Strange Machines

Biscuit with Big Blue, first rabbit made on my sewing machine.

She’s gone to live with my dear friend Angie who uses her as an eye pillow.

Here’s Gray with Blue Biscuit and Biscuit.

The Porsche Carrera S’s side mirror was poking his back.

Blue Biscuit came back for a week-long visit.

Biscuit & Gray have their own website now! Please excuse the mess while we hang the stuff up. But if you can’t wait, go visit them at Biscuit & Gray dot com.

Here’s a pic of Biscuit and Blue Biscuit, whom I made for Amber, my sister’s daughter for her 8th birthday. As you can tell, Biscuit was thrilled to have another rabbit friend and the two pals enjoyed 5 lovely rabbitty days together. (I think Gray felt a little left out.)

Jack was also ecstatic to have another Biscuit and was sad to let him go in the end. He still asks if I will make another Blue Biscuit and one of these days I will.

Today I brought Jack to town, hoping to snag the latest Aranzi Aronzo book Cute Stuff which is the best starter book for anyone who wants to sew their own bags. After the Kino 20% discount, it was $20.02, way cheaper than Amazon! V, whom I met for coffee today, agreed and mirrored my horror that shipping takes one month!

I have to say the Aranzi Aronzo books provide the best starter for any sewing novice with easy to follow step-by-step pictorial examples. It was easy to make Biscuit and Gray from their instructions, with some modifications to make them mine.

Anyway, I joined Etsy, a great site for buying and selling homemade things and have bought 3 sweet stuffed dolls already. Nothing beats homemade, which is why I stopped buying any stuffed animals for Jack since I read about all the damn toxic crap in our toys. And that sparked the interest in making them. So Biscuit and Gray were born.

Bookmark my Etsy page. I’ll be putting up my cloth bags and some small stuffed animals for sale soon.

Meanwhile I love my Singer. It is almost like driving that car simulator today at Best in Taka. Awesome!

To all those who asked, this is Biscuit (white rabbit) and Gray (gray cat), the two 100% cotton cloth dolls I hand sewed for Jack, inspired by the cute dolls by Aranzi Aronzo.

Now, before Biscuit came into our lives, Jack called all rabbits biscuits. I thought it was the cutest thing and interestingly enough, having Biscuit made the distinction between a “biscuit” and “Biscuit” the name.

Biscuit was made from an old 3 cats t-shirt of mine my Mom gave me. The front was stained with breast milk but the back was okay. So I cut it up and Biscuit was born, sometime late April. 28th I think.

Gray came soon after. 2 days if I recall correctly. April 30th. My fave Victoria’s Secret gray top had stretched beyond decency and its soft material made it perfect for a small gray cat. Victoria seemed rather stiff for a cute cat, so I called him Gray instead.

Biscuit’s pose in the picture was inspired by the bats on the last page of The Gruffalo’s Child. They sleep with us every night and Biscuit reads to Jack every night.

Anyhow, Gray needed a bit of surgery today.

I’d been staring at his uneven forehead for a month now and it kept driving me crazy (yes, Sab, my obsession with alignment even extends to live objects, not just webpages).

So this evening, while Jack obsessed about aligning (appeared to be inherited) his cars properly on his Tomy car park, I deftly took out my crafting bag, removed a needle, black thread, and scissors, and promptly gave Gray a lobotomy. Really, I unpicked the stitches under his right cheek, took out his stuffing, turned him inside out, unpicked the stitches attaching his ear to head, and restitched that part.

Jack turned to look at me some five minutes later, rather puzzled, then a little disturbed. I noticed his stare and told him, Momma is repairing Gray’s head. He glanced at poor Gray’s flattened head. Then reached out for Biscuit, his stuffed rabbit, and stealthily put her behind him.

Luckily his Dad was out of his shower and proceeded to distract him by playing with his cars and reading to him. Perhaps tonight he was too alarmed by Gray’s inside out anatomy that he allowed Dad to help Biscuit read his dinosaur book to him in a dreadful falsetto voice.

Gray’s head is now a beautifully aligned symmetry. I can sleep better now.

This morning when we woke, Jack nursed as usual and sweetly asked, “Mama please hold hands”. I held his hand. Once done, he peered into my dozy face and grinned, kissed my cheeks repeatedly and then ran outside to look for his Dad.

We accomplished a lot today. Got a new pair of spectacles, ordered a new bathroom door to replace the broken one, did some market research on sewing machines (I was very awed by the Singer 8280 and the saleslady’s demo).

In the end, we lugged home my brother’s old Singer - actually my grandmother’s - after much convincing (”It’s the second last furniture I have of grandma’s.” “Grandma’s going to live with you soon. Isn’t having grandma herself even better than her furniture?” Pause. “You’re so rude.”).

I spent the latter half of the evening cleaning it (and here’s a link to some step-by-step advice). It is rusty but I rubbed in lemon and salt and hoped for the best. The gears still work and everything is where it should be. I spent a moment thinking of my grandma sitting by her machine with all the chalk, thread, and needles in the drawers.

