Sewing machine

Here is a picture of the beautiful Singer I bought at an estate sale last week.  According to the number on the machine, it is from 1954.  The machine itself needs just a bit of rewiring, which my husband can do.  The cabinet and bench are in great shape, and the original instruction book is with it.  The seat of the bench lifts off for storage underneath.  This whole thing, cabinet and bench, cost only $20.00--I knew I just had to buy it at that price!

However, there were a couple of things to overcome.  The first problem was that it was in the basement of the house, and it's quite heavy.  So I had to have one of the people having the sale help carry it up to my car.  I thought it would fit in the trunk, so while we were carrying it up, my friend emptied the trunk of other "treasures" we had found that morning.  Well, of course, we couldn't get it into the trunk, so we had to move the treasures from the back seat back to the trunk, and then try to get it into the back seat.  We got it started, then she stood outside the passenger side to keep it from falling out, and I went around to the driver's side to pull it into the back seat.  We got it in successfully, but I wish we'd had someone videotaping the whole process.  It would be funny to watch, I'm sure!  Really, these were minor issues compared to the fun of having this machine.

Earlier that morning, we stopped at a garage sale where there were tons of stamping and scrapbooking supplies for sale at outstanding prices.  Large rubber stamps were just $3 each, some books $1, 8x10 papers were $1/20, and so on.  We both spent a fair amount of money, but got a lot of supplies.  We plan on doing a quilting/scrapping day at her house in August with another friend who does a lot of scrapbooking.

All in all, it was a great day of sales and gardens.

Great week!

My friend from up north was here last week, and we had a wonderful time.  We did some quilting and went to several thrift sales, which I'll talk about in my next post (one thing I got was a beautiful vintage Singer in a cabinet and with a storage bench all in great shape for $20).  But on Saturday, we went on a Garden Stroll to 6 beautiful gardens around town.  They were all nice, but one stood way above the rest; it was amazingly beautiful.  These are some of the pictures I took.

Early June garden

The gardens are beginning to look wonderful right now. 



Rose and lupines with hostas in the background

Flower on a Ninebark bush

Mock orange in back and peach tree in front.  The mock orange has tons of flowers this year and they smell so lovely.  The whole yard has a beautiful fragrance when these are in bloom.

Clematis with Campanula and hosta in back

As beautiful as the yard and gardens are, they have predators at this the time of year.  For about two weeks in late May/early June, we get those bugs that I call rose bugs. They are on everything--flowers, trees, shrubs, etc., and they do a bang-up job of destroying big parts of plants. I read about a solution for potato bugs (half flour and half baby powder sprinkled on them) and decided to try that on these bugs; it does seem to slow them down, but there are so many of them that I cannot possibly keep up with them.  This is the third year we've had them and the numbers seem to increase every year.  The trees and shrubs seem to be able to withstand the damage, but the flowers aren't always so lucky; they never look as nice afterwards.