No, nothing arrived in the post.
No, I didn't come up with an exciting new idea.
No, I haven't finished all the Atelier de la Poupee home workshop packs.... yet.
Instead my excitement was caused by this....
This photo shows only a small selection, from the cheaper end of the shelf. Prices at the other end were eye-watering. Does ANYONE need to spend £160 on an iron?
Regular readers will know that I get through irons at an indecent rate.
For example, almost 2 years ago.... Iron Woman
And 6 years ago... Fit For Purpose
And 9 years ago.... Well... I'M Excited...!
In my defence, I do a LOT of ironing.
Not CLOTHES ironing of course... that would be ridiculous!
No, my ironing consists of lots of fabrics, silk ribbons, trimmings etc. For work purposes.
My last iron finally succumbed to the nemesis of all my irons... iron-on vilene. With some additional help from assorted glues, starch, dyes etc.
It's once gleaming soleplate no longer gleamed. It was scratched and blackened, and no end of scrubbing was ever going to restore its once smooth glide, over precious fabrics.
So off we went to Tesco to find a suitable replacement, and after much perusing, humming and hahhing, I finally decided on this...
.... for the princely sum of £12.
It's perfect. Smaller than all of the monster-sized irons and it claims to be 'Featherlight Plus'. I'm always a tad sceptical about claims made for just about everything, but for once Philips has got it bang on.
It is indeed extremely lightweight. The first time I tried it earlier, I lifted it with the same force I habitually used for the old iron, and it almost flew out of my hand and straight through the window!
It will take a day or two to get used to it, but I really like it already. It has a proper 'silk setting' which is a boon as my old one only offered generic heat settings... cool, medium, hot, thermonuclear.... and I was forever fiddling with the dial to find a temperature which would easily remove stubborn creases from silk but wouldn't frazzle it.
It even switches itself off if I haven't handled it for 30 seconds, which is great as I sometimes forget it's on. It heats up in seconds too, in case I fall foul of the 30 second rule.
It also has a ceramic-style ''non-stick' soleplate which I'm hoping will withstand the vagaries of iron-on vilene and the multitude of other substances it will come in contact with.
So, all in all, I'm a happy bunny. Although such an indecent amount of excitement over the selection and purchase of a household small appliance does perhaps signify that perhaps I need to get out more....
2 comments:
Well done on the new iron, and thank you for the market research! I was thinking just this weekend that I would like a new iron. Mine is a Philips too, but about 20 years old and the steam vents have become permanently blocked from our brackish water.
Did I mention fabric softener sheets before? I learned this trick from a group of quilters who regularly meet in my studio. They iron over Vilene all the time. To clean the soleplate, they iron with a hot iron over the kind of fabric softener sheet you put in the tumble dryer. Maybe worth a try to extend the life of your iron.
Happy ironing!
Ooooooh... thanks for the tip. I'll definitely give that a go! :)
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