Yesterday was kind of a big day. A big day in that I stood in front of a cash register manned by an alarmingly sweet old woman and spent $351 of my own hard-earned money. And then I willingly drove to another store and stood in front of another cash register and spent another $120.
Guys I wasn’t even buying anything awesome like Frye boots or a plane ticket to Bora Bora or a sex swing – I WAS BUYING WOOL. Like all of my fellow octogenarians.
I don’t know how adept you are at math, but that’s a total of $471.
471 Dollars! On wool! I can’t remember the last time I spent $500 on anything. It might not be alot of money to, say, a Kardashian, but it’s a lot of money to me and as we drove home with a trunk full of soft, brightly coloured yarn, I felt nauseous, like I had just committed a crime.
This blogging gig doesn’t pay much (read: anything) and I work for social services. What I am trying to tell you is that I’m not a rich lady. By any means. The giant 170lb animal we have to feed, house, and entertain doesn’t help either (and then there’s Gus! Hardy har har). So seeing all those digits and knowing that they don’t exist in my bank account anymore, it hurts.
I have this market coming up you see, and I make stuff, stuff like chunky neck cowls and toques. And last year I did this same market and it was amazing and I had line-ups and I sold out and so this year I decided I would go big. But I didn’t start going big until 19 days before the market.
I have 19 days to knit $500 worth of wool.
Commence panic.
I’m not a businesswoman by any means (two points if you just imagined a woman in a power suit and shoulderpads) but I know you sometimes have to spent money to make money, especially if you’re spending the money on raw materials that you can then turn around and, through your own labour and creativity, sell for double what you bought them. But still. $500! UGH.
I grew up in a house with six kids. We weren’t poor, but when there’s 8 people scrapping for resources, there’s never a surplus, pennies are pinched, you are told “no” a lot. There was definitely never more than enough. I think this was a good thing, it’s good to know that some resources, like money, are finite, but we always knew that other resources, like love, were not (awww!). As such, my attitude towards money can best be summed up by OHMGOD SAVESAVESAVE. At all times. In all places. What if?!
I hate risk. So much so that when we transferred all of our savings to mutual funds with our brother-in-law and our first report showed a $8 loss I was all like “SELL! Or whatever! GET IT OUT!”. Adam had to talk me down from withdrawing everything and transferring it to under my mattress. In my mind that was eight dollars I could have saved! Or spent on salsa con queso! Or WOOL!
So as we drove home yesterday, all I could think was how much I could lose. “What if I don’t sell anything? What if I can’t knit it all in time? What if no one likes my stuff and then I’ve paid for a table and all the wool and I show up naked and fail the test and they all laugh at me?!”
And then I sat down in front of five consecutive episodes of How I Met Your Mother and I knit 4 neck cowls and 4 toques. If I can keep up this pace (I can not keep up this pace) I may be able to do it. Maybe.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that until Nov 28, posting will be lighter than usual because I will be busily spinning wool rather than words. I wish I could somehow do both, but short of live-blogging me sitting in a TV-coma, knitting for hours on end, wearing an adult diaper to avoid bathroom breaks I don’t see that happening.
Wish me luck!
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