Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. This is our second in Germany. Last year we used the Thanksgiving holiday to visit Germany and check out our future home. We ate dinner on Thanksgiving at an Indian restaurant. This year, we ordered takeout from the same restaurant Wednesday night so we could start putting our apartment in order for today. A few of my husbands colleagues will join us for dinner. Pies, stuffing, and cranberry sauce are made and the turkey is in the over.

I have may things to be thankful for this year, but in this post I am going to focus on some of the “fluffy” related things I’m thankful for.

– All the crafters who were a part of my childhood. My mom, my grandmother, AwesomeE’s mom and more. They all introduced me to all sorts of arts and crafts, early and often, especially the fiber craft ones. They demonstrated that they could be fulfillling, and that something can be both useful and a valid artistic expression, no matter what others may say.

– My husband, who supports and enables my crafting. I know so many women who talk about hiding or downplaying their latest yarn purchase, while he thought displaying my yarn on the wall was a great idea. He gets that I need to work on fiber projects to be fulfilled and its not “just” a hobby.

– Having a job that provides a standard of living where I can buy the yarns, fabrics and notions I want and still have the time to also use them. I know many many people struggle to meet basic necessities, much less find the resources (time and money) to have a hobby.

– Crafting communities. It’s great to know there are others like me out there, and even better when I get to hang out with them. Creativity thrives best when you are exposed to new ideas. It can be everything from a brand new technique to just seeing a combination of yarns or colors I wouldn’t have thought of on my own.

– Wool, and today especially, alpaca. Sheep wool is amazing stuff with all its varieties, it’s insulating properties, it’s memory, ability to take color and fire resistence. Alpaca doesn’t have the memory, but it sure is warm and soft. I am wearing my knit alpaca dress today, it’s barely above freezing, and I didn’t need to zip up my leather jacket. Crazy. (Here there are probably some friends or family members who would tell you that I inherited the cold weather gene in our maternal line and have a skewed idea of “cold”).

– My new hat, which is done, and kept my head warm last night in the snow and cold.

– Snow. Ok, so not craft related, but it is fluffy. I love it and we had a small snow shower last night. It made the walk to the grocery store in the dark exciting instead of a chore. I was grinning like a small child in a candy store the whole way there.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.