Hello, shapeshifters! Remember this new workhorse machine I photographed in August? I said, then, that it wasn’t quite ready for work, but it would be soon!
This serger has fought me every step of the way. Every time I’ve worked out one trouble, another one presented itself. I consulted a sewing machine expert on looper settings and the tension went wonky. I fixed the tension balance and the needle started snapping against the needle guard. I shifted the needle guard and the upper looper’s dulled edge skipped a stitch every 10”-12”, which I couldn’t have seen before, because the looper settings were causing skipped stitches every 3”-4”.
We’ve named it Jason. Partially because we accidentally bathed it in machine oil when it got here, and before that it looked like it had been through some rough times. Partially because it’s fighting me throughout reconstitution and recovery, testing me, I think, to see how far I will go to help it. And partially because it came with serrated knives.
Last week our expert and I replaced the dulled upper looper, which was tricky because this part was attached to the rest of the machine in a way unlike any illustration in any manual. Also, the replacement part I ordered arrived just a hair, a tiny hair too big to go into its slot, so there was some hand-filing to do to get it down to size.
With that final arm in place, Jason was finally ready to roll. We tested, and…
now it skips a stitch every 20”. Or so.
We’re still working to get this one perfect. It’s so close.
All that said! Although August and September-to-date didn’t benefit from the increase in production times I’d hoped Jason would bring, we certainly didn’t slow down. We’re on schedule for a 5-week wait time by Friday the 27th, and if all goes well, down to a 4-week wait time by October.
Which is important, because that means Halloween orders will arrive in time if you place them in September! We’re delighted to offer a whole bunch of Halloween prints again this year, and we hope you like them.
All of our new mesh colors are in, and with the Lace Sale on until the 19th now’s the time to combine a fancy lace with a vivid underlayer. The red is actually darker than expected. I’m digging it. We’re considering renaming it Blood Red just so the lace versions become Wizard’s Blood, Cleric’s Blood, Rogue’s Blood.
In other news, we cleared order #6000! Holy crap! Y’all are great. 2019 is the very first year we’ve ever cleared two thousand-order milestones in one year, and at this rate we might make the third before 2020.
By Halloween, we will have made six thousand orders. That’s bigger than the population of my mother’s hometown.
Every time we hit one of these, I think about a thousand. I made a thousand origami cranes in high school. I wrote thousand-word fanfic in college. I know what a thousand feels like now more than ever, how it breaks down, how the tens and the fifties and the hundreds fall away piece by piece until you’re there.
Here’s to a thousand more.