Sew Annoyed

I got back from Thanksgiving in Philly yesterday afternoon. The train ride back was full but not packed, we got a little bit of a lead on the crazy rush back to New York.

I'm trying to teach myself how to sew on a 1964 Singer machine that my neighbor gifted me in 2010. Over the last seven years, I've lugged it from apartment to apartment without ever really even examining it closely. It's a beast, probably 20 pounds, if we're not counting the weight of my stubbornness, which adds at least a few more. Two years ago, in a burst of DIY optimism/delusion I had a friend teach me how to thread it. Now that a full seven have passed, I figured it was time to actually put stitches in fabric. I'd like to sew something by 2028.

This time I got a full hour and a half of practice (read: sewing circles into pieces of paper) before the bobbin ran out of thread. Another hour was spent trying and failing to use the machine to rewind it, then when I turned it on its side, a teeny tiny piece fell off, which apparently was not decorative. Two more hours were spent trying to fix it using whatever internet results I could scrape together for a 53 year old sewing machine (read: sparse, and mostly erroneous). Finally I gave up, and sent pictures of the mess I made to a repair place in Queens along with a pleading and hopefully charmingly email.

Then I made a bunch of grumpy pasta* to eat in the sweatpants I had never changed out of from last night's zzzs.

Silver lining (no pun intended): the actual sewing part was super fun, before the machine breaking part and the banging of heads against walls. Very much hoping that with this skill I'll finally be able to start making my own clothing, and thus make progress towards my lifelong dream of becoming the third Olsen triplet (that's how triplets work, yeah?) Already working on subsisting on just cigarette smoke and my lost childhood, and sucking in my cheeks so my face looks hollow while thinking about upsetting things when people take pictures of me (read: poverty, being a size 6,  Lindsay Lohan's accent)

*pasta made and eaten defiantly, whilst grumpy