possible I made this one back in the day, too. The cover on the manual was in pieces but it did tape together nicely: because this machine is just a bit different I'm glad there is a good manual.

Fun times to have a great fishing vacation and then score such a nice sewing machine at the end of the vacation was just icing on the cake. Next up? Treadle restoration!

On the deck at the resort at the end of a day of fishing