All of the pictures in this post are from Iain and Elijah’s room where they’ve done quite a bit of decorating, after their own style. 

Two years ago my pedal stopped working, prompting a Christmas Eve run to the machine repair shop, last year, the entire machine gave out (yet again), leaving me up all night sewing one last shirt entirely by hand.   It’s hard to believe it, but I’ve come into yet another holiday season with sewing machine troubles.  This makes three years running.  I thought I remembered something before that as well, and looking back at blog posts, sure enough, the year before this streak was just fine, but the year before that I had issues as well.  It’s kind of a tradition of it’s own sort, albeit a frustrating and counter productive one.

Now my old machine was just full of mischief, always.  It had a personality of it’s own and in my decade of acquaintance with it, I truly began to believe that it enjoyed breaking down at the worst possible moment.  That final show-down, last December is what motivated the bringing home of a new machine in January.

Seeing as it is less then a year old, and reported to be of excellent quality, it was kind of a shock to find myself having trouble with this machine.  I’ve put in enough hours, these last couple of weeks, on Christmas pajamas that I should easily have gotten them done.  That is, if I had not had to fight for every seam.  Earlier this week I was finally forced to give up and brought it in for servicing, where the guy greeted me with the ever-so-encouraging, “What did you do?!?”.  His school of thought being that the problem is rarely with the machine, but usually with the operator.  I would like the record to reflect that *I* did absolutely nothing wrong and the problem was, indeed with the machine.  He was kind enough to look at it right away and fix the bobbin case problem I was experiencing.  I thanked him kindly, and took my family home for dinner and bedtime.  Once they were all tucked up with visions of sugar plums and whatnot, I sat down to resume my work.  And from the very first stitch the tension was entirely off and nothing, but nothing I tried made any difference in the slightest.  I think some adjustment he made must have thrown it off.  And I waved the white flag of surrender.  It will go in for servicing and be gone for a while and come back when it comes back.

A friend told me that possibly this is the universe’s way of telling me that I still need more rest.  And maybe she’s right.

Earlier that same day, we received a card from my Mother-in-law in the mail, with a check and a request that we pick out something for the kids for Christmas.  Which is how four sets of Hanna Anderson organic long-johns, with expedited shipping, came to be making their way towards my doorstep at this very moment.  Due to arrive tomorrow evening, giving me just enough time to wash them and slip them into their cloth gift bags and set them out for the last day of advent.  And to that I say, Good Enough!  Grandma will treat them to their holiday pajamas this year and I will sit back and enjoy.  I’m happy to be done.  All of my shopping is done and most of the wrapping.  And now all the crafting is done as well.  All that is left is to enjoy this time together with my family.  And something, possibly this pile of cut out and partially sew cloth over here?  Tells me that four children will be receiving pajamas for Valentine’s Day this year.