frogging, editing, and my summer wardrobe infusion
Each Wednesday, I take stock of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at.
Two notable things have happened this week on the crafting front of my life.
Firstly, I frogged about 2 inches of my Lady Bat sweater.
I ripped back my Lady Bat sweater to before I joined the front with the back to knit the second sleeve. I started knitting the second sleeve two weeks ago, but tried it on this week only to discover that I didn’t make the front & back wide enough. Ah well.
Because of the sideways construction, trying it on (and getting an accurate sense of what of how much more you have to knit), really requires an extra hand or two.
So, I’m going to knit a couple more inches on the front & back of my sweater, before joining again for the second sleeve.
Secondly, I finished the first round of edits for the second book in the Shawl Geometry Series.
With this round of book edits, I finished the first book last week, and the second book this week, and I’m over the damn moon. I still have the third book to go, but it feels like a far more do-able task now that I’m two-thirds of the way through.
And I guess thirdly, I thought about sitting down with my no-longer-really-an-Anna-Dress.
My summery wardrobe infusion plans have sort stalled. I’m attributing this to the massive amount of time & attention the shawl geometry books update is taking, and also to the seemingly endless rounds of rethinks I’m going through with the was-originally-going-to-be-an-Anna Dress.
When I was originally planning this wardrobe infusion, I said I wanted it to be light, and easy, and breezy – both in the making, and in the final projects.
Easy & breezy is kind of the antithesis of what this project has been so far – so I’m also mulling over ways to reinvigorate, push the reset button, and get this project moving again. Because out of the carry-on-suitcase sized capsule wardrobe that I packed in the middle of December, there are only so many clothes that I can transition into summer.
How do we decide when it’s time to throw a piece of clothing out?
Buying, mending, and disposable fashion.
Writing about mending my favorite pair of jeans last week got me thinking about how we decide when it’s time to throw a piece of clothing out.
How do we decide it’s time to throw a piece of clothing out?
Or rather, when do we decided it’s time to donate a piece of clothing, so someone else can throw it out?
When a piece of clothing can easily and cheaply be replaced, it’s almost never a case of necessity that prompts us to dispose of a piece of clothing.
And more than that, when the common avenue for disposing of our clothing is by donation, then we’re asked to donate them in “good working condition” – way sooner than the end of a piece of clothing’s life cycle.
It used to be (not that long ago) that clothing was designed, patterned, and manufactured with the idea that it would be altered, worn, altered, worn, passed along, altered again, worn, altered, worn, mended, worn, altered, worn, mended, worn, and re-purposed until they became rags.
Clothing was designed, manufactured, and purchased with an intimate understanding of how labor intensive & expensive making fabric is.
Wide seam allowances & generous hems make it exceptionally easy for garments to be altered – both to fit the original purchaser, and also to fit whoever ended up with the garment next. Consumers knew what a quality garment was, and shopped with quality (as well as price) in mind.
Disposable fashion isn’t disposable until we throw it out.
When it comes to fast & disposable fashion, tons of attention is given to the beginning of a garment’s life cycle. Lots of focus is put on manufacturing clothing in ways that is less devastating to the people making them, and the environment.
With all this attention on the creation of a garment (which should absolutely be getting attention), it’s simple to forget about the end of a garment’s life cycle.
What exactly happens after we donate a piece of clothing is information that is readily available with a quick google search, but hadn’t entered the collective public consciousness in the same way the exploitation of garment laborers has.
Which is kind of a shame, because the end of a clothing’s life cycle is something we, as consumers, have a tremendous amount of influence over.
Just because a piece of clothing was designed to last for 30 seconds, doesn’t mean we have to pass it along after 30 seconds. Disposable clothing and fast fashion, aren’t disposable until we dispose of them.
We can mend our clothes. We can alter our clothes. We can re-purpose our clothes.
And they might just last longer than we think they will.
Everything takes longer than I think it will. (Including writing this post).
Each Wednesday, I take stock of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at.
Books. Sweater. Dress. Books. Sweater Dress.
This continues to be the rhythm of my week – at least in my “not working on projects for other people time.”
And while there’s been more book editing progress than knitting or sewing progress. I have managed to sneak in time here and there to further my summery wardrobe infusion plans.
The editing is going – but I kind of underestimated exactly how much I had added, and how many pages there were to edit. So I just have to laugh every time I think about my original timeline for this project. But! This project is moving forward, just far slower than I had anticipated.
Which, is also a statement that could easily be applied to my summery wardrobe infusion as well.
Because everything takes longer than I think it will. (including writing this post).
Though I’m making tentative plans to make some time for making that is specifically focused on getting some of the smaller pieces of my summery wardrobe infusion made. Plus I’ve decided that a somewhat incoherent post every now and then is a-okay by me, so I will end this here, and go back to editing.
