The longest short month

This February has certainly seemed that way.  It's been almost a year since I traveled - the last trip I went on included the North Texas Irish Festival, which will be virtual next weekend.  I remember my mother being worried and I joked that Chinese people didn't tend to come to Irish music festivals.  One woman at the festival wore a mask with "ALLERGIES" written across it, but most of us didn't wear masks.  We did avoid getting too close, although I didn't resist a hug from a friend of mine who came to the festival using a free ticket I had and enjoyed himself immensely.  The festival is dog-friendly and he has a friendly dog, and we were planning to repeat this year.  Well, we'll do it next year.

Work is incredibly busy.  I had a 16:45 hour day last week, according to my work tracker.  It involved some midnight work with people in China and Japan, including my having to fill out a form that was mostly in Japanese.  I was pleased that I made only one mistake, which they corrected on the other end.  I've worked part of each weekend day this weekend, and last one, and it's likely to continue through March.  My boss approved for me to take time off in April.  I haven't had a vacation since April 2019; last year's was cancelled due to the pandemic, and I didn't do a staycation.  I can think of only one day I've taken that wasn't a national holiday, and I've worked on some of those as well.  I guess I'm a workaholic, but between the weather and the pandemic, I don't have much else to do.

Except cleaning and sorting stuff, recycling, donating to the thrift store, etc.  According to my records, I donated 836 items to the thrift store this month.  They ranged from small items such as a card of buttons to large ones such as the carryon that had seen quite a few flights and road miles before travel stopped.  Books, clothing, housewares I wasn't using, or which I hadn't taken out of their packages.  And so on.  I'm not a hoarder, not the kind you see on television or read about, but I am definitely acquisitive.  Now that I've been around my stuff so much, it's clear what I really need, what I want, and what has no further purpose, at least not for me.

If I'd been doing the Minimalism Game I would have donated 406 items, so I am well ahead.  Yes, it's really a thirty-day challenge and February has only twenty-eight days, but if you add the additional 59 items it's 465, well under the 836 I donated.  I call it good.

I do find items that I'd forgotten, such as this guy:

  

Many years ago the Yarn Harlot wrote about learning to make a monkey out of leftover sock yarn at a retreat.  I thought it looked cute and based upon the photos, made one.  I showed it to her at an event and she was very dismissive.  He does look a little crazed, due to the yarn and my embroider-on-knitting skills.  He's still cute.

I missed the monthly cooking club, also due to work running over, but I emailed a photo of my meal:

The assignment was to cook something from the Pioneer Woman's blog and I chose the Crash Potatoes because I could do them with things I had already.  I changed from cheese on top to slices of lemon, which I needed to use up and I thought it went better with the glazed delicata squash and eggs.  Not a food-blogger-pretty plate of food, but it was very tasty.

Overall, it feels like an incredibly long time, and it's hard to believe that February is the shortest month.  Maybe because work has been so overwhelming, or because I was able to do two trips to the thrift store, or just because the days blur because I am not traveling or even going to local events.  Some cinemas are open, with limited attendance, but I haven't felt like going.  There aren't concerts or other performances in person, not to speak of, and there's still too much snow for me to get in a walk.  The rare time I have the opportunity during daylight it's too cold, or raining.  Yes, tons of excuses.

It's also been over a year since I've seen any of my family, except for a couple of Zoom calls.  I speak to them, and email, but it's not the same.  I haven't seen a lot of my friends in at least that long, except for the ones I saw at NTIF last year.  We keep up via email and social media and a very rare Zoom call, but again - not the same.  I really miss seeing people for more than a distant front-stoop chat, or the routine of post office and weekly CSA or farmstand shopping, or the less frequent food delivery.  It will be nice to sit across a table with somebody and share a meal.  It will be fantastic to hug my family again.

Mini-Resolutions Status

I finally started the second sock, although I haven't gotten far.  I'm well on the way with the BLUE hat for my KnitTalk Make-Along challenge:

The multi has some blue in it that may be too close to the solid, but from a distance it looks better than it does when I am knitting.  I didn't do the deep ribbing the pattern has so I am leaving off one of the rounds of the full-sized dots to compensate.

I haven't finished any of my UFOs, nor a single book.  I am behind on the reading, as I would have to finish an average of one book every two months.  Maybe I need to choose a different book.

Update on what's been leaving

I meant to post an update on the Minimalism Game every week, and of course that didn't happen.  I did keep going strongly after the first week.  I need to finish totaling up everything, but so far recorded:

• 278 items to the thrift stores
• 35 lbs of fabric sold on Craigslist
• Three household items on Craigslist that will go to the thrift store if they do not sell
• Three soap kits that I'll donate to some homeschooling friends if they don't sell on Craigslist (and which I count as one item because they are listed together)
• Six bags of paper and non-redistributable magazines (mostly old, boring professional ones) to recycling
• Three bags of magazines offered on Freecycle (and which will be recycled if they don't find a new home soon!)
• Four items rehomed to others (a huge ball of cotton yarn to a friend who makes facecloths for the New Start Washcloth Project; a wooden box of soaps from England to another friend; a Scottish wool sweater to a male friend who fits it better than I do - it's a bigger medium than I apparently need; and a can of Tazo "Calm" tea to the dance mistress of a show I did at the beginning of the month, that I'd been given but I cannot tolerate chamomile)
• A Lantern Moon tote bag to the raffles at DFW Fiber Fest
• Two cartons of paper items to be shredded (one box was 13" high and I forgot to measure the other - the friends who inspired that decided each inch of paper counts as a "thing")
• 37 items into the trash

If you are counting, that's only 381 items and not 406, because I didn't count the magazines separately and only have one measurement of inches of paper being shredded, and I didn't count the extras that I put into the lot of soap kits.  Plus, I think I have not finished counting items because there's a pile on the guest room bed......


