Friday, December 29, 2006

A New Iron

My old iron died. Didn't get hot. Well, it never actually got hot, but now it wasn't even getting warm. It was doing a fine imitation of a paper weight. As luck would have it, the January issue of Threads magazine ran an article on irons and it convinced me that I needed to pay some major bucks for an iron that would do more than touch up collars and wristbands. The article talks about "heavy soleplates, narrow shapes, superior temerature dials and thermostats, and almost limitless steam capacity."

Armed with a 20% off coupon from Bed Bath and Beyond, I headed to the store. I chose the Rowenta Advancer. It's pricier than any other iron I've ever had but after using it for only half an hour I was convinced that it's worth it. With my old iron I had to work and work to get the wrinkles out of fabric that had been stuffed into boxes. Even spraying it with water and using steam, the results were never very good. The wrinkles still showed.

But with one swipe of this quite heavy iron with bunches of steam, the wrinkles are gone. Excellent!

Isn't it impressive? It has LED lights to indicate that it's warming up, cooling down, turning itself off, and ready to iron. After reading the manual (I always read the manual) I had to find a more powerful extension cord. This iron would likely overheat the cheap extension cord I had. And under Important Safety Instructions I learned that I should not direct steam at people or animals. And most importantly, I should not iron clothes while they are being worn. I wonder what bozo tried that. Rowenta probably got sued because somebody tried it and then claimed that it never said not to.