Nina the Bernina

I haven't posted properly about my new machine yet. Nina is a Bernina 820. Big price tag, big machine. But you only live once, right? 

Danny gets my undying gratitude for naming my new sewing machine. Bernie was obvious, but the Bernette was affectionately referred to as Bernie, so I was puzzling. Danny probably won't even remember saying it, but she mentioned Nina the Bernina in a chat. Nina it is.

By the way, I've just started following Danny's blog, even though I've been chatting to her for ages. I make it a policy not to follow "mummy" blogs, partly because I have a bad tendecy to say "HA, your child looks just like a monkey/facist-dictator/mutant". Which mummies don't tend to take well to, even when said child does look like monkey. Two reasons I feel safe to follow Danny's blog: a) she doesn't blog obsessively about her children, thus lessening my temptation to stir; b) she posts along the lines of "Ha, my child looks like a facist dictator" so we get along just fine.

Enough Danny love, here are some things I love about Nina

Speed. 1100 stitches per minute. OMG this machine should have been painted red. I've never been a fan of straight line quilting - until I could go THIS fast. Ms Leadfoot indeed.

Foot-control - revelation. I can needle up/down by tapping my heel. Go by tapping toe. Heel toe, heel toe... We're not in Kansas any more Toto! And you can tell it to finish needle up down. The knee lift is brilliant. Look, no hands! (Ok, this is a standard Bernina feature. But I love it).

Changing feet - one of the most annoying things that made me procrastinate before was changing feet. The darning foot required unscrewing the main foot adaptor on my old machine. Ditto with the walking foot. Pain. In. The. Aurifil. With Nina, it's a 2 second job. Click, clack, done. Off we go. And she SENSES which foot is on. If you tell her it's a foot with a narrow slot (don't know what to call that bit), she actually won't let you do a stitch that will break your needle. How awesome is that?! (Another standard Bernina feature. This makes it all worthwhile for me tho).

Auto tie off. It can be programmed to finish by 3 or 4 or however many stitches you want - in a row, on the spot, cut if you like...So I can quilt, stop, tie off, cut, start with lock stitch, stop, tie off, cut again without any fiddling about bringing bottom thread through, feeling underneath for where to cut, no pulling entire quilt out to start in a new spot 3cm from where I stopped. Un-fricking-beliveably good.

Super-bobbins - they are. Literally, in the super = large latin sense of the word. It takes forever to run out of one of these babies. And if you do get low, you can wind another while you are sewing. (If you have 4 hands and two sets of eyes).

Magical stitches - ok, they aren't magical. There are just a lot of them. (Can you see the number 937 below whcih is a stitch which looks like a coffee cup?). And there are various alphabets - kanji and katakana and hirigana too, which would be great if I knew Japanese.

In other exciting news, there's going to be a little music in my life...

Since Mr Patches went to the great bean patch in the sky to chase white parrots and eat bean plants to his heart's content, we've been a little lonely around here. So we thought a little music may cheer us up.

Canvalier Mystical Melody is joining us on Friday. She's two and a tricolour cav like Lainey. I'm hoping she fits in well. :)