Notes from the Spring Creek Arts Guild

Dream Machines

I love machines. I love all kinds of machines. Wait, what I really, really love are older machines, but I can still be taken with newer versions, too.

Let us begin with sewing machines. Here is a great example of a machine that still has the same basic parts and functions despite bunches of computer circuitry being added over the years. When I went to sewing machine repair school, I quickly learned that all sewing machines work basically the same way with the basically the same parts. Before about 1960, they were all very, very similar, but when innovations such as zig-zag and patterned stitches came along, there were variations on how manufacturers added those functions. But still, there are only so many ways to skin a cat, as they say.

Moving on, but staying with a textile theme, I love old fiber and textile machinery. When I was in Scotland last summer, I toured a Victorian-era woolens mill. Back in the day, people could bring in the fleeces they had shorn from their sheep and have them processed into yarn or woven fabric. The mill was run by water power with a mill creek running alongside just like the grist mill down at Mill Pond Park. The woolens mill has been completely restored and is now in operation again, but powered by electricity, not water. So far I have not caved to the temptation to buy any sort of loom or even spinning wheel, but I do have a knitting machine I need to get busy learning.

Next is farm machinery. I love an old tractor or implement, a pedal-driven whetstone, a horse-drawn plow, a corn shucker, a milk separator, or even an old hay trolley system in a barn loft. We once had an old, yellow Minneapolis Moline tractor that I wanted to park out on the ranch as yard art, but my husband did not agree and sold it. I still have one small bit of it, a grate, that hangs on my wall. When the wheat fields between here and town are being harvested, I have to fight the urge to park on the side of the road and watch. I love to watch a hay baler rake in the loose hay and spit out bales.

You probably notice that my emphasis is on old machines. I like their history, imagining all of the people who have used them and loved them, and I love that most older machines were made to be pleasing to the eye as well as functional. Even many old farm machines had embossed or cast-in designs like scrollwork. I also like how well-made old machines are. We once had a treadle sewing machine head (that we did not know we had) fall out of the barn loft about 10 feet to the concrete slab below and other than knocking off a little enamel, it was unharmed. Try that with a modern machine!!

I know I have at least one other friend here in San Saba County who loves machines at least as much as I do, and her daddy was the same, she tells me. Now that I think of it, I got it from my daddy, too.