Family History
I consider myself a lucky individual. I had an amazing childhood full of travels and adventures, was raised by two loving parents who are still together after 48 years, and have been supported by a circle of friends who've been through hell and back with me for over 15 years. Not everything in my life was perfect, but the good has certainly outweighed the bad. Another way I am lucky is that I live in the house I grew up in. Several years ago, my parents bought a 60 acre farm with a 100 year old farmhouse, moved out there and set to work remodeling it. You can follow their progress to sustainable living on my mom's blog, fincadelaspiedras.blogspot.com. So now I live in the house that I've known since I was five. Slowly, I've been going through the house and organizing the clutter that had built up in some areas, much to my mom's delight and my dad's displeasure. Last January, after C's wedding (re: 'The Beginning of SobeSata Co' blog), I decided to organize the garage and found the greatest treasure of all. At first I thought it was just a cabinet - a small black cabinet that had wheels and stood about 2 1/2' tall.
 Perfect, more storage for the things in the garage, I thought. I opened the door on the front, but instead of finding shelves, I found thick black gears seemingly stacked every which way. And spiders, lots of spiders.
 The door to the cabinet had two shelves, and in those shelves were threads, needles, buttons, a book that was falling apart, and what I thought were boxes of bobbins. I looked at the cabinet more carefully. On the left side were two hinges, which led me to notice that the top of the cabinet also opened. Imagine my squeal of surprise when, like a Jack-in-the-box, out popped a sewing machine that looked to be over a 100 years old!
 This had been in the garage for over 25 years. I had seen it before, barely visible underneath all the things piled on top, but it had been there for so long it had just become part of the background. Also I just assumed it was a cabinet all these years. So for me to discover this shortly after my interest in sewing had grown was a miracle. It was as if someone had smacked me upside the head and said, "I don't know how I could make it any plainer to you, kid."
After talking with my mother, I discovered this sewing desk from the early 1900s had belonged to my great-grandmother, who used it to make clothes for her children. When my parents had moved into the house, they set it in the garage for safe-keeping until they could find a place for it. Two decades later, it finally has a place in the dining room, where I keep it for inspiration as I sew.
© 2011, Tina Manley
 The machine is still threaded with ancient, thin gold thread. There is a needle stuck inside a makeshift pincushion wrapped around the top. All the different attachments for the presser foot are in a small, black box on a shelf in the door. While it's still fully functional, the strap used to connect the handwheel to the foot pedal has snapped, and I've been looking to see if I can find a replacement part for it. Should I find it, I'm going to teach myself the mechanics of the machine and bring my great-grandmother's sewing desk back to life.
