Thank goodness!

Thank you dear bloggy friends for all the advice, which I greatly appreciate, as I've never had to go and buy sewing machine before  (my father bought the Singer for me when I started to learn dressmaking at school at the age of 14).
I'm hearing more and more about Janome being reliable, but I still have a fondness for the Singer brand as I feel I know them so well, whereas when I look at Janome and similar brands, they look tricky to use.  There is a sewing machine shop in Bundoora, not too far from us, and I vaguely know the owner through her stalls at various quilt shows.  She does workshops and classes all the time, and I'm sure if I bought a machine from her, she would have no hesitation in teaching me how to use it properly. 

As a follow up, Ken's sister did buy the $99 Singer at Aldi's.  We dropped in to her place tonight for Ken to sign papers relating to their Mum's estate, and she showed me the machine.  She has had a little play with it, and said it stitches okay, but there is no adjustment device for the width when you sew zig zag.  Not only that, when she took it out of the box to show me, it had a plastic fabric cover, not a rigid plastic, so if you had to carry it around to classes outside of  your home, it could easily get damaged.  It looked more like a toy than a proper sewing machine!  SIL said she is going to take it down to their holiday house so if she needs to do some repairs, or wants to make something, it will be there instead of having to wait until she gets home.

Phew!  Glad I got that infection, and glad I didn't get that machine - Lucky escape! There is no way you would get even a light weight quilt through it, that I could see. (By the way, the antibiotics have already taken effect and I felt so much better today!  Thanks for the sympathetic comments)