Making, behind the scenes

I have been in recovery lately from a lot of holidays,the trip to see my family, and just keeping up with the start of school and our rough snow storm start to cold weather.  It felt like I was not doing much “work” in the writing department but actually, a lot of making was happening,  I have knitted on additions to two kids’ beloved sweaters (they got taller!) and you can see one of them here. I also decided almost immediately after finishing the black jumper to use the same 100 acts of sewing pattern dress no.1 to make a vest.  I did my own “hack” of the pattern, I cannot seem to follow pattern instructions the exact same way twice in a row!  This was all “free” fabric from theArtsJunktion. (A place in Winnipeg where you can donate arts and crafts supplies and also get them for free..It keeps us reusing and recycling and keeps good stuff for art out of the landfill.) I always make a donation and pay for parking, but the fabric did not cost me anything.  This made up for the fact that this vest took me a while!  I cut too low a neckline by accident, so had to teach myself how to make a dart in the back of the vest to raise the neckline.  I think it worked and am excited about wearing this with black dress pants and my new Strippy McStrippit design.

While all this was happening upstairs at my sewing machine, our washer broke.  Yes, this is something no twin mom ever wants to hear from her husband on a Saturday night.  However, I did a search for appliance repair people online, emailed three different ones-and kept sewing.

Imagine my surprise when one wrote back and said he could come diagnose the problem on a Sunday!  (Hallelujah!) We were able to have the broken part replaced and were back in the laundry business by Monday afternoon.  Whew!

Also happening—we received our second Black Sheep Mattress. (We were long overdue here for new mattresses.)  I have now slept on it, and wow, it was a good sleep.  It is made of wool, cotton, pocket coils, and an organic cotton cover.  Of course, five minutes after I made the bed with the brand new mattress, Sadie the dog was trying it out!

Then? There was a sale at my friendly, not so local Manitoba fabric store, ThreadCount fabrics.  I may have placed an order...this sewing thing is very satisfying just now.  I mean, I get new clothes when I finish a project!  Who could dislike that?  (Bottom fabric is a bat print for a friend’s teenager.  It is October—doesn’t every fabric order need bats in it?!).  Actually, the professor really does not like bats, and I am not world’s biggest fan myself...so I covered that up to give to my friend later!

Meanwhile, little boys in grade three play very hard.  The “brand new” start of school size 7 jeans are already getting holes in the knees.  However, I discovered that the size 7 jean legs are now almost big enough to mend using the machine.  This drastically reduces the amount of time spent on each hole, and I am all for it.  I even ironed on a patch today and then tacked it using the machine, but the kid with the size 7 slims better stop making holes by crawling on the playground, as they are too small to be easily darned on the machine. (And now that I have used the machine to do it, I do not want to go back to doing it by hand!!)

Last but not least, when kids play in wet, dirty, sloppy snow, they need a lot of mitts.  And my twins grew a lot this past summer.  I knit quickly, but do not work miracles.  So, I took some old felted sweaters and made two pairs of felted wool mitts, one pair for each boy.  These are not works of art but they are warm!  Now that the snow has melted and the mitts and boots are finally dry, I am hoping I have a few days off before we need to do quick mitten production and wet mitten and boot rotation again...

So, if you were wondering, what am I writing these days?  Well, not as much as usual, but things are still getting done over here in the meanwhile! (And this did not even mention how many meals and loaves of bread I turned out this week, did it?!)

Additions and deletions

So, I think the whole #slowfashionoctober movement has passed me by, because I'm not on instagram.  I'm a bit retro: when we moved to Canada, we didn't get cell phones here, and I eventually gave up on the US one I had.  I haven't kept up with the smartphone, texting, selfie stuff that I see people doing all around me.

In fact, I found it to be a relief.  We don't get a lot of phone calls and to be honest, I don't miss it, mostly.  Life with twins and two dogs is noisy.  I don't think I always have to be available--and juggling the folks in my household takes all of my attention a lot of the time.  Truthfully, the only time I really thought I should have a phone was back in the spring time, when I had my little surprise trip to the ER and was too sick to use one myself anyhow.

Although I have dropped in on the instagram conversation as a lurker, I realized I wasn't debating things in the way others have.  I haven't been wondering how I could make all my own t-shirts, or spelling out the origins of every piece of fabric or yarn in my stash.  I haven't sworn off anything much, either.  On the other hand, I don't buy a lot new in the first place.

My only recent purchases have been out of necessity.  I bought another pair of All Birds Wool sneakers when I visited the US.  They are all wool and biodegradable materials, and I have fallen in love with how comfortable they are...and since I am not really up for making my own shoes right now, I'll settle for an ethically made pair, ready for next spring, summer and fall, instead. (winter time in Winnipeg = boots from November to April)

Then, I had (gasp) an underwire pop out of one of those essential female undergarments.  I was down to way too few of those anyway, and had to go to The Bay and check out their lingerie sale.  Now, I think I bought all of "last year's models" and saved a lot of money.  Were all those bras and pairs of underwear made in a place with good working conditions?  With a decent minimum wage?  I just don't know...but Rome wasn't built in a day.  I have to take a middle path about this.  There's no way I'll have time to figure out how to make underwear this month.  It's just not in the schedule.

This month, as usual, I've fixed lots of things.  I mended and patched many pairs of little boy pants.  I knit up an extension on this sweater.  Instead of cutting off the old ribbing, I left it in place, picked up stitches right above it, and knit down.  Luckily, I had matching yarn left over, although I have a feeling the kid in question would have been fine with contrasting yarn, if that were on offer!

I debated cutting off the ribbing at the end, but felt it was risky.  This kid is narrow in the hips, so instead, I just basted down the ribbing on the inside, and it forms a double layer band towards the bottom of the sweater.  It looks tidy enough on the inside.

Now, in this action shot, over a hand me down polar fleece, if you undo the sleeve cuffs, you can see there is still room to grow this season, and the sweater has already been in action again...worn out and about.

The kid in question is pleased as punch to have his sweater back.

I haven't done as much writing about Slow Fashion this month as I had intended.  However, maybe I have some excuses to fall back on.  Pre-twins, I did write a whole book about this back in 2009.  You know, about making ethical and green choices when it came to choosing knitting yarns and textiles in general...Knit Green.

I also realize that while I may not be snapping so many perfectly staged photos, I am indeed spending those moments trying to mend, recycle, reuse, and maximize what we've got at home when it comes to clothing.  Yesterday, I showed someone the knitting in my purse.  It's the sleeve to one twin's fall sweater (each kid gets one handknit sweater a year, if I can manage it) and one half of a handknit kid's sock.  It's all from my stash--no new yarn purchases.  I'm still trying, one stitch at a time, to make things from scratch in a responsible way.

Today, in other activities: I've made 3 loaves of challah, one loaf of banana chocolate chip bread, pureed the soup (and froze some) that I cooked yesterday, put chicken and potatoes into the slow cooker, got my freezer lamb for the year delivered, dealt with another house upkeep issue, and submitted an article on a deadline to an editor.  You know, nothing much... there's still time to fit in a little more mending and knitting, I hope! (and all before I pick up boys from kindergarten, too...)