Several weeks in to lockdown we are, and we've had a lot of time to dwell on what we miss about the pre-COVID era, the things that make our "shelter-in-place" place interesting. The place where you live is so much more that your actual house and the physical landscape nearby, it's also the people and what they do - all the collective neighbors that make a community a place to call home. We may be slightly biased, but we think a pretty strong argument can be made that interesting communities offer special little businesses like boutiques, unique shops, and a variety of restaurants.
We had an email come through that promoted yarn and then went on to talk about the desire to start sewing and making plans to get going on that, which is awesome. The odd thing to us right now was that the author shared some tips for sewing which all came from a shop that is not at all local: not from a local sewer, not from a shop in a nearby town or the emailer's own town . . . and it seems like the best advice right now might be to seek out a local spot for some pro-tips for getting started with a new craft like sewing, or any place to spend a little money to help keep your sanity. Because right now we are thinking about all the neighborhood businesses we want to survive this pandemic slow down. And in Montana, the "neighborhood" is basically the town you live in, it's not really the business that posts pretty instagram pictures from 2,000 miles away.
We gave some love to many of the companies we use to supply our sweet shop in our last blog - and now we'd like to give some love to a few (there are many more we're not listing them all!) of our favorite local Billings businesses that we are thinking about and trying to do our bit to support. We know you can easily create your own lists and hope you are doing so!
