I also wanted to get yarn for the Ocellus amigurumi and also for (yet another) crocheted blanket. Because I had a coupon and JoAnn's was having a sale.
But yeah. Sometimes when I go out shopping, thinking it will be a fun and happy time, it isn't. This time wasn't. For one thing, apparently a new thing is for people to slowly meander through parking lots on foot - including walking down the middle of the lane you're supposed to drive in, all the while not looking for cars because they're so wrapped up in their phones. I wound up creeping along at a couple miles per hour behind a woman who was remarkably oblivious to my presence. (NB: I do not drive a hybrid car, nor a particularly quiet internal-combustion-engine one). Also there was a SIDEWALK parallel to where she was walking. So, I don't know.
Yes, I could have honked, but that seemed churlish to me.
And then when I got into the JoAnn's and went to the yarn section, there were seven or eight women - probably about my age but very much the former-sorority-sister type, talking VERY loudly and completely blocking the aisle. I got halfway down it, couldn't get any further. One said to me, "Oh honey, just tell us to move if you need us to move" but when I said "excuse me" they either didn't hear me or pretended not to.
So yeah. I went and looked at other areas of the store, figuring they'd leave. Got a pack of quilting needles, though not my favorite kind (I need more, but they don't sell my favorite kind, and it will be at least a month before I can get to the quilt shop in Whitesboro that does have them). Went back. They were still there. Looked at the magazines for a while. They were still there, but then were talking about going over to the Hobby Lobby and I thought hard in their direction "Yes, go to the Hobby Lobby" (so I could get the yarn).
It was also just very loud in the store in general. Not many people in there but they had the bad pop music they usually play cranked very loud - it gave me a headache. (This is not the first time the volume of the music in JoAnn's has been higher than what I would like. Ironically enough, they sent me an e-mail survey about my experience this morning and I filled it out TRUTHFULLY - I know some retail-worker-advocates tell you to "give all 10s because someone might get fired otherwise," honestly....they need to know their music is too loud in the store)
I finally managed to get the right colors - sort of - for Ocellus, but two of the colors of Red Heart the pattern called for because JoAnn's only has a few colors. I guessed at comparable colors of a Bernat acrylic: they are not perfect but when I looked at Amazon to see about maybe ordering the "right" colors, they were prohibitively expensive (probably because of the shipping) so whatever, I'll have a just-slightly-wrong-colored Ocellus, I guess.
And I found some "Pound of Love" acrylic for the blanket; it was the softest of the ones I looked at. Not a PERFECT color of what I was envisioning but it will be okay. The blanket takes some 2300 yards so being able to get the yarn on a good sale was important.
And then the person at the checkout harangued me for not buying three skeins of the Red Heart super-saver because, "But you would save more"
"But," I said, "I don't need a third skein."
"But you will SAVE MORE"
"But I don't need it"
"SAVE MORE!"
"You didn't have the colors I needed in the Red Heart or I would have got three skeins."
That shut her up but I do not like that kind of interaction. So I felt really bad walking out of there, between that and the women who just reminded me of how small and alone my life actually is, because I don't have a crew to do things like go out shopping with, and also, how it's just harder to navigate the world when you're alone, because things happen like big groups block you and don't hear you when you try to say "excuse me" to get past them. (Sad Fluttershy.)
And then I went to Kroger. It was busy and crowded. I got what I needed but I admit I felt a pang walking past the bakery, and past all the frozen treats, and down the cookie aisle...trying to reduce and trying to cut back on sugar and even other carbohydrates like bread is hard for me, and while it IS easier if I don't have the stuff in the house, still, it makes me sad to have my two or three little servings of vegetables and have that be it.
But anyway. I was also feeling bad because of the whole Birthday thing (not being able to get out to do fun things remotely close to the day, and also, my parents asked me what I wanted and I couldn't come up with anything (These days, most of my deepest desires are for things that aren't actually Things, and there's the added difficulty of my not wanting to make it burdensome for my mother to get me a gift)
So yeah, I was not in a good mood yesterday afternoon and evening. (I wound up trying to crochet squares for the current crochet blanket, and watch Dr. Pol, but eventually I wound up just going and getting the "Cony" unicorn stuffed animal and sitting and hugging it to my chest because I was sad)
Today, after church, I decided to do something "useful." (None of my hobbies are really, strictly, in the most materialistic/reductionist sense, "useful" - I do not need more quilts, I do not need more handknit socks, etc. But perhaps the point of a hobby is do combat the general reductionism of the modern culture that says you must always be producing things for the common good or increasing your wealth).
So I went into my sewing room. And started work on the newest quilt. I had started cutting for this a while back but didn't get very far. Today, I got all the cutting-out done, and some of the sewing. It's kinda-sorta an Irish Chain style, some nine-patch blocks (made from Charm Pack fabrics) and some "spacer" blocks with an additional (yardage) fabric. The yardage - none of it is shown here, I haven't started sewing those blocks yet - is from my stash; the charm packs came from Kaleidoscope Quilts:
There are eighteen of these total, in different colors (there aren't that many different patterns; that is typical of these pre-cut sets). I had originally considered using a pink fabric I had for the background, but after my dissatisfaction with the pink in the last quilt, I decided to switch to white, and repurposed a piece from my stash (I can always buy another chunk of white for the quilt that I had originally gotten it for).
