Are the Sewing Gods trying to tell me something? It seems that these crafty (get it? tee hee) Gods are conspiring against me sewing. It has now been almost 1 year since I ordered my sewing machine and still I have not been able to sew a single stitch. See my earlier blog for all the obstacles I struggled with in the first 6 months post order. And now 6 months on I'm still working on getting my brand new, albeit dusty, sewing machine in a workable condition... The guy I mentioned in my previous post, who gave it to another guy to look at before sending it to another guy eventually came back to me with a "sorry lady, but the part I need to fix the machine is not available in Turkey so there's nothing I can do to help you" or that's what I figured he said from his facial expressions and hand gestures since I'm still pretty hopeless with the local language. So anyway, after this conversation and a few tears of frustration, I jumped on the internet and spent a couple of days madly googling the part description to find the part number to find out where I could order it. I even asked my mother in Australia to try to order it from the manufacturer there. Eventually I discovered that the only place I could get it from was the official Brother parts and service centre in the USA.
So, after figuring out the time differences and loading up my skype credit I called a friendly guy at Brother and tried to describe the part I needed replacing. He was confident it could only be one part and promptly put it on back-order for me (of course it wasn't in stock when I called!). A sense of relief and satisfaction started to settle over me.... that was until he asked for my credit card number and corresponding U.S. address. I don't have a U.S. credit card! Bloody hell! "Oh and by the way", he said, "we don't ship internationally". Bloody bloody hell! So now I had to find someone with a U.S. credit card and someone in the States I could ship the part to who'd be willing to then ship it on to me.
Luckily I have 2 siblings living in the States. I thought of my brother first because I knew he had more free time available to be able to visit a post office. He gave me his credit card details and even told me to order anything else I might want from the U.S. since I'm often complaining to him about all the things I'm never able to find here in Turkey. But he advised me not to have the package sent to his address because he was going to be away for a few weeks. As a personal trainer / health coach to a disgustingly rich family, he often trips off to this tropical island or that luxurious resort on the family's private super yacht. So I spent the next couple of days trying to get in contact with my sister. My sister is a famous professional athlete so it's difficult to catch her (because she's so fast ... get it? tee hee). She's always racing here, there and everywhere. But eventually I did get a hold of her and she told me she would try to find the time to post my part when it arrived. So finally I was ready to call Brother again with all the necessary information. Luckily they still had my part on order and just to be super sure that the part on order was the part I needed, I again described the broken part. The person I spoke to assured me that the part ordered sounded like the very part I needed. So the order was confirmed, the credit card details were given and a U.S. shipping address was provided. Now I just had to wait.
One and a half months later, the package finally arrived. I ripped open the envelope and there in my hands was ... a part that looked absolutely nothing like the part I needed! Aaaarrrggghhhhhh!!!
I called Brother again and explained the situation and asked if I could send them a photo of the broken part from my machine. And after a week of emails back and forth with 3 attempts of attaching the photo in different ways, we realised that their email system did not allow them to receive attachments... Huh?So they then offered to email me their official list of parts complete with diagrams. I immediately identified the part I needed, called my brother to get his credit card details again (because of course I threw away the paper I wrote them on), and confidently ordered the needed part.
My sister received the part in the mail more than 3 months ago and posted it about a week after that. I'm still waiting to receive it.
Last night I skyped my brother again to get his credit card number (why do I continue to throw it away?) and as soon as the Brother office opens for business I'm going to try again. This time I'll get the part sent to my brother (since my sister is now especially busy leading up to the 2010 Hawaii Ironman World Championships) and have him bring it with him to Australia where we're all planning to get together for another brother's wedding later in the year.
Until then I'll be desperately praying to the Sewing Gods to allow me to start sewing. Feel free to join me in prayer.
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