the comfort of collecting

once again this weekend, i sought and found comfort in my craft stash. hours were spent making things by nearly all family members. sabin and her big sister spent several hours making monocules© on friday evening. on saturday, big sister raided the fabric stash to make a table runner for her mother and a pillow for her grandmother for christmas. i continued work on some snuggle quilts for my nephews. and it was all possible because we had all of the stuff right here, at hand - fabrics, clay, yarn, embroidery thread. when inspiration struck, we could immediately get down to work. and i felt justified in my pack rat ways.

and i looked around the house and realized that it's filled with collections of things. of course, i knew this, but i'm not sure i've thought that much about how much comfort and contentment those collections bring to me on a daily basis. from baskets of smooth stones to books to a collection of old (and new) cameras to the books that fill our bedroom and our dining room to the well-stocked perfume shelves in the upstairs bathroom. we're surrounded by our collections of things.

husband and i got to talking about the collections and what they mean. and why we have the drive to collect. husband has a tendency to explain everything through evolution. and he thinks collecting is the modern manifestation of the hunter-gatherer instinct. we don't need to hunt for our food these days, so that instinct manifests in other ways.  i know that i am constantly on the lookout (hunting, if you will) for interesting old locks and counting machines when i'm in the flea markets. and i gather interesting fabrics even when i don't necessarily know what i'm going to make of them - because i might need them for something or other one day. we indulge our hunter-gatherer instincts all the time.

collecting and acquiring is something we've discussed a lot as we try to decide how to approach our year of not buying things. one of the things we're thinking about is that we will only buy second hand (except socks and underwear, i'm sorry, but those have to be new) for the next year - at least for ourselves. sabin, on the other hand, will have to have new shoes and clothes, as fast as she's growing. but me, i can easily go a year without adding to my shoe collection and it won't hurt a thing. we don't have a fully-formed plan as of yet, but we're getting there. and we will undoubtedly find ways to indulge our inner hunter-gatherer and keep our collections dynamic. because the fact is that they also make us happy.

what do you love to collect?

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i wanted to thank you all for your great insight on the photo of the last post. i'm really happy to see new people coming out of the woodwork. on friday, i'll let you know who has "won" the entirely subjective competition for the best thoughts on the meaning of that photo.