exploring new horizons in stitches -- part one

as usual, as i do with everything, in early may i serendipitously opened a door into machine embroidery that has changed the course of my life -- or at least cost me an ungodly amount of money. i prefer to focus on the curative and spiritual rather than strictly pecuniary aspects. ok it's less painful -- even carthatic -- that way.
so here's how it went down:
me: no sleep. disconsolate on parkway at 6 a.m. dropping child no. 1 off at airport for overseas adventures i don't get to participate in, except vicariously. traffic looks horrendous across the median/my return route. to avoid traffic, and to console myself for sad feelings accompanying said child's departure, i spend a few hours in airport coffee shop commiserating with mom of child's friend, also embarking selfishly on overseas adventures we can't share.
jo-ann fabrics/robinson: beckoning upon my return.
what can it hurt? i stroll in, figuring to while away some time cruising the yarn aisle and allow traffic to disperse. so what if i drop a ten- or twenty spot on some vanna's choice?
in every jo-ann's, the yarn is in the back left aisles of the store. believe me, i have conducted extensive market research and this is true throughout this great land of ours.
accessing yarn mecca requires me to pass by the sewing machines.
brief footnote required: i have ... well ... a thing for sewing machines. as i do many machines. there is not room enough here, or anywhere on god's grand earth, to analyze the genesis of my thing for machines. i dig machines. they separate humans from beasts. the women from the girls. they embody raw power, masculinity at its most virile, femininity at its most creative. they're louder than hell; and like a baby or a spouse, if not yours, more annoying than you can tolerate. they surpass our ability to create, to craft, to mold by hand. they marry mind and physical resource. they are inscrutable, testosterone-driven, estrogen-inspired, marvels.
and sewing machines, perhaps the finest, the most-approaching perfection invention of modern times. weeks and months of arduous, if heartfelt, labor reduced to minutes and hours; redactive, reductive; abstract, constructive. true love.
a machine that, when brought in for share time at the preschool co-op in Oakland, Calif., turns brash, destructive little boys into compliant, polite automotons eager to please for a chance at the wheel of the machine. four rules i invented when sewing capes, GI Joe sleeping bags, Transformer knapsacks with the pint-size monsters: keep your grubby little fingers out of the way of the needle. don't go until I say go. stop when i say stop. keep your grubby little fingers out of the way of the needle.
and so it is not surprising, not unwarranted, not out of character that i stop to browse the machines enroute to the yarns.
truthfully, i could use a new machine. i haven't realized this until just this moment; but my current sewing machine is in cobwebs in the basement, victim to a broken spindle, the misplacement of the ridiculous discs required for specialty stitches, the waning interest precipitated by my fairly newfound knitting addiction.
truthfully, i could use a new machine.
so i accost the sewing machine lady. she is, it turns out, jan. smart. patient. fair-minded.
i am not really in the market, i say right out at the outset. perhaps i might be interested in your least-expensive machine, but really i could go to wal-mart. i bought my last machine at wal-mart. tell me why this machine is better than wal-mart.
as i said, jan is patient. this least-expensive singer machine, which yes they have at wal-mart, is perfectly fine. for a cheap machine. if that is what you want. a cheap machine.
it will do what it says it will do. it is a fine, fine cheap singer machine.
i am sold. for a hundred and nineteen dollars, why wouldn't i go home with a machine without cobwebs, with a fine intact spindle. even if, until this moment, i hadn't considered the $119 expenditure. it all makes sense. it is a fine, fine cheap singer.
but, as i always do, wielding the comparative shopper move that drives my youngest crazy, i ask the next question: so what's the difference between this machine and the next one up? why would i pay an extra thirty dollars for this next machine?
jan is patient. through the next machine, and the next. and the next. she explains, at each stage, the relative strengths and weaknesses of each choice, the decorative stitches, the automatic sensors, the fix buttons, the programmable features, what it is that separates the deluxe from the basic, the peak from the valley, the paragon from the primal. at each progressive stage, sold as i am, i know that i am playing with jan, and she is teasing me. we both know i will leave here empty-handed. maybe, we think, i will leave and head to wal-mart. more likely, i will go home and sleep it off, this sudden inane insatiable sewing-machine lust.
Next installment: the pick, the roll, the Husqvarna Viking with embroidery attachment.