Competing Interests

This is a bad time of year to get a new sewing machine. I have too many activities vying for my attention, some of which—like growing food—are time sensitive and cannot be put off. I did oil the 1541 and run it, without needle or thread, for about 10 minutes on Monday. That machine came installed with a servo motor, which is supposed to be easier to operate than a clutch motor. The speed of the servo motor can be adjusted. I might slow this motor down a touch, but I didn’t feel like the machine was running away from me.

I also cleaned, oiled, and re-threaded the industrial Juki serger. That machine lives in the basement. Right now I have it set up for a three-thread overlock stitch. Getting the tension dialed in took a bit of fiddling as the tension knobs have no numbers on them. I backed all three of them all the way out, then adjusted them one at a time. I was getting a goofy wave stitch, though, where the tension on the lower looper alternated between tight and loose, thus making the upper looper “wave” back and forth across the seam. Fun fact: BabyLock has a proprietary Wave Stitch setting/dial on some of their higher-end sergers. Second fun fact: The manual for my domestic Juki serger gives instructions on how to create a wave stitch (lowercase) manually.

Because I know how this stitch is created, I examined the threading path for the lower looper to see if it was getting hung up somewhere. (The wave pattern was regular and repetitive.) Sure enough, I noticed that the thread had gotten twisted around one of the thread guides twice. I untwisted it, serged another sample, and the stitch was perfect.

I have to decide if I want to add the left needle and the chain looper to make a five-thread stitch. (This machine cannot do a four-thread stitch, only three- and five-thread stitches.) Adding the left needle and chain looper makes a chain stitch about a quarter of an inch away from the serged seam. Do you have on a pair of jeans? Look at one of the leg seams. You should see a straight line of stitching—the chain stitch—as well as serger stitches.

The chain stitch adds a second seam for durability. It is the same kind of stitch found on feed bags and dog food bags, and will “unzip” from the bottom to the top.

Threading the chain looper on this machine requires that I stand on my head and whisper softly to it as I attempt to feed the thread through the correct guides. I’ve done it before but I’m not sure I want to do it again. Some of it depends on how I plan to use that serger. Will I be seaming or just finishing edges? Will I be working with light fabric or heavy fabric? While I was making up my Wawak order, I added a new-to-me serger thread. I think I’ll try the new serger thread and then decide how many threads I want to use.

[The number of different threads I have for all these machines is mind boggling.]

Interestingly, the industrial serger has an old-fashioned clutch motor on it. To hear people talk, clutch motors are the spawn of Satan. I don’t find them that objectionable, perhaps because I am used to driving manual transmissions. The serger’s clutch motor is smooth and quiet and I don’t feel the need to replace it with a servo motor.

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I’ve been meaning to mention how much I like the finger stiletto I picked up on one of my Seattle trips last year. This little gadget has come in very handy when assembling those log cabin blocks because of all the seams:

The stiletto can be worn a couple of different ways; this is the way I like to use it. It keeps the seams from flipping back as they go through the machine. I have a long, pointed needle stiletto, too, but I prefer the control I have with this one.

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The rain stopped and I was able to cut the grass yesterday. I’ll finish the trimming this morning. I said to the husband that perhaps it is my imagination, but it feels to me like the ground underwent a lot of frost heaving over the winter. Our yard has never been level, but riding that mower around yesterday was like four-wheeling in Baja. And it isn’t just in our yard; I noticed the same thing out in the garden.

I have not yet—fingers crossed—seen any rodent damage in the garden. I have a motion-detector solar light pointed at the row of peas and I keep moving the fake owl around near the spot where the ground squirrel tunnels come out. The turkeys have steered clear of the garden, and I suspect it is because they are scared of the pigs.

I have a new friend:

It was in the path between the herb garden and the chicken yard when I went out to feed the clucks. I delivered a stern lecture on staying out of the chicken yard lest it get eaten by a flock of fluffy velociraptors. I haven’t seen any snakes out in the big garden yet, but I keep watching.