Day 326: For some time now, the dogs have been showing a reluctance to feed. It had come to the point that I was having to force the issue, so much so that I had begun shopping around for a new sewing machine, having exhausted my father's entire tractor-starting vocabulary on the cheap Brother. To complicate the matter, I'd just ordered a 1/4-inch foot to help with quilting, and although it wasn't expensive, I really wasn't happy about wasting money on a machine I'd be taking to a thrift shop. However, that new foot played a vital role in determining why the dogs wouldn't feed, because when I dropped the regular foot off the machine, I noticed a tuft of lint poking up behind their teeth. I tried to pick it out with a pin, then with a seam ripper, but it didn't want to budge. Figuring that there was more inside the machine anyway, I decided to open it up to have a look inside. I shouldn't have been surprised, given the amount of sewing I do, but when I lifted the plate off the feed dogs, I saw that they were almost completely choked with lint...lint so compacted that it was hard to the touch, so packed in that it was preventing the dogs' back-and-forth action. I teased out the big pieces, vacuumed up the looser stuff and put the machine back together. Now the dogs are walking normally, feeding nicely and without that obnoxious barking noise they'd been making for so long, tamed by a well-placed foot.
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