Now some people are doing a "one bag for every day of Lent" thing, and I'm not ready to enter into that, but will keep it in mind.  I suppose you can always pick a month to do "a bag a day" and see what you can discard.

In other news - I've made a couple-three scarves to take to my friend whose church gives them to The Samaritan Inn.  Some people have talked about attaching scarves and hats and such to fences or trees in low-income neighborhoods and near shelters for people who need them, but it hasn't happened in Hartford to my knowledge.  I've also done four pink-and-purple cat hats for a friend's daughters and nieces (a commission project!) and a hat for her SIL (that I promised to make less pointy on top), al in reflective yarn because the SIL thinks they need to wear lots of reflective gear when walking home from services at night.  My friend thinks these are a bit more chic than the construction workers' vests her SIL distributes.

28 Items Ready to Go

The first week of the Minimalism Game is done, and although I got busy and didn't pick out item for the last couple of days, I caught up this morning.  This means that in addition to the items I had already packed up to go to a thrift store, twenty-eight more items are heading out the door.  I calculated that by the end of the month, I need to have gotten rid of over four hundred items!  To be precise, Σ28 = 406.

In some cases, the item was a thing I had thought about sending away, but hadn't made up my mind.  The challenge helped me make up my mind.  In others, it was something I had gotten thinking I would use it and have not, or had gotten for gifting and that never happened either.  Sometimes it's a child's item and the children I know are older now.

So hopefully on Sunday I'll take this week's collection to the thrift store, and get some boxes and things to start the next week's collection.

I did add some rules of my own, at least for this week:

• Items already packed up for the thrift store - I had 21 of them - did not count.
• Items I have set aside to send to Mittens for Akkol for their current grads collection also do not count.
• The boxes and things that I am using to take the items to the thrift store of course do not count.
• Items for my Etsy shop also don't count, since I keep hoping to dispose of them by having someone buy one.  Or several.

So far, everything I packed up on a day had a single ending, mostly the thrift store, with one exception.  I think that may change later in the month, but we shall see.  I know I have plenty of magazines for some of the larger-numbered days.


In other news, this also left the house this week.  Given that it is a commissioned item, I don't really count that as something that should leave.  I was working on a scarf for a friend, and our stage manager saw me, and asked if I would make a scarf for her.  In discussing colour options she mentioned grey, and when I asked what shade she wanted, her eyes lit up.  "You know, there's that movie coming out....."

I told her that there was no way I would try to find, or work with, fifty shades of a colour, but I'd see what I can do.  This is five shades worked in single crochet entrelac.  Washable acrylics because she has three large dogs; the outermost one has a touch of sparkle.  She's not a big "bling" person, but was thrilled to see a bit of it in the yarn.  And she loves the end result, which is the best part.

Next up are to finish my friend's scarf, and make five hats of reflective yarn that a friend commissioned for her sister-in-law, nieces, and daughters.  And I want to get a couple of boxes of craft supplies organized and photographed to post on Craigslist to see if anybody wants them.  I'm sure they will go quickly on Freecycle, which will be the next stop for them.

The Minimalism Challenge

A friend's boyfriend challenged her to do this, and some of us think it's a good idea.  I am going to challenge my parents, because my mother is always trying to get my dad to throw things away.

The idea of this game is that you must get rid of as many things as the number of the day of the month.  So one thing on the first day of the month, two things on the second day, and so on. The original challenge says that "each material possession must be out of your house—and out of your life—by midnight each day", which really doesn't work in the middle of a blizzard.  So we've adapted it to you have to put the item in a box, and not take it out again, and on the weekend donate it someplace - Goodwill, Savers, Salvation Army, local charity shops/thrift stores, a shelter. 

One of the people in my friend's feed suggested: 

If you have anything you think a teacher might use, contact one you know or a local school. Art supplies, old shirts for paint smocks, magazines, even old stickers that come with address labels and envelopes to return bills you pay online can be useful in elementary schools. High school teachers use all kinds of used stuff as well. 

Some after school programs could use art supplies, too.

If you decide to do this, follow the standard rule for donations: Make sure the item is in good, usable condition.  If it's not, throw it away!  Nobody can wear falling-apart shoes, or would want a torn and stained shirt or pants.  Dried out paint and glue will not benefit a crafts program.  Expired personal care products or food.  If you cannot use it, why give it to someone else?

Because I already had a box going, I wrestled with whether to count it or not.  For now, I will, but this weekend I may get caught up on items.  I am going to keep a list so that I can see how much goes out the door.   Magazines will definitely be included in a later week when I have to get rid of a lot of things per day.  There's a debate about getting rid of old papers, and we seem to be agreeing that one inch of paper would count as one thing for the day.  Too much?  Too little?