Monday morning things

* I got the last of the preparatory stuff done on the "birb" quilt yesterday and now it's to the point of sewing up blocks, so hopefully I will get this one finished soon. Not sure what will be next - I have a number of ideas and I keep thinking I need to do that Vignere cipher quilt (with the typography fabrics, and I think I've collected enough) that I keep talking about doing. (Bonus: that one will, like the "birb" quilt, not require laying out before I set it together).

I bought a magazine of "Modern Quilts" (It turned out some of the patterns were reprints from the Better Homes and Gardens quilting magazine I already have a subscription to, but whatever) and there's another one in there I want to do with some of the grey solid I have and some of the grey-background floral prints. 

* I also made a few more afghan squares for the Color-Bar blanket. I am debating taking the ones I have done and blocking them - maybe as I do a set, I block them all to size (in a stack).

* I had kind of stalled out on "Back from the Land" but I pulled it out and read some more on it last night - the narrative now is discussing people returning to society. In some cases it was simply becoming sick with the level of effort required - using privies, and washing things by hand, and not living near to needed things (pharmacies, grocery stores) and all of that. And some comment was made in the book about the then-new (this book is a few years old) "voluntary simplicity" movement, and how it seemed like a successor to that. And I do think that the tiny-house/hipster/convenience-shunning mindset is perhaps a spiritual descendant of that. (There was an article in the NYT - I saw it linked elsewhere - called The Tyranny of Convenience and I will agree with many of the commenters on Metafilter, who noted "This guy has never ACTUALLY handwashed anything bigger than workout clothes." (given that he rails against washing machines and dryers. Okay, for some people, line drying is a good thing and I salute people who can save energy by doing that. I can't; my allergies would kill me - I'm already suffering bad hives right now from the pollen). But yeah. That kind of "Why don't you just take on additional labor because it's good for you" mindset makes me so tired. I work full-time, okay? And I have volunteer work I do, okay? What of that do you want me to slack on so I can wash sheets in, I don't know, my bathtub, because it's, I don't know, good for my soul or something?

(I don't know. Doing things in an intentionally more difficult way that doesn't give me any real reward doesn't seem to be something that would enhance my mood or particularly benefit my soul. And yes, I say that as someone who sews some of my own clothing, and knits some of my own garments, and makes quilts....but all those things, given that they are more labor to me, bring me pleasure and relaxation (and a product better than what I could perhaps easily afford otherwise). But I love a lot of the modern conveniences. As I said - I remember my mom's stories from her childhood of having to haul water and use an outhouse, and all that does is make me more grateful for having a kitchen sink and a bathroom)

There was also the comment that people felt they needed to feel they had done more with their lives than the manual labor that homesteading required. And while I suspect that if you raise a child, you do have that satisfaction, for a childless person, doing only manual labor to stay alive all day, every day, gets old really fast if you have some other option.

And there's also the isolating nature of homesteading (at least for those not on communes, and communes had their own additional level of heartache) - you don't have other people around to talk to and it does seem for a lot of people, lacking a community was a problem. (Winters in snow country seemed to be particularly isolating).

And that's why I wonder what the outcome of things like the Tiny House movement will be; perhaps some people will find it suits them and they stay with it, but I suspect a lot of people will tire of it. Or will "age out" (I cannot imagine sleeping in a loft where I have to climb a ladder up and down to get in and out of it - not just for the "having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night" but also the fear of falling early in the morning when tired). And just being in that small a space would probably get old - like I said, during prolonged periods of heavy rain it would get really old and crummy and isolating (especially if you were stuck in with several family members and maybe a wet dog).

I dunno. I admit I am suspicious of people who talk about giving up some of the blessings of modern life without a clearly good reason (e.g., maybe not having fancy gadgets as a way of saving money) and who make some handwaving claim to "virtue" or "it's good for you." I don't necessarily believe hardship is good for a person...certainly not the grinding labor of having to handwash clothing or carry water or whatever, especially not on top of working full time otherwise.

(Another comment made: labor-saving devices have always existed, at least for the wealthy: years back they were called "servants" or "slaves" and yes, that's true. I'd rather outsource my clothes-washing to a machine than force a person to do it for me.)