Things of beauty,mystery objects and blunt needles

It was a lovely misty dewy morning here and we spotted this on the conservatory window. An imprint of a spider's web in the condensation on the outside of the window.

Well , I survived the after school experience yesterday - just! The Chardonnay helped. I'm totally stumped at what happened but my usually sweet, funny and endearing little girl turned into a devil-child. She dished out bucket loads of attitude, along with filthy looks and was generally utterly obnoxious!

Heck, I even had to give her time out on the bottom step whilst her friend was still here.

We had a good chat when we were alone again, I can tell you. I explained that I was sad that she had spoken to me like that and couldn't understand why my sweet baby was behaving so badly. I also explained she would be unable to have friends round again if she behaved that way.

She did the old wobbly bottom lip and big teary eyes and we made up.

Then she became 'super-creep' and churned out some artwork to make amends:

Hee hee hee :-)
She even drew one for Daddy so that he didn't feel left out!

Today I've been trying to get this old lovely working again.

My parents bought this for me when I was about 7 and I sewed doll's clothes and all sorts on it for years. However, something is not quite right and I just cannot seem to get the tension right.

I called into two sewing shops today and neither sell the old type needles for this type of machine so I've been researching on the net.

I've emailed someone who sells spares for old machines in the hope she can help.

It's a cylinder shuttle machine and I think it's about 100 years old. It smells wonderful!

The wooden case is especially lovely - not a plain one but with little bits of turned wood on the corners.
It has all sorts of different tools - for tucking and ruffling - but the instruction book disappeared years ago,

Unfortunately, this is the best I could get it to sew.

I've adjusted the tension but with a needle that is probably at least 40 years old I don't think I'm likely to be able to improve on this much.

I will always keep it because I love it but I would so love to get it working for the children to learn to sew on.

I'm too frightened to let them use my electric machines and besides their feet don't reach the pedals!

It also had these in the tool box - any ideas?

I don't think they attach to the machine - I can't see where they would fit. Maybe they are for making different bindings. I'll have to give them a go and see what happens.

I'm off up to my friend's for a quick coffee before fetching the children so I'll leave you with some words of wisdom (!)

So glad I cleaned the fridge doors yesterday :o)

I do apologise for the awful spacing on today's post - Blogger and I were obviously not getting on and in the end I gave up!!