Iceland: Part 1

It’s been over a month since I returned home from Iceland, the land of fire and ice. Over the past many months, the idea of a trip to Iceland went from dream, to wish, to risk, to reality, to memory, and my heart swells thinking of the incredible journey that I traveled to this mysterious country and within myself on either side of it.

In my last post, I mentioned how my experiences with anxiety have heightened significantly over the past year, and without going into too much detail, it was very much true of my life and experiences this winter. And yet - I had caught the travel bug last summer when B and I traveled to Montreal in July. The experience of going there changed me and built in me new desires to “go” that I wasn’t totally familiar or comfortable with in many ways. And yet. The idea of going to Iceland this year came to live in my mind. And of course, I followed the amazing Helene Magnusson for many years (she is THE Icelandic Knitter for goodness sakes). When I casually mentioned her and we talked about Iceland this spring, my amazing partner immediately responded “You have to go. That’s what you have to do.”

So on my birthday in February, I gave myself by far the biggest birthday present I had ever given myself and we pressed the button to book the Spring Knitting Retreat happening in mid-May in ICELAND. My heart was beating so fast. It didn’t even feel real to do it! But the closer and closer we got, the busier that I got at work this spring, the more I told people that I was going to Iceland in May by myself the more it felt real and the more I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to get to go. Actually, at this point, I was equal parts overwhelmed and terrified, if we’re being honest. I had spent a day in NYC alone, had done day trips outside of Durham, but flying across the Atlantic by myself to meet up with a group of total strangers in a country to which I had never traveled? Oh goodness.

The week that I was set to go was, of course, also one of the busiest weeks of my whole spring. There was so much going on at work, and in preparation to be gone for 9 days, that I barely had time to think, and I ended up packing my entire suitcase the night before. The day of my flight, I triple checked everything, went to work in the morning, and then came home to drive to the airport. My 60L backpack, full for the first time, weighed more than I anticipated and I almost fell over, adjusting to my center of gravity. I checked EVERYTHING one last time, my heart physically pounding, and got in the car to go. I was hot from the many layers I was wearing, preparing to go from 80 F to 40 F in the span of only 12 or so hours, and I nervously chatted with my driver the whole way. Of course, I ended up at the airport much too early, but I was on my way.

I was on my way!

oh hai blog

Hi friends. Happy New Year! Happy goal setting month, happy arbitrary but often useful fresh start for big dreams and reflection and (hopefully) new inspiration. We traveled so much over Christmas, from here in NC to both families, to Atlanta and Nashville and I feel like the new year is already way back into the swing of things overall. It’s exciting! It can feel overwhelming, too, but I’m choosing to lean into what Elise Joy talks about in her Love to Sew podcast episode and rather than get overwhelmed by all the possibilities of all the things - get excited about the fact that there are SO MANY THINGS to be inspired by and want to take on this year.

I’d love to say that making this blog a more relevant part of my online presence is a goal of mine (and back of my mind, it definitely IS), but no promises friends. 2018 brought on a new job for me, a new workout routine that I love, a new schedule for my husband and his work, lots of travel and I honestly don’t see any of that really changing much in 2019. Except for hopefully the new job thing, because I am in a really good place with my work. :)

At the same time, the end of the year brought on quite a few new personal things for me in the way of tackling a LOT of anxiety about my stage of life, what I am accomplishing and what makes a meaningful life. Right around that time I also read this incredible post from The Craft Sessions about the meaningful work of making. I clapped, I exclaimed, I cried a little bit. It is so good y’all. If you are a maker in any capacity, I highly encourage you to check it out. And maybe bookmark it for those days when you get discouraged by just another individual being bewildered by your passion for anything that they consider to be “just a hobby”. I know I have.

So I do have some intentions that I’d like to share with you all at this beginning of the new year. I find this to be much more helpful and doable than putting a number on specific goals when I’m juggling quite a few things. It includes the excitement and the motivation for the new year while removing the potential guilt of not meeting some arbitrary number of things that I decided in the dead of winter to do.

• The first is to document more of my work in an intentional way. Not sure yet whether that will mean this space, Ravelry, doing more general posting in my Instagram feed or perhaps collections of Instagram stories? At the end of the year I was trying to go through and get a full collection of my finished works for the year and discovered that while my making was very much a regular practice in my life, my documentation was not.

