Adaptation

Like everyone else in the world, I've been thinking about the times we live in lately, of economic instability and weird weather, of viruses and outbreaks, the lack of individual agency in the climate crisis, of all the things that the mass media would have us think portend the end of the world.  It is easy to panic in such an atmosphere, where it feels like everything you know and cherish might come to an end tomorrow. 

These things are cause for serious concern, but they are mostly things that sap our emotional energy with fruitless worry, since in truth, there is little we as individuals can do about any of it.  What will be, will be. I think it is worth remembering that we will all need to adjust to things as they happen, that we need not go into some sort of survivalist headspace that wants to take everything for oneself, to ensure self-survival.  I was reminded of Brian Kaller's excellent writing over the years on these topics--he is an American journalist living in Ireland with his family, and trying to reclaim some of the older ways of doing and being.  I've found him to be a sober and realistic correspondent, intent on reclaiming the small local bonds of community and ways of life that will see people through crises.

I went searching through his archives this morning, looking for a post he wrote a few years ago that stuck in my mind.  He talks about how our model for future change is almost universally dystopian, that some crisis is coming that will fundamentally alter the world in ways that will seem apocalyptic.  He says this vision is fantasy, and does no one any service (nor does it improve anyone's mental health).  Instead, he says we should be focusing on how to strengthen the bonds between ourselves, in community, because that is how we will weather change.  No man is an island, and the man with the most toys does not win in the end. 

He writes:

"[W]e have created a society that runs on coal and oil, which won’t last forever. Even the amount we’ve burned so far has changed the air so much that it is literally changing the weather around the world, creating more intense storms, harsher droughts, and greater extremes of heat and cold. Anyone who walks along the Irish shoreline can see the other main product of our civilisation, the plastic and other rubbish that now clutters the world’s seas, or piles up in landfills that have become the largest man-made structures on Earth.

Yet apocalyptic stories assume that our modern car-driving, computer-using culture will collapse overnight in some catastrophe, whether a robot Armageddon, climate disaster or Rapture – and the fact that we make entertainment about such horrors means that they are not really our fears, but our fantasies. And they offer the worst possible model for how to handle the realistic difficulties we might face in the future. Paranoid survivalists do not help build a delicate web of trust among neighbours, and millenarians will not help build lasting infrastructure for the next stage of history. The more people are convinced that we face a violent and despairing future, the more likely such a future becomes.

In the decades to come, as we have to cope with more difficult economic times, energy crunches and unexpected weather, more of us will have to grow more food ourselves, learn to use less energy from different sources, and buy more products made to be fixed and re-used rather than thrown away. It might be a reduction of our energy wealth by 10 percent, or 50 percent, or 90 percent – depending on your time and place -- but it’s literally not the end of the world, and we shouldn’t confuse the two.

And it will require more of us to form carpools, shopping co-ops, allotment clubs, medical co-ops, home-schooling networks and other such ad hoc organisations, and to cheerfully work with our neighbours to create new relationships – something people can and often do in a crisis, and exactly the opposite of what most science fiction depicts."

~Brian Kaller, "What Science Fiction Ought to Be," Restoring Mayberry blog, 21 June 2018.

Kaller goes on to talk about the sorts of stories that would be interesting and helpful to tell ourselves as our world changes, stories that would help to prepare us for times to come.  It's a great post, and he continues to develop these themes in a later review of a graphic novel. 

The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves matter, and while I won't say anything so insubstantial as "what the world needs now is love," what I will say is what we need now are stories about human resilience and the ways in which people can come together to support one another in times of crisis.  Stories about breaching the walls that divide us, stories about creating common space between us. 

Be prepared for times of crisis, but don't panic, and keep an eye out for those who need help.  Because we all need a helping hand from time to time.

February: The Lost Month

I say this almost every year about this time, but January and most of February always feel like lost time to me.  We have a bunch of church feasts, a few secular holidays, plus a bunch of family observances and celebrations between Jan 1-Feb 15, and I never seem to catch up until Lent starts.  And then it is, you know, Lent.  But my knitting has kept me sane this year, and I have some projects to share!

~knitting~

I already blogged my Delft Doocot, but I've been wearing it regularly since it finished blocking.  I love the fit and feel of it, and am jazzed to have finally made a lighter weight sweater that I really love.  My Carbeth from last year is still great, but in my current hot-flashy state, and the milder winter we're having means I can't wear it very much this year.

