At 09:25 AM 8/13/05 -0400, Carolyn Hastings wrote: > . . . take a look at Consumer Reports in you library,
Many years ago, when I first encountered a copy of Consumer Reports, it included a review of bicycles -- which began "We are going to restrict our reviews to disposable toy bicycles because bikes that don't weigh a ton and are capable of being kept in good repair are strictly for people who like to punish themselves." So I never again opened a copy of Consumer Reports, but not too long ago I happened to be in the room when a Consumer Reports TV show started to review a battery-operated miniature sewing machine. I'd read about such machines many times on Sewinglist, so I waited to see what they thought of it. After ten or fifteen minutes of building up suspense "will it work? will it work?" they plugged it in, the needle went up and down -- "It works! It works!" Test over. It's better to get your product reviews from sources that specialize in one class of products, and suspect, for example, that people buying a sewing machine might care whether or not it sews. Concerning another branch of the thread: Singer went bad somewhere in the mid-60s, or whenever it was they brought out the 600 series of machines. They peaked with the 400 series, which had metal gears instead of the drive belt that had been standard up until then, and the 500 series was, I gather, quite useable -- I've never operated one myself -- but the top-of-the-line 600 machine, the one in the front of the store, the one we were supposed to use when doing personal sewing on company time -- that one drove me bananas, even though we had a full-time mechanic on the premises to keep it tuned up. Rumor has it that Singer started to put its act back together shortly before the turn of the century, but I'd ask a *lot* of questions before buying a Singer that wasn't black with gold trim. Above all, don't buy a *new* Featherweight or a new treadle. -- Joy Beeson http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ http://home.earthlink.net/~dbeeson594/ROUGHSEW/ROUGH.HTM west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where it's sorta thinking about maybe raining. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
