Driving War Time Tanks!!

There's lot of things I won't admit, but being spoiled is one I have to own up to.  I'm not sure how it happened ... probably when my husband ran off with the love of his life he met on the internet ... so I decided to buy everything I ever wanted ... mostly.  I am after all, a cheap accountant!

My sewing machine is a Mercedes Benz of sewing machines.  It rides like a dream, has all the bells and whistles and will do anything I ask of it, including embroidery as well as sewing magnificently, all at the touch of a button.

Finding a temporary replacement is like one of the worst things to have to do.  Any machine out there under $500 is a tank ... a battle tank like this one.  Imagine driving a tank across the landscape.  Better yet, imagine driving a 1960 Volkswagen Beetle, standard transmission down a washboard road in the Mohave desert, with the clutch grinding every time you shift.  Yeah, it's about like that.

So here it is ... my new temporary machine from Singer.  It sounds like a tank going down the highway at 50 mph.  You can hear every single gear, feel every bump and it's hecka hard to shift gears while moving.  There's no power steering either.  Every time the needle goes over a seam it sounds like a woodpecker ... bang bang bang.  

Right off the bat, it sucked my fabric down into those lovely gears ... TWICE in a row.  I quickly learned you cannot get anywhere near the edge of the fabric.  The light is so dim, it throws shadows next to the foot so you can't really see if you are at the edge or not.  I actually set up my flashlight next to it to shine a little light on the subject.

Let's see ... there MUST be something I like about it.  Oh yeah ... it has automatic thread cut, which was a must have AND needle down, so when you stop, the needle helps hold the fabric in place.  It wasn't exactly cheap, but better than the next step up which ran $1200.  Nope, not going there.

It's NOTHING compared to the sleek smooth quietness of my Brother machine, but it does sew two pieces together and will keep me from going mad for lack of something to do.  It's kind of like driving that old WWI Jeep we had on the ranch.  However, it did work to sew the last twelve seams on this quilt.  Operator error ended in ... well an error.  Can you find it?

This is the corrected version.

After a couple of hours and one set of ear plugs, I was able to get two borders sewn on.  One more to go and it will be ready to quilt.

Here's my latest tidbit on Wyatt Earp.  These images came from Facebook Historic Tombstone.   This is Wyatt and his brother Virgil at about the time of this story, told by their sister Adelia, the last surviving sibling of Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, James and Warren Earp.

Before her death in 1941, she wrote down some stories about the boys.  Virgil and Wyatt worked on the railroad when in Wyoming.  They got in a really big argument with two big Irishmen and a "mighty" Swede laborer while knocking down some drinks in a saloon.  A real brawl broke out. Virgil did a lot of damage, but in the end, they put him down and out.  Wyatt lasted about a minute, taking a terrible beating.

The next day, battered and limping, Wyatt decided he better learn how to fight.  He looked up John Shannasey, a professional boxer, and quickly learned enough so he could hold his own.  He also learned all the rules and laws, doing some refereeing as well as boxing.  That's how he got into the profession and occasionally refereed big matches.

One of the last things he did before leaving the railroad job was to call upon the big Swede.  Wyatt "mauled him up bad and was mighty well pleased" said Adelia.  Now you know why Wyatt was so fast at knocking bad guys over the head with his gun before they could cause trouble.  Little did they know he was a professional boxer.  That was news to me too.

One more picture.  This is the old wooden jail in Gleeson Arizona, probably the only remaining image.   The bad guys were just climbing out the roof, so they built the concrete jail just behind.  The wooden one was torn down ..... the concrete one remains to this day.

If I can muster up the gumption, today will be skunk interference day as I see if this new underground fence is going to work.