Time is the real luxury

I’ve been telling you there’s still time to knit one more summer top in a plant fiber, and I took my own advice to heart. This is my in-progress Classic LBD top by Jen Parroccini. I’m knitting it in undyed Pianta with a palomino-colored contrast edging. (The other three skeins from this dye lot are in the shop now, if you want to be twinsies with me!)

It’s the last days of summer, and here in San Francisco we’re easing into our actual summer weather. It’s warmer than usual, sunnier than usual, with less fog than usual. I’m wearing shorts and my Oolong tank and newly handmade tee shirts.

When the calendar page turns to September, I’m usually eager for autumn and cozy season; but, this year, I’m feeling a little different. Maybe you feel it, too?

I want to linger in these late summer vibes. Maybe it’s because the last few years have been heavy ones, full of change and isolation and my personal season of wintering.

(Around this time, two years ago, I put the majority of my yarn business on pause. I’m now shifting back into a season of greater work, and it feels meaningful to have learned how to stop, and also to learn how to start again without regrets, just accepting that this is my story.)

Lingering in a season—whether it’s a personal season of doubt or success, or an actual season like summer—reminds me that time is the real luxury.

It’s not the plush vacations, or the expensive face creams, or the conspicuous brands, or the Instagram-ready kitchen. These things aren’t actually luxury, even though they do cost lots of money. Time is the real luxury: time to decide what you want to do. Time to spend as you wish. Time where you don’t have to work, you don’t have to strive, you don’t have to measure up. Time to simply be.

This is a gift that knitting offers me, over and over again. The simple truth is that when I linger, when I take my time, when I knit something for myself, I’m saying that I matter. I’m worth taking time for.

In this world where we’re not billionaires, where we don’t own the company, where the vast majority of us don’t have generational wealth or quiet luxury (that’s only “quiet” if you don’t know what to listen for), time is what’s actually valuable. Time that we convert to labor in order to earn a living, to pay the bills, to do the sometimes overwhelming care tasks of keeping ourselves and our families afloat.

Time is the real luxury.

Time to take a long walk.

Time to sit with my beloved in the morning quiet and watch the birds.

Time to notice the slow changes that happen to the trees and plants in our backyard, as summer wanes.

Time to make a meal with abundant tomatoes. (So many tomatoes at the market!)

Time to knit one more summer garment.

Time that so many of us wish we had. That we all deserve but which capitalism and white supremacy has conspired to rob us of.

Time to pause, hand over my heart, and take a deep breath.

Maybe you feel the same?

This colorway is “Depths of Despair,” so named for Anne of Green Gables. It’s dyed on my Cashmere Blend base, which is a delicious 70% extrafine merino, 20% cashmere, 10% nylon.

No matter how your life’s story is unfolding right now, whether you’re in a period of plenty or a period of scarcity, I hope that you are able to take a quiet moment or two with your knitting or just to be quietly with yourself. Time is the real luxury, and it’s a luxury I wish for you, and for me, in abundance.