Resilience, recovery from injury and workman's pride

Content warning: Discussion of injury (no photos)

I've been sewing gear for over 8 years now and it's rare I get an injury. Yesterday, I managed to put my size 16 machine needle through my left index finger, narrowly avoiding the nail bed. It was a through and through so it bled like a nightmare. The machine cycled such that it jabbed me and came to rest in the up position so I didn't have to take the needle out myself. The incident has taught me two things. The first is that while I can deal with slicks of blood, open abdominal wounds and people expiring in front of me, I am very, very squimish when it comes to my own blood. I had to ask my flat mate very nicely to help me dress the wound (under my direction) because I was on the verge of passing out. Great. Really adds to your street cred when you go green at the sight of a small wound to your finger. No one tell my work colleagues!

Second, it taught me about resilience. It's been a long couple of weeks with starting a new job and running Foam Fest Live 2 at the weekend. Getting back to games and generally juggling life has been a bit of an adjustment and I'm still finding my feet. The order I was working on was a complex custom commission and it had taken a lot of my time. The piece I was working on was the second generation that I had picked up again after a couple of weeks mulling over solutions to a particular problem. The small tacking stitches at the bottom of the pouch where I expected there to be highest risk of injury, however, weren't the ones that caught me out. It was a simple corner stitch for the flat loop Velcro you can see in the photo above. I sewed the short edge, lifted the foot and turned the piece, dropped the foot and failed to get my finger out the way before my foot engaged the pedal to move the needle. Punch. Through and through, in one side and out the other. Thankfully, I missed the nail bed and I was using my big size 16 Cordura needles. I think had it been a smaller needle for one of my non-tactical gear projects or had been 3mm to the left, it would have broken inside my finger and I would be having a very different discussion right now. As it was, I have enough dressings and gear on hand to clean and dress it properly thus saving the NHS the effort and my own blushes because my local hospital is part of the same Trust that I work for in my day job. I patched myself up and had to take the rest of the afternoon off because I physically couldn't operate the machine with a giant dressing on it.

Sorry, boss... I can't come into work: my finger looks like something from ET

 I got back on the machine this morning and I was very nervy to start with. I finished up the custom commission for the order I was working on without incident. It took a lot more time than usual with me being slow and second guessing everything. The extra mental effort also sapped a lot of the 3D spatial thinking that custom work needs. It can take a lot of bandwidth to fold fabric in your head space to allow for machining and ensuring things turn out the right way. If that bandwidth isn't available then I fall back on good old fashioned try, fail, repeat. Fortunately, Cordura is very resilient stuff and can take being pulled apart multiple times. What should have taken 45m took closer to 3 hours as I worked through pretty much every iteration until I got a pair of pouches that I was happy met the specification.

Beware: Velcro loop tape may bite

 

Then I went onto something slightly simpler. Still custom but only in trim - I put together a drop-leg pouch and I was very pleased with the results. Inordinately pleased. I realised afterwards it's because I had overcome my initial hesitation and that by being back on familar ground I had put my confidence back together and got moving again. It's a strange feeling to be reminded of my pride in my work but sometimes I need that reminder.

It would have been a nightmare if I had bled on this particular trim!

 

So why am I sharing this one on the blog? Well, because I'm one of the more experienced machinsts in this particular niche field and if I can balls up so spectactularly and learn from it then I hope others can, too. A lot of us have been out of the hobby this past year or so and there will be skill fade there as a result. I think coming back into games and back to the modding bench, we're all going to be a bit rusty and make expensive mistakes. It's OK to balls up and feel like you've somehow lost it. Get back on the horse with something familiar and simple. Build back up and remember that we do this for fun but there's always growth and development there. This hobby can teach us many hard skills but occasionally it can just serve to remind us of community, shared spirit and our own innate resilience.

Oh and to clarify, at no point was I at risk of bleeding on the piece. My hand moved out of the way pretty sharpish under reflex and I had indirect pressure on my finger before I could anything other than leak over my hand. I've worked with enough bodily fluids this past year to know how to stop them getting on the wrong things...