Manorisms

Practically no one believes me when I tell them that the most important thing I have learned in 2 years of taking sewing class is that nothing gets out blood stains like your own spit. No lie. Given that sewing involves all manner of sharp objects (needles, scissors, my wit), the occasional finger prick is inevitable, and you will bleed onto fabric. As long as your salivary glands are operational (and to test this, tell me what happens when I say the words “chocolate mousse pie”), there is no need to fear that your DNA will be left behind in that throw pillow you’ve been laboring over and isn’t square at the corners anyway, so who were you kidding. Immediately upon hemorrhaging, just take some spit, extracted in any fashion appropriate for the setting you are in, and rub it into the stain. Faster than you can say “orthostatic hypotension”, that reddish brown blotch will magically disappear.

Of course, I learned this little trick well after it would have proven useful during a project that I will have to refer to in code, as it was for a client and there is NO WAY I am going to let her know that I inadvertently dotted her crisp, white bedroom window sheers with my life juice. No way. The up side is that, if Jurassic Park really pans out, someone can fetch those curtains from her house, scrape off some cells, and recreate me in a lab long after I’m gone. If they do, I promise I won’t come to life and chase anyone down in a commercial kitchen or tear any arms off while people are trying to trip a circuit breaker. I guess if you haven’t seen the movie, those would seem like pretty strange and random threats, huh.

The secret appears to be some sort of enzyme you produce that your blood is terrified of coming into contact with. There is probably a more scientific explanation for how this works, but I got a “D” in Organic Chemistry, so don’t expect me to tell you what it is. I did Google the phrase “enzyme in spit that gets blood out”, which led to one very helpful web site: “How to Get Rid of Things”. Among the highly fascinating things it promises to help you get rid of are acne, computers, debt, people, and skin. Now, I don’t know about you, but I would love to get rid of a whole bunch of skin that has been collecting around my neck and jaw area for the past 10 or so years and which is showing absolutely no signs of going anywhere but down my chest. I don’t have a particular problem with acne, computers, or debt. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit there are some people in this world that need getting rid of.

Miss Manors has a dark side.

One of the people who needs getting rid of is the person who convinced me to make pleated lined silk drapes for the sliding doors in my kitchen. When I figure out who it was and find that son of a bitch, I am going to make sure he or she is good and gone, because those drapes cost me about 2 liters of blood and a fair amount of ridicule in sewing class. Recalling my mental diary of events, it went something like this.

Day 1: locate fabric in Pennsylvania Amish country on a Routine Sourcing Expedition (i.e., shopping trip).

Day 28: decide to use fabric to make some sort of drapery for the 2 sliding doors in my kitchen, which is being renovated.

Day 29: return to Pennsylvania Amish country to discover all that fabric is gone.

Days 30-50: complain to anyone who will listen that life isn’t fair and nothing ever goes your way, to the point where I have to hit *67 before dialing just to get anyone to talk to me. (In case you didn’t know, *67 is how you block your number from showing up on caller ID. This is essential if you are going to be sewing or going on Match.com any time soon.)

Day 51: locate fabric in Delaware during a Hard Target Search (i.e., desperation shopping trip which takes place 20 minutes before the store closes). Hazzah!

Day 52: draw sketches of the drapes, which is when I realized I would need 20 yards of silk, plus 20 yards of interlining, plus 10 yards of trim, plus 2 special traverse rods that are only available online and ship in a tube the size of a javelin.

Hmmm.

Day 53: full speed ahead.

Days 54-78: proceed to convert 20 yards of silk and 20 yards of interlining into 2 massive drapery panels measuring nearly 10 feet wide and weighing approximately 50 pounds each. I think this is what they call a “snowball” project, which just gets bigger and hairier as it rolls downhill.

It was during the construction saga that most of the bloodletting took place. Thankfully, the fabric was a gold and burgundy plaid, so a majority of the stains blended right in. What was more humiliating was showing up at class every week with these mammoth panels and having to explain that I was in fact making a legitimate home décor item (like curtain panels) and not a hideously large marine object (like a boat cover). Perhaps this doesn’t seem like a Secret Solid moment to you, but picture this: I am 5’4”, 120 pounds, trying to wheel a sewing machine, a notions bag that holds every possible sharp object you can think of, my purse, my Diet Coke, an umbrella (because it always manages to rain on sewing class days, especially the ones where I am hauling silk around like it’s a garden hose), and 100 pounds of partially finished, haphazardly blood stained curtains, into the sewing center. I did this every week and made just one trip from the car, partly because of the rain but mostly because my parents were rooting for a boy and, upon realizing I had girl parts instead, raised me to be tough and independent. You’re buying that, right?

Eventually, those 10 foot wide panels shrunk down to 6 foot wide curtains, thanks to the masterful mentoring of my teacher, Phyllis, and my friend, Karen, who had just finished making her own pleated panels.  She had the expertise, math skills, and chip clips to loan, and while she’s just about got her sanity back, a side trip down Crazy Lane over some sofa pillows did give her a bit of a setback. Please make your check payable to “Karen’s Mental Health Fund”.

Now I know what you’re thinking. How do the terms “blood”, “spit”, “javelin”, “garden hose”, “chip clip”, “snowball”, and “*67” come together to tell a plausible story? Friends, all I can say is, these were my memories of the project that turned out this beautiful result: