Sunday Morning Philosophy Class

I went to Missoula yesterday. DD#2 asked me if I was bored; it isn’t so much boredom as the fact that I get twitchy without a change of scenery periodically. The husband once went a span of 10 years without leaving the state of Montana, and even within the state, he didn’t venture far.

That makes me twitchy just thinking about it.

I briefly considered a quick over-and-back day trip to Spokane, but it’s back up in the 90s again here, a wildfire is burning next to I-90 in north Idaho, and, of course, there are tourists everywhere. I am going to save my trip to Spokane for a long weekend or for the next time I go to Seattle.

The drive down to Missoula was lovely because it was early in the morning. The roads and the air were still clear. I know Missoula almost as well as I know Kalispell, so I mentally planned my route to hit the stores that were open first, starting with Kohls and then Joann Fabrics. Kohls had nothing—literally—just half-empty racks here and there. I can’t decide if that is because of supply shortages, the fact that Dillards is the only store left at the mall, or a combination of both.

Joann Fabrics was devoid of people, but I found some fabric I wanted. Even though Joann is a large chain and has the same products at all of its stores, not all of the stores have the same selection. Ours, for some reason, is very thin on apparel fabrics and heavy on outdoor fabrics, fleece, and flannel. The knits section consists of cotton/polyester blends, polyester/spandex, or rayon/spandex blends. I am not a big fan of cotton/poly knits, and I really only wear slinky rayon/spandex to church. If you venture into the juvenile fabric section, it is possible to find 100% cotton knit in bright colors (yay!) and cotton/spandex knits. However, the cotton/spandex knits are mostly juvenile prints. I don’t really want to wear a T-shirt with dinosaurs on it. The Disney section also has cotton/spandex prints (more on that in a moment).

[The husband asked why I was looking for cotton/spandex knits if I am allergic to spandex. I am, but I can tolerate a small amount. These knits only have about 4%. My bra has more spandex in it than that and I have to tolerate wearing a bra (and tolerate is the correct word, because it does make me itch). It’s usually leggings and other kinds of close-fitting garments that give me trouble.]

I therefore enjoy going to other Joann stores to see what their selection is like. This one had a much bigger selection of cotton/spandex knits than our store, and I came out with enough fabric to make two T-shirts for myself. One of them is this cute S’mores print, which I think I can pull off:

I left Joanns and headed to the Good Food Store, then stopped by Goodwill. I am still searching for another large dog crate for next year when we get piglets. I also popped in to Vicki’s Quilts Down Under. This is the store that is the fabric version of an archeological dig. If you need an out-of-print fabric line, she might very well have it. I headed for a back corner where I knew she kept the bolts of knit fabric. It was a dark corner, and I had to move some bolts to uncover other bolts, but I found what I was looking for. I left Vicki’s with two more pieces of cotton/spandex. One was a hot pink Laguna Cotton from Robert Kaufman—the lovely people who bring us Kona—and one was a periwinkle and white print from Cloud 9. I was going to order some Laguna Cotton anyway, but now that I know she carries it, I’ll buy from her.

I tried to visit The Confident Stitch, which is downtown, but there was some kind of big market/festival going on—the kind where it’s nearly impossible to drive through the area because pedestrians just walk out into the street without looking—and I knew I wasn’t going to find parking. I extricated myself from that mess, stopped at another thrift store, and then went to The Book Exchange to check out the quilting and sewing books. I found this gem:

The Ultimate Serger Answer Guide was published in 1996, but it’s chock full of all sorts of useful information. Each page is devoted to one serger problem with a list of possible solutions. (“Are your edges hairy?” This is how to fix that.”) This is the kind of book I would hand out in a beginning serging class. Unfortunately, it’s out of print.

I left Missoula early, around 1 pm, because there was nothing left for me to do there. I have some thoughts about this trip, which I will sum up by sharing what I told the husband:

Like most 22-year-olds, when I graduated from college, I thought I had some idea of what life would hold. I was wrong. I didn’t expect a lot of what has happened, but what I really didn’t expect was that we would be living through the decline of the American empire. That was never on my radar screen. The husband, having been born a fully-formed cynical adult human being, has always been far more realistic. None of this is a surprise to him.

The last time I was in Missoula was just after Christmas, and the feeling of demoralization I felt there was overwhelming. I chalked it up to a side effect of the pandemic, but I think it’s more than that. When we first moved to Montana, going to Missoula was an adventure. They had a Target! And a Staples! And a Macy’s downtown! And a huge Hancock Fabrics! And a mall with lots of stores!

Missoula still has a Target and a Staples—and now quite a few other big box stores—but the Macy’s is closed. The mall lost Herbergers, JC Penney, and Sears (which is why I think there was nothing left at Kohls). The landscape is peppered with marijuana dispensaries that have taken over former mom-and-pop stores. Some of our favorite restaurants have closed. A couple of thrift stores went out of business. The quilt store/Bernina dealer behind Joann Fabrics closed at the end of May. (The owner retired.) The sense of demoralization was less noticeable yesterday than when I was there in December, but I suspect that some of that is due to the current influx of tourists.

On the one hand, I do think the rampant consumerism that has been a hallmark of this period in history needs to be scaled back. That’s not a bad thing. On the other hand, watching it happen in real time is sobering. It’s going away and I am not sure it’s ever coming back. And yes, I know that some of this is due to e-commerce, but not all of it. This country is polarized and splintered and I am not sure that’s fixable, either. (And you’re not going to get me to play the blame game with one side or the other, so don’t try.) The only person I can control, though, is me. It is up to me to navigate what’s coming with grace and humor. I need to own my part and deal with it, including my (sometimes unrealistic) expectations that I can have whatever I want at my fingertips whenever I want it. I guess I am just trying to grieve the losses ahead of time so that they aren’t such a shock when they happen.

We’ll see what happens, but I think a lot of people are going to be blindsided.

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I want to end this blog post on a happy note. At Joann Fabrics on Thursday, I happened upon a one-yard remnant of cotton/spandex in a Disney Frozen print. Our renters have a 5 year-old who loves to sing. Sometimes she stands on their porch and belts out songs from Frozen. When I hear her singing, it makes me smile. I thought she needed something out of this Frozen fabric—and it would give me an opportunity to practice my serging skills—so I made her a nightgown:

The pattern is from Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom and it was easy to follow. Instead of a hem, I did a lettuce edging on the bottom ruffle. The neckline and armhole edges are bound with the same fabric. Her dad texted me a picture yesterday—she slept in it and then informed her parents that she planned to wear it all day.

I might talk about the differences in serging the various types of knit fabrics in a future post, because they can be significant.