Post-Apocalyptic Life Skills

Have you been honing your post-apocalyptic life skills? In the knitting community we used to joke about knitting being one of the aforementioned skills, but now it’s kinda true. People with skills like growing food, cooking, sewing, and general DIY know-how are faring okay right now. Well, as okay as can be expected during a pandemic and crappy economy, I guess?

On twitter there’s a lot of humor around people protesting for things to open because they want a haircut. Do they know they can cut their own hair? It’s especially easy to cut guy hair and if it’s not perfect, who cares? You’re not meant to be going out anyway! For women, there’s plenty of YouTube videos on hair trimming.

But moving along!

I’ve been planting lots of things we can eat, partly because I don’t want to go out to buy produce and partly because of impending food shortages. So far I’ve heard about farmers not being able to get potatoes delivered, but also corn, peas, etc. to factories that process them into frozen foods. I’ve also read about a frozen French fry shortage! So we’ve planted lots of lettuces, various herbs, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, okra, and sweet potatoes. I’d planned to do potatoes but my seed potatoes are now on back order and I think it’s probably too late now.

I made a spreadsheet of what foods we have and then planning meals around what expires soon. Also, then I know what we need by looking at the google spreadsheet instead of rummaging through the cabinets trying to count cans. With my spreadsheet, I looked through my cookbooks again to see what recipes I can cook using what we have in the pantry. Hopefully this also cures the cooking rut I’ve been in.

I finished a ton of knitting and crochet projects I was *thisclose* to completing. There was a giant crocheted blanket that needed ALL THE ENDS woven in. Then, a knitted blanket with just a few ends to be woven in. My 11 year old’s poncho needed piecing together. And finally, a pair of socks that just needed ends woven in. (See a pattern here? I hate weaving ends!)

Sewing… I haven’t been sewing much, other than to make a few homemade face masks. I have some fabric I got on our last beach trip that I need to use to make some shirts.

Writing all this makes me look productive, but really, I feel like I’ve been pretty lazy. And that’s okay because we’re all just trying to make it through each day as best we can!