I didn't blog Ponchik's Puddle Duck either--that was a quick knit in December using some random yarn from my bin--I'm making a big effort to stash-bust the random skeins I bought and forgot what they were for.  I had two skeins of Taria Tweed bulky in a orangey-pink color, and I have absolutely no idea why I bought them.  It is not a color I typically wear myself, and the amount was too small for anything for the girls.  So I combined it with some leftover bulky Garnet Heather Swish from my L'Enveloppe and made Ponchik a pullover sweater with it. The silk wool blend is so soft, and the garnet stripes are enough visual interest for my print-loving girl.  She loves it, I love it, and I'm glad to have that yarn out of my bin!!

My scrappy shawl!  I've had this idea to make a shawl out of some random leftover skeins of yarn for a while, and I started it on a bus ride to NYC in late December.

I got pretty far on it (I was getting close to the border and final bind off when I realized I Did Not Like how the striping and color and pattern were coming out.

I was using the Boneyard pattern, so every 12 rows there is a knit row on the purl side, which looks great on a solid color, but when the skeins would run out in the middle of a pattern repeat, it looked strange.

I thought the stripes needed more variation, and the colors didn't quite work all together.  So I frogged the whole thing a week ago and started fresh.  (Sorry, I don't have pictures of the original).  I decided to pull out ALL my scraps and start from there, which meant I could make a bunch of narrow rows at the first since some of my scraps were small indeed, but I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

It is a reflection of many things I've made over the past years (some successful, some not), uses up yarn that is not very useful otherwise but I can't bear to just throw away, and produced a useful finished garment for one of my girls to enjoy.  Win-win.

Next up is a belated birthday gift for my mother.  Her birthday is in early January, but I knew in December already I wasn't going to be able to finish her gift in time.  (I had kids sick at home for almost three weeks in December, as I mentioned, and it just threw my schedule off.  Things Did Not Get Done).  But my mom is a big girl, and willing to wait!  My parents are coming for a week-long visit tomorrow, so I set myself a firm deadline and tried not to look at any other yarn until her scarf was finished.  

The pattern is Embrace, from Quince and Co. and the yarn is Chickadee in a limited edition color from a few years ago called Carnation.  I bought four skeins at the time, intending to make a toddler sweater for one of the girls, but never got to it, and now four skeins probably isn't enough for them.  I think it will work well with my mom's coloring and preferred clothing palette, so I hope it will be a nice accent piece for her.  It was a fun knit and I learned a new stitch on the border!

I cast on my next Doocot with the Quince and Co. Chickadee in Sorbet I bought with a gift card from two Christmases ago.  (I keep looking at the color name and thinking "zher-bet" or "soar-beT", like "sher-Bet" instead of "soar-bey."  Anyone else?  Just me?  Alrighty then).  I've been wearing my blue Doocot almost every chance I get, so I think another will get a lot of good wearing.  The weather is so weird this year that heavy sweaters are not the best choice.  My teal Carbeth has had only a couple of outings this year.

~reading~

Quite a lot actually.  I finished Come As You Are, and I wish every woman would read it!  It was so helpful and empowering for me.  It's worth the price of admission for the first chapter alone, which is just basic anatomy, and the range of how women's bits present.  In short: you are normal.  I am normal.  We are all normal.  If it doesn't hurt, it's normal.  But the rest of the book is amazing too.  I might write some more about it in a dedicated post.

I started her most recent book, Burnout, at the beginning of the month, and while I like it, and am getting a lot out of it, I don't recommend it quite as whole-heartedly because the tone is different, and there are some sections I skimmed as a result.  But the chapter on the Bikini Industrial Complex is worth the cost of the book, as is the chapter on sleep and active rest (you need more than you think, and it isn't just about sleep!)  It has made me think about my whole body in a different way, but that knowledge is built on the foundation of Come As You Are, so if you only have time to read one, read that one instead.

During December I got obsessed with the Sky series A Discovery of Witches (watched it twice!) and then immediately started reading the triology.  I swallowed the first book almost whole, but am taking my time with the second one.  I'm very eager to see the second season, which only recently finished filming.  I started following Teresa Palmer on IG, and am enjoying her account very much. I also follow Deb Harkness, who wrote the books, because I'm a geeky historian and lover of medieval things, and love the stuff she posts about her research as a university historian.

