Opting Out and Thrifty Crafting

At what point do we need to catch up with ourselves?

Dear Friend,

In this letter, we’ll talk about…

📵 Opting Out

🪡 Making Crafting Financially Accessible

🧶 What I’m Working On

📵 Opting Out

I was talking with a friend the other day, and we were lamenting the state of social media. Facebook came about when I was in college, and quite literally, it was designed and piloted with college students in mind. The concept was great - network and share with friends, keep in touch with those far away. Those benefits became so ingrained in us that people are still making the same argument for the platforms, adding in the ability to market local events and small businesses. But is that still accurate?

The local firehouse made a post inviting kids to come down that afternoon for ice cream and truck tours. The problem is, it didn’t show up in my feed until 2 days later when it no longer applied. I would scroll through my feed only to see strange people and groups being “suggested” instead of news from my actual friends. Incessant reels, marketing posts, political and social divisiveness…it became a lot of noise to me, sowing seeds of anxiety, depression, discontent, and self-doubt. It was feeding the impulse to accumulate - through influencers, the buy nothing groups, sales at small businesses, a deal on FB marketplace - all things I didn’t “need” until I saw them. But worst of all - it was an addictive distraction affecting the truly important things around me.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

Proverbs 4:23

Something I’d see or read would stick in me and bubble away on a back burner in my mind. Oftentimes it would spill over and I’d be irritable or short tempered without meaning to be. I’d do “one last scroll” as I lay in bed, which always lasted longer than I’d intended and robbed me of restful sleep. I’d hit the snooze on the alarm that would have given me quiet morning time before the kids awoke. Anytime I had an inactive moment, I habitually picked up my phone for an update.

As a homeschooling mother of four, life can be chaotic. However, I have a hunch that the overwhelm I often feel is not entirely due to that. My children and my husband are competing with silent pots on the back burners. Pots that don’t have to be there.

Social media has become so ingrained in our society that to be without it seems impossible. But it’s not. Sure, it’s countercultural, and likely to be inconvenient at times, but they don’t open a Facebook account when you submit a birth certificate. It’s not required.

So I’m opting out. I’m taking an indefinite social media fast in an effort to regain my focus and be more intentional about what I consume. I want to do more with what God has given me.

🪡 Crafting Tips: Save Money on Materials

I’m at a bit of a crossroads with my knitting and sewing. I have champagne taste and a tap water budget. My husband and I are managing a family of six on one income, so budgeting is a real thing in our house. My hobbies are not one of the four walls (housing, food, utilities, and transportation), so I don’t have much allocated for my supplies. I despise working with acrylic and am not a fan of what the big box stores have to offer.

Now, if all you can swing with your budget is what the big box stores have on sale, please understand that I am NOT judging. This is my personal dilemma, as I have a slight obsession with natural fibers and want my own flock of sheep. But if you’re like me, scrounging your pennies for the next skein of yarn or yard of fabric, but wanting to work with wool, linen, silk, or cotton then let me share my tactics.

I will save up to invest in my project supplies, but for the in between times, here are five places to buy discounted supplies (no coupon necessary):

1. Destashes: if you’re on social media or Ravelry, there are groups and forums for people looking to sell off some of their supplies, oftentimes at a discount to you.

2. Yard/Garage/Estate Sales: This is another great way to find craft supplies on the cheap. You may be able to buy a bulk lot of yarn or fabric. It helps to know your fibers or how to test the fibers, as labels may or may not exist.

3. Supply Swaps: If you are part of a local crafting group, see if they have or are interested in having a destash party or supply swap.

4. Thrift Stores: Check to see if your local Goodwill or Salvation Army has a crafting section. Other crafters have also bought sweaters cheaply and unraveled them to use the yarn for a pattern they prefer, or bought cotton, silk, or linen sheets to use as fabric.

5. Crafting Thrift Stores: See if there is a shop near you that resells donated crafting supplies. I recently found a store that sells fabric for a flat $5 per yard, or smaller pieces by the pound. I just snagged a sweater’s quantity of wool yarn and skeins of pure silk and wool/silk blends for $4 a skein. I’ll share the link at the end of this letter because they also have weekly online drops.

🧶 What I’m Working On

Do any of you have all the ambitious plans for making things leading up to a week, then the time somehow siphons off here, there, and every place OTHER than into your crafting? That was this week.

I had grand plans to sew myself a Gypsum skirt by Sew Liberated, and got as far as printing and assembling the pattern pieces. They lie in a cut out stack on my sewing table, awaiting fabric. I set myself up for failure on this one, as we were preparing to head on vacation and my husband was pulling overtime front-loading his work so that he could actually take some time off with us. Such is the life of a freelance writer, still relatively fresh in his career. Laundry and packing for a family of six took all the kid-free moments that I otherwise would have sewn in.

I did pick up and put in some work on a long languishing work-in-progress (WIP) that I decided to take on vacation with me. I started my Navelli tee by Boyland Knitworks (Caitlin Hunter) back before I got pregnant with my second child. I put it down “temporarily” because I didn’t want to put the time into something I wouldn’t fit when I finished. Best to finish it after the baby arrived and I was back to my non-pregnant shape. Joke was on me. I’ve now gone through three pregnancies without finishing it, and I am definitely still heavier than I was when I started it.

Call me optimistic, call me naive, call me stubborn, I refuse to frog it. The color work is really lovely, and its boxy shape forgiving. I can stretch it out a bit during blocking if need be. I’ve knit the entire body, split and finished the back panel, now I’m creeping my way up a front panel. All it needs are sleeve cuffs and it’s done. I’m determined to finish it before I hit the five year mark.

What’s the longest WIP you’ve ever finished? Are there some lurking in a time-out basket somewhere?

Links for this Letter

Swanson’s Fabrics (craft thrift store)

Gypsum Skirt by Sew Liberated

Navelli Tee by Boyland Knitworks

Food for Fatherhood - my husband’s substack

Until next week, lots of love,

Briana