Looking Up — UN headquarters, NYC

image stolen from Obohemia

The latest Musicworks magazine has an interview I did with Kingston, Ontario-based artist Matt Rogalsky about Discipline, his homage to teenage-boy axe shredding. Reverse-wired guitars singing along to classic rock! On stands now!

Knit Fair Isle-style 2-frame ball oscillator from Conway’s Game of Life.

2nd Update: I’ve now put the manuals and some new ones together on their own page!

Update: Thanks to a kind fairy in New Zealand, CB-N manual now in English!

After years of searching in Canada, Angella finally picked up a foot-powered treadle sewing machine. A Husqvarna CB-N she found at a local flea market for a whopping 120 Swedish crowns. That’s $18.50 Canadian.

Needless to say, it is gorgeous. And Angella says it works better than any electrical machine she’s used. I’m not kidding. We haven’t given it a proper photo shoot yet, but you can see someone else’s in the picture on the right, from the International Antique Sewing Machine Forum.

Information online about this machine is scarce. It seems it’s no older than 1934, and apparently the CB-N Class 12 was the first electric machine that Husqvarna made. They must have just slapped a motor onto the original CB-N. Bear in mind that these facts are according to the internet.

Since there was such little information online about it, we were a little upset. That is, until Angella discovered a secret compartment containing all the missing pieces and the original manual in Swedish. It was like finding a secret room in a house.

I thought I would do the internet a favour and put the manual online. It looks valid for the Husqvarna CB, CB-N, CB XI, HR, and VS. It’s in Swedish, so you may have to translate parts of it. It’s called Hur symaskinen arbertar och hur den vårdas, or How the Sewing Machine Works and How to Care for It.

As a taste… The introduction is called “The Woman and the Sewing Machine,” and it contains a quote that I can translate as:

The woman must overcome her disregard for machines. She must instead learn to turn them into obedient slaves and exploit them in all manners.

How awesome is that?

Download it here.

If you want to learn more about sewing machines, check out the amazing Secret Life of Machines episode on sewing machines.