Crabby Old Lady

For the past month, I have been suffering from a series of misfortunes regarding my sewing machine(s). Just before I left Arizona, Bill asked if I wouldn't be happier taking my Pfaff with me. I love my Pfaff. I sew fast with my Pfaff. I don't have to think about anything when I'm sewing with the Pfaff. Perhaps I've come to be rely too much on my Pfaff. I didn't want to be one of those stodgy old ladies who can't adapt to something new. No, I told him, I'd use the Singer I had at Dillon Beach. I left the Pfaff behind in Superior. I could spend the summer with a different machine. I was still young enough to be adaptable, wasn't I?

Less than three weeks after working with the Singer, it developed a noticeable problem. The presser foot was limp and wouldn't stay up without one hand holding it up. It made sewing a definite Challenge. Each day became harder to even sew a seam, unless I was able to grow another hand just to hold the presser foot up. Thinking it would be easier to get it fixed, I took it into Santa Rosa to the sewing machine fix-it shop. (Thank goodness, in this age of buy-something-new-instead-of-get-it-fixed, there are still sewing machine fix-it shops around.) However, the fix-it man told me it would cost more to fix the ailing Singer than it cost new and he didn't think the fix-it job would hold up. I'd need a new one in no time.

Defeated, I returned home and made a call to my daughter-in-law, also a sewer. She loaned me an old machine that turned out to be my forty-one year old Montgomery Wards machine, I had given to her soon after she was married. It brought tears to my eyes to see the old machine. However, it could only crank out laborious four-part buttonholes, not the fast one step ones of the Pfaff and the Singer. I asked friends and neighbors if I could borrow their machines, so I could use them for the buttonholes. I collected three machines and returned all three.. none could make one step buttonholes. I missed my Pfaff. I was missing it more every day.

As each day unfolded, and a new sewing woe filled my repertorie, I'd relate the newest sad story to Bill. One day, he'd heard enough. "I'm packing up your Pfaff and sending it to you," he announced.

It sounded like a good idea. But.... "But insure it, won't you?" I reminded him. They weren't making my model 7530 any longer but the used ones on eBay were going for a thousand dollars or more.

"I'll insure it for a thousand dollars," Bill said, "and if it doesn't get there, you can buy another one."

When my daughter-in-law heard what he was doing, she worried, "But what if they drop it? Then you'll still have a machine, but a broken one!"

"You worry too much," I told her, trying not to imagine the worst.

Six days later, they delivered it. It was boxed well. There were no unusual rattles in the box. I uncrated it on my day off and set it up. I'd made six shirts by then and they all needed buttonholes. I set to work buttonholing. The machine worked fine. It was flawless. Shipping from Arizona hadn't hurt it a bit. I was on a real High that morning as I buttonholed three shirts. After I'd been sewing for two hours, Chuy announced he had to go outside, so I turned the machine off and took him outside.

I saw Willy and Tad and stopped by to tell them how great the machine was running and then added, "You'll have to tell your wife that she worried for nothing. The machine is running like a top!" Then I ran home to finish up the last three shirts. Suddenly... The Big Nada... the machine wouldn't switch into the buttohole mode. It wouldn't stitch in the normal stitching mode. All it would do was a plodding basting stitch. Nothing else. What in the world was wrong with it? Here I had bad-mouthed my daughter-in-law's worry and now it seemed to have come back to bite me in the butt. The machine was toast. It would not work right. It was time to return to the Fix-It man.

Two days later, I took it in and dropped it off. When I described the problem, the Fix-It Man said it sounded like the circuit board. A major problem. He said they would look at it and call me before they did any repairs. I went back out to the car, sans Pfaff, and burst into tears. My beloved Pfaff.... left to the repair man. Could they save her life? Or would she too have to succomb to the Can't-Fix-It-Pile?

I kept stolidly sewing on the forty-one year old machine and even managed to make some four step buttonholes with it, mainly because I had five shirts to sew for my daughters-in-law and grandsons to wear in the Fourth of July parade. I wasn't proud of the bottonholes and instead of making all four in five minutes, it took about fifteen minutes each, BUT... they were buttonholes. At this point, I was beginning to appreciate ANY sewing machine.

Five days later, the Fix-It Man called and said the bad news was a four hundred and fifty dollar circuit board, plus labor, and it wouldn't be ready for three weeks. What could I do? I agreed. I tried not to think about broken down sewing machines and the pile of unsewn shirts I had cut out and not been able to get sewn. It was taking so long to sew a shirt with the forty-one year old machine. I couldn't zip through one in an hour and a half like I could with the Pfaff. It was taking me the better part of two days to get one finished. What should have been recreation was feeling like WORK! I was not a happy sewer.

A week later, the Fix-It Man called and said the Pfaff was ready. The circuit board was in a warehouse on the West Coast rather than on the East Coast, so it was ready. Along with a six hundred repair bill. I snipped the thread on my Montgomery Ward machine and ran to Santa Rosa to get the Pfaff.

All the way home, I held my breath. Was the Pfaff really fixed? Could I get back to the effortless sewing I used to enjoy? Would the Pfaff go P-ffut again after a few hours of sewing? Well, Yes, and Yes and No, it didn't. Yesterday afternoon, I sewed two and a half shirts. This morning I sewed two more. The sewing is almost effortless. The machine is sewing like a champ.

And me? Guess I won't have to be a Crabby Old Lady any more. And I can actually have something to talk about besides my ailing sewing machine and my huge repair bill. But at this rate, I'll have to sell twenty shirts to pay for the repair bill!