And more with the sewing machines

I went looking at real machines again today.  I went to the Janome dealer in San Mateo and the Brother dealer in San Mateo.

( tl;dr: Janome experience poor, Brother experience good - but Disney?? )

The Ellure+ may end up being a good, if slightly inconvenient, point to jump in with.  Advantages: Quite affordable price point, what should be a sufficiency of stitches; may try looking up the manual online and see if I can see exactly what the stitches are.  Disads: no stitch editing, can only plan/place 1 embroidery design at a time (both of which come on board when you go up to the Esante).  But am I willing to pay that much more for those functions (plus hellalotta more stitches)?  It's a good thing I'm making myself wait till the end of August to purchase anything!