In Transition

It has taken me a while to post about my trip to Clarinda, Iowa. I ended up putting fake blogging dates on those posts so that they wouldn't all appear to be on the same day.

While I was in Clarinda I would optimistically drive down to the Super 8 every night to take advantage of the super slow wireless, only to have my laptop thoroughly misbehave. Some nights I couldn't even get online. The misbehavior of my laptop continued after I came home, and then it took a really long time to transfer things over to my new laptop. I'm not really much of a computer person so all of the chores that I'm having to do just to get the new one up and running are kind of making me want to run in the other direction. The new computer keeps asking me questions that I don't know how to answer! It is a very tedious process.

In a similar vein, I had decided shortly before the computer issues started happening that it was finally time for me to become acquainted with my fancy new sewing machine that I haven't used once in the nearly two years that have passed since I bought it. I lost 2 sewing machines and I especially miss my favorite sewing machine of all time - the Singer 404 because it was so basic and sturdy and easy to use. I eventually got another machine that did some fancier stitches but I always felt like I was cheating. I didn't really enjoy using it and I didn't much care for the fact that it was made out of plastic. So after the fire took both of these machines from me I decided to combine their value and get one super-duper sewing machine. It is made by Brother and can do some truly amazing things and it is really well made. But the instruction booklet is over 60 pages long. At least it has an instruction booklet, unlike my new computer. And at least the instruction booklet is so well-written that I can actually tell what the instructions mean.

So far I've only used the straight stitch for a couple of projects but that was enough to get me excited about the potential of this machine. Unfortunately I'm probably not going to have time do any more sewing until we get back in our house. Then I'll be able to set up a real sewing area instead of having to move my computer out of the way. Also I have to buy all of the basic equipment again. And there's nowhere else to set up the sewing machine so I have to use the same card table that I use for my computer. Complain, complain, complain.

It's all pretty inconvenient, but I'm learning a few new things and re-learning quite a few more things as a result. But I'm pretty sure that the days of sewing bathing suits and winter coats and reupholstering the car seats are long gone. These days I have other diversions.