Relationships

Another handmaiden nearly left my service.

As you may know, I have named my appliances, because I was feeling a bit discouraged that I didn’t have servant girls like the Proverbs 31 woman.

My dear and faithful sewing machine hasn’t been so faithful this last year, and I’ve begun to wonder if it is her time to be removed from service. Elna’s timing has been off quite often lately and she drops stitches sometimes and skips them at others. During the beginning of her servitude, I was extremely happy with her capable assistance, but lately, during crunch time she has failed to perform and I’ve had to resort to borrowing a handmaid from a neighbor or friend. I am of the opinion that borrowing a sewing machine is like borrowing your friend’s socks; you could do it in a pinch, but it just doesn’t feel right.

She worked fine through all the Christmas sewing. Five pairs of flannel jammies finished two days before Christmas, a record for me. But as I was stitching some cute little duckies on my Boo’s jammies, the upper thread ran out, slipped through the tension disks unnoticed and jammed with a loud crunch of gears into the bobbin works. I painstakingly fished out all the thread, brushed it clean, reoiled the bobbin area and changed the needle. After realigning the duckies I had just stitched to match the movement of the needle, I set off again around Boo’s neckline. This time only the head of the duck was stitching, for some reason; it was skipping the lower half of the duck’s body. I tried unsuccessfully three different times. It wouldn’t work.

I took Elna in last week to the local guy at the fabric shop who had readjusted her timing before. He said she was in time, but couldn’t figure out why she was skipping stitches, and that I should take her into the Sewing Shop in Tacoma. Today we had errands on that side of town and we dropped her off. Well, I actually sat with her while she had a checkup; I’m just good to my girls that way. I explained to the lady who helped me what was going on and she threaded Elna and started stitching. Miraculously, she was sewing again! Her tension was a bit tight, and she does need a bit of fine-tuning, but the duckies were whole duckies this time!

In the past six months I have had two servant girls threaten to leave my service. In each case, after a bit of tender loving care they have come back to me and are faithfully working again. I guess they only needed some personal attention.

I need to remember to apply this to the real people around me.

Proverbs 3:27 "Do not withold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in the power of your hand to do so."

Comments

Stylin said…
Good old sewing machines are hard to find !!!!
I tore up my moms old one !I think I put the repair man s kids thro college !
You name your appliances because of Proverbs 31! I love it! I am going to do that too.

Thanks for stopping by my blog,
Sue

Popular posts from this blog

Sprouted Whole Wheat Bread

4-H Modeling and the Wardrobe Malfunction