Monday Message

"Today, I emphasize a most basic principle: home production and storage. Have you ever paused to realize what would happen to your community or nation if transportation were paralyzed or if we had a war or depression? How would you and your neighbors obtain food? How long would the corner grocery store—or supermarket—sustain the needs of the community?" (President Ezra Taft Benson)

I know when things are going smoothly it is very hard to think that they would ever change.  Life is going along well. You have a good income. The biggest thing on your mind is getting everyone where they need to be on time. But I guarantee you that won’t even be on your mind if you were suddenly out of work.

One job that my husband had suddenly cut the pay in half for the same hours of work. I thought, oh no…well, we will just have to do what we could. We had food storage, we could scrape by if it did not get any worse… but not much longer again his income was cut in half for the same work but now it was one fourth our pay. 

We were holding on by a thread as we were told it would soon improve. My husband had bypass surgery the year before so we needed the insurance and we were both up there in age which made getting another job harder to do plus, we were told it would get back to normal... and then we got no pay. So when I tell you things can change, believe me they can change. Are you prepared??

Here are my thoughts: When it happens first tears are shed and there's a desperate feeling of what will we do? Job search begins, resume updated. Yes, I can tell you word for word because I have lived it. You assess what resources you have, what food we have in the freezer, refrigerator, and cupboards. We are patching clothes. I can tell you with kids you don’t want to worry them. If your job paid really good and you were always eating out and going to movies or taking vacations this all comes to a screeching halt. Then yes, you will need to explain to your kids and ask for their help. We never made such an income and I was frugal and stored food, so in those ways nothing changed just no grocery shopping. What would you do? 

I know the answers can be as many as there are people… I just want you to realize nobody’s job is totally secure, nobody nohow it just isn’t no matter what you want to think.

Building skills how are you coming on those????

I am still working on learning my weaving. In the above pic you can see the pink and the plum. I had a friend who was working on a crochet project, afterward she gave me the leftover yarn. The weaving pattern I was working on had three colors so I picked a cream to go with the leftover yarn she gave me, problem was that this was all that I had on hand and the cream color was thinner by half, so this was a learning thing for me. I doubled the cream thread and worked it as one, it is perfect…the other thing you can see here the yoga type mat. I had saved it for another project. I got it at a yard sale from a free box…..you can use paper when rolling fiber on the back beam but I saw in an old weaving magazine that someone did something similar which reminded me of this mat. I only had half of the mat because I gave the other half away but it is working fantastically. So that was a new learn and then I showed you my little invention before but I'll put it up here again.

So these are the things I have been learning on the loom.

I have also been studying bobbin lace, wanting that to be one of my skills….more on that to come.

I have been doing some organizing and cleaning of sewing drawers.

Spring is finally here in central Iowa as you can tell by the top picture. From thinking that spring would never come to weather that has been like summer here… I hope it won’t stay that way through all of spring.

Keep learning your skills and keep stocking up. Be as prepared as you can be!