The Imps Have It

There is an imp living inside my computer.  I used to think of such creatures as living outside in the wood.  However, we moved inside, so the imps have followed.  Smart of them, since it is April 21^st and we have two inches of snow on our blossoms.  I do not know if they have turned to inside pursuits elsewhere, but in Indiana, they obviously gave up on out-of-doors tricks and conceded the crown to our weather.

Inside, they have decided my computer should close out all tabs whenever they think to do it.  They are lazy little imps, so they go long enough between attacks for me to forget that it happens.  I have learned to recreate my work in several applications.  I’ve been suddenly cancelled out of emails, social media, and Word.  Half a sentence in, and blink! it’s gone!  They are especially happy if it is an unsaved document.  They are on the payroll of internet shopping—I have never been cancelled out of a shopping venue. 

I sew, so they have also invaded my new, electronic sewing machine.  I have an old machine I could use, but the new one has more features and, well, it’s new. But I replaced a broken needle (suspicious about the needle that broke, too), and the new one is whatever is the smallest measure you can have different from the others.  So, the “automatic” threader does not work with this needle.  It misses by an nth or an iota or whatever, and means I must thread the needle the old fashioned way where you put thread through the eye.  I can manage that during the day, but with readers stashed every ten feet in this house, I haven’t a pair that works on needle eyes after about seven o’clock.  The imps know that I have actual needle threaders—thin pieces of tin and wire that have their own issues.  They also know that they are stored in a plastic box inside another plastic box in the top of the sewing room closet and they might as well be on Mars in-so-far as actually getting to them without a major disaster bigger than two inches of snow in April.

Another sewing trick of my imps is pulling on tiny hanging threads.  Someone taught them that all you have to do in a machine made garment is find one little end of a thread and you can pull out an entire seam, hem, or button thread.  Then, the wearer stands and looks at the open seam, hanging hem, or unattached button and goes, “Annnn..ah!?!” And the imps laugh and laugh.  And the wearer calls Gramma.  Sentences that begin, “Can you fix my….” always point to the imps at work. So frustrating are these imps that my oldest child once boxed up her mending and mailed it to me. 

The imp’s greatest sewing feat to date, however, has to be the track team tank top.  It beat putting the hem back into someone’s expensive Ralph Lauren bedsheet.  My son brought home his track team tank top.  It was new, freshly handed out that day.  It also had all of the binding around the neck and sleeves hanging by a few stitches.  The imps had played with the manufacturing machine bobbin and very little of the bobbin thread caught.  The meet was looming.  So, I worked time in after supper for reattaching the mile or so of binding with a stretch stitch.  The imps had to hold their breaths all night before letting me in on their ultimate win.  Because the next day, the coach said all of the shirts would be sent back to be restitched, except my son’s, which looked fine.   Everyone else could wear their old tank tops until they were fixed. I’m sure the win was sweeter because I should have known they wouldn’t keep an entire order of unwearable tank tops.

I am sure there are other areas where the imps roam.  I do not use power tools just-in-case they have broken the code and invaded them.  Manually threading a needle or searching for a lost document is one thing; bringing down the house with an errant power tool is quite something else.  But I see people going back and forth to the hardware store several times a project and I know what is happening.  It’s the imps, crawling inside to avoid the weather and finding new territory, wreaking havoc as they go.