Progress stopped by the foot control

Last night I cut out the Simplicity top - 4 pieces and pretty simple ones too. I set up my serger (a Babylock Evolve) to start sewing and brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr the foot control appeared to be stuck on one speed - fast! This is actually a replacement foot control because a year or so ago my serger seemed to "race" in speed, going fast, slow, and then fast again. I took the serger to the dealer but the serger itself was fine (thank goodness) so they replaced the foot control, which seemed to fix the problem. But now it's doing it again. My husband suspects it's because I leave the machine plugged into the power strip all the time. But it's more likely that cat hair mixed with fiber dust that probably accumulates on the floor accumulated inside the foot control. I say probably because the floor is not visibly dirty. But neither is our house and every day Roomba sweeps and comes back with a dust bin full of hair and mystery fluff. The sewing room is off limits to Roomba because of a fringed rug in the room, so the cat hair, fiber, and mystery fluff doesn't get picked up very often. My husband used his air compressor to try to blow out any debris in the foot control. Unfortunately the control is not made to come apart so he couldn't do a thorough job. I really hate manufactured things that are sealed so that you can't open them up to fix them when they break. Often you have no choice but to replace things and leave the broken item to rot in a dump somewhere for the next million years. I don't like to send things to the dump and I don't like paying money to replace things that are fixable. Anyway, the compressed air seemed to help. I tried out the foot pedal and it alternated between normal and fast but there's hope I will be able to serge at a normal speed, perhaps with another shot of compressed air. But by then it was too late at night for sewing so I will revisit the Simplicity top on another day and hopefully not have a temperamental foot control.

And now to change the subject. We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium two weeks ago and I brought my camera with me. Click here to see some more photos.