• Don’t buy any new fabric. For how periodically I sew, I have a really good size stash of fabrics and I’m ready to figure out which patterns they want to be and go for it. This was clarified after a recent incredible fabric sale at the Scrap Exchange and an amazing workshop on planning a handmade wardrobe by River Takada-Capel at Freeman’s Creative. Although there is some pretttttty incredible silk noil on Blackbird Fabrics that is reallllly calling to me right now…

• Go beyond the boxy top. 2018 was my first year with a really amazing sewing machine (I love my Janome Magnolia). So, I made a jacket and a pair of pants and felt like a badass (Note, I am still actually pretty far from being a sewing badass by my own estimation, but the feeling was real great). AND - all of the early sewing projects that I tackled, some variation on the basic boxy top, are not things I regularly wear. When I consider what makes me feel confident, I definitely still come back to waist-defining or some sort of fitted garment so that’s ultimately what I need to be sewing as well! Some ideas that are percolating in my head are the Adria top, Hinterland dress (yay Durham!), Tea House dress, and the Scarborough Fair skirt or something similar. I would also love to make another pair of Winslow culottes in a longer length and elastic waist and an unlined version of the Wiksten Haori jacket in something that involves swiss dots.

• Steek a sweater! This one is already in progress!

• And related to this, flex my creative knitting muscles more this year. I love a good, mindless sweater knit or a vanilla sock probably more than anything, and while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, I have several really exciting projects I’d like to tackle this year that will require more brain power, and I want to lean into this.

I’m really happy to have this space on the internet to come back to, and I hope that in some small way, my sharings here bring some joy to you and spark inspiring ideas for all that this new year will hold.

Building a wardrobe: 2018.5.20 Winslow Culottes

Feeling ever emboldened by my success with the Wiksten Kimono Jacket, I finally felt confident to consider sewing myself a pair of pants (!!), specifically, the Winslow Culottes. Let me preface this by saying that culottes are perhaps the most forgiving pattern one could possibly choose when it comes to actual sizing for the lower half of your body while still claiming to be pants, which for me was exactly what I needed. Pants and I have always had a difficult relationship, my hip to waist to thigh ratio being a bit...dramatic. For this project, however, the cut of the pants are so flowy that you don't actually need to measure anything but your waist! Curvy girls rejoice. 

I cut the second length of these and they hit almost perfectly at the knee, using a drapey fabric that I can't quite identify that I purchased a while back from The Scrap Exchange. The directions for this pattern were extremely straightforward, but for difficult moments Helen's Closet also hosted an incredibly helpful Winslow Culottes Sewalong that I highly recommend for anyone who is considering sewing the pattern. It was my first time using my invisible zipper foot and save for a slight issue at the beginning that was quickly solved with my seam ripper, totally doable! My only other regret was not using paper-backed interfacing. I had a bear of a time trying to incorporate interfacing that wanted to cling to everything it touched as soon as an iron came near and would recommend you use a good-quality, stiff interfacing for the waistband unlike what I chose. 

This pattern is extremely wearable and has already been a go-to piece for my summer wardrobe! They give me the practicality of pants while acting, and often looking like, a skirt. Win win win. For the fall I would love to figure out a way to cut a stretchier black knit version of these in a longer length, perhaps with the gathered waistband hack that Helen graciously provided as well. 

Building a wardrobe: 2018.2.20 Wiksten Oversized Kimono Jacket

For my birthday this year, my sweet husband relented from his desire to surprise me and I purchased myself a secondhand Janome Magnolia sewing machine to celebrate my 27th year of living. It's not an exaggeration to say that having a machine that runs as well as this one does, with the functions that it has and the possibilities that it opened up for my sewing life, was nothing short of a game-changer for my wardrobe this year. (Also, you know you're a nerd when you spend an entire night practicing making buttonholes on scraps of fabric just because you can DO that now. But we won't dwell on that.)

I decided to christen my beautiful new-to-me machine with a really challenging make (for me). I fell in love with the Oversized Wiksten Kimono Jacket from the time that I saw it on Jenny's feed in the most recent Making zine and had to have one. I combined a black semi-mystery, cotton blend fabric I purchased at the Scrap Exchange with some wonderful linen-rayon from Freeman's Creative and am so happy with this piece, even with its many imperfections. 

