Stacyverb

Quality vs. quantity

Last weekend, I boxed up a bunch of clothes to drop off at the thrift store.  Among them were quite a few me-made garments.  In the past, I've been reluctant to get rid of handmade items.  But my standards seem to have gotten higher, and now I just want these things gone.

 

Here’s a me-made blouse I've been wearing since 2005 or so, despite several problems that I kept rationalizing.  Such as: I sewed the cuffs on backward (oops).  There’s a little stain in front (I can just wear a sweater over it).  It doesn’t actually fit right (oh that).  This was one of the first "tailored" garments I made for myself, and I was quite proud at the time (backward cuffs notwithstanding).  But let's be honest: it's poorly tailored.  The whole body is too wide, and the shoulder seams hang way below my actual shoulders.  In the years since I made this blouse, I’ve figured out how to deal with my very narrow shoulders when I'm sewing.  So now I’ve finally reached a point where I look at this garment and go, NO.  It has too many problems.  I no longer feel cute in it, just sloppy.

 

Speaking of sloppiness, here are three skirts I've been wearing with safety pins taking in the waistbands, because they're all way too big (the downside of regular exercise).  Yet I continued to wear them.  The orange one in the middle is me-made, and I’ll need to replace that soon, because my summer wardrobe depends heavily on having an orange skirt in the mix.

The other two came from thrift stores anyway, so why cling to them?  I almost got rid of the black one during a previous closet purge, but I thought, "No, you need a black skirt!"  As if another black skirt (that actually fit) would be so hard to come by! 

The white flowered one I shouldn't have bought in the first place.  It was too big when I bought it, but I was blinded by its beauty.  And it was $3.29.  I figured that judicious use of safety pins would make it work.  Ditto a pair of me-made black pants (not even worth photographing).  I've kept “making do” with all these too-big garments that wanted to slide right off my body because I figured, hey, I'm sitting down anyway, so there's nowhere for them to go.  Ugh!  I’m now realizing just how many of my garments are wearable only because my wheelchair holds them onto my body.

Anyway.  I'm tired of making do, and no longer interested in keeping clothes that are almost fine.  And honestly, although my sewing skills have vastly improved over the years, I'm clueless about alterations.  So these things are going bye-bye, to make room in my closet for new things that fit and are flattering.

Do you hang on to clothes unnecessarily?  If you make your own garments, do you find it harder to get rid of those, even when you know they're not working?

The good things

Stupid cancer.  It came back to our sweet Little Kitty again.  She had surgery today to remove two small lumps from her breast tissue and is now, as they say, "resting comfortably" at home.  The cancer could come back, or not.  (Let's go with not.)

In the meantime, Little has no idea there was ever anything wrong with her, and we'd like to keep it that way.  Except for finding that bumpy place (we check her regularly, since we knew it was likely to recur), we wouldn't have known either.  Little is a content, playful, affectionate cat with a good appetite.  She loves looking out the window (aka "watching cat TV"), getting brushed, and chasing the laser pointer--when she's not napping in a sunbeam or on her favorite fleecy couch blanket, that is.  Simple pleasures.

 

A typical post-breakfast nap

We, too, take simple pleasure in having Little as part of our family--enjoying the feel of her soft fur, the sounds of her happy purr and sassy meow, the hilarious way she frantically chases the red laser dot.  Sharing your life with a pet is a privilege, and one that I don't want to take for granted.

I keep thinking about a passage in Ann Patchett's novel Bel Canto, which I read recently. 

"Carmen prayed hard....What she prayed for was nothing.  She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone."

That pretty well sums up my attitude toward life in the past couple of years.  I no longer bother to wish for great things; I just wish for nothing to mess up the good things I already have.  And sometimes, I just wish that not too many terrible things will happen all at once, and that's all I can hope for.

Have I lowered my expectations, or just developed a deeper appreciation for life's small joys?  I'm not sure.  Either way, this evening Anthony and I are reveling in the joy of having our beloved kitty home, purring on her blanket as she recovers.

Poppy cardigan and downsized bag

This was a project I started back in May.  I knit the five pieces in about two weeks, and then they sat in my closet all summer because I hate seaming sweaters.  During a flurry of finishing in September, I eventually stitched it together.  And yesterday the weather finally cooperated so the sweater could make its debut!  The pattern was originally called Marigold, but I call mine Poppy because of the color.

I'd also like to point out the shoulder bag I'm sporting here.  This was a recent fabulous find at a thrift store, which set me back only $2.50.  Woot!  The red and black combo goes with most of my wardrobe.  It's much smaller than the bag I carried all summer (seen here), which is great.  Having a smaller bag prevents a ton of extraneous crap from accumulating.

CARDIGAN DETAILS

Pattern: Marigold Sweater, designed by Amy Polcyn, from Summer 2010 issue of Interweave Knits

Yarn: Cascade Yarns Ultra Pima color 3751 (4 skeins), purchased at Sheepish

Needles: Size US 5 (3.75 mm)

Stash, part 2: yarn

Editing my fabric stash was so satisfying, I decided to tackle my yarn stash, too.  Here's what I was dealing with: large Rubbermaid bin, kitty litter container, and wooden magazine rack-converted-to-yarn-bin.  All stuffed very full of yarns and some spinning fiber.

