I deleted the Facebook app from my phone and iPad today. I started the day working at my younger son’s school in the sewing class that I have either lead or helped lead for since 2008. I often check my phone while our lead is talking to the kids, if I don’t have anything else to do and I got wrapped up in Facebook and all the (very understandable) hurt and anger that people are feeling and found myself arguing with a friend of a friend in her comments. In that moment, I felt like I needed someone to take Facebook away from me and not let me back on. This afternoon, I decided to be that someone. Obviously, I can still get back on but not having the app reminds me not to check it. Not to get sucked in. Instead, I donated money this evening to the ACLU and to Planned Parenthood and I will participate in other productive ways in the coming months but for now, I needed to step back and breathe.
Instead, I want to focus on the work I am doing to make my small part of the world better: my volunteering for the school. As I said, I have been working in the sewing class since my older son’s kindergarten year. This is my 18th session of the class. I know I am resistant to change but I’m still amazed that i have been doing it so long. One of my younger son’s classmates is in the class this time and he decided to draw his own design for the embroidery. He drew this cute cat face.
M’s cat
I love to see the kids enjoy embroidery. Some of them struggle with it, some do intricate stitches and some, like this kid, have a vision of what they want to make and just go for it. He almost completed it today.
One of the kids said to me that embroidery takes a lot of time, and old people must do it because they have a lot of time on their hands. I told her that I embroider even though I don’t always have a lot of time because it just feels good to make things. It really does, it feels good to make things. So that is what I am going to do: make things and breathe and work on helping the kids at my child’s school appreciate the enjoyment of handwork and making things. Just because.
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the sheep free knitter 