Saturday, March 19, 2011

A Measure of Wealth

After my recent search for navy blue track pants failed to find anything suitable I headed out to the Spotlight sale and scored three metres of navy blue polar fleece for the princely sum of $12.  And since the cold weather is already making its presence known I decided to whip the first pair of pants up this afternoon so we’re not caught short by early frost.

Charlotte was completely thrilled with how soft and warm they are and extra delighted that I’d spent an hour making them just for her.

I couldn’t help but reflect on a story my mother told me when I was six while she made me a new party dress.  She said that she used to be quite embarrassed to wear home-made clothes to school because it showed that they were poor.  It’s ironic.  In these modern times my daughter is proud to wear clothes made by me because it means I spent time making them for her.  In today’s time-poor society, that’s quite a measure of wealth, even amongst five-year-olds.

2 comments:

  1. Home made clothes are often not much cheaper - or not even remotely cheaper - than bought clothes these days. Especially as the parent who makes them is still usually the mother, and her time is worth $$$ these days too!

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  2. Too true. Certainly with my baby quilts they cost about $70 in materials and take about six hours to make. Or you can score some cheapie version for about $20 (mind you, where's the love? Are we putting a price on that???)

    As for Charlotte's trackies, they were only about $3 to make. Unless you factor in my hourly rate and then it was about 15 times that.

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