Your Singer Story

Just a quick little post which might interest you if you have an older Singer sewing machine. With the company celebrating its 160th birthday this year, they are encouraging owners to share their 'Singer Stories'. You can also enter the serial number of your machine (if it's prior to the 1970s) and find out what year it was made. A PDF link will then appear and you can print a commemorative certificate. It's quite cute and something nice to keep if you and your machine have some history together!

I need to take a picture of mine to put on here but having just entered the serial number I've discovered that mine was manufactured in 1929, the year of the Wall Street Crash that helped kick off the Great Depression. It arrived at our house probably in the very early 80s or late 70s when my Nan bought it for me from the local paper as my first machine. She was a seamstress by trade and taught me how to sew my first items, although I wish now that I had paid better attention of course! I remember the day it arrived and was set up on the dining table. I opened the case and that wonderful smell of polished wood and machine oil hit me. It was in fantastic condition and sewed beautifully. It makes you wonder though, doesn't it, what life did it have before it became my very first machine? In those intervening 50 years, who had it and what did they create with it?

Wonderful graphic courtesy of the Graphic Fairy Blog

First Past The Post

Well, here it is. My first post on this new blog. I'm pretty new to the blogosphere but have gained so much enjoyment and learned so much from the many wonderfully creative people out there that I felt it might be fun to join in!

My introduction to blogs - and yes I know i am soooo late to the party - has come through podcasts. Around 2004 or 5 my husband bought me an ipod nano. I'm not really technology based so he knows he's taking a risk when he does such things but he had his reasons. My sleep pattern is pretty bad but having found out I had a tendency to nod off when listening to audio books on my 'Walkman' (ok, stop laughing) he thought that he could bring me more into the present, with my present!

And he did. I rarely use my ipod for listening to music but I *love* my podcasts! If you haven't tried them, then I highly recommend them. Not only are they fun and informative, they make long journeys go far quicker (don't worry, it's not in those conditions I nod off!) but often have a linked in blog which brings me back to where I started.

Some of my favourite podcasts are listed below. I hope you enjoy them if you decide to give them a try!

*  The Paperclipping Roundtable
*  Sew Forth Now
*  Greenstitch
*  Scraptime

On a slightly different topic, the BBC History Magazine podcast is one that's also on my list. Lots of interesting interviews and it's now gone weekly! Highly recommended!

I hope that you've enjoyed this post. I'm totally new to this but I'll do my best to get better and hopefully provide some degree of entertainment, information and fun!

Wish me luck! xx