Sewing

Sewing machines and I have never gotten along.

As a teenager, I used to try to sew on Mom's machine, and most of the time it was an exercise in frustration. Mom says that after I was gone from home, she discovered it was a problem with the tension on the machine, but with me behind the "wheel" it probably still wouldn't have worked right. I still would have had "tension" with it!

Now I have a machine of my own, a nice Singer, which I got at a yard sale about six or seven years ago, along with a lovely cabinet and upholstered rolling chair, by flashing $100 cash in front of the lady who wanted $150. It really is a great machine. My daughter sews beautifully on it. My mother, who was here last week, sews beautifully on it, repairing a blanket for my son with little to no effort.

I tried to make a skirt yesterday. I had to re-do all the seams because the first time something wasn't set right and they were all loose. The bobbin kept catching and not working right, so I finally unwound and re-wound it.

You'd think I'd just quit. But there's something that always draws me back to trying to sew things. As creative as it is, maybe in my case there's some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy of failure that keeps pulling me back.