I confess still being tempted by the 8280, its reputation only slightly marred by some jamming issues. Duds, some of them? The saleslady May said they’re all assembled in China now, although the parts are made in Brazil. I’ve been lucky so far with the Nokia phones. But let me run a couple of projects on the old Singer first. But it would be nice to have a machine ready to go…

Since it sells on Ebay for about slightly more than the list price including shipping (over US$100 - ouch), I might just get it here if I want it. Okay, I want it, but for now, I don’t need it.

Meanwhile, I’m planning to make this lovely stuffed tomato dish (with organic spinach, diced carrots, raisins, black beans, garlic, some herbs) for dinner tomorrow. It will be a nice change from the usual pasta+fish combo. That and the wrinkled yellow capsicum that is now 1 week old in my fridge.

After taking 2 days to make my very first small tote bag (instead of buying them) which is 100% cotton and a cool black (and a day of carrying and admiring it), I’ve decided it is time to go get a machine to help me out. This just is not productive.

Into Alice’s rabbit hole I fell.

From Pfaff to Singer to Brother and Bernina, I spun. And those are just the brand names. The models are even more, almost like genuses of some new species (I remember those days in Anthropology 101) I had to remember. It was impossible to find a conclusive model to buy.

Never mind my mother and brother both have ancient Singers, all in good health ready for use, which they insist they need to keep. Mom: “It is worth 1000 dollars if I sell it now, and I do use it. Occasionally.” Right. Bro: “I still want it.” Okay.

At Great World City I found a nice craft lady who wore a measuring tape like a necklace. She said they sell Janome and recommended me the entry-level Jem at $262. Gosh. I was looking to spend no more than $120.

Then the advice online. There seems to be a consensus that you can’t do wrong by Bernina and Pfaff but they’re worth more than what I earn in a year (now). Brother and Singer are all apparently plasticky and made in China now, and they’re erratic from model to model - I hate that.

There’s a woman selling a Brother XL-2220 on Ebay for $120 now and I can’t find a single review on that model. Other forum advice points to Ebay being overpriced although generally we noobs are better off buying second hand higher end machines than new entry level machines.

So this is what I have decided.

1. Go look around in live shops and touch the machines.
2. Find one I like that isn’t plasticky.
3. Consider seriously if I will be using that machine much.
4. Try to convince mother and brother to part with theirs.
5. Look at the Bernina Bernette series and the Janome Jem, which seem to have the most thumbs ups so far.

It is mine! On Wednesday night, I decided that it made perfect sense to buy a phone that was also a fabulous camera and so after a night of research and many questions and answers later, on Thursday I bought the Nokia N82. Just snapping a pic of Jack and I in the car and seeing it turn out perfect cheered me so.

I know that it is a nay in the spirit of non-consumerism, which I am striving for, but I have abstained for a long time till the price fell within a reasonable range and I cut coupons and accumulated points for it. Plus it helps me document my son’s and my cats’ lives and those are important to me. Plus my last cams were 3.2MPs so you can figure out how old they are.

I always regretted not buying a good camera phone when Jack was born and so early pics and videos of him are grainy and not very many. So this time, there are no regrets buying the best I can afford. Now I might actually catch that elusive Jack smiling in his sleep shot. Hopefully without waking him!

Here are my reviews of it on TechBot:

10 Thing I Love About the Nokia N82
Tips for Uploading to Flickr on the Nokia N82
Why Nokia N82 Beats N95 8GB Hands Down

A lovely mention on Mike’s blog (and my mug of our poem The Nightmare Avatar’s Nightmare and my reading on the SFPA’s Halloween page. If you haven’t grabbed a copy of it yet, run run and buy the H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror Issue #4 now.

I’m up to 4500 words on The Flame now, a speculative story I am writing. So far I hit 3000 on the first sitting - 6 hours - the ending was rather abrupt, says my kindly readers, so I revised it for expansion during another edit and sitting to 1500 words. As the plot is rather complex, I have had to lie down and poke holes in the plot. It troubles me when a story has glaring plot errors, never mind the factual errors, and I want to ensure I commit none of them.

Since it has been a zillion years since I have worked on a story this long - I got up to 30 pages once for a novel but that has been shelved after I got stuck and bored. The hard copy is still with me. Someday I might just take another look at it. At best it is another Interview with the Vampire, before I even read it. But that is another story.

Got a new mouse today. My fingers are getting friction burn from using the touchpad. And the true reason is I had spilled my honey green tea onto the keyboard causing some keys to stick together. Must Google to find solution. Speaking of which, bought a handful (literally) of Google shares. Glad I have made 5% already. Go Android!

Note: Just after I pressed Publish, the hubby signalled me that Jack woke up. He turned on the sidelight and true enough my little munchkin was sitting up rubbing his eyes. I walked to him, waving and said hey. To our delight, he waved back. It was the cutest thing!