One of our LQS is going out of business because the owner wants to retire and wasn't able to find a buyer for her very successful shop. We went a week ago and bought some things. While there we noticed she had a Janome 9900 for a very good price. I thought it was really neat and absolutely beautiful, but have always enjoyed doing hand embroidery so wasn't really seriously considering it. However, my husband was very impressed with it and was strongly considering buying it for me/us (thinks he would maybe enjoy doing some embroidery work on it).

We didn't buy it, but kept talking about it all week and going back and forth on yes, we should/no, we shouldn't spend the money. We went back this Saturday and she had reduced the price a bit more. We decided it was too good an offer to pass up because even though it was their demonstrator model it came with the full warranty. I asked the manager (the owner wasn't there, but we know both of them well) what the absolute best price would be and she said that was it. However, she said she could throw in some thread and a couple of digital patterns. I ended up with at least 30 spools of embroidery thread. In the end we got the machine (considering the thread and patterns) for just over half the MSRP so we think we did very well.

I have been noticing that you all have been telling us on the forum the names of your machines so decided I need to get on the band wagon. I had been trying to come up with appropriate names for my Janome 6600 I received two years ago for Christmas and my Kenmore that is more than 20 years old. Well . . . my new Janome has a red faceplate so her name was very easy to come up with - Ruby. And since I am patriotic to the core and my blood runs red, white and blue, I decided to name my Janome 6600 Diamond and my Kenmore Sapphire!

I really am excited about getting to know Ruby. I am planning on starting with quilt labels and then work up to bigger and better things in the future.

I love this forum even though I don't jump in real often and write something.

Annie