Dread Pirate Alice

A Cry for Help

So, I was going to make my neighbor a lovely afghan for her new baby that is due any day now…but I just don’t like the yarn that I ordered. The texture is too….polyester feeling. I’ve waited too long and now the baby will be here before I can even decide what yarn to get.

So… I decided I would make an attempt to sew the blankets like Sister Madness has done. I figure I can knit, I can crochet, I can do counted cross-stitch for crying out loud I should be able to sort out how to use the sewing machine to make lovely even stitches around the squareness of a blanket! Pfft…if I can use a computer I can figure out a sewing machine…

So I pull out the neglected sewing machine

And I get my tools together

And then I pull out the test fabric.

Cuz ya know, I don’t want to practice on the actual fabric and crap it all up…

Well…I get the fabric ready…I’m going to make a dice bag for my D&D dice… not that much harder than a blanket, right? Yah, right…

The machine started up made a few stitches and then came unthreaded. I tear out the few stitches and rethread the machine and try again. Same thing happened. Over and over I can’t get it to go the whole 6 inches across the bottom of the frickin bag.

A call is placed to dear Sister Madness…

“What could I possibly be doing wrong?” I ask.
“Have you threaded the machine properly?”
“It appears I have, I followed their lame diagrams.”
“Is the needle sharp? Is it maybe bent?”
I look at the needle…it appears straight, she talks to someone at her end and in my vast stupidity I poke my finger with the needle…seems sharp to me…ow…
“Yeah, the needle just stabbed me, I think it’s sharp. But I’ve got an extra needle, maybe I should change it anyway?”
“Give it a try.”

So I grab the mini-screwdriver and try to undo the clamp following the directions. It’s very tight I use both hands and watch the needle fall into the opening where the bobbin thread comes out…there’s maybe a fraction of a centimeter of the needle sticking up *sigh* this does not bode well…I use the screwdriver to try to pull the needle out of the hole…it just moves around a bit, until the needle completely falls INTO the hole. It’s gone now. I look at all the screws and how the machine is put together to try to figure out how to get it out.

“You got the needle in yet?” Sis M asks me.
“Uh…the old needle fell into the hole…” I shake the machine to try to figure out where it is. I’m thinking this whole thing is over with now, I can’t put the new needle in without it getting broken on the old one that’s stuck inside.

“Don’t worry, I’ve lost plenty of pins in my machine,” she says.

I feel a little better but I try to shake the needle to the opposite end of the machine anyway. I put in the new needle and all seems well. I thank Sis M and we hang up…she’s at work anyway so I don’t want to keep her.

I try again, thread the needle, get the bobbin going, put in the fabric….and the needle just pokes holes in the fabric now…no stitches are getting made at all… I rethread the machine…redo the bobbin…Look at the lame diagrams… nothing works. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. Does ANYONE in the Chicago area know how to use a frickin sewing machine? I can bring this to you…it’s portable and lightweight…What the hell is wrong with this thing??

The boy comes down asks how things are going. I tell him I can’t sort it out.

“My mom does this kind of sewing,” he says.
“Yeah, but she’s in Texas too…not much help to me down there.”
“Give me a computer or a car engine and I can tell you what’s wrong, but this is out of my league,” says Mr Gadget Boy as he walks away.

Give me yarn and a crochet hook or knitting needles anyday… DMC floss and that special canvas with a book of color coded X’s and I’m ready to create a masterpiece… But this machine stuff…Is there ANYONE who can help me? I got this machine and I’d like to learn how to use it.

UGH…

Beautiful day in the neighborhood

It’s official, I have become Mr Rogers. I wear a light jacket to work, and when I get in the door I take off the jacket and put on a sweater, and the sweater zips up the front too. That’s because it’s so fraking cold on the train and sometimes the bus is freezing too. Then I get to work and I’ve got icy cold air blowing on me. So yeah, I’ve become Mr Rogers.
I always wondered why he’d take off his coat and put on a sweater. Seriously, why not just leave the jacket on? Well, some jackets make you kinda sweaty, while the sweater breathes better. And it’s good to leave a sweater at work for those cold moments. But for me, every moment is cold.
I bet you’re saying, “Why don’t you just wear the sweater to work?” Well, I’ll tell you, cuz it was really hot outside most days and some mornings I’d forget to bring it with me so I’d sit on the train shivering and then I’d get here and my hands would be so icy I could hardly type. So I’ve decided to just leave the sweater here all the time (except on some weekends when I’ll bring it home to be washed). There are people who work here with blankets in their office cuz it’s so cold so I’m not exaggerating, the temperature control here sucks. In the winter it’s no better, cold air still blows all around. So I think one day when I’ve got money I’ll be shopping finally for big sweaters and stuff. My old job controlled the temperature better so wearing sweaters just made me really hot at work. But now I can get the big bulky sweaters and I’ll feel better here. Hopefully I’ll have enough money to shop for clothes. Or maybe I can MAKE a sweater…the cardigan in progress isn’t doing that well…but perhaps a pull over will be easier, not so many pieces. I’ll keep you all informed.