TOGA TOGA TOGA

Hi there Mary,

That is the way you start your message calling all Treadle 'onions' from the land of Treadle On to a gathering.

TreadleOnGAthering is how I assume the name TOGA got started, but like many things in Treadleonia it is a mystery to me.

One thing that often happens, according to Cindy Peters of Lake City, MN is a TOGA entertainment which involves ambulances or some sort of official intervention. This time is was a car starting on fire right in front of Cindy's storefront and then (thank goodness) it continued through the intersection until a valiant citizen of Lake City ran into the street and, waving her arms, stopped the car and dragged the confused and protesting driver to safety. Cindy is going to find out who our heroine was. She claims everyone in Lake City will know by tomorrow morning.At that point cars continued to drive around the stopped car so several of us (yes, me too, you know how bossy I am) went out into the street to stop traffic. Several people were quite indignant that they couldn't drive past the burning car and had to go AROUND THE BLOCK!

Once the 2 police cars, and then the fire department got there they effectively blocked the street and we could go back to gawking. I got a few photo's and thought you would all like to see the fire department in action. They had a little trouble getting the hood off and when they finally did we all cheered.

This happened on Sunday morning so after this excitement we went up to the church and watched Damascus Annie (Annie Kusilek) do some free motion quilting on her Singer Treadle. I think it is a 15/90 Singer but I am not sure. Hopefully someone will confirm or correct me.

I was fascinated by her 'feathers'. All I can say is WOW WOW WOW.

After that I got out my new Singer 99 to check it over and do a little practice sewing on it. It was pulling the fabric a little and I was wondering about the pressure on the presser foot, so I called Bill Holman over and he looked at the machine. He noticed the tension knob was incorrectly assembled so he took it off and fixed it and put it back. What a guy. He is what a Treadlonian calls a OSMG (Old Sewing Machine Guy) They are national treasures in the sewing machine world and I can certainly agree about Bill. I am sure he had forgotten more stuff about sewing machines than all the rest of us put together knew.

I tried to post a video of Annie treadling the feather quilting but the download died. I will show you when I get home on Monday.

Love,

Nancy