I came this close to buying one of these today. It's the Elna #1 or sometimes called the Grasshopper. It's a cute portable straight-stitch portable sewing machine with a free arm. The only thing that stopped me from getting it is that this particular one was made for the European market. So it had to be plugged into a big power converter to work. Not the best solution, especially since there were ones made for the American market out there. There's some interesting history behind this machine. It was originally made by Tavaro S.A. - a Swiss company that manufactured arms among other things. They eventually switched over to sewing machines and became known as Elna. That's definitely a nice swords-into-plowshares kind of story.
The coolest thing about this machine is its carrying case. It folds open and becomes a table that the machine slides into. Here's a few links with more information: Elna history, Elna Grasshopper & Supermatic (where the pictures came from), someone's personal Elna.
I also tried out a 221 Featherweight. Wow, I have to say that I liked it so much more than the Grasshopper. But I still really want the free arm and free motion stitching capabilities of the 222 Featherweight. So perhaps I need to take a lesson from the Shaolin masters of Kung Fu days and have patience. But then again, I did like how cute the little green Grasshopper was. Time will tell what little portable machine I end up with.
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And on Saturday we had a short visit from my in-laws. We drove directly from the airport and took advantage of the gorgeous weather to show them the Golden Gate bridge. We parked in the lot on the Marin county side and walked to the halfway point of the bridge. The bay was filled with sail boats struggling against the currents and one smallish oil tanker and its accompanying pilot boat. There was one adventurous kayak near the rocks and lots of brown pelicans. (Or at least I think that's what they were .. it was hard to tell for sure since the bridge is fairly high up from the water.) Sadly after lunch at our local Thai restaurant we had just a few hours before we had to ferry our parents back to the airport. Still it was nice to have family visit even though it was a quick one.
