The Gift of Thrift And A Happy New Year

The last day of the year is a good day for taking down and putting away stuff from the holidays. In our home, there will be a new addition to Bill's shelf of homebrew supplies: The feed and grain coop store in Antigo  added brewing and winemaking supplies to their inventory, and Bill got a 3-gallon glass carboy. It's rare for us to spend this much on a store-bought gift, but at 23 bucks there's no way I could acquire glassblowing tools, materials and skills to make a big bottle myself.

 
Bill got me a set of wool carders at the Sievers garage sale. Everybody else got something homemade. If you were to add up the time we spend making gifts, it would probably even out with the time other people spend going to jobs to earn money to buy gifts plus the time (and gas) they use to go shop for things to buy.

But making everything does take a lot of time, so Bill and I try to alternate who makes the bulk of our holiday gifts. This was my year. You can read how I used fabric reclaimed from thrift shop sheets and curtains, the indigo vat, and bits of fabric from my stash in my gift posts on Two Red Threads.

With holiday sewing done, I had a chance to catch up on some mending. The breeze at the knees was giving Bill a chill where his Carhartt work pants wear out. My studio jeans had a few breezes of their own.

I don't spend much time on these repairs or worry too much about how they look. Apart from an occasional quick trip to the post office, chances are nobody will see them but us. To us, they're just pants -- something to keep us warm, something to deflect sawdust and slivers and stray drops of dye. And to us, patches represent more than keeping garments out of the waste stream. They represent the way we stitch together a lifestyle measured less by our income than by the progress we're making toward our long-term goals.

In truth, it's a tight squeeze. We spend more on our monthly health insurance premium than on any other category of household expense, including our mortgage -- and that's with a $5,000 deductible. Unexpected medical expenses hit us this year, but then it's always something. You feel like you're getting ahead, and a vehicle needs a new head gasket. We don't take it personally. We just do what we have to do to keep our vehicles roadworthy and our bodies healthy and productive. We've been careful, and we've been lucky.

We're making do. And for that, we are grateful.

We hope that in the new year we all can find creative ways to meet the challenges ahead (whatever they may be), and continue to make ends meet without losing track of which ends are important. Happy New Year!

Spring Cleaning In The Studio

Yesterday I did a bit of spring cleaning in the studio. Today I've been reflecting on advice I've given to many students over the years.

"You have to make a lot of stuff."

This is part of the sermon on building fluency with the materials, finding your voice, yadda yadda yadda.

Well, I practice what I preach, and I've got a whole lot of stuff. Yesterday I started looking through several boxes of samples for classes I don't expect to teach again. I need to clear some things out to make room for more samples for classes I am teaching now and ones I'm developing for the future.

What to do with all this stuff? I have plenty of other samples that more than adequately illustrate possibilities and the evolution of ideas. I don't need to keep all of this. So I started sorting it into piles.

Gifts. There are a few things I know I can give as gifts soon enough that I'll actually remember I have them stashed away to give as gifts. This wasn't a huge pile, though, because I enjoy making gifts that are really personalized.

Donations. Maybe I'm naive on this point, but I want donations to represent current work or new ideas I'm exploring. Still, I found something to donate to an event next year. It will be part of the award given for an exhibit piece made with recycled materials. Must remember what I'm donating and where I'm stashing it.

Recycle. I found a few pieces I could recycle into something for a gift or harvest for materials.

Archive. There are pieces I want to hold onto just the way they are. Some may inspire future efforts. Some will remind me not to waste more time on that idea.

That left me with a large pile of stuff I don't want to keep, give, recycle or archive. And a dilemma. This stuff doesn't represent the work I do now. But it represents hundreds of hours of time. I have no desire to go to the work of photographing it, writing descriptions, pricing it, and trying to sell it online. But it represents hundreds of hours of time. I don't want to sell it at a garage sale or donate it to a thrift shop. Did I mention it represents hundreds of hours of time?

So I slept on it last night and here's what I decided. I'm packing  it up and taking it with me to a gathering at the Amana Colonies in Iowa later this month. The friend who organizes the Festival of American Basketry at Amana is hosting an event that will include demonstrations and sales to the public as well as time to share and connect among participants. I always love going to Amana, and I love this group of people. They'll understand what I'm about to do.

I'm not going to package or tag stuff (there's at least 5 hours saved). I'm going to put it on a table with a sign that says, "Pay what it's worth to you."

I don't think this will have a negative impact other people's sales at the event. In the unlikely event that there's someone selling things very similar to mine, I'll remove mine until theirs are sold. And if there's anyone at all who's uncomfortable with this scheme, I'll remove it all and just demonstrate and sell books like I planned.

But if it works, some of this stuff will have new homes by the end of the month, I'll have freed up some real estate in the studio, and maybe, just maybe, I'll have some income in a month with no teaching gigs scheduled.

What do you think. Am I nuts?

Building The Pile

Welcome to Compost & Creativity. I’m Donna Kallner, a fiber artist from rural northern Wisconsin. For most of our lives, my husband and I have been self-employed. We’ve had lots of practice at coming up with creative solutions to challenges faced while trying to make art and make do. And in trying to make a difference in the world, we’ve learned that even small things can yield big results.

Everywhere we turn, we meet wonderful people who are also trying to make do and make a difference. This blog is a place to share ideas. Thanks for coming by and joining in.

I’ll be posting once or twice a week about topics related to living well but simply – things like vegetable gardening, composting, food preservation, bread making, growing and gathering craft materials, homebrew, winemaking, low-cost low-impact recreation, pets, housekeeping, clothing, craftivism, community, volunteering, vehicles, books and blogs. I’ll post occasional creativity exercises, DIY gift making tutorials, and PDF resources that make it easier to get volunteer jobs done in your local community.

To stay up-to-date with what’s happening at Compost And Creativity, subscribe to this blog, using the button in the sidebar.

Building a blog is a lot like building a compost pile: It can be done with little thought to the ingredients and left on its own, and still produce results – eventually. But the results will be better and we’ll have something rich and fertile sooner with a healthy mix of elements added to the pile.

Here, the key to the mix is you. I hope you’ll share your ideas and experiences. Join the conversation related to a post by clicking the Comments button at the bottom of it.

Want to write a guest post for Compost and Creativity? Send me your ideas at donnastitches[at]gmail.com.