I love the relationship between Matthew and Diana in the book, and how the story arc and character curves don't go the way you might expect.  (Some people have said that the All Souls Triology is like Twilight for grown-ups meets Outlander, and I don't think they are wrong.  Outlander is better written and the cast of characters much larger, but I think the authors are exploring similar themes.

My stack also includes books I received for Christmas, but haven't started yet.  I only have so much time to read!  But I'll get through them sooner or later.  Circe is there because I'm trying to develop a female character who is different from a lot of female tropes, and a friend said that the main character is written differently.

~sewing~

Almost nothing.  Just a bit of mending (see Ponchik's leggings above).  I also took out a pair of my husband's suit pants and learned a fascinating amount about how men's suit pants are constructed.  I wish women's skirts were given so much thought and structure.  Sewing for me, nada.  It's okay, really; I'm having a great time thrifting.

~watching~

I watched some forgettable stuff that had been on my watchlist for a while, but A Discovery of Witches was the high point (since I watched it twice in a row!)  I've tried a few shows in the past couple of weeks that are trying too hard to be Game of Thrones and just...no.  I don't want to watch that.  My writing partner and I were discussing this phenomenon recently, and she was pretty frustrated with the offerings as well.  Her comment: "My bar isn't really that high--can we just have a show without people's heads being cut off?  I'm not asking much."  Me: "I know, right?"

Season 2 of Jack Ryan was...okay.  I thought the first season was brilliant, and a great reboot of the characters, but season 2 seemed like it was trying to tick too many boxes.  I know that happens sometimes in the second season, so I'll be eager to see if they straighten the course for the 3rd season.

There was an interesting indie film called The Delinquent Season that I found very thought-provoking, but it will not be a film for everyone.  The acting was raw and courageous, the storyline had a lot of tough stuff in it. 

Marriage Story was excellently acted, well-written and directed, and deserves the award nominations it is getting, but it was also a pretty tough watch.  Delinquent Season explored similar themes, but in a more interesting way, I thought.  Marriage Story was just pure pain.

I decided that the boys were old enough to start watching some of the Marvel films (not all of them) and we started with Thor, and then moved on to Avengers and Captain America.  We're through The Dark World now (skipping the Iron Man movies for now, because I think they have a bit too much language and violence for them, relative to the other Marvel offerings).  It's been fun to share those films with them.  I think all the kids are ready for The Princess Bride and am eager to show it to them.  I read the book aloud to them last spring and they all enjoyed hearing the story.

I binged The Stranger at the beginning of February, with Richard Armitage, and highly recommend it.  I follow him on IG, and have been waiting for this show to hit Netflix for a while. A friend also recommended The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which I have not really been interested in watching until now, but I tried it, and I do like it a lot.  It's not a show I want to watch quickly, but I like having it in my back pocket for when nothing else seems to be interesting. I also watched Agatha Christie and the Truth of Murder on Netflix during a sick day recently and enjoyed it very much as well.

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!

Slopers

I've been meaning to write this post for ages, but never did until I got Stasia's most recent newsletter about her jeans-buying adventure, and thought I really should get to it.  I think a lot of people don't understand why sizing varies so much across and within brands, and get frustrated when a size doesn't fit the way they expect.  I didn't understand until I started sewing for myself and reading about the fashion industry, and I found the knowledge so helpful and empowering!  Hopefully this will be helpful for someone out there.

The short answer is that when you make a garment and size it up or down, you use what is called a sloper.  The sloper is the base pattern that is used to make all the other sizes from, and where brands slope from and who they slope for, determines a lot of how garments fit proportionally.  (I have a larger-than-industry-standard waist-to-hip ratio and a 14" rise, so I've never been able to find RTW pants that fit me, and modern skirts are usually a challenge). 

