Friday 7 March 2014

Free and simple garden planner

I've been wanting to bit a bit more organised with my terrace garden space and thought of drawing out what I should plant and rearranging the space as it has been neglected since the end of autumn. I was going to use Photoshop (my usual program for most artwork) but decided to look to see if I could find something online that was free, required no sign ups or downloads, and was far quicker than I could do using my existing artwork program.

And I found this ideal Garden Planner relatively quickly! I highly recommend it if you are thinking of drawing out any garden plans. It's pretty straight forward to use, just select the item you want, drag and drop it to your design board, adjust the width/height/colour to your liking, and keep going until it's all done. 



Saturday 1 March 2014

Antique Frister Rossman sewing machine

Just before moving last year, I decided to sell my two vintage sewing machines, one was a Singer and the other a more unique Tiger with intricate decals. I did like using both of them but was always found it a little inconvenient to set up the foot pedal and electric plug which limited where I could sit to sew. Although it was a breeze sewing straight lines gassing on the foot pedal, I was always anxious about the maintenance of it should the electrics ever become faulty. I didn't fancy lugging them with me to our new home so sadly but gladly departed with them.

So my search for another began. I've been eyeing Frister and Rossmann's sewing machines since then, as I love the slightly more angular shape of them to the usual curves of the Singer. It was also a less common make which I liked, but also not too uncommon that I could still find lots of literature about them. Of course, I lusted after others, especially the beautifully shaped Wilcox Gibbs types but they are too much of a collectors favourite for me to ever afford.

After losing out to a few eBay bids over the year, my patience paid off and I finally won this little gem! 



The exact decal patterns I wanted, with a beautiful box cover and porcelain crank handle. I took it apart to clean and oil. It took a while to find an instruction manual but thankfully managed to find an original copy. 

So I've been playing around with its settings to get used to all and very happy with it!