Here's a close up:
And I had two thoughts while I was back there working:
First, another resolution: In addition to "try to finish up some of the long-term projects," I could also take all the quilt patterns I've marked in my magazines and books as "I want to make this some day" and also grab some of the chunks of fabric I have bought over the years where I said "I like this but don't know what to do with it" and just match up fabric and pattern, and worry less about if it's the PERFECT pattern for the fabric, and also try to use stash-fabric as much as practicable, and just work down the stash some (I won't use it all up; I have a truly dramatic fabric stash).
I already found three fabrics (two, 2 1/2 yard pieces, and one bigger piece) for a very simple quilt - checkerboard squares interspersed with wide strips - that will probably be the next top I do. (It will be fun to do a really fast one like that).
I'll probably eventually get them all quilted (I still hold a vague dream of getting my own longarm machine some day), or, failing that, I might give some of them away to people who either like to quilt or who would get them quilted, or, heck, I might just make them and then some day my heirs can divvy them up, if people still use quilts in 2060 or thereabouts. Better that than them inheriting a pile of fabric.
And I had another thought: I need a new cutting mat. (These are the big flat mats - Olfa is the best known company making them - that you use with rotary cutting, as a surface under your fabric). Mine is 20 years old and is starting to crumble a little (They are not so "self-healing" as they claim). And then I thought: wait, couldn't Mom and Dad get me one for my birthday? And then I thought: maybe they could call Lulu and Hazel's (the quilt shop here in town) and order one for me, and I could pick it up. (I am guessing the shop would be happy to do that, my mom could give a credit card number over the phone, and I KNOW they order the mats because I asked about it once before, but said I wasn't ready to order one). So I called her and suggested that and that solves the problem of "what do I want for my birthday"
So that made me happier. And just sewing makes me happier. Sewing is my first craft "language," so to speak. I was thinking about it, the order in which I learned things:
Handsewing: about age 6 or so.
Embroidery: shortly after. (My mom has one or two pieces that I embroidered based on drawings I did as a kid - birds and butterflies)
Crochet: maybe about 7 or 8
Knitting: 10, the Thanksgiving of the year I was 10
Sewing on a sewing machine: Maybe 10 or 11? I remember my mom got an old, old White machine from her friend Marian - Marian's husband "rescued" old machines and fixed them up. It was never a particularly great machine. After my dad's mother died, my mom got back the older model Singer that she had passed on to Grandma when she got her Kenmore...and I had that in my bedroom for a while. Still later, I traded two handmade teddy bears (for her grandsons) to Marian for a newer Kenmore portable model (so I could take one to college with me, though I never used it). That's the one I use now; it's a good machine - it's not fancy but it's a tank and it runs well and isn't fussy; I just do a little cleaning periodically and oil it every six months or so.
But piecework? In the sense of making quilts? Some of the first things I ever sewed were "doll quilts" (Well, really: quilts for my stuffed animals, which I preferred to dolls for playing with when I was small) sewn by hand from scraps my maternal grandmother had, done while we were up visiting her. They are more coverlets than true quilts; they are backed but don't have a filler layer and aren't quilted. (I still have them, packed away somewhere, at my parents' house).
So quiltmaking is familiar and comforting to me, and I always find when I return to it after a break I wonder why I hadn't been doing it all along.
Also, yesterday - before the whole debacle at JoAnn's - I had gone to the Target for some staple items (TP, laundry detergent, shampoo) that I needed, and I found yet another "nostalgia toy reissue" (for some reason Target seems to get these. Then again, the only other place I ever get to look at a "Toy Section" is the wal-mart, and theirs is a lot smaller)
I didn't have one of these, but a friend did, and also had the "dollhouse" Holly Hobbie colorforms, with little figures you could move around and make stories up about:
A Holly Hobbie "paper doll" Colorforms - so the clothes stick and are easy to change. (Though Colorforms I remember from childhood seemed higher quality - thicker, and easier to peel off their backing?)
I also wonder: are Colorforms still commonly sold as a toy? I know a few years ago I saw a reproduction of the original set (just geometric shapes, so you made up your own designs) in an art-museum catalog, but I haven't seen "regular" Colorforms - like the ones I knew as a kid, where there was a scene and little characters you could move around in it and stick to the background (Oddly, now that I think of it, like the Sunday-School "flannelboards" of my youth). Colorforms were an excellent car toy - because everything clung to the background, it was less likely you'd lose the pieces, and it was quiet. I wonder if that kind of thing is all-virtual now. (A while back we were discussing in my department about how something is a little lost when kids don't have the chance to "manipulate" objects like Lego or other small things, and they do it all virtually. It shows up in both ability in and comfort with using lab equipment....the people who built things as kids, or played with Lego, or made doll clothes, they are more comfortable than the kids who seemed to mainly play video games...)
But yeah, there is a little atavistic pleasure in being able to make different outfits for Holly Hobbie. It's simple, it doesn't require a lot of thought or (for an adult) a particularly great deal of dexterity, but it's kind of fun. And there is something comforting about it. I might leave her stood up somewhere - on my piano or some place - and just periodically change up her outfit (there are white, yellow, red, and blue clothing components, several different skirts and tops, a pinafore, a couple of hats, and some smaller things including bows and flowers and gloves)
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