Sweetie and Me

Right off the top let me say I have been sewing since I was fifteen years old,  a long, long time but recently I learned the hard way I haven't been keeping up with  sewing machine technology.

A couple of years back I upgraded to a super-duper type of  machine and I thought we were compatible until last summer when I packed her in her special container on wheels and trundled  her in for a checkup  because  she sounded like a thrashing machine.

$300- plus dollars later she was back to her quiet and refined self and sewed brilliantly but not before I was  confronted at the shop by a  bunch of solemn head-shakers about the broken gear and the absolutely impacted mess of thread in her gizzards.
Can't be thread I said since I don't sew that much. Oh yes, said the store people-- you sew a lot. The way they talked, I must be sewing 23- hours a day.

On the drive home, feeling put-upon, a scenario flashed into my mind and I knew what really happened. I recall the day when another repair man  pulled a ton of cat hair out of the refrigerator gizzards just before the condenser was about to wave the white flag.

 It was long, thick Himalayan cat hair--from the same cats that  slept on the sewing table curled around the back of the sewing machine.
My reasoning was that there wasn't any place that their hair could travel into  the machine, right? Oh so very wrong.

A few months earlier when  I sadly realized  that I couldn't keep up with their care and grooming,  I took them to the vet for a  check-up, got their shots up to date, then to the groomers for adorable haircuts and finally gave them to a younger, enthusiastic couple who adore Himalayan cats.

Back to the sewing machine.

 I was still smarting from the expensive bill and finger-pointing when I recently ran into another problem while I was trying to finish a couple of shirts I was making for son #4 for Christmas.

I reluctantly  headed back to the shop.

Well, said the nice lady, for starters there's a burr in the needle. A brand new one, Id like to add. She put in one of her own so it had to be burr-less. Try as I might I couldn't see a burr.

It seems the bobbin was in backwards also. This day was not going well.
She spoke very slowly to make sure I didn't miss a word and changed the bobbin around. Then I heard myself mumble  that since the machine returned from the factory it ran too quickly.

"You don't know how to adjust the speed ? she asked  incredulously.
Um, no.
She showed me.

There's more.

Apparently the tension was set so that it couldn't possibly run properly.  I never, ever change the tension so I don't know how that happened.
By this time she was sighing

As if  I hadn't suffered quite enough humiliation  I mentioned it took forever to thread the needle since I couldn't see that tiny needle hole very well.

"You don't know how to use the automatic needle threader?"

Just throw me in the dungeon and toss away the key.

The thing is, if you just make up your mind it will be a humiliating twenty minutes out of your life you come away from the store with a machine that sews more slowly, you know why she said the the bobbin wasn't wound correctly and the needle can now be threaded automatically. A really nifty trick,that one.

At last I was released, skulking out wheeling my sweetie behind me, with a mental picture of the nice lady in the shop regaling  her fellow workers about the ditz she just dealt with.

Back in the peace and quiet of home I photographed the proper settings, practised threading the thing automatically and vowed to read the manual one page daily until I have the thing memorized.

And to be on the safe side I photographed the correct settings.

So, yeah, it was worth the aggravation.

And sweetie's gizzards are immaculate.