Seriously. I do.

I just ordered, and received a very nice J. Higgins Braemar-style sportcoat/kilt jacket. It's lovely, in Navy Blue. The only reason I went with J. Higgins is that after looking around for almost a year and a half, I never saw a Braemar-style jacket in a size that would fit me, for a price that didn't make me dizzy. Spending hundred and hundreds of dollars on something that I'm going to wear two or three times a year just sticks in my gut. OK, so I'll probably wear this thing...uh... SIX times a year! UGH....

I'd wanted charcoal gray. But when I went to the Higgins site, a charcoal jacket was $70 more than Navy Blue. A Navy Blue jacket that fits is just as useful as a charcoal one, so I got it, even though I really wanted the charcoal. But it's just a JACKET, you know? It's a thing that I "wear" it's not THAT important. Evenwith going with the less expensive alternative, it took me two months to digest the fact that I was going to spend $229 on a piece of CLOTHING.

You have no idea how long I agonized and fretted and delayed and fussed and so on, over ordering a kilt from M'Lady Chrystel. I COULD have made that kilt myself.

I just commented in another thread about spending $140 on a pair of kilt hose. I could never do that. Turns my stomach. Buying clothes just to have them....yuck. I got epoxy (fiberglassing up a cracked caber) on my blue jeans two months ago, and I simply can NOT make myself go buy a new pair. There is NOTHING wrong with these jeans. They just have some yellow spots on them, right?

Buying things which result in experiences....like a boat, or a ticket to a ballet or a symphony, or a new backpack, or a new throwing weight, airfare to someplace I haven't been before, a registration fee for a class... things like that are NO problem. I have no problem at all dropping wads of cash on things like that. Those are things that become part of me, part of who I am.

But clothes? They're just clothes. Some of them are kind of fun, right?...like kilts.... but they're still just clothes. They're not important...they don't become part of who I AM, you know?

There's a reason that I've made most of my kilts. The MAKING is more than half of the point...the experience is now part of who I am.