Vacation! Yay!

 I am one week into a 2 week vacation.  As stated earlier, I had so much planned during my first week of vacation that it seemed almost like I was busier than when I work!

Last week I had a million things to get done, culminating in a 3 day convention over the weekend.

We are having temperatures in the upper 90s so I was very happy to be in air conditioning all weekend, along with all of the wonderful things I learned.

Today we will eventually be at 97, we're at 95 right now.  We have one window air-conditioning unit in the kitchen window which is the middle of the house and fans pushing the air to other areas.  I'm in the office/sewing room on one end of the house and it was tolerable earlier but I am pretty sure a move to the kitchen/living area is going to happen after I get this blog post done. 

So Wednesday we had a lot of errands to do and one of them was next to Quality Sew and Vac which is where I purchased my last/current sewing machine in February of 2012.  Violet, my Pfaff Ambition 1.5, has been a decent machine, and has helped me finish many projects.  Very few complaints with her, she had the features I wanted for what I could afford.

In 2013 I started contemplating high speed straight stitch machines and really wanted a Juki TL 2010Q but just could not justify (or afford to be honest) the price, when I had a machine that worked fine, and did basically what I wanted it to do.

Fast forward to last Wednesday and I finally got my Juki.  The one I settled on all those years ago still had excellent reviews and recommendations from many quilters.

I took Violet in to get her serviced at the same time, and she will become a gift for a friend of mine who really needs a sewing machine, but does not have one.  I also got myself a Brother (I have always been very partial to Brother and Singer machines) Innovis PS 500 that the lady at the store made me a very good deal on.  Both it and the Juki were on sale and were well within my budget. With the special no interest financing they were offering, and with full Spousal agreement, I got them both.  

I read the Juki manual when we got home and got it unboxed and tested but didn't have a chance to really sew with her.  Today spouse took pity on me and said he can take care of today's things so I could have some time in the sewing room.  I can not sing the praises of this Juki loudly enough.  It is SO fast and SO quiet and SO smooth.

The Brother will likely be set up once I need to stitch a binding on the current quilt in process, since I like to use decorative stitches around the binding.  The manual for the Brother is WAY thicker and more involved and the machine does a ton more things than my Pfaff ever dreamed of doing, so I definitely will need to devote some time to instruction reading, even though Kathy at the sewing store gave me a quick run through.

Anyway, it's been years since I have made a big purchase for myself and hubby is always telling me I am nearly impossible to buy for so we are calling these my anniversary present.