Jullianna mentioning that she needed to buy a sewing machine made me remember that it was exactly one year ago today that I got my baby.
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It's a vintage Kenmore, about 40 years old. I love it, it even makes a chain stitch! Woohoo! But when I got it, it hadn't been used for a while and it was kind of gummed shut with gunk and old oil. A lot of the parts wouldn't move, but I took the problems one at a time and looked them up on the internet (like, I looked up "sewing machine won't zig zag" and found the problem that way. Then "sewing machine won't drop its feed dogs", etc.) Finally, after one bent screwdriver, lots of oil, new motor belts, and a hairdryer, everything works perfectly. It was missing its stitch cams too, but I found them on ebay.
One thing I really love about it is that the entire metal case comes off, so you can see the gears and everything working inside. I love seeing how things work. The whole thing is metal pretty much, and it's much heavier and stronger than the little one I had been using before.