Pfaff 360

Today was a stressful but productive day, overall.

I was squeezing work into a bunch of other errands.  (Was it the other way around?)  Some of you may know that I'm looking for a new house, as I'm seriously in need of downsizing (but my sewing machine purchases have sadly kept apace); I have to sell a condo, a Volvo, about 30 sewing machines (at least), some other items, start boxing up/selling/storing/throwing/donating/etc. a bunch of stuff, and on top of it all, I have to take care of my mother who fairly recently suffered a heart attack.  I am my mother's caregiver because the rest of my family will not step in to help.  I love my mom but having her live with me has been a difficult adjustment.

Today I looked at a house.  It was a decent house -- mid-century modern, a good design -- and I liked it but thought it had cheap finishes and would require at least 100K to make it 'nice'.  Adding that to the price of the home and I think I'm better off looking at more expensive houses to begin with; basically, I'm in the process of:

• Finding the sweet spot in the current real estate market, which is very hot right now
• Figuring out what I can afford
• Figuring out what I am willing to spend
• Deciding on which new neighborhoods and communities I would like
• Packing and throwing 
• Thinking about how much house I need vs. how much I would like vs. how much is available
• Doing a lot of driving and stressing
• Refusing to put my mother in a nursing home while wondering about my sanity

In addition to the above, I found a very nice machine, a Pfaff 360:

I love Pfaffs and I've wanted a free arm (360 or, preferably, a 362) so I bought this one.  The seller realized it didn't have a power cord or pedal, so lowered the price to $45.  I think that's reasonable, as it's in excellent shape and I already have the cord/pedal from my 260, my 230, etc.

What's important about these Pfaff Automatic machines is that you have to have the levers in the exact positions to achieve the stitches you want and you have to follow the sequence of lever positioning.  So, you need the handy dandy Pfaff stitch wheel, which I don't have.  (There are full-color downloads and I can run those through a laminating machine, then insert a brass brad in the middle to spin it.  An easy hack.)

These machines are exceptional sewers but one of the best features is the shallowness of the arm itself.  This will likely be my free arm machine in a future sewing atelier with a Kenmore as a back up, as this machine cannot do several stretch utility stitches that are very useful on cuffs, for example.

OK, gotta go look at house listings and swallow hard.  This weekend is a busy one.