How to Drive Yourself Crazy Without Even Trying

Okay, so I know I've been saying I was going to sew for, like, three days now.  But Day Three has come and gone without so much as two stitches of sewing.  I actually did sew one stitch.  I'll get to that in a minute.

First, I want to say that I saw my orthopedist today, who said what I thought he would say:  surgery probably won't help my knee.  However, he did say that weight loss "can't do anything but help."  I thanked him for that vote of confidence.  He gave me a prescription for physical therapy, but I don't know if I will go.  I'm hard pressed to think how that's going to help either.  My knee has a degenerative process going.  My thinking is that I'm going to need to learn to live with it until I can't live with it any more.  By that I mean until I'm ready for a knee replacement...which I am not.  For now, I'll just whine about it from time to time and use it as an excuse not to exercise when I need one.

So that appointment took waaaaaaaaay longer than I thought it would.  I was advised that I needed to check in at 9:45 a.m. for my 10:00 a.m. appointment.  By 11:15 a.m., I was still cooling my jets waiting to see the doctor.  I think he came in around 11:25 a.m.  This annoys me to no end, but I'm sure you ALL have stories about being admonished not to keep the doctor waiting, and then waiting a damned fine piece yourself.

Once I got out of there I went to a quilt shop I've been meaning to visit, but I'll have to tell you about it in a separate post.  It was a good one, so I'm excited to tell you about it.  For now, I have to tell you how I drove myself crazy today--aside from waiting in the doctor's office forEVER.

So here goes:  Last night, this dropped into my email inbox:

Now, I should never be shown things like this because it gets me thinking too much.  I have a Bernina 440QE which I love in every way except one.  The harp space is quite small and it makes free motion quilting anything larger than a lap quilt very difficult...for me, at least.  I know there are those who use their domestic sewing machines to quilt absolutely humongous quilts, but I haven't found the patience to do it on my machine.  

So, once again, this ad drops into my email inbox, and I get to thinking about it.  Then I read the reviews for the Bernina 750QE, which has a full three inches more harp space, and I think, nah!  And then I think, heck yeah!  And then I think, nah, Mike would never go for it.  And then I think lots of things.  And then I dream about it.  And then I decide to approach Mike about it.  And guess what?  No begging!  So, without getting too carried away, I got carried away and bought one this afternoon.

I've spent the whole afternoon getting it set up and sewing exactly one stitch.  Then, it was getting late in the day, and so I decided to wait until tomorrow to spend more time with the instruction book.  And, fortunately, it comes with four classes so I can learn to use it.  The first class is on Sunday morning.  Since I'm making dinner for the kids on Sunday, that pushes my stress level a little higher, but I decided I would rather get through the class sooner than later.  And the 2nd class is meeting Monday evening, so by Monday evening, I should have a much better handle on it.

An advantage/disadvantage of the machine is that the bobbin holds 80% more thread than my current bobbins AND there is a sensor that causes the machine to stop sewing when the bobbin runs out of thread.  I like that feature a LOT.  Here's the disadvantage...I have about twenty of these smaller bobbins that will be of no use to me now.  I'm planning to sell my Bernina 440QE, and so I guess the bobbins will go to whoever buys it.  I have a basic Janome already and I can't afford to have the Bernina 440 just sitting around if I'm going to shell out the bucks for this new machine.  But here are the two bobbins side by side.

That also means I won't be able to use my Bobbin Buddy storage system any more either, but I'm not complaining.  Just observing.

So once I had the machine set up, I sneaked a peek into the instruction book.  This is what I saw first:

Yikes!  And right away, I managed to make this red light come on.  I still don't know what it means, but in practice, it means the machine won't budge.

So I sort of flipped through the instruction book, paying special attention to the trouble-shooting pages, and couldn't figure out what was going on.  So I did what any computer nerd would do (because, let's face it, today's sewing machines are simply computers with needles), and I turned off the machine.  And then it was back to green again.  And then I sewed one stitch.  Wahoo!

And then I decided I'd had enough excitement for one day.  Besides, I was still in love with the new machine.  I knew if I pressed my luck, I would be in tears very soon.

And that's how I drove myself crazy without even trying.  A new sewing machine is a blessing and a curse.  A blessing for obvious reasons.  A curse because now I have to figure out a complicated piece of machinery...one with a computer...and a needle.  What could possibly go wrong?

And if you have any interest at all in my 440QE, it comes with the optional machine embroidery module, the plexiglass extension table, the Bernina stitch regulator, an extra bobbin case, and twenty or so metal bobbins!  I'll be listing it on Craig's List sometime next week, but email me for more info.