You’ve heard of the saying that searching for something was like looking for a needle in a haystack. My latest experience has enlarged that concept to the highest degree, as far as I‘m concerned.
I was married 57 years ago and I immediately started the craft of sewing, copying my mother who was a gifted seamstress. She had to engage in that craft because she had to dress four girls in the most up to date and beautiful dresses that could be made. We would travel to a nearby town almost every Saturday, meander through the big city department store, and Mother would look at expensive dresses, always keeping the impressions in her mind. Her intent was to create the same dresses for her daughters that were displayed at the expensive store.
She would then go to JC Penney or Montgomery Ward stores who had a fabric department, buy material similar to the expensive creations we had viewed; and, lo and behold, in a few days we all had new beautifully created frocks.
My memories of her from those days are of her sitting at the Singer sewing machine late on a Saturday night putting the finishing touches on one of the dresses or sitting in a chair under a dimly lighted lamp while hand sewing the hems of all four creations so they could be worn to Sunday School at First Baptist Church the next day.
None of us appreciated her labors until years later when we, ourselves, started sewing. Her value increased in our eyes considerably as we realized the labor that was involved.
After getting married I loved sewing my own clothes. Many years later as my children grew, the most enjoyable thing I would do was make darling dresses in current styles at the time for my daughter. It was like making doll clothes for the most beautiful real life doll.
For several years I even made T-shirts for our boys as well as our daughter, my husband and myself. Halloween costumes were my annual creations during October.
I tell you that background to let you know that I was always sitting at the sewing machine also, just like my mother did when I was growing up.
Two things that a seamstress cannot do without are needles and thread. I always had many colored spools of thread but the needles proved to be a problem for me. I was always losing the needles. It was a consistent habit of mine to always put the needles into my one and only pincushion, which I’m sure I must have bought during the first year of my marriage.
It was about the size of an average orange. It was thickly padded, like every other pincushion, and the covering was green velvet. The problem that began to emerge after a few years was that I never could find a needle, even though I had placed them into the pincushion when I finished my hand sewing. It became apparent that there had to be a needle eating ogre in our house or there was something around whose intent was to drive me nuts with curiosity about what happened to the previously used needle. I would occasionally go to the fabric store and buy another package of needles, which usually held about five needles of various sizes. Some were embroidery needles, too big to sew hems or tack on frilly lace, so those needles were rarely used. Sometimes the smallest needles had tiny eyes through which the tread had to be forced. Very often I would spend ten minutes laboring at getting the colorful thread all the way through the tiny eyes, then having to do it all over again after the long length of thread was used. Another contributing factor to the frustration was that we had cats for pets and it was a puzzle to me why the cats seemed to always take an interest in my sewing. One or another of the cats would always hop onto the sewing table and slap the pin cushion around, sometimes biting at the straight pins and pulling them out. So I blamed the cats for the disappearance of the needles, wondering if those darn cats had caused the needles to fall into the carpet. However, nobody in the household had ever complained with a piercing scream that a needle had been stepped on and was making its way into the inner sanctum of his or her foot. I had other things to worry about during those days, so I just took it as a matter of fact of life that there was a mysterious needle fetish belonging to some invisible being in our household. Occasionally, if I was desperate, I would push on the top of the pin cushion and cautiously feel on the opposing side. I could always feel the sharp point of a needle. The thin little metal shaft had to be completely submerged into the middle of the pincushion, so I would get my tweezers and make a desperate attempt to put enough pressure on the top of the pincushion so that a hidden needle would be peeking out the other side enough that I could take the tweezers and pull out the needle. Most of the time that maneuver worked. Other times, I would give up and go to the store and buy another small package of needles. Heaven knows, I would need them in the future. That scenario went on for years, my going on a treasure hunt, looking for a needle that I could have sworn I had put back into the now aging pincushion. The playful cats occasionally made their way to the top shelf where I kept the pincushion and I would find it on the floor with straight flatted pins strewn around the area. I made sure that I picked them up and put them back into the pincushion. It was strange that I never