Monday, November 11, 2019

A Needle and Thread

... at least the needle had an eye
through which I could push the thread ...
I have been thinking about sewing for many days now.

The ideas may have come to my mind because a pearl button fell off of a jean jacket that is not mine.

The jacket I wear Rebecca’s.

I told her that I would sew it back on if she would bring me a needle and thread.

I wear the jacket when I am here.

I have tried to get it off her, dispossession – by telling her it is old, or that she will not be able to fit it again, or I just tell her outright that I love jean apparel more than she does and if for that reason only, the jacket should go to me.

Or I may have been thinking about sewing when I read an article where the author was bemoaning the loss of the skills that some of us picked up in high school: how to sew, how to cook, how to repair a car, how to type, even how to do simple accounting. Old people have a habit of warning young people that they are not developing skills that will keep them alive. My grandfather told me that I was wasting my time in high school. What I really needed to know was how to start a fire. He thought I should go into the field behind my house and practise that art of fire building until I was good at it. I gave him the fact that starting a fire might have been a desirable skill that served his mother well, but I couldn’t see how cooking over a campfire that I had started myself was going to be of much use to me. Oh, I didn’t tell him that. I only thought it.

... nothing so satisfying as a button with a strong shank ...
Sewing had also come to my mind, for I was wondering where the party dress was that I made in Sewing 30. We had to make an evening dress using chiffon, taffeta or silk. I picked out a highly patterned abstract printed pink fabric, with a pattern that high lighted a closing in the front with about 10 graceful scallops all of which had hand bound button holes which my teacher taught me to do, and which I executed with extreme precision. When it was time to hem the dress, she told me to bring a pair of high heels to class and she would turn the hem for me. While she was on her knees, with pins in her mouth, making the hem even, she asked me if I were going to wear it to the high school graduation evening dance. I was horrified. I hadn’t ever thought that the dress would be worn – I was only making it for a project. Wear it and dance with a boy? That sounded like torture on both fronts and that was absolutely not something that had ever entered my mind that I would want to do.

Another girl in the class was making a strapless gown to wear. I can remember the detailed instructions about how that dress was going to be held up. My classmate had the figure for it. Strapless dresses were banned in my religious community so I knew I would never be wearing a dress like that. Still I was interested in how the bodice was being boned and if I fanaticized ever wearing that dress, all I could think of is that if I tried to do a 360 degree turn it it, my body would make the turn and the dress would be left behind.

I have no idea why I was thinking about sewing. Perhaps because I have been thinking sewing because I have been thinking about knitting as well. A lot of old people knit. I don’t mean the old people from my past were knitters, those I watched when I was young. I mean the old people who are knitters and in my cohort, now. Some knit to keep their hands busy. Some knit because knitting fills their minds with joy – maybe in the intricacies of the patterns they can create. My idea of knitting is finding a sweater at the thrift store that has been hand knit and that I can now buy for less than the wool cost the knitter.

What may be worrying me is that I am a sewer, but I am pretty sure that when I get so old that I have to go into a home, that I won’t be able to take my sewing machine with me. Now if I were a knitter, I could take along my needles and my wool, but I don’t think sewing in the old folks home is an open option. I have been watching those old folks homes. There is hardly room for a bed in a room, let alone a sewing machine.


4 comments:

  1. Doral introduced me to a game called Patchwork. The person who gets to go first in this two-person game is she or he who last used a needle. It's fun to have that discussion before the game begins.

    Sewing was so integral to my childhood that I can't imagine you without a sewing machine, Arta.

    But if you had to choose between sewing and writing, I do hope you'd choose the latter.

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  2. Doral suggested that we buy Parks, a game where national parks are bought and sold. I have no idea which one I would want the most, and I wonder now if it is a Canadian or an American game. If it is Canadian, I am going to choose Banff National Park, though perhaps one of the BC parks would be nice. I have to think about that.

    As to playing a game where the person who has last used a needle, I am never wanting to play with Rebecca. She is always piercing a blister on her finger that festers from arthritis. Does that count as using a needle. And what about Moiya, taking her diabetes shot. Does that count? Does the needle have to have been threaded?

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  3. Sewing was integral to my childhood as well. And more so to making clothes for my tall girls -- in those days the clothes were called home-made. Now they are called designer fashion.

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  4. I am wondering when I will stop trying to put words together and then doing something even harder -- finding an audience to read them. We have so much print around us these days. Most people can hardly make it through their email. I don't feel as though I have had time to read a book for ages. Tomorrow Rebecca has a busy day. Someone is coming all afternoon to get some specialized help from her on their thesis. Rebecca said to me, "Why don't you ride the bus all day tomorrow. You are always saying you would like to ride the double-decker buses and tomorrow might be a good for that." She is right. I could ride the buses. But how about staying here and doing some writing? Or some reading? Wouldn't that be a glorious way to spend the day as well?

    So many choices.

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