Let's talk about small, nourishing habits

What are the tiny things you do that give you outsized joy?

Me, in a handmade dress (Woolfork pattern by Jacqueline Cieslak), holding two skeins of my Targhee Fingering yarn in the colorway Lavender Thyme.

This week has been our annual heat wave here in San Francisco. We pretty reliably have a heat wave most Octobers. (If your summer weather feels like it’s getting hotter, know that it’s not your imagination, summers are getting hotter.)

San Francisco weather isn’t as deeply influenced by solar cycles as the rest of the US, but by a fairly persistent area of high pressure in the northeastern Pacific Ocean (the North Pacific High). You’ll often hear SF natives explain that our “summer,” or our warmest weather, is in September and October.

As you can imagine, this puts a damper on my plans for a spectacularly cozy fall season. Add to a naturally-occurring hot October: San Francisco is the least air-conditioned city in the U.S. (Only 34% of homes have central air conditioning.) And, this past week, it was one of those extra-hot Octobers. Temperatures in the city hit a high of 91, the second highest October temperature in the 26 years I’ve lived in San Francisco.

It was hot.

It was not what I wanted.

It reminded me that taking time to enjoy small, nourishing things is absolutely, positively, always worth my time.

I worked in the coolest part of the house (the garage). We created a “cool room” in our bedroom with a room-sized air conditioner so that Molly and I (the two most heat-intolerant members of our household) could nap and get some respite. We all camped out in the cool room on the evenings where it didn’t cool down outside until after 10:00 p.m. We drank fizzy water flavored with homemade syrups. I soaked my plants in tubs of water and spent time admiring their new growth. I ate crisp, freshly-picked apples.

I thought about—and did—the small, cozy things that have nothing to do with fall colors, or sweater weather, or pumpkin spice lattes. And it occurred to me that the small ways we each have of making ourselves comfortable, of soothing ourselves, of being gentle with ourselves—these are the big things. They’re bigger than the things that cost a lot of money. They’re bigger than the “big trip to Rhinebeck” or the splashy sweater quantity of hand-dyed yarn, or the photogenic romp through piles of golden leaves. The way we have of being with ourselves, of finding the pleasure in our very real, sometimes very hot, every day moments, of making the actual stitches on our needles right now, this is what’s most important.

If the idea of fizzy water flavored with homemade syrup caught your attention, I’d like to share a recipe with you for my favorite sparkling drink, in case you’d like to make some too:

Homemade Ginger Syrup

• Wash, but don’t bother to peel, a big chunk of ginger root, and chop it into small pieces. I usually chop it up around a mince-size, like I would do to garlic, and I stop when I get tired or bored. So, mine is usually a sort of chunky mince.

• Put the minced ginger in a saucepan with 1 cup of water and 1 cup of turbinado sugar (sugar in the raw). It’s fine if all you have is white sugar, but I really like the extra molasses-y flavor of turbinado.

• Simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring periodically to dissolve the sugar, then turn off the heat and let everything steep for about an hour.

• Strain through a fine mesh colander.

The syrup keeps for a few weeks in the fridge, but we keep ours on the counter because it never lasts longer than a week.

Using the syrup to make a homemade ginger ale

• Pour about a half-inch of syrup in the bottom of your drinking glass. This is the amount of flavor and taste I like, but you’ll have to experiment.

• Fill the rest of the glass with sparkling water. I like to use a lime-flavored La Croix.

• Add ice and other fancy stuff like fresh herbs (mint or oregano are my favorites, and sometimes I add lime slices).

Seriously the best, most refreshing, warm yet cool, ginger ale I’ve ever had.

Tell me: what are your tried-and-true small, nourishing habits? The ones that bring you outsized joy?

There’s no yarn update this week because I’ve been busy packing Gripping tentacle kits—with a huge thank you to everyone who ordered! After 10 years of kit-making, you would think that I better understood just how long it takes to get a kit like this (with lots of small component parts) from “everything is made” to “all packed and out the door,” but I’m still learning. And, even though it took longer, or maybe because of it, I was able to really deeply immerse myself in all the component parts of Gripping and lean into all the great messages I like to share with you. Life is in the details, and tending to those details brings me such joy.

Next Sunday, I’ll have new yarn for you and the picture above is an Easter Egg.

I have a big batch of Targhee Fingering, ready to be reskeined and timed to be roughly in tandem with a new sweater pattern coming from Tina Tse Knits, created out of my yarn.

I’m still getting into the groove of working more (after ~18 months of a mostly shop pause), and I have a vision of doing rotating shop updates with different bases, which is something I know many of you have been hoping for!

I wish some extra-nourishing small moments for you as you settle into your day’s routine and to-dos, whenever you read this. I hope you’re able to let it really sink in that the small things you do, every day, to care for yourself and others—they matter so much. You matter so much. Be gentle with yourself, friend. I’m rooting for you.