Friday, May 30, 2014

Not snow. . . FLOWERS!


We were headed home from shopping in Las Vegas, New Mexico and I saw this white streak on about 10 acres of land. Sorry for the remoteness of the picture, I took it with my phone.

Since it has been hailing the past couple of weeks and the weather has been so freaky, I thought it was left over hail or snow. Some of our higher hills still have peaks covered in snow.

My husband said no, that's not snow its flowers . . . white daisies!

Oh my! They were so beautiful! Then I began to notice they were everywhere!
Not on every piece of acreage, just here and there.

I had forgotten that every year at this time of year, with all the spring rains, we get these fields of wild flowers. They are never in the same field every year, the locations are very random. You never know where you will see all this beauty.

It seems the colors are never exactly the same. Last year they were golden yellow, the year before they were light lavender, and so on.  I have never seen white or red.

Whatever color they are they are so beautiful and so plentiful, they take my breath away. Being a city girl from California, I had never seen this beauty before.


Monday, May 26, 2014

Cleaning and Testing New Vintage Machine

I have spent my holiday cleaning and researching my gifted vintage "Housekeeper Deluxe" sewing machine. Here is a picture of her after her preliminary cleaning. Isn't she beautiful?  The paint job is excellent! It either was very well taken care of, used very rarely or repainted. I still have more cleaning to do. It seems every time I step away for a few moments and come back I find more "spots" to clean! Since it was probably stored in some warehouse for many years, I know it will take time to discover all the nook and crannies that I need to clean.



Here is a picture of the side of the carrying case after I started stripping the paper.


This is that same side after I finished stripping all the paper. Now I only have three sides and the top cover to go! I also have to figure out how I am going to glue the top together so it will not split again.


But, before doing any cleaning outside and stripping paper, I researched the machine so I could thread the bobbin and the machine and test sew.  The following picture shows some of the testing I did.  It did very well. I still have to adjust the tension more, but that will take time to get it just right.


I had ordered some rubber "tires" for the bobbin winder of my Singer Hand Crank and had a couple left over. I tried one and it fit the first try!  Lucky me! Now I can wind the bobbin. Next step will be to buy more bobbins.

I also noticed that there were some sparks coming from the motor. Some people on the internet say that is very common among these machines and other people say that the machine's brushes should be replaced.  So, that is something that I have to do research on and will let you know what happens.

In the meantime, I still have the big job of stripping and refinishing the carrying case, buying more bobbins and finish cleaning all those nooks and crannies.  But, I love that it works and it's so quiet and smooth. It's just a matter of time and patience to finish the job . . .just like quilting!!