In stitches!

Are you ready for it? The great saga of Failing at Sewing continues…

Much as I’d like to paint myself as a saint at school, my sisters have put a stop to that by telling everyone (under the Comments to various posts) that we three girls were terrors at school. It was very nice of them to say ‘we’ as I suspect that I was the worst Terror of the lot!

And once you have a reputation, then it kind of sticks – like egg on the face or wet spaghetti if you throw it on the wall. (What do you mean you haven’t tried?)

We went to a prison boarding school and lived in dorms. And that meant that every single item of our clothing – school uniform and mufti (i.e. casual clothing) – had to have a name tag sewn onto it!

Once, I had the temerity to show up at the beginning of term with tagless socks. The matron or housemistress decided that I should sew my name tags onto my socks myself.

This was a welcome break from the tedium of homework, so I eagerly turned my attention to this task. It took hours because I was not very good at sewing, but I was determined to do as good a job as possible.

So, sitting on the carpet in my dorm and with my little tongue sticking out, I painstakingly sewed each name tag on lovingly. I was really proud of myself when I had finished. There – laid out on the carpet for all to see – was a line of eight socks.

Bursting with excitement, I called the matron to come and admire my handiwork.

Now, this is where the bit about reputations sticking comes in…

You see, in my efforts to do a good job, I had – quite inadvertently – managed to sew all eight socks onto the carpet! Yes – they were stuck there, held prisoner on the carpet by my childish stitches. (Not sure how I managed this, but it came quite easily at the time.)

Now, any nice or normal person would have laughed off my childish mistake. Not this teacher. She was furious because she thought that I had sewn the socks onto the carpet on purpose. Because, as you know, I was a Major Terror.

I got a terrible telling off. But, at least I was never asked to sew my name tags on anything again.

It’s a wonder I’m so well-balanced after such a traumatic experience…