which is precisely how it's supposed to work
Fri 2024-03-29 21:16:54 (in context)
It's Day 9. Yesterday I tested positive again. But I wound up going home yesterday for a couple hours, while John was out and we would not come into contact, in order to do some laundry. And while I was there, I took the opportunity to grab those much-missed physical copies of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way and Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. But first I did something else.
See, while I was in Metairie, Dad showed me this vintage Singer portable sewing machine of Mom's that he'd found at the bottom of the closet. He was thinking about selling it, if he could figure out how much it was worth. Of course I offered to take it off his hands. (Are you kidding? How could I not? Haven't you seen my typewriter?) So when I started driving back to Boulder, it was in the trunk. And there it stayed through much of my isolation period, in my car in the hotel parking lot.
Yesterday, while the laundry was spinning, I brought it inside and began my investigation. By plugging its serial number (AC976189) into this lookup table, I was able to identify the machine as Model No. 127 (possibly variant 127-24 according to this chart), dating from January of 1930 and featuring the innovative and weirdly rocket-shaped vibrating shuttle. (It also features an add-on motor controlled via knee-lever, but that's not currently behaving itself and will need professional attention.) I downloaded the appropriate owner's manual from here, followed its instructions for threaded the bobbin and the needle, and, by rotating the handwheel manually, sewed a few trial stitches in a bit of scrap cloth.
And it performed beautifully.
Flush with success, I turned to my World Fantasy 2011 canvas tote where one of its original seams was coming unraveled. The bobbin thread got stuck and snapped just the once, but otherwise, it was smooth sailing. And my tote is partially mended!
This whole exercise made me unreasonably happy, just utterly joyful way out of proportion to any logical explanation. I wanted to do more with it, like, right now! But, alas, the laundry was finished, and it was time for me to fold it and bag it and take it back up Diagonal Highway to Isolation Station.
As I said, I made sure to pick up my copies of The Artist's Way and Writing Down the Bones. I figured, maybe I'd been unfair to Baig's How to Be a Writer. I'd basically had a tantrum at it for not being the book I wanted it to be. Although, in my defense, that really did seem to be what it was trying to do--to be Writing Down the Bones for the two-thousand-teens. Trying, and failing. Offensively. But nevermind. Ranting and raving about it was of limited utility. I figured my energy would be better spent on rereading the books I actually enjoyed and found useful.
So the next morning--this morning--I cracked open The Artist's Way and reread the first few sections. And in the section headed FILLING THE WELL, STOCKING THE POND, I hit this bit of text, and then I just laughed:
Any regular, repetitive action primes the well.... A little experiment with some mending can cast a whole new light on these activities. Needlework, by definition regular and repetitive, both soothes and stimulates the artist within. Whole plots can be stitched up while we sew. As artists, we can very literally reap what we sew.
Well no wonder part of me bubbled up with joy at the prospect of rehabilitating a vintage sewing machine and using it to rehabilitate a beloved tote. That's precisely how this works! And, really, when was the last time I deliberately paused between writing tasks to knit, or tat, or cross-stitch, or spin?
I took the lesson to heart and darned a pair of socks this evening. And, with Cameron's "artist dates" in mind, I made sure to take a walk--and, for my efforts, I was rewarded, not just with the delightful discovery of the loudest frogs in Boulder County on a rain-flooded lawn nearby, but also with a small plot discovery which I immediately jotted down upon returning to my desk.
Tomorrow morning I will finally check out of this hotel, spend tomorrow night at the home of a friend who's out of town and has offered me use of her place, and then Sunday--Easter Sunday, at that!--it will be Day 11, all of John's guests will have gone home again, and so, at last, will I.