More Sewing Toys

For the past 8 months, I've been working on a project at work that involved completely re-doing the design rules for lifting our components (big, intricate, stationary parts of a steam turbine). A previous engineer, which everyone always refers to as the uber-engineer, worked on it for 3 years and couldn't manage to get all parties to agree to the changes. Now this uber-engineer tried to make everything "ideal" without actually taking into account that in reality you can only do certain things.

When I took the project over, I broke out all the issues into mini-chunks and presented those chunks to the interested parties and got their agreement on each part. I was then able to completely re-vamp our design rules and publish the rules, which no one had been able to do for 4 years. Because of the hard work that I put in on the project, my manager gave me a nice award - $500! It isn't cash, but I can redeem it for gift cards at various stores like Lowes, Barnes & Nobles, or Amazon.

If you remember, earlier this spring I was able to get a new sewing toy of my new sewing machine. I love my Bernina 440 and it sews like a dream. However, my nice, new sewing machine has been sitting on my husband's grandmother's old rickety sewing table for the past two months. I've been toying over buying a new sewing table, but just had trouble getting past the idea that if I wanted a decent table I was going to have to spend at least $350. Well, now that I have this extra money from work, I'm getting a new sewing table! :-)

I saw a really nice one on Amazon by Homespun. It has a large work surface, an air lift system to put the machine at any height you want, lots of storage space, and an extra leaf extension that adds an extra 5 sq. ft. of table space on the back of the table - perfect for supporting nice heavy quilts.

The one odd thing about it is that for an oak colored cabinet the price is $620, but for a cherry cabinet its $820! Its not even real wood! Its just stained veneers! Why is there a $200 difference? Obviously I'll be getting the oak colored cabinet, and yes its more than the $500 award, but I have some birthday money hanging around that will cover the rest of it and then some.

Now I just have to wait 2-3 weeks for it to ship to me. ;-)