Many Thoughts Converge

 

My hemming 'station'

I do hemming in the evening while I 'watch' tv. 

Nothing new about this.  As a kid, mom and I would knit while we watched tv.  Or I would make a puzzle on the coffee table.  Mom and I rarely just 'sat'.  I suppose knitting was - for me at least - my 'fidget spinner'.  I always find meetings more bearable if I can knit while the business proceedings unfold.  Unless I'm chairing the meeting.  

Hemming is pretty 'mindless', requiring just surface attention, but it keeps my hands busy so the loveseat is permanently set up with my bin of sewing supplies beside me (about 30 spools of thread in a range of colours, pins, extra needles of various sizes, scissors, etc).  And the seemingly (for now) endless supply of tea towels wanting hemming.

Lately the hemming has been going more slowly because about a year ago I started having pain in my hips and if I sat in one position for too long (define 'long'.  define 'too long') I had trouble standing and walking.  So I chair hopped between the dining room table and the loveseat.  Things have been getting 'better', but still not great, so my routine is to continue to chair hop.

But I also think about the nature of 'making'.  How, in the 21c our (NA) society seems to be intent on having everything in life present us with instant gratification.  How doing something time consuming - be it making things in terms of handcrafts, or just building a puzzle, are not sufficient.  We can't 'wait' for anything.  Results have to be *now* and they have to be *perfect*.  No room for learning.  No room for 'mistakes'.  (Not all, of course I know, not all!  I am one of that 'not all', after all!)

Instead of learning how to knit, people buy 'fidget spinners' when they could be using a drop spindle and actually creating something (yarn) by twiddling something.  Or knitting, crocheting, or...you get the drift.

Instead I am questioned as to why I don't machine sew the hems on my towels in order to get them done faster.  Because I am the 'efficiency queen'...

But efficiency doesn't mean to always and forever do something faster.  It means doing it with the least amount of excess motion.  To reduce the harm to the body.  Not *just* to make something 'faster'.

And I don't actually prefer machine sewing for the hems on my towels, but if you do, then you should do that.  I've had customers comment on my hand hemming, and appreciate that I take the time, and the attention to detail.  But again, that's *my* personal preference.

I think about how much society has changed in my 70+ years.  How things used to be, and where they are now.  And wonder where they will be in another 20 years.  I doubt I'll be alive by then, but you never know.  My mom made it to 90.  But my dad and brother didn't make it through their 50s, so the odds are that I probably won't see 90.

And I think about the state of my studio.  How much yarn I still have, even as I weave it down, as best I can.  I can celebrate that the linen is *mostly* gone (barring the linen I unearthed last month in the latest snow globing of my yarn storage area), the mercerized cotton is gone (to the point that the rest has gone into my bobbin lace stash).

I wonder how much longer I will be able to weave, and hold onto the hope that while things are getting better, every gain is hard won and I'm tired.  So, so tired.  Is this what 'old' is?  Just, tired, all the damn time?  (For anyone contemplating telling me I'm only as old as I feel, I feel old.  Tired and old.  Doesn't mean I'm ready to give up, give in - too much yarn in my stash.)

I think about the state of the world and despair that humans will ever, even just once, actually listen to their religious icons and live in peace and harmony.  Because every major religion says pretty much exactly the same thing, and yet...

As we face another year ending and beginning, we ride this grain of sand in the galaxy and live our lives, to what end?  What is the purpose of our lives, anyway?  We determine our purpose by the choices we make.

I choose to encourage, support, teach.  I choose to be creative and make things, even when they take weeks to complete.  Not everyone chooses the same things, and that's fine - because we choose.  We choose to live with the status quo or to try to improve things, as best we can.  So I take my resources and spend them with companies that appear to be responsible towards their employees, pay them reasonable wages.  At least act inclusive, even if it is just on the surface.  I vote for politicians who at least attempt to help, not hinder, who have an actual platform, even if I don't agree with everything on it.  I refuse to vote for politicians who are full of hot air and stand on - or for - nothing, but foment outrage based on 'fake news'.  

I choose to live as frugally as possible, with the smallest carbon footprint I can manage, given I live in the 'north', in a small community, far away from metropolitan areas.

Does me buying a new HVAC system to use less natural gas solve the climate crisis?  No, but using less natural gas is still *less*, not blithely continuing to use more...

And so my thoughts go - round and round and round.  Until I go to the loom and shut the door on my thoughts, my worries, my concerns, generate some endorphins, a little dopamine, give myself a couple of hours (or so) a day when I stop fretting about the state of the world and humanity.

If nothing else, my weaving is a form of mental health care, so based on that alone, I will keep weaving for as long as I can...even when it takes me weeks to 'complete' a batch of towels, even when industry can outproduce me every day of the week and no one *needs* a hand woven tea towel.  *I* need to keep making them.  And so I do...