Old-Fashioned Fruitcake
They don’t make things like they used to! Buy a pack of cotton dishcloths, and hardly a decade has passed before they’re wearing into holes you could put a teacup through. This time around, I decided to make some myself. At least this way if they wear out in ten years, no one can be blamed for shoddy workmanship but me.
And after all, how hard can it be to crochet something square?
If one were to judge from social media and memes alone, there are only two experiences of lockdown: Exhausted Parenthood and Exorbitant Boredom. (Clearly, this overlooks other experiences such as Having to Work Despite Feeling Unsafe, and Fearing Your Family Will Starve to a Covid-Free Death, possibly because the people having those experiences don’t have a lot of time for memeing.)
Personally, my experience of lockdown was busier and more stressed than my ordinary life, due in small part to the technolofication of all communications, and in large part to publishing a book in the middle of NZ’s Level 3. Publishing in a Time of Pandemic: not recommended.
But in amongst the stress and confusion and delays, I did manage to fit in a bit of sanity-maintaining handwork. I did a moderate amount of tatting, including a very simple lace collar, and two bookmarks.
I think it was the hats that finally clued me in.
I own thirteen hats, and as I walked to the yarn shop to obtain materials for the fourteenth hat, I brooded. More than that, I mused, I prayed, I meditated. On such subjects as simplicity, the significance of hats, and the wisdom or unwisdom of buying yarn for another hat.
And this is what I realized: the reason I have so many hats – the reason why I have trouble getting rid of any of these hats – is that they represent the people I could be.