Socially responsible shopping

I just sold the first thing from my etsy shop!!! I put a few balls of plant-dyed yarn on there. I hope to be putting more plant-dyed yarn as I get yarn and dye it. I’m collecting a nice assortment of dyestuff, more on that later.

I also finished my Mystery Stole 3! Now I have to block it and figure out how to wear this thing. Any ideas?

So this week I was realizing I needed some fall clothing. My long sleeve shirts are all starting to look like something to use for waxing the car, and most of my jeans are too faded or don’t fit. Harpa posted about an article the other day where a Swedish environmental group did some tests on textiles and found all kinds of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals in items produced in non-EU countries. You can read a PDF about the study here. Scary stuff. So I decided I wanted to buy something made in the US, Canada, or the EU. After some research, I decided to try Lucky brand jeans, because I could find them at several shops at the mall near me. So off we went to the mall. I did find the jeans, and they fit perfectly, but I didn’t buy any because the only ones they had in my size were long. So I will get jeans another day. We saw a few cute sweaters, one was a cotton sweater with a really nice lace design and an overlapping v-neck. Made in China, and they wanted $65. Oh well, maybe I have a sweater design idea for a future project. Then I saw a beautiful Elle MacPherson designed bra. Made in China, and $60! Elle, do you really need the money that badly? So I went home with nothing, and went online and bought some shirts on sale from American Apparel. Even the fabric is made in the US, and it’s comparable in price to The Gap or Old Navy. So I guess you have to work hard at being socially responsible, but I think it’s worth it. I’ve decided to research country of origin from anything that I buy. The only way to make a difference is to vote with your wallet.

This weekend was our anniversary, so we went for a nice drive Sunday, after seeing the 1931 Frankenstein in a theatre built in 1931 on Saturday night. (I wanted to dress like we were in the 1930’s, but we were rushing around and didn’t have time). We went to Shelburne Falls, where we went on our mini honeymoon.

Cats like swans

(I love sentences like that.)

Cats love birds like I love chocolate-covered licorice, and my bird-hunter is no exception, as much as I’d like him to leave those pretty birds along and just go after the mice. Maybe he can sense the Swan Lake theme in Mystery Stole 3:

Or maybe he just wanted to snuggle up after watching the slightly disturbing Perfume, A Story of a Murderer. I was surprised that the movie was just as good as the book. It was incredible how they managed to translate it to screen so well. We were disappointed to not be able to see it in the theatre here (never made it to any of the ones near me). But now we finally got around to seeing it.

I came upon The Tasha Tudor Cookbook in the library the other day, and we tried a few recipes from it last night. Classic New England cooking. I first knew of Tasha Tudor when I had a very cool Christmas book full of songs as a child that she wrote. When I became an adult, I read more about her life and I find her just a fascinating woman. She is the ultimate self-sufficient woman, living alone for a lot of her life, keeping an 1830’s lifestyle as much as possible, making her own cheese and so on. She definitely is a role model of mine. And so far, it’s a pretty good cookbook.

Niagara Falls

So I got my trip photos back.

Wait a minute…this doesn’t look like Niagara Falls!

Nope! It’s Seljalandsfoss. I obviously need to get my film developed more frequently.

HERE is Niagara Falls:

A lot of the other pictures came out kind of bad. There is so much spray there, and between that and the cheap camera, the contrast just wasn’t good. I told Ingi that next time we do a “real” vacation I am spending some of the vacation money on getting a real camera.

And here is Mystery Stole 3. One end is all short rows and this was what I did all vacation long. I have gotten to the halfway point.