Thanksgiving, The New Life

Thanksgiving, The New Life

This holiday looks nothing like what was celebrated as a child. The number at the dinner table has decreased significantly as my siblings have stretched out all over the country and my father's side no longer gathers at our table. My mother, being the baby of the bunch never has to host. lol This year, my son's family kept it quiet, low key, and with my Genghis being a real puberty monster, I did not want him to feel bad about being overwhelmed around people he loves and misses.

Holiday visits are now a choose your best availability and go from there; no more back and forth about making sure we all get together. As a result, I can sleep in and not stress about food prep, quantity, and post consumption clean up. Dinner around here to a vegetable stir fry, deep fried catfish, baked spaghetti, and a pie- preferably sweet potato but if my sinuses have been gentle with me (and they haven't this year) a buttermilk pie. Being newly recovered, I’m looking at matsutaki soup and a skirt steak with sweet potato chips and seaweed crisps to snack on with Stoli (I had to add that to the Windows dictionary) vodka.

Since I'm not big on the new American tradition of post holiday shopping, I assumed that I could get more rest. The reality is that if I want to be taken seriously as a designer and provider of patterns then I have to sit on the other side of the retail experience. I wanted to dive right in and hope for the best, but I didn't want to be massively embarrassed so I sat my presumptuous ass down and researched. My hubris won't get the best of me this time. I learned that yarn buying does better during the post Thanksgiving experience and specifically indie brand cult classics and major label with major sales. After the winter holiday season (did you know there were over 20 holidays celebrated during December?), people are ready to spend experimentally with gift cards they've received (I’m not there yet but it is coming) and looking to recover from the holidays with fiber therapy (have we coined that term for regular usage yet?), that is the best time for pattern makers to strike with a combo punch. This does not discount from those that buy patterns, but I have found that the biggest pattern purchases (See Me This Week) come after the yarn is in hand.

So, I don't feel as bad as when I compared myself to artists in different fields that put beautiful art out on a monthly basis. My contributions exist in their own realm of beauty and should be respected as it stands and not diminished by comparison. Thank you to every one reading these missives. To quote that great philosopher, Kendrick Lamar, "We gonn' be alright".

#nowplaying Colde Crumbling (오르르)