New Toys - A Sewing Machine & a Bike

I've been playing with my new toys.  Yesterday it was my new sewing machine - a Pfaff expression 3.2.  I finally got up the gumption to figure out using my machine's capability to stitch letters and save a series of stitches.  All the time that I used Sonja's machine, I never got myself to try any of the special features.  Now that I have my own, I swore I'd try to make fuller use of things.

I decided to try setting up a signature file.  It took me a couple of tries to figure out how to do it correctly and get a look that I liked, but overall it was very quick and easy.  It won't replace my hand-stitched signature on everything, but it sure is fun to do.

I managed to save the sequence and even to edit it, but I never did figure out how to go back to just plain stitching without restarting the machine!  That convinced me that I need to take the two free classes that Nashua Sew and Vac offers with every machine purchased.  Manuals just never tell you enough...

Today I got a very different new toy - a new bicycle.  As happens in so many cases, you don't realize how bad your current one is until you try a new one.  My husband wanted a new bike because his was giving him a few problems.  I thought we ought to wait to make sure we'd really get back into biking.  But...before we could really start, we had to go to the bike store because we discovered that my helmet was broken.  Of course, while we were there, we thought we'd find out about what was available so we could "plan."  Plan, haha!  All it took was a short test ride and I knew I didn't want to get back on the old bike.  If we were going to get into biking at all, we'd have to have new bikes and we put in our order.  We picked them up this morning and went for a ride after lunch.  I have to say that it was great and I'm really looking forward to riding more.

While I'm talking about the bike, I have to give a plug to Ernie's Cycle Shop in Westbrook, Maine.  It is hard to imaging that we could have had a better experience.  Sylvia spent literally hours with us helping us get everything just right, offering suggestions, but never pushing; helping us figure out what was right and the best value for us.  She made us feel like we'd been friends for years and her enthusiasm for biking was infectious.  If you need anything bike-related and you're anywhere in the area, I'd definitely recommend that you go there.

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