The first thing is that some brands slope from the middle of their size range, and some slope from the bottom.  Sloping from the middle means that whatever the "medium" or middle size number is (often an 8, but sometimes a 10), is the base sloper.  The smaller and larger sizes are then graded from there, which means that the pattern is either made larger or smaller along the seam lines in even increments.  Some brands slope widely between sizes, and some slope smaller.  What that means is that in some brands, the difference between and 8 and a 10 might be an inch or more, and in some brands, it might less than an inch.  A common grade is 1/2" between sizes.  The size differences are more pronounced the fewer sizes there are overall, so things that are simply labeled: small, medium, large, etc. can vary quite a bit.

For brands that slope from the bottom of their size range (say a 0 or a 2), their upper size range is going to come out much smaller than a brand that slopes from the middle (this has to do with how grading is done, and how much grading you can do to a pattern before it starts to have distortions.  It is also why so-called "plus-size" clothing tends to start at a size 12 or 14, because it is difficult to slope from size 0-30 without having at least three base slopers made, which is expensive). 

There is also the target audience of a brand, which is useful to know not because of style-sense, but because it informs the slopers.  Brands that market to a younger audience are likely to slope from the bottom of their size range.  Why?  Because their target audience is a teenager with a still-maturing pelvic cradle.  So these brands' slopers are smaller, the size range smaller, and the amount of curve smaller.

JCrew slopes for a taller-than-average, straight-up-and-down figure, and appears to slope from a size 4 or 6, and their clothing reflects all that.  Land's End and LLBean target a different audience, and appear to slope from the middle of their size range, but the middle of their size range is also based on a curvier figure. 

Slopers also change over time, which is why a vintage 14 is considerably smaller than a modern 14 in almost any brand.  Legacy brands like Pendleton or Eddie Bauer have vastly different garment measurements over time.  I thrift wool skirts online, and never purchase anything from a legacy brand that doesn't have the measurements listed because you can't go by size.  A vintage 14 Pendleton skirt (from 1990s or earlier) is going to have somewhere between a 26-28" waist and 36-38" hips.  A recently-made Pendleton skirt in the exact same style, in the same size, is going to be more like 30-31" waist and 41-42" hips.  I recently discovered that Sag Harbor made a wool skirt sometime in the 1980s or early1990s that fits me great in a size 14, but not all my 14s are the same.  Some of my skirts have a 32" waist, and some are more like 31" (these skirts have a bit of elastic in the back, so some of the range might be due to how much the elastic has been stretched out, but it is hard to tell).  This is for the same skirt, in the same woven, non-stretch fabric/lining, made around the same time. 

The other issue is that there isn't a standard sloper for any garment across the fashion industry, but in jeans, particularly high-end jeans, companies often do not check their slopers carefully against actual women's bodies for good fit across all sizes.  What happens is if there is a basic fit issue on the sloper of a high-end jean, it gets replicated across all the jeans in that range and brand, and in all lower-cost brands that copy their sloper.  Sometimes you also get slopers that grade well up or down one size to either side, but distort big-time when you get more than a couple of sizes up or down.  Since the fashion industry moves fast these days, there isn't enough time to check all these things because time is money and clothing has become more or less disposable.

I think one of the reasons why so many "pear-shaped" (or triangle-shaped) women have trouble finding pants (*raises hand*) is that no one has bothered to check slopers for full seat adjustments, because as your waist-to-hip ratio increases, the likelihood of a fuller seat increases.  (So does the need for a full tummy adjustment).  Since many brands are sloping for a 6-8" waist-to-hip ratio (meaning that the waist is 6-8" smaller than the full hip measurement) and a flat bottom and tummy, anyone with a differently-shaped body is going to have major fit issues at any size.  Stretch fabrics can only mediate fit issues so much.

I personally find garment measurements to be the best predictor of fit (know thy measurements and thy desired ease of wearing!), and since I thrift most of my clothes online, I try not to buy unless I'm pretty confident about the measurements or I've had a lot of experience with the brand.  

If you've made it all the way to the end of this, pat yourself on the back!  I hope this proves helpful.  The main thing to remember is this: your body is not a problem (All Bodies are Good Bodies!), and size is just a number.

Talking Tuesday: Ontology and Telos

I've been pondering how to write this all day, and not really knowing how to start, so perhaps best to start in the middle and work outward.  I should also say that this is very short and preliminary, and probably is going to be something I'm noodling through for a long time, so don't take any of this as definitive, but rather the start of a long conversation.

