Interesting lesson in this story:

Pkg with contraband was intercepted, documented, all needed warrants secured. Pkg is delivered while the house is staked out by LEOs. Sometime after delivery (a day later, iirc) they bust in, find the pkg, and arrest. The pkg was sitting just inside by the door, unopened. Defense argued “my client knows nothing about this unexpected package. Who’s to say the sender wasn’t framing the recipient?” So he obviously got vindicated.

So there’s a game of timing. Recipients need to be given the chance to open the pkg and react by calling the police. Not sure how it goes if you consume it immediately after opening and burn the box. Certainly the wrong move is to open it and let it sit around open.

/cc @[email protected]

To be clear, the spores are perfectly legal. You can mail order spores that come in saline solution in a syringe without trouble. The businesses selling that are smart enough to not use media mail, which of course would cross a line (fraud). I wonder why someone would risk media mail. Perhaps they thought it would be trusted as such and thus have less scrutiny.

The nuance here is you said “kit”, which suggests everything you need for growth and thus intent. Maybe you’re right on that bit. Buying everything separately would require surveillance to put all that together that you have a kit, in effect.

I want to be self-sufficient enough to “own” my machine (i.e. to be able to repair it myself). OTOH, I see lots of room for user error judging from the service manual steps with difficult measurements. It seems I have a good chance of making it worse by adjusting something that doesn’t need it. I doubt I’ll be able to find a pro who I can watch over the shoulder on in my area, so the risk of making it worse might be my best option.

I appreciate your detailed explanation!

The shuttle hook is a bit higher than the needle eye when they cross. This seems necessary for this machine so the hook can grab the thread. If I understand the service manual correctly, the shuttle hook should be ~⅛ inch above the needle eye. I can only eye-ball it because it’s quite hard to measure.

I don’t see an early/late difference between left and right. Left right and center appear the same as far as I can tell.

The presser foot was loose so I hope that explains how I broke a needle.

When manually cranking a straight stitch, it seems to miss ~1 in 10 stitches. When manually cranking the widest zig-zag, the left misses most of the time. Probably ~7-9 out of 10 stitches miss on the left, while on the right probably 1 out of 10 miss. So without fabric and with the machine on its side, it appears to work correctly most of the time on the left and right. That is, it grabs the top thread, drags it in a circle and then it wraps the lower thread. Effectively each cycle adds a twist to the threads. It seems to be a hindenbug (the kind of bug that hides when you’re looking closely at it). I could really use a tiny camera to record what happens underneath when sewing fabric.

Before today I’ve been inserting the bobbin so it spins counter-clockwise (a Youtuber said that’s the correct way) but I just noticed the manual shows a clockwise insertion. So I switched to clockwise. I’ve noticed no difference in that regard at least when hand cranking.

I just went to a street market and lifted¹ a dozen or so machines. I bought the heaviest one figuring it has the fewest plastic parts. It’s a Singer from the late '60’s. Front-load bobbin. Found the user manual and service manual online.

The one job I’m uncertain of is whether it can hem denim. The user manual says it can sew denim with a size 16 needle and canvas with a size 18 needle, but if I’m hemming denim then I think it must be able to penetrate 6 layers of denim (where the vertical seam gets folded). The manual makes no mention of layers. Motor is 85 watts.

I realized well after buying that there is no “arm”. I suspect that will be quite inconvenient with hemming in my case because I was planning to do non-destructive technique: undo the original hem and without cutting fold it up as high up the leg as needed. That will be a pain when the cuff can’t wrap around the base.

1: physically picked up, not stole

There were many 2nd hand machines at a swap meet I went to. One of them included a box of accessories & spare parts. I get the impression the parts are not standardized on any of them which leaves me wondering if Singer is the only brand where I can expect to easily find parts for. I saw these:

• Huskystar model 60
• Vendomatic 970 Super zigzag
• Riccar Offenbach
• E&R Classic
• Happy special edition
• Singer Concerto
• Lervia
• Carina
• Singer 1808
• Husqvarna 2000 (with extra parts)
• Dorina
• Brother

Lot of others were Singers. None of the used ones were computerized.

I get the impression two needles are useful. Most of the machines only had 1 needle but some had two spool holders which I think implies a 2nd needle can be added. But then I don’t know if that puts me on a hunt for hard to find parts.

The other thing is the stitch pattern symbols on the knobs are hard to understand. Are all the non-linear symbols for stretch stitches?

In fact I think you may have discovered the only pure FOSS solution.