Frustration!

My new flipping machine

                 

            ‘Hells bells and buckets of blood!!!!!!!,’ I cry. ‘How can this piece of inert metal defeat me. I’m supposed to be a reasonably intelligent person having gained a good honours degree and postgraduate qualifications! What is more, I used to make clothes for my children, myself and my husband no problem. I even made a suit as well as an overcoat for the latter. I should be able to master this piece of modern machinery surely.’

            I turned to my husband for a solution and support. ‘No use looking at me love. Give me some wood turning machinery or other complex tools to do with shaping wood but a sewing machine is way out of my comfort zone,’ he strode off washing his hands of my problem.

            Little wonder that even my sister, who was proficient at sewing, had decided that when she bought a more modern up-date on her old model, she couldn’t approach it without first having a drink of sherry and taking a paracetamol! I’d bought one in a sale last year intending to make pelmets for the curtains we had made. The quote I’d had at that time for pelmets only, was almost as much as for making full length lined patio curtains. No way Jose! I decided I’d make them. I’d made curtains in the past no sweat. I was forgetting that was on my very old Singer which had been a treadle before being up graded by having a motor fitted. I’d bought it at an auction for very little and it was wonderful. It sewed fabric that was thick or thin: it didn’t throw a fit at anything it was asked to sew. True, it only went backwards and forward; none of the fancy stuff, but that was what I needed.

            This new machine has gadgets for button holes, can make embroidery and goodness knows what. I only want it to sew and fondly imagined that it would work in a similar manner to my old darling. I tried to thread it as I would have done in the past: was that good enough for it? You’ve guessed the answer. No! I fished out the instruction book and tried to carefully follow the directions to the letter but it was like trying to assemble a flat pack from MFI or IKEA. There’s always something that gets missed out in the process or in my case, the ‘take-up lever’. Where is it and why isn’t it marked on the diagram? I’ve tried every hole and lever and still although it looks quite good when threaded, as though it should work, it doesn’t. The cotton gets snagged on the mechanism under the plate.

            I’m torturing myself now as my husband has decided that at long last the pelmets are essential kit to have for him to be happy, as well as because my friend Sue, asked me ‘Have you got a sewing machine?,’ without thought I replied, ‘Yes. Well I couldn’t lie could I?’

 ‘Just run up these two lines of sewing on the throws I want shortened. You don’t mind do you?,’ she replied.

How could I refuse? She’s been very helpful to us in the past, so of course I said I’d do it. She’d duly delivered the throws in bags with cotton etc for me to do the job which I’d got out this morning. What I’d forgotton was that she’d included a much thumbed copy of a Catherine Cookson novel.’ That was much more my thing: reading I mean.. I can do that at the drop of a hat anywhere, loving being transported into another world. The more varied the books’ content the better. I‘d shoved it aside reluctantly, being resolved to tame the beast that is the sewing machine.

As I became ever more demented, trying all I could think of, my thoughts strayed back to the book. After two hours of being angry and humiliated, I threw in the towel. I felt exhausted. I made a cup of tea and curled up with the book.

Sorry Sue, I’ll deliver your things back together with the machine. If you fathom it out perhaps you’ll instruct me. I slowly relaxed.