Again, I'm sure many knitters out there are thinking that this stash looks meager.  Everything's relative.  (Also, I remind you that yarn is squishy, and a person can cram a lot of it into a space if they put their mind to it.)  For me, the stash was getting out of hand, mostly because I was stumbling over the kitty litter container every time I ventured into the closet.  What's in that container, anyway?

Well, in theory, my whole sock yarn stash.  But once I went through the big brown Rubbermaid container and the other wooden bin-that-used-to-be-a-magazine-rack, here's what I discovered:

Right.  All this other sock yarn that had been hiding in other bins.  I'm not the first knitter to note that sock yarn seems to accumulate faster than other kinds of yarn.  A lot of us buy it on our travels or whatever, somehow kidding ourselves into thinking that picking up "one souvenir skein" doesn't count toward stash.  Also, five of those skeins were gifts.  I'm not trying to rationalize, I'm just saying.

After spending some quality time with all this stuff, I was able to cull a bunch of oddball and what-was-I-thinking skeins to donate.  Eventually, I managed to smoosh all of the sock yarn into the kitty litter container, which I then fit inside the large Rubbermaid thingie.  Everything in there is now good, useful stash.  The magazine rack now contains only yarn for which I have immediate plans with projects in mind, for easy access.

So.  I've freed up floor space previously taken up by the kitty litter bin.  I've donated yarn to people who will enjoy it.  And I've been reminded of what I have so I can figure out how best to use it.  All in all, very productive!

That's (not necessarily) entertainment

Judging from the comments people have left here and/or have made to me in person about Tuesday's post, I'm not the only one who sometimes reaches that point where the things we do for fun end up feeling like chores.  And apparently quite a few of us are delusional optimistic about how much time actually exists, especially hobby/recreation/fun time.

Let's talk about this!

There are lots of ways I like to relax, but when I try to cram all of them into a weekend, I can't manage it (duh! see above point re: actual available time) and then feel stressed out.  Which basically sabotages the whole relaxing angle, obviously.  My current goals are about having more calmness in my life, remember?  Freaking out about getting "behind" on pastimes is ABSOLUTELY DUMB.

Knowing all this, recently I have:

• vowed not to start any major new sewing or knitting projects like tailored dresses or intricately cabled socks.  I'll start only simple, quick-gratification projects, and work on finishing the complicated long-term projects already in progress.
• declined several offers from friends who wanted to loan me books they thought I'd like, because I know I won't get to them right away.  (On a similar note, I'm checking out one library book at a time instead of a whole stack.)
• realized I only want to keep up with maybe two TV shows at a time.  Following anything more than that means either planning my downtime around TV (no thanks) or getting behind on episodes and trying to squeeze in time to catch up, which ends up feeling like a chore.
• cut back the Netflix plan to one DVD at a time.  When we had the two-at-a-time, we'd end up with a backlog and those little red envelopes would start taunting us (again, the pressure/ chore/obligation feeling).  Bonus: we save five bucks a month.

How about you?  How could you better manage your downtime?  Could doing fewer "relaxing" things actually help you feel more relaxed?

Letting things go

In Friday's post I mentioned that while re-organizing my fabric stash, I unearthed a project from several years ago that I realized was never going to get finished, and I got rid of it. 

Letting go of that project made me feel a bit lighter, a little less bogged down.  It's a good feeling, but one that doesn't necessarily come easy.  I've always prided myself on NOT being a person who is all talk and no action.  So if I decide I'm going to do something, I like to follow through and do it.  But sometimes...you just have to let things go.

Recently I followed a link to this article, which really puts that feeling into words.  My favorite part is this:

"Knowing when to kill a project is an important skill to have if you are interested in simplifying your life. It’s unreasonable to expect every single project you start or get involved in to be perfect. Sometimes it takes awhile to realize that it isn’t what you imagined, your goals have changed, or the passion just isn’t there."

I'd even go a step farther and say it's unreasonable to expect every single project you start or get involved with to get finished at all (never mind "perfection").  As I'm focusing on prioritizing where to put my time and attention right now, it's important to face the fact that I don't need to act on every single idea I have.  Trying to do so just leads to feeling overwhelmed, and having a bunch of half-assed, half-finished projects lying around.  UGH!  Much better to focus on the things that are really enjoyable.  Otherwise, the things we supposedly do for fun can start to feel like chores or obligations.  What fun is that?

Stash: delusions and containment

To an artsy or craftsy person, a stash is as a pantry is to cooks--a storehouse of raw materials out of which you produce your creations.  Personally, I have a sewing stash, a beading stash and a knitting stash.  Last weekend, in my efforts to de-clutter and streamline my life, I tackled the sewing stash.

