This a picture of me in my hospital bed about six weeks ago taken by Wendy. She threatens to print it and post it on the fridge as a reminder to me!
My first thought on seeing it is how well everyone at Wytheville Community Hospital looked after me. I think the folk who looked after me, like people in those kinds of occupations all over the world, only have one motivation – –
Of course I compare the US health system and the Scottish NHS and the difference is pretty stark! Not the quality of care, but how it’s paid for – –
I live in a very rural part of America where there is still something of the ‘frontier spirit’ – I look after me and my family and don’t look after anyone else unless I choose to. Scotland is different – everything is free for everyone and paid for through taxation. Maybe some memory of the clan system, maybe the longstanding left wing attitude or maybe just a small country where almost everyone has a connection with someone else.
When Margaret Thatcher was at the height of her popularity in England, but much less so in Scotland, she famously said “There is no such thing as society, only the individual and the family”. Like the vast majority of Scots I believe she was wrong and the Scottish National Health Service is a fine example.
This past weekend I was at my parents’ house helping them divest of clutter. This is a difficult task because my dad is a hoarder. Literally, I was putting things into a wastebasket and he picked it up behind me and pulled them out.
I think he saved a magazine subscription offer. And face, because that way he’s in charge of what gets thrown away. It’s fine. It works.
Running errands Saturday afternoon, I ducked into a thrift store for a few minutes of therapy. Just as a woman who worked there wheeled one of those big metal racks past me. Two shelves were stacked with high end yarn.
Right time, right place, but this is where the story gets interesting. Everyone who knows me knows I have actually crocheted through weddings and Christmas services. (It’s a long story for another time. I will crochet on a train, plane, and any automobile I’m not driving. OK, once I might have… never mind. We don’t need to talk about that. The officer did not give me a ticket, he was so impressed.)
Anyway, the yarn was pima cotton, which is a special strong kind of stuff used to make lightweight summer gorgeous things. And some mercized cotton and some standard collections of acrylic, but lots of the same dye lot.
Finding multiple skeins in the same color, or organics brand new, is known in yarn thrifting circles as “a big score.”
Thing was, I don’t do that much cotton crochet, and I didn’t want to make high end summer lacy swimsuit covers. In neon jewel tones. I am enjoying making the crazy hats and a bunch of keychains right now (see previous blogs) to use up some supplies.
Use up is the operative word. I have an entire room in my house stuffed with yarn. (Our house has what’s jokingly called a secret room off the side of the staircase. It’s just a tiny bedroom created out of unused eaves space, and it’s got a fun triangular door. A friend dubbed it “Yarnia.”
I left the yarn there. Yarnia is so full of yarn that, if I crocheted 360 out of the 365 days of every year for the next twenty, I might, just might, get through all the yarn. (And that ratio of crochet days is entirely possible, so long as Netflix keeps that high quality content coming at a reasonable streaming price. But there’s always podcasts if not.)
When the Bible says teach us to number our days, I am not sure they meant with yards of yarn accomplishment, but honestly, there comes a time when a girl has to say, I have enough. At least, when it comes to yarn. Those words will not be uttered about wine, chocolate, or cats, let me reassure you.
I didn’t need the yarn. No, I didn’t WANT the yarn, which would challenge me to make something wonderful and give it away as a gift someday to the bewildered child of a friend who would look at the crocheted lacy lime green negligee and say, “Well, this is a weird wedding gift but thanks.”
No one else would have had one like it, kid, but all the same, be thankful. You’ll get potholders from the cheap yarn I bought on sale five or six years ago, because I still haven’t worked my way through the box. And, despite what Netflix movies may try to tell you about sex keeping the flame alive, trust me; the potholders will do more for your marriage.
Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids 