Friend Friday Volume 2

As I promised, I would take Fridays (at least most of them) and write about my wildly talented completely awesome friends.  Today, I want to write about an old old old friend of mine.  Hello Kitty!   Yes, the Japanese cat.....quite possibly the only cat I ever liked.  I can remember being a kid and exploring the Hello Kitty store for hours.  Diaries, lip gloss, nail polish all decorated with the kitty and I loved it. This is not what made Hello Kitty my friend though.  She has proven time and time again to come through in my hour of need.  She is on my daughter's sewing machine.  Right at this moment, I am working on an auction project for the elementary school PTA.   I am sewing a raggy denim quilt.  (There will be a tutorial on this project!) This will be easy I thought.  E-A-S-Y!  Well, having that thought was my first mistake.  The idea was simple, but sewing machines are cantankerous things.  They KNOW when you need them to work the most and then they stick out their tongue at you and barf thread and laugh at you for procrastinating.   "You want me to do what?" they say, bringing a girl to her knees.  My brother actually told his wife he didn't want her to learn to sew because that is one of the only times he ever remembers hearing our mother swear.  Sewing machines can make the mildest mannered woman have a Clark Griswold type of tantrum shaking cords, muttering obscenities and karate chopping the antlers off of by-standing reindeer.
For the first time today, my new Janome sewing machine let me down.  It kept breaking threads and was completely non responsive to any tension adjustments.   I am not a sewing machine whisperer, so I did what I could to try to fix it and walked away.  I went to Hobby Lobby to buy some more thread.  When I got back, migraine in full effect, I gazed at the actual and figurative mess this project has made for me. But in the middle of the mess, I saw her, sitting on the counter and I could actually hear her yelling "Put me in Coach! I'm ready to play." Hello,  Hello Kitty!!!!!!!!!

This miniature size machine bought on clearance at Target for about $50 is intended to teach kids sewing. It is super simple with a dial, basic stitch functions and no computerized components.  It is simply a machine with all the determination of the Little Engine That Could.  It has saved my over ambitious booty on many occasion.  One might call her the 12th Man of Sewing Machines.  My ONLY problem with this machine is that I did not buy 2 of them!

So, today, Hello Kitty, I thank you for your well adjusted tension, pretty stitches and the fact that you work so well when your more fancy, more expensive friends fail me.  Please keep sewing through 4 layers of denim.  We will continue to create great and pretty things together.