I should never have mentioned that very popular pop star. It led to frustrating exchanges until I took the post down. Today began with positive covid tests. I am not in the mood.
GOOD & BAD
yarn
SHOPPING/not shopping
When you live more than five miles from the nearest small and overpriced grocery store, fifteen miles from the nearest full grocery store (also overpriced), and thirty-five miles from Costco, shopping during the pandemic simply played on your habits of shopping rarely and large.
Shopping locally in our tourist economy meant the our monthly drive to a large city farmers’ market and even the city stores considered overpriced were relative bargains for us. Whole Foods prices were in line with or lower than what we found locally and better quality and more variety.
Now that we spend nights In Portland, we have three or four favorite grocery stores within easy walking distance. We love New Seasons, Fred Meyer is cheaper for some things, and there’s always Zupans when we want something special. But the habits of nearly forty-five years without easy access to such stores are still a powerful influence. The toughest to overcome is the most recent: ordering online.
Buying too much and ordering online are hard habits to break. Yesterday I made a vegetarian lasagna that turned out really well. I’m not pressed for time as I was when I was teaching and I am not cooking for two growing boys as well as ourselves. That lasagna will provide meals for Gary and I for three days…
During the recent perilous weather in the Pacific NW, we stayed home and I cooked from what I had in freezer, fridge, and pantry. I also ordered the organic whole wheat noodles I used for the lasagna. I have five more boxes of flat noodles in my drawer and six pounds of whole wheat angel hair pasta. I’m set for a while.
I finished a warp this month and plan to begin another this week. The overall goal is to use up much of my yarn stash, but then I ordered a skein of yarn a couple weeks ago. That gorgeous bright handspun fits in with a warp I was planning, but interferes with the important goal of cutting back my yarn stash.
I need to buy less.
It feels like I’ve done this before. Haven’t I vowed to cut back on purchases? Haven’t I actually done that from time to time?
February needs to be a no-purchase month. Food is okay. No clothing, no yarn, no fabric, no books. I have plenty of everything. I can afford to swear off all unnecessary purchases. It’s a short month. My pantry shelves look leaner and tidier from not shopping much this month. My beach closet is very lean from a recent culling. I need to continue making progress with the yarn and quilting fabrics. I can resist Liberty cottons and batik’s for a month. I can. I probably can.
Cutting back on purchases is like cutting back on food. I can recall eating as a child until my stomach hurt. And I was a thin child because I walked and ran everywhere. It’s different as an adult. It’s different as a retired adult in nasty weather where I go out but for an hour instead of three hours, and I eat because I cooked too much. I learned when I shifted over my diet to a healthier balance in 2020, that feeling a little hungry is a good thing.
There are projects waiting for my attention, and I really could learnt to cook for two if I troubled to do it. I have more books in my to-read stack(s) than I ever have had in my entire life. I can cut the shawl to make a pillow cover. I can put on the neutral warp. I can cast on the sweater I promised myself a dozen years ago—the yarn is right there. Ideas for quilts swimming about in my head do not require any fabric other than what I have stored.
April will be Camp NaNo and I will work on short stories. Between now and then I can make progress on projects: three more warps if I am quick, a knitted something, and two sewing projects. With discipline, I can avoid purchasing anything other than food for four weeks. That’s what I’ll do.
I will not buy yarn, a rosebush, black wool pants, more socks, food in bulk, magazines, books, fabric even though it love it and it’s on sale, a new chair or two, a used table for Gary’s coffee (he’s using the window-ledge in the new living room configuration), knitting notions, or anything I cannot consume within a week. I promise.
It works for me to make a promise.
HABITS OF PLEASURE
There are too many blues. I am not actually a blue person—I do not now have more than one garment in my closet with a pale blue pattern. What I have in my Made Things drawer is all from the other side of the spectrum. As a result, I have many blues, but mostly tipping toward green and especially purple. Not enough red. The red/pink bin is only a quarter full.
We all have our habits. My husband and I both love books and tend to fill shelves. Beyond that we have other things, too much of other things.
When I spread all my Koigu yarn and a handful of handspun skeins out in order to get them sorted back into bins by hue, he took a look and announced: “I am cutting you off.”
Then, the other day, he took all his CDs out of his bookcases. They filled the sofa and two chairs and made stacks a foot and more high covering the coffee table and the carpet. I tried to get a photo but could not get all the CDs in one shot. He did not count them. Suffice it to say he is cut off. He is humbled and sorry. “I am serious. You have to cut me off.”
This is most of Gary’s CD collection, removed from shelves Monday. I think he meant to eliminate a few, but in the end, he spent an entire day (the day before yesterday) putting them all back. Every one. They are organized by artist and tradition or period. (Those are his books in the back too. Also organized by topic.)
Gary says, “It’s not a habit, it’s a sickness. Somebody please stop me.” He would like to blame Cervantes for some recent acquisitions because Don Quixote alerted him to even more music without diminishing his interest in Sami and middle Eastern, not to mention classic rock and roll. (No one should try to tell Gary about classic rock and roll.) We will not go into musical instruments since he has friends with four times as many.
On the other hand, I felt free to order seven more skeins the other day. His pile is bigger than mine, more costly. And after all, I eventually wear or mostly give away my yarn when it has become something.
And when we spread them out, Gary might feel guilt, but all I can think of is how to put the colors together in order to make something, how that might be a shawl or blanket, those skeins might make a striped sweater. And then he plays a CD and his imagination soars, just like mine. Not “harmless” habits but beautiful.
Both of us know what sparks joy.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 