Apparently, I'd been deluding myself about the size of my fabric stash.  I have this wooden chest that, in my mind, was where my fabric stash lived.  And that was kind of true--the chest was, in fact, full of fabric.  But there were also random cuts of fabric in other places--a shopping bag in the closet, a FedEx box on a shelf, etc.  These pieces had somehow ended up in a holding pattern, like a pre-stash staging area.  Some still had prices or labels pinned to them, and thus hadn't been washed or pre-shrunk and thus weren't technically ready to use and thus hadn't yet moved into the stash chest and thus didn't count as stash...yes, this does sound like a massive loophole and yes, I told you I'd been deluding myself.

So, step one was to wash/dry/pre-shrink all of this vagrant fabric--eight cuts in all, totalling somewhere between 11 and 16 yards, enough for at least five garments.  That's a lot of stash to have been floating in limbo. 

With all of this former pre-stash ready to join the rest of its brethren in the chest, I had to face the next problem: if I really wanted all of my stash to live in that chest, some would have to go.  I discovered five sewing projects that had been stalled or abandoned. Taking a hard look at these, I determined that four of the five could be saved.  The other one I realized I no longer cared about and didn't feel sad about officially surrendering.  From elsewhere in the chest, I put together a bag of remnants to give to a friend who quilts, along with some yardage I'd had literally for ten years without ever figuring out a plan for it, as well as some what-was-I-thinking pieces.

Now I can honestly say that this filled-to-the-top wooden chest contains my entire fabric stash.  Some of you with a hardcore sewing habit are surely looking at this and thinking what a puny stash this is compared to your stash closet/stash room/stash wing of your house, but that's okay.  I now know what all I have and where it all is, and I like all of it.  Plus, there's now empty closet and shelf space formerly occupied by pre-stash fabric.  Perhaps most importantly: fabric is squishy!  I've managed to cram a LOT of fabric into this chest.  If I didn't buy any more for several years, there would be plenty here to keep me busy.  Of course, I'm sure I will buy more fabric.  But THERE WILL BE NO MORE PRE-STASH STAGING AREA: I'll be trying very hard not to obtain more stash until some of what's in the chest has been sewn up to make room for new stash.  If I make this vow in front of you all here, maybe I'll actually keep it. :)

Ten percent

Last month I told you about how Adverb and I have been making an effort to minimize unnecessary stress.  A big part of this effort is de-cluttering our living space and getting rid of some Stuff.

Now, we have nothing against Stuff per se.  In fact, we like Stuff.  But the thing is, we don't need all the Stuff we have.  Some of the ways having excess Stuff causes stress in our household:

• It's often physically in the way, cluttering up the kitchen table or the floor.
• Finding what we're looking for can be difficult.
• In the case of supplies we've kept for future projects to be done when we "get around to it," some Stuff comes with an annoying, nagging little voice that says, "When are you going to use meeeeee?".

Those are just a few examples.  So, some Stuff clearly needs to go, but the task of doing something about it can seem overwhelming.  One way we've made it more manageable is to implement a "ten percent" system: tackle the Stuff one category at a time, and get rid of ten percent of it.  I went through my closet and discovered I owned 20 (really?) skirts.  So I put two of them in the pile for the yard sale.  I had 90 novels on the living room book shelf, so I weeded out nine of them.  See?  The task sounds much less daunting when broken down into modest goals like this.  Here's a handy pie chart to illustrate: :)

Ta-da!  That slice of Stuff That Goes isn't huge, but it's certainly big enough to make a difference. 

We're not done with this project (not by a long shot) but already several big boxes of Stuff have left our house, we have more closet and shelf space, and we've made some extra cash at the yard sale.  Even better, we have the happy, peaceful feeling of knowing that the Stuff that remains is the Stuff we like the best--Stuff that is useful and/or gives us enjoyment.

Pie chart created at InstantPieChart.

Stress management

With all the stress that's been swirling around me--work stuff, family stuff, money stuff, blah, blah, blah--it has felt good to narrow things down to the basics lately.  Work. Food. Sleep. Exercise.  Focusing on these kinds of things helps me concentrate on taking care of myself and my hubby, and we need that right now.  Here are a few small changes I've been working on, in my efforts to simplify:

• Purging clutter.  This not only frees up space in our small house but also (fingers crossed) will generate some extra cash in an upcoming yard sale.
• Unsubscribing from e-mail lists.  I feel much calmer without that nagging sensation in my inbox, reminding me of all the events I don't have time to attend and worthy causes I can't afford to contribute to.  If I'm inclined to re-subscribe later, I can.
• Not starting any new projects--or at least finishing more projects than I begin.  This is tough for me, because I'm surrounded every day by so much inspiration at work and elsewhere.  But right now I'm getting more satisfaction from finishing up works-in-progress that have been languishing than from the rush of newness.  Case in point, my Pomatomus socks (above) that I did for the Cookie A knitalong, and a cardigan whose pieces I finally sewed together this month.  Photo of the sweater coming soon, when I feel like it.  See how I did that, not putting unnecesary pressure on myself for a photo shoot? :)