Adventures In Second Blog-iversaries
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As of June 17, it’s been two years since I started this blog. Two years of posting a new article every Friday. I’m quite impressed with myself. So for this second blog-iversary, I thought I’d list a few recent purchases that I’m quite pleased with.
First up: Guggenhein scissors. This is a Texas company that makes fine dressmaker/tailor’s shears. I recently purchased the Guggenhein III (the little thread snippers), the Guggenhein IX (9” tailor’s shears), and the Guggenhein Precision II (the “Little Giant” small fabric scissors). I love them all!
First, the little thread snippers: I already had an old pair of these, which I’d actually used when learning to sew in childhood. When I moved out, I moved these out with me…I’m not sure if my mother realized I took them but she’s a smart lady, so probably she just let me have them while thinking I was getting away with something. She’s a kind soul… My old pair is stainless steel and doesn’t have any brand name on them, just the country where they were made (Brazil). They work just fine. But while I was busily scooping up Guggenhein scissors, I couldn’t resist adding their snippers to my shopping cart. I would say that the Guggenhein snippers are a cut above the ones I had before. (Ha.) They are maybe a centimeter longer, and about 15 grams heavier. Despite being heavier, they are beautifully balanced, so they feel solid in the hand rather than heavy. I’m glad I purchased them.
The small precision scissors are also heavy and perfectly balanced. I’ve been using them on a quilt project to cut small amounts of fabric out of my seams. Using full size scissors would have been challenging but these “Little Giant” scissors are the perfect thing. And like the full size shears, the sound they make as the blades come together and cut through fabric is very satisfying. If I were the sort of person to make an ASMR video for YouTube, I think I’d make one with the sound of the Guggenheims cutting easily through fabric.
And finally, the full size shears: I’d been using a pair of Marks scissors as my fabric shears for a number of years, but despite being sharpened on a reasonable schedule, they’ve finally started to operate stiffly, making them difficult to use. They are only slightly smaller than the Guggenhein shears but quite a bit lighter. As with the other scissors however, the Guggenheim shears are beautifully balanced and cut fabric like a dream. Honestly, when I first got them and did some test cutting, I had to force myself to stop wasting fabric by cutting it into small pieces. That sound and the clean cut are just so darn satisfying.
I got all of these scissors for a very reasonable price, and Guggenhein often has sales. They also have a fantastic satisfaction guarantee. I highly recommend the products and the company.
My next surprisingly satisfactory purchase was a new set of root comb applicators for hair product. Prior to washing my hair, I generally apply a rosemary oil/caster oil combination to help speed up hair growth and reduce hair loss. I alternate this with a rice/clove water mixture that I use for the same purpose. Neither product is difficult to apply, but with the new applicator, it’s super easy. The combs work through your hair to rest against your scalp, which is where I want my products to land, and the little holes at the tip of each comb spike dispense whatever fluid you’ve loaded into the bottle. Just don’t be too enthusiastic with squeezing the bottle while holding it upside down or you’ll get quite a lot of hair oil all over everything.
And finally, a story about Wi-Fi. I live out in the country. There is no cable out where I live, so getting TV services or Wi-Fi through cable is just not possible. When I moved into this house 20+ years ago, I did get an old-fashioned landline telephone (like we all did back then) and I got a barely acceptable Wi-Fi speed through that. However, my phone line ran along the outside of my house and was therefore subject to the vagaries of weather. So every 10 years or so, the wires would wear out and need to be replaced, and the phone company would send their tech out to fix the problem, usually the same day. Fast forward to the pandemic, and in October of the year where no one went anywhere and everyone wore masks, my phone line broke again. I called and was told that the first available appointment for someone to come out to fix the problem was in about a month. I was rather shocked by this…I consider phone service a basic utility, right up there with electricity, sewer, and water. Who waits a month to get a basic utility repaired? Nonetheless, that was the soonest appointment, so I set it up. Then the customer service rep said, “Let me check and see if you can go on the cancellation list, and that might get you an appointment sooner.” She put me on hold for a few minutes and then came back on the line to tell me that I “did not qualify” to be on the cancellation list. That really was the last straw…
I managed to end the conversation without being too rude to the poor lady, because it’s not like any of this was her fault. Then I called my cell phone company (Verizon) to look into hotspot services. They hooked me up with quite a lot of hotspot data for less that I was paying for my (non-operable) phone line. Once I’d checked that this actually worked, I called the phone company back, cancelled my repair appointment, and cancelled my landline phone service entirely. So the only home internet I’ve had since 2020 is my cell service data and a hotspot off my cell phone. Since I live in the sticks, even cell service isn’t great out here, but I was making do. For uploading my blog posts, I’d have to take my laptop down to the library to use their Wi-Fi, since my hotspot just wasn’t fast enough to successfully do those uploads.
And then one day a couple months ago, the clouds parted, angels sang, and Verizon mailed me a flyer saying I was now eligible for their new 5G home internet service. Since this works off of cell towers using cell data, I wasn’t confident that it would work better than my current hotspot/cell data method, but I was willing to give it a try. So I signed up for it, and Verizon mailed me a package with a magic box inside. It’s just a white box that you plug into a power outlet, set up near a window (or an exterior wall), and turn on. And then it sets itself up and you have Wi-Fi. I HAVE WI-FI!! My mother tired quickly of the repeated text announcements accompanied by an admittedly reprehensible number of exclamation points; I felt she should have been grateful that she was not subjected to the little “I Have Wi-Fi” song I composed and she also did not have to see the accompanying dance. But really…it was amazing! My Wi-Fi is at least as fast as what I can get at the library, and I can access it all over my house.
My favorite sister-in-law asked me (after receiving excited texts with lots of exclamation points) how it worked, and after I tried to think up an explanation, I just had to tell her, “It’s a magic box that sprinkles Wi-Fi over everything in your house.” This less-than-scientific explanation wasn’t terribly informative, but this really is the best Wi-Fi I’ve ever had and comes from a box that just plugs into a power outlet in the wall and isn’t physically connected to anything else in any other way. So it really does feel like magic. If you want good Wi-Fi at a reasonable price, check with your cell phone company and see if they have something similar. It’s life-changing.
