The Dishcloth Manifesto

I'm sitting at my kitchen table, drinking coffee and watching birds go all out on each other for seed in the snow. I've been watching them for two days now and I can't get enough. There are cardinals, sparrows, eastern towhee (thanks Amy for telling me the name), titmouse(mice?), chickadees, and a few others that I can't name. The more I watch them, the more I think about our (potential) new home and all the little things I'm looking forward to, all the small touches that make a house a home. Bird feeders and windchimes and suncatchers in the windows, the familiar holiday decorations that a family sees year after year, the smells and sights that let you know this is your home not just the house you currently occupy.

I try to envision what our home will be like and I realize that it's entirely up to me (well, us, but mostly me) to make this house into the home we want it to be and I start to feel a little lost. I start to think about the things I'll need, the art for the walls and candles to burn and the wreaths to hang for this to be our home. And then I remember that we don't have those things that we've never before placed much importance on those things and then I get sad.

But THEN I realize that that's really stupid. And it is. Then I say to myself, K, don't be daft, don't be a consumer, don't go blow your tax refund on some crap to hang on the wall. So I take to the internet for inspiration, to my old favorites. There is a very particular aesthetic that I associate with the kind of lifestyle we hope to lead once we settle. A country, farmhouse, handmade, soft, and homey aesthetic. A simple aesthetic. There's a woman named Amanda Soule. She has a website, SouleMama. I WANT to BE her. Meaning that her aesthetic, her STUFF, is the stuff I want.

But, it's sooooo haarrddd to make all that stuff. The knitting and the crocheting and the sewing and making stuff..I mean, I kinda know how to do it, but I've never actually completed a project involving yarn or fabric or needles or any sort. Never. I lack follow through (to put it mildly).

But, since I don't have crafting gnomes at my beck and call to create pretty things for me, I guess I better get crackin', huh? One of my goals for this year is to actually complete a knitting project and I thought dishcloths would be a good place to start.

All your dishcloths are belong to me

I mean, dishcloths. That's gotta be easy, right? Plus, it's something for my home.

For a person who knits, I'm sure it would take all of about an hour to make a dishcloth. I'm giving myself until the end of March. I have a goal. I have a deadline. And soon I will have a dishcloth.

Tally ho!!