On a recent phone call with a dear friend, I said, "If my 30s were all about ontology, I think my 40s are going to be about telos."  She laughed, but understood what I meant.  Long-time readers will know that I've written a fair bit about the ongoing existential crisis of motherhood, and I think I spent a lot of the past decade trying to parse that.  Who am I?  What am I made for? What am I doing?  These are the basic questions of ontology.  Becoming a mother brought a lot of those questions to the forefront for me, and I thought a lot about them (mostly through the Twilight series, but a number of more serious books as well). 

While I'm not sure any of us can ever definitely state that we know the full depths of our selves, or that we've completely sorted the basic ontological questions, at a certain point, I think you can start to say to yourself, This is Who I Am.  Maybe it isn't a particularly articulate ontology, but you begin to have light on the darker corners of yourself, and can sketch more of a whole picture in your mind.

Lately, however, I find myself occupied with questions of telos.  Telos, in some ways, is a far bigger question, but it naturally follows the ontological ones.  Ontology asks "what," but telos asks "why."  Why am I here?  Why am I?  Where is the meaning of everything located?  I sense in the larger culture a nihilistic impulse that is hard to resist.  It is hard not to feel despair, easy to find no meaning in the day-to-day grind of life. 

I could write fancy pat theological answers to those large questions, and the theological answers are good and right: we are here to pursue God, to find our life with Him, to seek the beauty in creation, to find salvation.  But those are amorphous, and difficult to get a handle on somehow. 

Seek peace and pursue good.  That is something repeated a lot in the services of the Church, and while maybe still not concrete, a good thing to hold on to.  But then the next question is: What is good?  How do I find peace?

I used to be able to answer these questions without hesitation, without question, with theological certainty.  But I find as I've experienced hard things, and then even harder things, that I have less certitude than I did previously.  Perhaps that is normal and part of the course of things. 

I do know that the answer to those questions is located outside myself, and within the Church, and in seeking I will find, but man, the road is long and winding.  I suppose the way to find them is to excavate the truth in the Liturgy (I've had a post brewing about this for some time), to stay present with the texts, the rhythms and musical phrases, and let them sink down deep into me.

The past few years I've sung the Hymn of Kassiani during the Holy Tuesday Bridegroom Matins at a local parish.  (It is the only time during the liturgical year that this hymn is sung).  The parish is Slavic-oriented, but the priest broad-minded, so he has graciously allowed me to sing it Byzantine-style.  Sung in Byzantine chant, it is probably one of the harder pieces of vocal music for a singer to master.  The piece slides between two tones, one minor, one major, with lots of "in between" notes; staying within the musical phrasing and not losing the meaning of the textual phrasing is a feat.  I always go into it with fear and trembling.  But the text always haunts me, the great lament of it that seems to rise up from my bones, particularly toward the end.  There is a great stillness that seems to accompany it, as the sound rises to the top of the nave.

Perhaps the way toward telos is to be mindful and remember those moments when something buries itself into your soul, and gives you a hook to hold on to. 

Blue Heather Doocot

I finally finished my Doocot sweater!  This sweater was a constant game of yarn chicken, it must be said.  I had six skeins of denim heather Swish (worsted) in my stash that I wanted to use up, and thought this pattern might just make it, but ordered two more skeins just to be safe. 

I got most of the body and sleeves done on those eight skeins, but ran out in the middle of the ribbing in early December, and had to wait quite a while for the final skein to arrive. 

Then it was the holidays and I didn't have time to pick up this project until last week.  I finished the ribbing on the bottom and the neck ribbing in fairly short order and then spent an hour or so seaming the sleeves on day last week. 

I wet blocked it, but didn't aggressively block the ribbing so it has a more fitted look than the design suggests, which I prefer.  I probably could have made a size one and been fine, but the two is good.

I'm actually quite chuffed with this sweater--it turned out way better than expected, and I'm now rethinking my plans for the Quince and Co. chickadee yarn I bought in December with a gift card from last Christmas!  (Although, given my tension and the fact that I knit this with supposedly worsted weight yarn at 22 stitch gauge, I'm not sure what the chickadee fabric will look like.  Swatch, swatch, and swatch again!)  The chickadee is about the color of my scarf, for reference.

