I was sewing the other night, at almost 2am.  I knew I should have called it quits at midnight, but I wanted to get what I'd done so far in one piece.  It was a hot night, but the sewing took my mind off the discomfort until Suddenly, nothing happened.  The machine just stopped, and an ominous warning error message lit up the screen.  Stop for safety purposes! I was devastated; I'd broken my darling machine. I googled the error message, and while I didn't find an exact explanation, I think a fuse on the mother board has blown.  A thermo fuse.  Does that mean I was sewing so much I overheated the machine, or was the sewing room too hot, or a combination of both?  I will have to wait and see what the repair man says.  Looks like I won't have my machine back till the end of next week, so I had better organise a replacement, from my collection.

It's always the electrics that let these old machines down.

Beloved has worn out her foot control, and it's a very unique one, so I haven't been able to source another one in several years.

 Bernie the Bernina has ground to a halt too, she only works intermittently.

I brought my old Janome 7000 back from Shonny's house, but Hayden did some 'sewing' and messed up the timing, so that has to go off to be repaired too.  Good grief, I should do a sewing machine repair course.

I tried sewing on this little sweetie, but she flipped the switch on my meter board and threw the sewing room into darkness.  That's a definite no. (That's an old photo, with my budgies in the background.  No more budgies for me, ever again...)

So finally I dragged out this 631 slant shank machine, and will work at fine-tuning the 1/4" seam allowance on her.  Lots of piecing strips together will help with that.  But I still don't feel that spark of joy when I sit down to sew.  I miss my 6500.

Of course, this could be the Universe, telling me to stop sewing and go clean up my kitchen.  But that's not a message I want to hear right now....