I don’t have them.
It is a long-established fact that I don’t cook.  It’s not that I can’t cook.  I’ve been known to manage a mean Thanksgiving dinner.  I can bake things.  If I set my mind to it, I can probably cook just about anything.

It’s just that I don’t often set my mind to it.

My mind is busy with other things.

Like–at this point–sewing machines.

Sewing.  Another area of domestic dysfunction.

I have a Girl Scout sewing badge.  I made an extremely ugly jumper once in Home Ec.  There are buttons that owe their existence as functioning fasteners to my needle.  I’ve hemmed things.

Recently, I made some curtains for the Casa.

And therein begins my tale.

Once upon a time, my mother bought me a sewing machine.  It was a simple, straightforward thing.  A needle, a bobbin.  A couple of tension adjustment settings.  A handful of different stitch lengths and types.  (Zig-zag!)  Forward.  Reverse.

I’ve tried to use it a handful of times over the years.  Something always goes wrong.  Adjusting the tension is extremely tricky on it, for some reason.  In addition, the needle always breaks.  Always!  I don’t think I’ve ever completed a simple seam on less than two, usually three needles.  I’ve had it overhauled once, and the problems still continue.

After finally completing the curtains in way more days than it should have taken, we came to the conclusion that perhaps, just perhaps, it was not the operator but the machine.

At that point, my mom announced that there were three sewing machines sitting unused over at “the old house.”  (The house which my mom inherited, with all its contents, from my grandmother.)

So, now we are embarked on another odyssey of trying to get one, at least, of these machines to work.

Machine #1 requires significant intervention with an oil can, if not a sledge hammer.  It appears to be frozen solid.  The needle won’t go up.  It won’t go down.  Set that one aside to take to the repair shop.

Machine #2 actually runs.  It runs so well that we can’t seem to disengage the needle the way you are supposed to do in order to fill a bobbin.  Set that one aside to take to the repair shop.

Machine #3 also runs.  The bushings, however, that hold the spindles that hold the spools of thread, had disintegrated with age.  Set that one aside. . . .No!  Wait!

It turns out you can order those parts.

So, we did.

They came yesterday.

Today, we put the new parts in, and I brought the machine home to test it.  I’m up to page 5 in the manual.  It will sew straight lines and zig-zag lines and overcast stitches and hems and buttonholes and buttons and monograms and I-don’t-know-what-all.  It beeps and buzzes and lights up, and I will need a degree in advanced programming to figure it all out.

While I’m studying it, maybe I can get the machine to cook dinner?  I wouldn’t put it past it.