That "I'm just so excited I just finished this thing late at night" feeling

The only changes I made to the pattern were to shorten the jacket by about 5". I wanted more of a cropped, boxy look but I kept the pockets the same placement and size because I also LOVE a generous pocket. I made the size medium but for a more fitted fit would have gone for the small. All in all, the instructions were really clear and easy to follow, especially since this was my first fully lined garment!

We had such a weird, long winter this year that I have already gotten a great amount of use out of this piece, and the two neutrals have gone with a lot, including some darker prints I have in my closet. 

Since its debut in Making, Wiksten has also published a re-worked version of this jacket for sale as a paper pattern, so if you found yourself wanting this jacket with some modifications, check that out. 

slow fashion, and other deep thoughts on a seemingly not philosophical topic (what we wear)

I've had quite a few thoughts, feelings, ideas, philosophical arguments, rants etc. swirling around in my head about slow fashion for about a year now that I feel it is time to finally get out on paper (or, HTML, as the case is today). I know there are others who will say ALL of the things I want to say much more eloquently than I, but I also know that I want to be a part of the conversation around sustainable and ethical clothing choices, and not wait for the right words or the perfect moment to share my thoughts with the world.

Slow fashion, for me, is the idea that there is a better way to live than supporting large corporations who make cheaply constructed and environmentally destructive clothing overseas, only to be sold for an outrageous profit margin to consumers in the US, who in turn will grow bored with these clothes or find a minor flaw in their construction after some use, and either donate them or throw them away. The issue of how our clothes are made has so many human rights and environmental implications, from the time that the fibers are produced, dyed, sewn, sold and eventually, passed on or disposed of. There are lots of resources out there for anyone interested in understanding these impacts, but a book I found helpful last year was Overdressed: The shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. 

For something that is so essential to our day to day living, as essential as the food we eat, the water we drink, the jobs we hold, how do we break out of the cycle of consumerism and a culture that demands new clothes every season, no matter the cost to ourselves or our planet? 

There's so many ways, and I really struggle with articulating my feelings about slow fashion sometimes because the ways that we can work to make slow fashion a reality are so expansive. From high-end ethically grown and USA-based clothing companies all the way to sewing up the holes in a skirt you've owned for 15 years to make sure it sees 15 more, it can sometimes seem paralyzing to even know where to start or direct your energy.

In fact, while returning to a draft of this blog post, which I first sat down to write in January of this year, I discovered another, much shorter, blog post (which depending on how you feel about my verbosity, you may have preferred) in which I literally just wrote: "SEWING IS IMPORTANT. MENDING IS IMPORTANT. BUYING LOCAL FIBER IS IMPORTANT. SUPPORTING ETHICAL COMPANIES IS IMPORTANT. HOW DO I KNOW WHICH ONES TO DO THE MOST??" I could, and I know that there are organizations out there that do, focus on the impacts of fast fashion and trace their way back to the source, lobbying for fast fashion companies to make changes in their labor practices, environmental impacts, and sourcing, and I want advocates to keep pursuing these very important efforts, knowing that even with the maker movement having a huge comeback in the past 10 years, the majority of people in the world will continue to acquire most, if not all, of their clothing from a large retailer. 

Indigo and onion skin-dyed fabric samples

The most beautiful thing to me, and where I think I am in my journey of slow fashion, is as a maker, when slow fashion and the joy of sewing and knitting meet. Because of my interest in creating my own wardrobe by hand, wearable garments and accessories that I love, I think there was always going to be a natural interest and focus on being a part of the label of the "slow fashion movement" and to see others interested in creating a sustainable wardrobe chime in on the ethics and pleasure of a wardrobe that is at its core, slow, is a really exciting thing. I don't think that I am wrong for choosing to sew my spring and summer tops, or alter clothes I swapped at a local clothing exchange, rather than advocate for the reform of fast fashion companies, just as I don't think that anyone who focuses on buying sustainable retail are wrong for not wanting to learn to make their own clothes. It's all important. And I want to hear everyone's voice who care about the people who make our clothes and the impact of what we wear on our planet.