The Rule.

Momma G had a rule. Actually, with 5 boys she found it necessary to have lots of them, but today, Boy G invoked this particular rule on Queen Ginger, and she was none too happy.


Momma's rule was simple: before you could have something new, you had to prove you could take care of it by making sure everything you already had was well-cared-for.  That was the way she worded it- as if to say, if you show responsibility, all sorts of good things can come your way.  In reality, it was a bribe. You want a new toy? Clean your room. As I said: simple. Children with messy rooms did not get nice things.


When ExBF first moved into the house, we used "the rule" to resolve the shoe issue- that being, 2 queens who work in retail can manage to collect an obscene amount of shoes!  So the rule was simple:  if you buy a new pair of shoes, you have to get rid of an old pair. That seemed reasonable enough, until all the shitty shoes were culled out of both wardrobes, and there were still new shoes to be had. Eventually we added onto the house which worked for a while. Then Miss Ginger came along, and things got touchy again. Unfortunately for Boy G, the relationship didn't work out, but lucky for Miss G she now had possession of one half of an enormous walk-in closet with room for all her "necessities".


Hence todays invocation of the rule.  Queen Ginger wanted a new toy for her craft area, which was a wreck.  Boy G, in his benevolent way, wanted to purchase said toy for the Queen as a congratulatory token of her recently ended reign. But, he told her she could not unbox it until her craft area was clean!

She started with her fabrics, which were all over the house!  Some were still in the living room on a cart from her recently finished costume.  Some were in bins on Shelby's window seat in the master closet. Some were in bins under the guest bed.  And more and more bolts, bundles, and wads revealed themselves as the day went on!  By the time she found, folded, and sorted it all, the dining room looked like Mood had exploded in it!

After it was all organized and labeled by fiber and weave, most of it fit back into bins under the guest bed, with a few pieces that will be needed soon going into baskets on shelves in the craft area. Once the fabric was in order, Queen G went through all the notions, tools, threads, and crap that were all over the place and got them corralled back into their drawers and bins.  Of course, she couldn't get all of this done by herself, so she was glad to have Princess Shelby there to help with it all!

 Finally, there was room on the workspace for the Queen's new plaything: the Janome Memory Craft 300E! Don't say it: I know what you're thinking!  "Queen G- you already have 2 sewing machines and a serger: why the hell do you need another sewing machine?" To which I say, Dear Snaps, don't judge a book by it's cover- this is not a sewing machine at all- as a matter of fact, it can't even make a seam!

The "E" stands for embroidery, which is all this machine can do.  Yes, they make machines that do both, but mine isn't one of those. And, the beauty of having a separate machine is that the embroidery machine runs independently, so it can do it's thing while the sewing machine does it's thing.  The embroidery machine runs automatically, calling for you with a beep when it needs for you to change its thread color. You can work on part of a garment while the machine embroiders a design on another!

What kind of designs can it embroider?  Just about anything you can imagine!  In addition to 100 built in designs and 3 lettering fonts, the 300E has a slot for a compact flash card, so you can download design files from the internet and load them into the machine.  Can't find a design you want?  Digitizing software lets you take a photo, drawing, or other graphic file and convert it into an embroidering program that the machine can read.  It's pretty much like a computer printer, except it "prints" with thread on fabric instead of ink on paper!

Queen Ginger has all kinds of wild ideas for projects she wants to make, and she can't wait to show you some of the things she has up her (flawlessly embellished) sleeve!