A few months ago, my son intently looked at me and seriously said, "Mom, you're just not a gadget gal." With my husband's retirement from the USAF and a move from San Antonio, Texas (where I lived most of my life) to the Washington DC area brought about sudden crash courses in my learning how to use....
....a lap top where the keys must be spaced differently from what I was used to. My fingers usually fly when I type and I rarely made mistakes until I used the lap top. Now I was making nothing but mistakes. I was making a gazillion typos, bringing up other web pages, and closing down my page by the mere attempts of striking the keys. Then there was a "ghost" feature that mysteriously appeared while I was typing. I accidentally found a setting to get rid of that ghost and my fingers have finally learned to fly on a lap top!
...a cell phone which I rarely used in San Antonio. With the move across country I finally learned how to plug in phone numbers so that I could keep in touch with my parents, our real estate agents in San Antonio and Virginia, etc, etc, etc. Then we moved into our house and my phone basically sits in my purse. When a friend of my son's came over, I had to ask the boys how to put in the phone number for the friend's mom. What can I say...I forget things I don't use all the time.
...a GPS, which I've dubbed Lee because describing him takes a lot of adverbs while we are on the go. He likes to drive us through downtown Washington DC. However I've learned to reroute him so he will take me out and about via easier routes. Interesting-lee, he gets lost once we reach our own neighborhood. I'm glad I have that much of the area figured out!
...television cable which in Northern Virginia apparently requires numerous mega monster electrical cables and three remote controls. That's crazy! I still haven't figured out how to use the VCR or DVD or any other doo-dad on the machine. My husband says I'll never figure it out. Hmmmm, that sounds like a challenge.
... the telephone answering machine which is now more complicated than a simple push of the button.
...learning a new phone number took me months. Numbers aren't as friendly to me as letters. I tried to give someone my phone number the other day. He thought he remembered the prefix, which was wrong, but since he put the wrong number in my head, for the life of me I could not remember the correct number.
...the clock on my nightstand is beyond comprehension. I purchased it when we moved into this house because my husband gets up at 4:30am to get ready to arrive at work by 6am. 4:30am is too early for me! I want to wake up at 6am. However I couldn't figure out how to set the alarm, so my son set it up for me. Now my husband turns my alarm off on Friday nights and sets it up again on Sunday night.
...and now a new sewing machine which the moving company recently paid for! I have been busily sewing window treatments, Year 4 Unit 1 costumes, and researching and gathering supplies for new colonial costumes. I want to make my daugter's dress more historic. My son wants me to make a warmer and more accurate Lafayette costume for winter and a gentry outfit for summer. I've not had much time for sewing, due to lesson planning and studying. We've also been sight seeing, either at historic places or at Lowes, my husband's favorite store. When he runs out of projects, he takes me shopping. I can't complain. I'm thankful my husband is perking up the house. Alas, my sewing sits on the table during the hours we are at Lowes. The few times I get to sew, I optimistically think I'm going to be extremely productive, but something always happens.
I've been sewing on a piece of silk and the tension has been too tight. I thought it was due to the flimsy fabric. Tonight I finally took a look at how to fix that. I'm not great at figuring out tension. Remember I'm not a gadget gal. It appeared that the top tension was too tight, so I decreased the tension but it didn't make any difference, not even at a 1. I tried a piece of cotton and had the same problem. Oh dear, my new machine is broken. I resorted to my old machine which is broken from the move, but at least the tension still works. As I sewed on my silk, the tension problem kept nagging me. I finally sat at the computer to do some googling.
Specifically I googled, "Pfaff Expression 2.0 tension". Oh, no. I found a lot of comments about the exact same problem I had experienced. They users all sold their Pfaffs and purchased other machines. I felt awful. I looked through my google search and found another forum (not Pfaff), where the thread was about the Pfaff Expression and opinions of it. Everyone loved it! One lady had a thread gunking problem. She took her machine to the Pfaff dealer and found out she was doing two things wrong. One, she was threading her machine with the presser foot down. Hmmm, I thread the machine with the presser foot up, so that's not the problem. Second, when she inserted the bobbin, she didn't listen for the click when she moved the thread around to different parts of the chamber. Hmmmm, this could be my problem. I've always suspected that I was not putting in the bobbin correctly. The thread was always flowing too freely from the base of the machine. However the insertion method is completely different from any I have worked with and is quite intricate. I went to the machine, took out the bobbin, moved the thead around the different parts of the chamber until I heard the click. "Click!" Do you know how wonderful that sound is????? I've never heard that before! I finished threading, replaced the cover, and started sewing. Eureka! The seam was gorgeous!!!!!!
Since Pfaff users sometimes find my blog for information, I wanted to be sure I posted this little tip. Also it will make great reference for me. Since I'm not a gadget gal, I might forget if I am ever away from sewing for months at a time! | 
