I Changed My Mind

    I have a love/hate relationship with sergers.  I bought a Juki serger about three years ago that worked well for about a year and then the tension went wonky and I couldn't fix it.  I took that machine to Goodwill about a year ago and I thought I would be through with sergers forever.

     I really love what you can do with sergers, rolled hems, seam finishing, etc., so every once in a while I try to work out a way to own one without spending a boatload of money.  I wish I could afford a machine with air threading and all the fancy stitches, but that's not happening now.  So I spent the last weekend trying to find a machine I could afford and I settled on the Singer14T968DC, Professional 5, five thread serger that comes with 7 presser feet. I bought it from Allbrands.com.  I have made four purchases from Allbrands.com and I have been happy with all four purchases.

    I received the machine on Thursday (it was ordered on the previous Saturday) and took it out of the box.  I also downloaded the owner's manual/workbook from the Singer website and that is on my computer now.

    Here she is: 

   In the bottom picture the machine is threaded for 3 thread overlock stitching.  You can do a variety of stitching  styles with this machine.  It took me a little while to thread the machine last night, but threading this machine was a little more involved than it was on the Juki.  This machine has a few more levers and and knobs to adjust when you are threading for a certain type of stitching.  It's all laid out in the workbook, which is really handy. The 3 thread overlock stitching is actually working and I'm getting ready to make some headbands with some lovely knit jersey I bought.   I'll be sharing those when I finish them.

    I started another knitting project.  I watch several knitting podcasts on Youtube and several knitters are making trying to knit one or two dishcloths each week this year so they can use them for Christmas gift giving.  I love this idea, but I'm not going to make so many.  I'm just going to make as many dishcloths as I can from the four balls of KnitPicks Dishie yarn that I have in the Jalapeno colorway.  I bought this yarn last year to crochet dishcloths, I really like the knitted dishcloths but they take so much longer than crochet, but if I give myself a year, I should be able to get this yarn knitted up.  I'm using a size 8, 24" Bamboo ChiaoGoo circular needles to make Grandmother's Favorite Dishcloth.  I found this super easy dishcloth pattern on Ravelry years ago, but if you're not a member of Ravelry, you can find the pattern here. 

    Here's my first dishcloth in the works: