Time for a Confession

My name is Linda, and I'm a gadget fanatic.  Yes, it's true and it's definitely incurable.  Whenever I see a new gadget, rather it be for the kitchen or the sewing room, I just start to twitch.  And then I start into cold sweat, and finally I just shake uncontrollably.  And it doesn't stop until I order it or Rod says a firm "No Way".  So today, my post is about some of my "gadgets".

I love a salad that you buy in a restaurant.  Love those chicken cashew salads, the spinach and bacon salads, the Pittsburgh steak salads (complete with french fries), and just a salad you make yourself on a salad bar.  But here at home, salads just don't impress me.  They just don't taste the same.  I haven't quite figured out whether it's the dressing or the ingredients.  But then it hit me, it's the lettuce.  The nice dry lettuce.  So, I looked at salad spinners.  And they come in all price ranges - some for under $20 and many for much more than that.  Well, I'm also a tight wad, and so I finally decided on $10 one from Walmart.  It's a pretty green and white and I just love the fact that it doesn't crank, you don't have to swing it, but rather it has a pull cord much like the one on the lawnmower.  But, I haven't used it.  So, today daughter Mary came with all the fixing's for a spinach salad.  She boiled the eggs, cooked the bacon, and made a wonderful hot dressing with bacon grease, red wine vinegar, cooked red onion, and Dijon mustard.  And she used the salad spinner to wash and dry the baby spinach.  And you should have seen the water coming out of that spinach!!  It was so much fun (do you think I need something more in my life?).  And the salad --- ausgezeichnet!!  or excellent!! So the $10 salad spinner gets a thumbs up from me.

I'm working on designing a new project to sell online.  I've done a prototype, and think it needs a little tweaking.  But so far, so good.  I was searching online yesterday for seam binding that I could purchase inexpensively.  And then it hit me -- I purchased two different sizes of binding makers.  And again, I haven't used them.  So, before I purchase any binding, I'm going to try and use my makers.  That's my project for the rest of the week.  Trying to learn to master the binding maker "gadget"  I did manage to find a seller of zippers at really good prices on eBay, and ordered them yesterday.  They have already shipped, and hopefully will arrive by the weekend.  

Do you have any gadgets you just can't live without?  What is your favorite gadget?  I have had a Teflon pressing sheet for a few years now, and it has to be my favorite sewing room gadget at the present time.  It's so handy for fusing appliques together, not to mention when I'm applying fusible to fabric.  And now you have it -- the confession of a gadget-oholic.