Most Fridays I put on my wabi sabi shirt. I read this article about wabi sabi last year. Wabi sabi is the zen aesthetic of imperfection and impermanence. I realized that my best favorite shirt didn't have to be mended after all. The little frays just mean it was well worn. So I pulled it out of the mending pile where it had sat for many years. It is a big cotton shirt, striped with different colored cotton rather than dyed. I also retrieved my favorite old black sweater. My old black sweater has just the right drape, and it was just warm enough to wear around my drafty house on a cold day. It had a hole in one elbow. In the past I would mend the holes invisibly. I can do that. But I hadn't done it for years. It was on my list of things to mend, but once I knew about wabi sabi, I realized I could wear a sweater with a hole in the elbow, and it would be OK.
Wish I'd learn that before my husband made me through away my woolen seed pattern sweater. It had holes but it could have been my winter wabi-sabi.
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