Tomorrow is my husband’s last day of work. It seems like graduation when you move the tassel on your mortar board once your degree has been conferred. He’ll wake up Friday morning with a status change from employed to RETIRED. He said he has absolutely no problem with being a “kept husband” while I continue to work. I told him to enjoy his newfound status while it lasted!

April and May will go by in a blur as I wind down the school year. When we return from spring break (next week), I’ll have 35 work days left. That’s it! Here’s to what’s next!

Well, it happened. The censorship bill (GA SB 226) passed. (Thankfully, the criminal penalties against school librarians were removed from the legislation.) Let’s see how many parents start hounding school principals to remove the books they find offensive from school libraries. Never mind we have a procedure in place that works well. Besides, common sense and having a open conversation with the parent usually alleviates 99% of book challenges.

Yes, every parent has the absolute right to determine what their child may/may not read. We place notes in the child’s record so that we know the kid isn’t supposed to check out that particular series, genre – whatever the parent dictates. What that parent does not have the right to do is to dictate what other kids in the school may or may not read. Parents need to be more concerned with what their kids are watching on TikTok than the books they’re checking out from an elementary school library.

And if my principal asks if we have anything offensive in our library, my response will be, “Yes” because in our current climate, anyone can find something to be offended by if they look hard enough.

Well, not my circus and not my monkeys since I’ll be gone by the time the bill becomes law.

I’m going to guess this model is a mid-to-late 1990’s vintage. It reminds me so much of Old Faithful, the Kenmore I had for 20 years before one of my students accidentally dropped it on the concrete floor at school.

Anyway, she’s definitely a happy girl – all clean, oiled and sporting a new red spool pin doily! Hard to believe this was the same machine that sat on the top of the display cupboard in Miss Pat’s shop for so many years. It literally purrs now. There’s just something so satisfying about stitching on a well-built mechanical sewing machine!

General notes:
(1) A free pdf manual (with no watermarks) is available from the Sears Parts website.
(2) Trading metal class 15 bobbins for plastic class 15 bobbins made the machine run quieter.
(3) This model has left to center needle adjustment. There is no way to move the needle to the right to achieve a scant 1/4″ needed for patchwork. Solution: Borrow the scant 1/4″ foot I use with my 221 machines. Problem solved.
(4) Switching to an LED bulb brightened up the workspace considerably.
(5) The machine sews zigzag stitches from the left needle position, rather than from the center. I use small zigzag stitches for machine applique (settings: 1.5 L x 1.5 W). They got lost when using the regular satin stitch foot. An open toe foot with a wide scoop at the top improved visibility.

Will I keep this machine? Although it would be a great machine for travel, I prefer some features that this machine doesn’t offer (needle down, fully adjustable stitch length and width, availability of a straight stitch needle plate) – that my Elna STAR does. I have a sewing friend who needs a solid, uncomplicated machine like this one. That’s one reason I took so much time to clean it up and outfit it with all the accessories she would need to be able to make projects for her grandkids.