Who invited Murphy to sew with me?

Some days it simply doesn't pay to even walk into the studio to work. Thursday was one of those days. Thinking about it yesterday, all I could think of a book I read to my boys countless times when they were young - "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-good, Very Bad Day" (thanks to Judith Viorst).

Yep, that's pieces of iron everywhere

It started well enough - morning yoga and breakfast with a friend, then back home to get to work. Appointments and deadlines loomed in the next week, for a fitting on the custom mother's dress I'm making, and pick-ups on various alterations, not to mention the six complicated wedding gowns to be altered for summer weddings. Get to work, be productive. Trying to make the goal I'd envisioned at yoga come true for the day.

Midway thru the first dress alteration, disaster struck. I heard a noise behind me as I sat at the sewing machine, and turned just in time to see my nearly new gravity feed iron hit the floor, heel down. Tiny pieces of plastic housing everywhere - electrical connections staring out at me. It's toast.

I don't think my fix-it guy can handle this one. The replacement is already on its way to me - the people at Wawak will be wondering what possessed me to buy a 2nd iron in less than 6 months.

Once I regained my equilibrium, I moved on to work on a custom dress for a client. I had cut the outer dress earlier in the week, on the bias, and was ready to attach it to the finished lining. I held up the assembled dress (not completed, but basted for a fitting, thankfully) and one look was all I needed to see that Murphy was still hard at work. I had neglected to consider what would happen to the subtle diagonal design when I cut it on the bias. The ombre colors running in stripes are going vertically on the front, but horizontally on the back. My husband failed to see it with several minutes of examination, but my artist son spotted it the minute I turned the garment. That sent me on an extended hunt for more fabric last night, in 5 o'clock commuter traffic the night before a holiday weekend.

Do I still love this job?