My original plan was to make another Carbeth pullover, but I think I like the versatility of this weight of sweater, and would like to make a cowl-necked version out of the Chickadee yarn which means dropping the front neckline slightly.  In the meantime, however, I have something else I need to work on first, so I can consider my options while I finish that project. 

The green wool skirt is another recent thrifted find; I thrifted a Sag Harbor wool skirt earlier this fall and love the way it fits, so I've been watching ebay and snagging a few more in other colors as I find them, since I know the size is good.  

This one is longer than the other three I have, and I originally planned to take it up to match the just-above-the-knee length of the others, but I'm kind of digging the midi length for this skirt, so I think I'll leave it.  My only regret is that it doesn't have pockets (the other skirts do) but I feel so snazzy in this outfit, I don't even care that much.  I'll take that for a win!

The amount of petersham I cut off the waistband edge.  I left the full length of the waistband, however, in case I need to let it out again in the future.

 I also took in my rust cord skirt yesterday, because I'm really missing it in my closet.  The best way to have done it would have been to completely reconstruct it, but I knew I'd never get it done if I had to unpick everything, so I did a sort of lazy alteration that will do for now.  I took the waistband off the back of the skirt, and then pinched out half an inch or so down the center back from the waist to the hem.  

I pin-basted, checked the fit, pinched out another half inch (for a total of just over an inch), sewed up the seam, finger-pressed it to the side, and then reattached the waistband and resewed the hem.  I really need to redo my whole skirt sloper, but that is a project for another day.  (I also want to see where my body "lands" so to speak, since I've been up and down and up and down for the past 6-8 months.  The alteration I just did can be undone again if need be).

The Depth of Ourselves

Longtime readers will know that we live in a small house with inadequate built-in storage (read: basically no closets), and that managing the stuff of six people occupies a greater amount of my time than I would really like.  Too much "stuff" stresses me out, and frankly, I think it stresses my kids out, even though they still want to have new things, and have a hard time letting go of some other things to make room.  I have two children who are legit hoarders and their stuff just has to be gone through regularly to cull out the hair clippings, random trash from the playground, school papers, and other "treasures" they squirrel away.

The first few years that we had kids, the gifting at Christmas was a bit insane.  Don't get me wrong--I'm grateful that we have so many relatives who want to love our kids with physical gifts, and I know there are lots of kids out there who don't get any presents at all.  That said, my kids couldn't even process all the stuff they got, and since the fill-and-spill stage of play seemed to last FOREVER, it felt to me like it was just more stuff I had to pick up all the time.  One of my children always seemed unhappy on Christmas day, no matter what the presents were, and it was just so frustrating to me.

A few years ago, I decided to simplify things and do three gifts only--a book, a pajama, and a toy.  I realized that my kids were unable to handle surprises at that time, so they picked out exactly what they wanted, and each of the grandparents chose which of the three things they wanted to give the kids, and we gave the final gift.  (There were always a few little extras from aunts and cousins and friends, but just having the three main things was helpful).

It worked okay for a couple years, but I realized last year that things needed to shift (we substituted an "experience" for the book last year and the kids got a year-long membership to LegoLand).  This year, I decided throw the whole system out the window and let the kids pick out a number of toys each.

Why? I realized that my unhappy child was unhappy because that child feels good when there is a big pile of presents to open.  This child didn't want to have to choose just one thing, or two things, but felt guilty when unable to make a decision because the want was so strong and the stakes felt so high to make the "right" choice.  (I understand this feeling well).

We talked through it all in the weeks before Christmas, as each child sorted through what they wanted on their lists, and I saw that I had to let go of this vision of "simplicity" at Christmastime.  (This has been part of a larger picture of me letting go as a parent.  I have made a number of shifts in my thinking in the past year about how I want to parent my kids, and letting go of unrealistic expectations, and living where my kids are at is one of them.  I don't always succeed, but I'm trying).

My concern these days is less about the accumulation of "stuff" and more about the why of what they want.

Do they want a new toy because they just want it, or do they want it because they think it will fix something inside them that feels bad?  One child in particular struggles with this, and we've talked a lot about it over the past year as we've struggled through it together.  Every opportunity for gifts and purchasing has come with a conversation about why the desire for this thing is so desperately high.  Often it is because this child feels bad about something, and can't stand to live in those feelings.

