Best Singer machine?

If you look closely you'll find that the shuttle moved ROUND the bobbin, which doesn't actually move at all! :)

I will be going back to my corner now, and will polish my bifocals.

Does that mean that Mistress Kate is also in school this week?

Mine is in school this week, playing with the kids... They love the 'little black one'. :D

You're just a really big help today, aren't you, Beverly? If I had $380 or $460 right now, I think I'd get one of the new Roombas that can handle fringe on a rug. My little Carmen chokes on fringe and calls to me "Uh oh!"

The hook is the part that moves. An oscillating, or shuttle, hook moves back and forth. A rotary hook goes round and round. The bobbin generally stays in one place, however, it does turn, like a wheel or reel, as the thread is pulled off it while you sew.

gwh

The easy way is to open the trap door and watch to see what happens when you turn the handwheel. A rotary hook will make a complete turn around the bobbin/bobbin case. The vertical oscillating hook will move part way around the bobbin case, then reverse to its original position.

The horizontal axis rotary hook machines or vertical oscillating hook machines may also be known as a machine with a "front-loading" or "side-loading" bobbin.

gwh

Thank you -- I'll eventually get it straight - or round to it...

Then there are some of the older machines for which the bobbin went inside the shuttle. :-)

Well, gosh, I try!

I have never seen one demonstrated. It just seems impossible to me that that tiny thing would have enough suction and bag capacity to be a *real* tool. Don't get me wrong, I am all for automated household chores....

Beverly

Yes, I have some machines like that.

I have an older Roomba - Carmen, my Roomba. She does an amazing job, actually, especially getting into places the regular vacuum won't go, like underneath the king-sized bed and low furniture. But she's so thorough, she tries to vacuum up the fringe and that doesn't work. I also have a Scooba, which does an incredible job scrubbing my hard-surface floors. After all the work in the kitchen, I thought the floor was shot, but Scooba got all the stuff stuck on the tile up and left it shining. It still needs to be replaced, but only because some tiles are chipped and worn.

I don't think either are the end-all solution. With Scooba, I still need to grab a mop to do the corners. Roomba, on the other hand, does get the corners and along the baseboards. But it's a lot slower than DH wielding the Dyson. Neither of them dust the furniture or the window blinds.

But it's a lot slower than DH

Me, too! But they did come up with a gutter cleaning robot this year.

I have only very small areas that need to be mopped (the bathrooms), so that's not hard to do manually. But I may just give Roomba a try-out for the hardwood and carpets. I don't have any fringe. ;-)

Beverly

?? I've read a number of times that, the 222K was never sold in the US, therefore it's rarity there.

But would you really rate it as being better, or more outstanidng then the

221? Wouldn't both work just as well? If a 222 is considered to be an outstanding machine, then I would also have to rate a 221 as being outstanding because there is no real difference in operation. Yes, the 222 can drop the feeddogs and has a freearm feature but I don't know any sewer of experience who would rate either of those especially highly as usually, by the time we can afford a freearm (or perhaps I mean my generation could afford a freearm) we'd all learned on flatbeds and knew how to do things like cuffs and insert sleeves and mend by using the reverse funtion etc without using a freearm (even now I don't bother converting to the freearm on any of my machine but still use the flatbed).

I'd always assumed it's high price in the US had to be associated with the fact that as it had never been sold in the US all machines there were brought in from Canada where it was sold and later, other countries. I ready to stand corrected ont hat but rarity usually increases the price of things.

Thanks for that - will now have to investigate the machines and see what I have.

They promised us robots back in the 50s, said they'd be doing the boring housework. It took a long time, but I do like my little Roomba. She's always cheerful, and doesn't mind scooting around and around, picking up stuff and tucking it into her bin. If she gets stuck, she calls for help, and when she finishes up, she celebrates. My cats think she's a bit odd, but they don't mind her. They do sometimes watch. DH vacuums, but is not always cheerful, especially when he gets stuck. Thank goodness for the Dyson, now I don't have to go change bags and get things out of it for him. He's not nearly as patient as Carmen.

I don't remember ever seeing a 222 "in the wild" years ago when I had my first Featherweight (bought second-hand) in the late 1950s. So you could be quite correct about them not being sold here. They did sell the white/tan/green 221 here and my MIL had one that she gave away.

I think the driving mechanism is a little different with the 222, in that I think it's got an internal belt rather than gears. I think it's more versatile, with the free arm and the dropping feed dogs. Both are handy features to have. I think that's why the little Elna "grasshopper" is so popular. The first time I used a free arm, I was astonished at how much easier it makes some things to sew over the flat bed machine.

Even though the 222 is reasonably priced in Oz and the UK, the shipping expense drives the cost up a bit to get it to us here in the US.