found a needle on the floor. Perplexed? Yes, I was. It only took 57 years to solve the mystery. Now that I’m older I have time to spend in solving life’s big problems, like is there a God, is the universe going to end at any time soon, why do men love to go to war, why do men always capture the remote control like they own it, why does a dropped vitamin always end up under the cabinet even though it had to go uphill to get there, and where did all my needles go. I finally had some time to decipher that last 57 year mystery. Recently I needed to take a few inches off of a pair of jeans and hem them, so I got the navy blue thread out and grabbed the infamous faded green pincushion. You guessed it --- nary a needle in sight. Okay, I was faced with deciding if that pincushion was so old that I didn’t mind sacrificing it to solve the problem. Besides that, I didn’t want to go to the store and buy another package of needles when there might be one or two needles hidden inside the pincushion, ones I wasn’t able to retrieve during all the years. I marched myself defiantly into the kitchen, grabbed the sharpest knife I had and started sawing on the faded green velvet pincushion. Nothing is holy after all those years and it had served its purpose. The filling inside of the pincushion resisted the butcher knife but I was a woman with a purpose. I applied more and more pressure. What in the world could that filling be composed of to be so stubborn? I had imagined all these years that the filling was shredded foam of some sort. Those insides were definitely not foam. The butcher knife finally broke through the faded green velvet and pierced into the filling. Out poured a combination of some sort of sawdust and finely ground leaves. Well, one mystery was immediately solved, part of that stuffing must have been ground catnip and that’s why the cats had such a fascination for it. I already felt empowered with that knowledge, that the cats weren’t weird at all, they were just normal cats drawn to catnip or some other cat loving plant. Then suddenly the innards of the pincushion revealed some thin, silver metal objects with small eyes in one end. Good, I thought, as I reached for one of the obvious needles, now I have something with which to sew. As I moved around the sawdust and ground plant particles, more needles appeared. Then more and more needles were visible. I was astounded, though now I know I shouldn’t have been so surprised. After all, there were 57 years of disappearing needles for which to account. I picked out more and more needles of various sizes. There were even two sewing machine needles among the others. I took a little break from retrieving the lost needles from the sawdust and plant matter because I certainly didn’t need a vast number of needles that day. But, the thought came that I might as well get all of them and put them in the new pincushion I had bought a few years ago but rarely used because I didn’t want to abandon the told green one. I didn’t want the green one to have feelings of rejection. After all, it had been so loyal. I finally found all of the needles, took the sawdust and ground plant matter and put it in with some dirt in a flower pot. The task of putting the newly found treasure of needles into the new pincushion became laborious so I put the task aside and decided to finish the job later while I was watching television. No, I’m not easily distracted from a task, but this one was too ominous to complete in one sitting. If you think I’m a weakling for quickly abandoning the project, stick with me for a few more lines of the story. The reason it took two sittings to complete the task is that the final count of needles that were nestled inside of that pincushion were 68. It was a needle swallowing pincushion, helped in its quest by the cats in the house who had probably pushed the needles down inside as they were slapping it around. The old saying of looking for a needle in a haystack is passe to me. Looking for 68 needles in a pincushion fits my 57 year adventure to a T. I will never run out of needles. Maybe I can sell some of them at a garage sale. They’re precious to me now. They hid for years and years right there in that old faded green pincushion. Each needle holds fond memories of creative garments I lovingly sewed for my family. Sixty-eight? Yes, I said 68 needles. How that pincushion that was the size of an orange held all those needles is a mystery to me. Maybe now I can solve the mystery of the jumping - bean vitamins that have the talent of hitting the floor when dropped and then bouncing uphill under the cabinet. I really do have an active mind, not always worrying about things, but vigorously searching out reasons behind every unexplainable phenomenon. Inquiring minds always want to know. The truth of the Haystack Principle is that we must be careful in looking for a needle in a haystack. There might be a vast number of needles with sharp points ready to prick you, or you might be overwhelmed with what you find in that haystack. It might be just what you’re looking for, or it might be something you don’t want to know. Sometimes inquiring minds don’t need to know. I’m 68 needles richer but I’ve stopped making creative garments. What project can I find that requires using 68 needles? One just might show up. I’m up for the challenge.