So we are working on living in the bad feelings, and not using "things" to make the feelings go away.  Because actually, the things don't make the feelings go away.  At least not for good.  Sure, they might go away for a little while, but as soon as the "new toy" shine is off the thing, the bad feelings are back, and the desire for a new thing to fill that bad-feeling place is back.

This has been a hard lesson for me to learn over the years as well.  If we are really honest with ourselves, I think most people living in this late capitalist period do this in some way or another.  I'm trying to learn to live in the bad feelings and go through them instead of trying to smother them with stuff or drown them with food.

At the same time, however, I don't want my kids to feel so deprived that they make reckless financial decisions as adults or spend their lives chasing things instead of building relationships.  It's a fine balance, to learn to live with less, make do and mend, to value and use what you have, but still feel that you are worthy of receiving love from others in the form of physical things.  Because gifts do speak about worth louder than words sometimes.   There's a reason why Gary Chapman identifies gift-giving or receiving as one of the five primary love languages.

I suppose what it really comes down to is exploring the reality and depth of love: what it is to love another person fully, to meet their needs how and where they are, and to affirm their worth and value in lots of different ways.

~

{It is Philip's day today, and while I'm certainly thinking about it, I have little to say about it today.  I'm unwell and emotionally exhausted, and I can't poke around inside myself to see what I find.  Thirteen years is a long time.}

Happy Christmas!

I've posted this one before, but it never gets old.

So here we are, finally at the end of the Nativity Fast.  To be honest, the Fast seemed to go quickly this year, more so than other years.  Probably because I spent the first three and a half weeks of it nursing sick kids!  There were plenty of challenges in the Fast, however, as is usually the case.  

This seemed to be the Fast in which Toilets Did Not Behave.  We have issues with our plumbing anyway, because it is the city, and apparently no one in this area vents plumbing stacks, ever, and heavy rain seems to make things a bit worse (and there was a lot of rain this month) but I do what I can to mitigate things.  In any case, our second floor toilet required quite a bit of intervention this past month.  Thankfully, it seems mostly resolved now.  

In related plumbing issues, the down pipe from the shower in that same bathroom has a tendency to work loose on the u-joint at the bottom (the pvc screw that attaches the joint to the pipe above gets loose) and then leaks into the kitchen, but thankfully we have an access panel just below that join, so I can tighten the pipe screw as needed.  So there were a few leaks to deal with this month.

This isn't even all of them.

The girls spent the past two weeks busily making things in their room, and hiding their presents from prying eyes.  There was a truly impressive stack of cards and things to unwrap!  

Boo made me a little boat out of wood and painted it himself with watercolor paint--I'm so impressed.

Multi-colored on the sides.

And since I'm sure you are dying to know what I wore yesterday, here it is, all thrifted except the tights and hat: cashmere sweater, cotton undershirt, wool skirt, wool tights, dansko booties, and handknit beret from a couple years ago.  I wish I could remember what size needle I used for this hat, because I really like how it fits and haven't been able to replicate it on subsequent hats using the same pattern.

I've lost a bit of weight this month, and my corduroy skirts are all too big and look pretty sloppy.  I've already taken in the blue and green ones once, and I confess, I'm not looking forward to altering all three again, as I think I shall have to take them completely apart and start again.  I thrifted some Sag Harbor wool skirts recently (of which the red skirt above is one) and I plan to use one of them as a block to alter my Anne Adams 9481 flat pattern, since it clearly needs adjustment.

Part of me is also concerned that I might alter the skirts only to find that they don't fit again after the holidays!  (But I'm also trying to get into a mindset of eating in the middle of the lane all the time, and not swinging to extremes during fasting/feasting seasons, so perhaps it is good to solider on with alterations).

 

But that is a project for another day, since I am very tired today, and fighting a cold.  So I plan to do little things, but mostly just rest.  We are having Piglet's birthday meal tonight (his birthday is Christmas Eve, and he decided a few years ago to wait for the meal until the 8th to have non-fasting food!), but it is easy since he wants Shake Shack and ice cream.

The kids received a number of lego sets for Christmas, and I have to think about storage for some of them.  (I have a pretty good storage system in place, but several of the sets are rather large and require some re-jigging of the system on my part).  

In the meantime, the sun is shining, the air is crisp and cold, and my to-do list is manageable.