Text(ile)

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer. ~  Barbara Kingsolver

I love looking at photographs of all kinds. Photos of people I know and people I don't know. Photos of trips I've been on and of places I've never been. Art photographs and everyday life photographs. I would really love to take good photographs myself, but there are a few obstacles standing in my way. I hate having to stop in the moment to take a picture, although I love having the memory. I always feel like I'm slowing others down or looking like a tourist or getting in the way. I don't like lugging my camera around and rarely have it with me. I feel like I don't take very good pictures so I rarely bother. So to start slow I'm going to try to leave my camera in an accessible place at home and try to get into the habit of taking pictures around the house and in the garden when I have time. Maybe with practice I'll find out if I like it enough to start lugging the camera around.

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor"                                                         -Anne Lamott I criticize myself a lot.  I often think about things that I've messed up, or think I've possibly messed up.  This morning, I was overwhelmed by thinking about all the things that I do wrong, and I caught myself and tried to start thinking of things that I do well. Crickets. I couldn't think of a single one. And since I know that there must be some things that I do well on any given day, I know that my perception must be skewed. I'm focusing 100% on the things that I mess up and not at all on things that I do well. I think I might be a perfectionist. This surprises me because I'm not super detail orient...

After the success of my Minoru jacket, I'm even more motivated to make all of my own clothes (wherever possible).  Some things I'd like to tackle: Jeans High Waisted Skirt (like this one ) Dresses! Both sewn and knitted Self draft a blouse Design and knit my own sweater (I have a project on the go that I will share soon)

1. Tea, especially the first cup of the morning. 2. Books. Right now I'm loving Emma Bull and Anne Lamott. 3. The Garden. We've done a lot of work this year and things are starting to thrive. Right now we have tiny red baby strawberries, one small green tomato, a handful of jalapenos, and a crap ton of chamomile. The green peppers are also starting. The compost pile is also doing well which is interesting to no one but me. 4. Time Off. In a conspiracy of the fates, I have an unexpected extra long weekend. It is exactly what I need right now! 5. All of the above combined in sitting outside in the evening. It sounds cheesy, but when the sun is going down and the birds are singing, our back garden is a magical place.

I made a jacket!  Here is a picture of it!  Here is another one! This one shows the fun lining. This is the pattern I used. I can't say enough good things about it and about the super helpful sew-along instructions.

I've always been interested in clothing.  I've also never had the funds to devote to being a fashionista, so to look at me you wouldn't really know that I'm interested in clothing.  Almost as long as I've been interested in clothing, I've felt guilty about being interested in clothing, so even when I buy clothes that I love, I feel like I shouldn't.  I shouldn't be shopping, spending money, or consuming. But, friends, those are all feelings that I've realized come from buying clothes at the mall. Now that I've discovered the joy of making my own clothing, however, I'm hooked. And I think Sarai Mitnick of Colette Patterns hits the nail on the head in the opening pages of The Colette Sewing Handbook when she says that for her sewing her own clothes is "an antidote to this rushing whirlwind of fashion and consumerism. It reclaims fashion as an opportunity for creativity, joy and self-expression." Making my own is so much better tha...

I'm taking a course in macroeconomics this semester, and, surprisingly to me, I find it interesting. So I finally picked up the book What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealt h , by Wendell Berry. In the Foreword to the book, Herman E. Daly discusses the fact that we actually use the wrong word when discussing economics. The word economics comes from the Greek word oikonomia, which Daly defines as "the science or art of efficiently producing, distributing, and maintaining concrete use values for the household and community over the long run," that is, what we mean when we say "home economics" which is actually a redundant term. This word has been appropriated refer to (I'm quoting the OED's secondary definition of economics here) "the branch of knowledge that deals with the production, distribution, consumption and transfer of wealth." Ok, I get it, we appropriate words all the time, that's great, there obviously wasn't anothe...

I felt like crap today, so I decided to just go with it.  I built myself a little nest on the couch and surrounded myself with books, music, knitting, tea, and chocolate. I felt a little bit guilty for what I felt was wallowing in the crap feeling.  But as I finished a book (the last in The Hunger Games series), started a couple new ones, did a little schoolwork and knitting, I began to feel better. And I decided that although I see the value in "act[ing] the way you want to feel" (from The Happiness Project, one of the new books I started), I also think there is value in being honest and just acting the way you feel. I am all for trying to feel happier and better, but I also that we have a tendency to fight negative emotions and to try to push them away, which often doesn't work and ends up making us feel worse. I think sometimes we need to just name how we feel and live with ourselves in that space, and allow others to do the same.

"Such an argument is necessarily an essay ---a trial or an an attempt. It risks error all the time; it is in error, inevitably, some of the time. The idea that it could produce a verdict is absurd, as is the possibility that it could be concluded. I am never completely happy with this project, and sometimes I am not happy with it at all. I dislike its necessary incompleteness, and I am embarrassed by its ceaseless insinuation that it is a job for somebody better qualified. I keep returning to it, I think, because the study of connections is an endless fascination, and because the understanding of connections seems to me an indispensable part of humanity's self-defense."                                                    -Wendell Berry, P...