Monday is repair day

My older son does karate about three days a week. Once a week he does sparring. Regardless of if he does fighting or not, karate at his Dojo is sweaty business. I have seen workouts where the floor is completely wet from the combined sweat of the participants.

My son gives me his gi, or karate uniform, to wash quarterly. I'm not squeamish, but I refuse to touch the gi before it has been cleaned. Last night was wash the gi night. My son mentioned that his gi was torn and needed to be mended. I know, as well as anyone, that " A stitch in time saves nine." or it makes a whole lot of sense to mend before washing, because the agitation of the machine can cause more damage. But in this case, that gi wasn't going to be touched until it was clean.

Our usual drill is to run the gi through the wash twice. By the time the gi came out of the wash, the bi-directional tears under the arms were pretty spectacular. I sewed them up but noticed that the the lever that lifts the sewing machine foot didn't seem to be connected properly.

I pulled out my trusty tools and took the machine apart. There is a repair place in the neighborhood, but it is utterly unreliable. my trusty repairman/sewing machine doctor has moved from the garment district to deepest Brooklyn.

My wrists are not strong enough to manage taking my machine on the subway. A car service would charge me about $50 each way. So even before my repair doctor says hello to me, I'm talking about $100. The trip is well over an hour each way on the subway and at least 45 minutes by car. It seemed worth the effort to attempt to fix it myself.

I made one attempt at fixing the problem. It made things worse. I then reopened the machine and fiddled a bit more. Eureka!!! The presser foot now ascends and descends with it's familiar business like snap and reassuring way. That wistful flop is no more. I feel so virtuous.

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sarah in nyc

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