A First Post

Needing an outlet to share my crafty thrifty side and catalog my journey through life, I decided the best way to do that was, of course, a blog!

About Me:

I am a mid-30s mother of 4 and wife to a computer/music geek.  I am also pretty geeky and occasionally a literary nerd - I tend to spend way too much time in handarts like knitting, spinning, and sewing while watching (or listening to) classics or Doctor Who.  I also like spy-shows like Alias and Chuck. :D

My four kids are young - my oldest just turned 8 and my youngest is 15 months, and I use my creativity as an outlet to stay sane.  After a day of chaos, there is something about the rhythm and predictability of stitches that soothes me!  I have two boys, and then two girls.  Good playmates.

I own my own business, making reusable household products, both soap and bath products as well as sewn cloth products like reusable menstrual pads.  I also dye fiber and yarn, so I have a second little etsy shop for that, though it's only occasionally stocked.

My history: 

Mid-way through childhood, my mom taught me to cross-stitch.  This lead almost immediately into me constructing and handsewing my own doll, complete with yarn hair and clothing, though poorly done.  For a 8 year old, I suppose it was excellently done!  By 13 I was a proficient cross-stitcher, a decent sewer, and I had started to construct dollhouses from kits - I liked to choose the biggest, most complicated one.  I made accessories and furniture for the dollhouse using bits of trash and fabrics.  I feel I was pretty clever as a child!

I learned to knit as a 19 year old, working reception at a music store.  The other receptionist, an older woman, taught me everything I wasn't able to teach myself, which was most of it.  I quickly gave up on that for crochet, which stuck better.  But when I moved to Ohio in 2007, at the age of 27, I picked up knitting again, and the next year, spinning yarn.

Those were the years I was introduced to more frugal, renewable ways of living.  We were "house poor" and I learned to coupon and shop thrift stores in earnest, to reuse what I have, and to garden.  I was also introduced to cloth diapers for my 18 month old son, and shortly after, I learned about cloth menstrual pads and other reusable products.  I started making my own soap, and laundry detergent, and using the clothesline outside.

I can't say I've always been consistent.  We moved to Nashville, TN in 2009, and I haven't had a clothesline since (though I do have a very energy efficient drier, which is nice, because I also have three more children!)  I still try to compost, and we have a garden, but no recycling.  (I need to work on that!)  I still use cloth pads and usually use cloth diapers, and we are most definitely frugal with consignment sales, garage sales, and couponing keeping costs down so we can pay off our debts and make a nice life for ourselves!

So what is this blog about?

I suppose I just want to share.  I'm not sure I have anything important to say, but maybe my journey in learning to live the way my ancestors did will affect you, too.  I am tired of the commercialism of this world, the constant struggle to have more, do more, be more than is humanly possible.  I am concerned for my children and the barrage of advertising that tells them they are not good enough.  I want to get back to a place where it is okay to have work and play clothing with patches, and where it's not an embarrassment that the muffler in my van is cracked and a bit noisy, because, hey, it's paid off!  I want to relish the accomplishment of making something beautiful in it's own right - not because it's perfect, but because it is. 

Voluntary Simplicity.  I suppose that's what this blog is about.

Hopefully the rest of my blog posts will be a bit more lighthearted, but there you go.   That's me in a very small nutshell. :D