One of my annual rituals has occurred. All summer I habitually take only cold showers – the last warm shower I had was back around October last year. But the weather has been turning slowly cooler as autumn shifts into gear here, and I decided it was time to use the hot water tap once more. So I’ve moved back into my warm shower phase for the coming winter.
Today I also learnt some things about sewing machine maintenance. My wife has been sewing up a storm, making doggie bandanas to sell at my market stall this Sunday. She wants to have as much stock as possible made by then. So her brand new sewing machine has been getting quite the workout.
Today it stopped working and we had to figure out why. She pulled apart a few of the routine things that she does when winding and loading a new bobbin, but a thread was stuck coming out from the bobbin area to the sewing platform. We tried to pull it out with a pair of tweezers, but it stayed fast. I had a look underneath the platform and found a couple of other metal parts around the bobbin holder that looked like they might be removable, toggled a couple of catches, and pulled them out. This allowed me to tweezer the stuck thread out from the bottom.
Reassembling the bobbin assembly took a bit of figuring out, and once done the thread wouldn’t rethread in the right places. So I pulled it apart again and inspected the various components, trying to figure out what was going wrong. It turned out the bobbin thread was incorrectly placed and jammed between two metal sheets, rather than threading neatly through the intended slot. So ew removed the bobbin completely and my wife rethreaded it. Then I reassembled all the bits and pieces, and presto, it worked again.
I got hands covered in oil – there’s a surprising amount of oil inside a sewing machine! – but also a new appreciation for the mechanical intricacies of sewing machines, and some experience with fixing problems with it. So that’s pretty cool.
I also spent some more time preparing comics for the time when I’ll be away next week. And went on a walk with Scully and my wife to get some lunch at a local bakery. It’s curiously quiet going to for a walk in the middle of a weekday.
New content today: