Valentine's Day is...not my favorite.

Lately my life has been good - pretty smooth sailing, even though there are bumps and I still grumble about things, when I reflect back I know I've been having some really good years in terms of where I am with my health, my family, and my friends. I still remember the bad years, and I still remember how Valentine's Day could feel so particularly horrible, even though I knew that it was this artificial, commercial, marketed phenomenon pushed heavily by an advertising industry that makes a lot of money off of making people feel bad about themselves.

There were the years I tried to do an anti-Valentine Day, and somehow that just made it worse.

Last year, when Meredith Crawford/One Sheepish Girl announced the Sheepish Heartbomb, it really clicked with me. Instead of trying to outright reject today, or try to pretend it doesn't exist, I could celebrate in a way that rejects some of the aspects that really rub me the wrong way, specifically the consumerism and the messages that we are somehow undeserving of love unless we buy our way into being someone else.

For projects like these, I think about my matriarchs a lot. My devoutly Catholic grandmother took "love one another" (John 13:34) very seriously. My seamstress grandmother showed me that you can take scraps and turn them into something whole and beautiful, literally and figuratively. My great-aunt Mary demonstrated that you could do all of that in fabulous, loud, attention-grabbing color. Mom told me this week that she'd thought for a long time that teaching me to knit and crochet at such a young age was a rookie mother mistake, but it looks like it worked out in the long run - she'd just crocheted 23 hearts after I showed her how (she doesn't use patterns).

So I made a rainbow of sorts, thinking of "no rain, no rainbows" and thinking of what it takes sometimes to get out of the bad times, using only yarn I already had on hand, leftover from other projects. The results are eye-searing, heavy on the hot pink (I had a lot of hot pink - still do, actually). Great-aunt Mary would have loved that.

If you are in the downtown/Chinatown area this weekend and there are still hearts here, please take one and share the love!

p.s. members of TheFUZZ have been busy lately!