April 23, 2016
by cablackmar@yahoo.com
Comments Off on Luna Pantsalong Day III: Inspiration

Luna Pantsalong Day III: Inspiration

I was trying to figure out why I got so excited about doing this whole pants-making business, and I’ve decided that I had some pretty legit reasons for being excited.

First: I’ve never made myself a pair of pants before (and often felt dissatisfied with what I could buy)
I’m heavier on the bottom than the top, built a bit like a T-Rex with really beefy legs, but sort of spindly forearms and hands. As a result, I’ve always dreaded buying pants. The first few times I tried to buy pants for my adult woman self, back in the early days before lycra and spandex had infiltrated all our clothing, I remember thinking that there simply wasn’t anything out there that could work for my body as it was. And, like so many other people, this gave me a horrible sense that my body needed to change if was going to conform. It’s been a long journey since then, but I still generally dread buying pants. I’m not claiming I can make anything close to as good as what might be out there, but there is something exciting about the idea that these pants are made for me, taking my actual measurements and needs into account.

Second: because I neither like to pants shop, nor as am diligent about mending as I should be, I’m starting to run low on pants. I bought four pairs of colored jeans four or five years ago on sale and have worn all of them within an inch of their lives. New pants for summer would be nice.

Third, and most importantly: Japanese Farmer Pants!
Probably dating myself and giving too much away about my personality, but as a kid I was obsessed with a yuppie mail order gardening supply catalog that would come in the mail for my mom. Smith and Hawken, they had all these groovy gardening tools, and pictures of beautiful English Country-type gardens with fountains playing eternally in mottled sunshine. Aaah.
I had deep agricultural aspirations even as a kid, and I really wanted to dress the part by getting myself a pair of the ‘Japanese Farmer Pants’ perennially advertised in the catalog. Of course, I was a kid, and the pants were expensive, and not sized for children– so I would emulate the look by rolling up the legs of my blue chinos a bit (based on photographic evidence, I looked pretty dopey–but it felt so good!). I never did get a pair, but apparently people who did really liked them, there are forums on Amazon and elsewhere with former Smith and Hawken customers (the supplier went under) begging for someone to bring the fabled Japanese Farmer pant back to market.

I’ve been watching the trend of baggy pants cinched at the ankle and worn with birkenstocks (and here in West LA, with a nice manicure) with great interest. It reminded me of…. something…. but what??

And then I flashed back to Smith and Hawken and the Japanese Farmer Pants. Now was my moment! the Japanese farmer pant is finally in fashion!
As I’ve started to get energized to make my own, I decided it might be worth researching whether this concept of “Japanese Farmer Pant’ had any basis in Japanese sartorial history, or if it was a complete sales construct designed to lure in crunchy California pre-teens. Happily, it turns, out, that there is, in fact, a tradition of loose-fitting pants that have ties at the ankle and the waist. They are called “monpe” in Japanese, and were actually used by farmers and other people working outdoors in the heat, and therefore had to have a lot of give. Traditionally, it seems many of them may have been died with indigo using shibori technique, and sometimes even embroidered in the knee pad area with sashiko (running) embroidery for reinforcement, and presumably comfort for someone having to kneel. While one website said that the style had fallen out of favor because it reminded people of the necessity of women doing men’s agricultural work during World War II, it does seem possible to procure modern monpe on the internet. I have not yet seen any indication that the baggy pant ‘look of the moment’ that I see at the park and that is being emulated in the Luna Pants is indeed inspired by monpe, but it seems possible.

So I will finally have my Japanese Farmer Pants. The yellow ones I’m making probably won’t be that good for gardening because of the color, BUT, I do have some extra cotton yardage in a very ugly ‘putty’ color that would be a great candidate for a shibori makeover…. so stay tuned!

April 16, 2016
by cablackmar@yahoo.com
Comments Off on Lunapantsalong Part II: Bleach Printing

Lunapantsalong Part II: Bleach Printing

The Japanese fabric manufacturer Kokka produces a beautiful line of fabric by the designer Naomi Ito. I love her designs, and in the past have purchased some of her ‘pocho’ designs for projects. The fabric is hard to come by in the US, though, and also quite expensive. Since the ‘poncho’ designs are often just handmade-looking, repeating dots, I thought; ‘how hard would it be to just print my fabric that way on my own?’

Another favorite fabric designer, Lotta Jansdotter, did a whole book on DIY fabric printing techniques. One I’d always been intrigued by was bleach printing. When I first laid out the fabric and started pockmarking it using a pencil eraser in a small amount of bleach, it did feel transgressive…. Like I was tagging it. I followed the Instructables tutorial here (less scary with a guide!) and though the results ended up being more elliptoid than polka dot (possibly I has too much bleach on my eraser?) I think the ultimate result adds interest to the fabric.

I did also have to come to terms with the reality that I wasn’t going to be able to finish this project with the 1.5 yards of fabric I had. Happily I live walking distance from an amazing supplier of upscale quilting fabric… Sew Modern. I had one free yard of kona cotton to cash in from their rewards program. It was almost like I didn’t have to buy fabric for this project 😉

April 16, 2016
by cablackmar@yahoo.com
Comments Off on Pine Needle Coasters

Pine Needle Coasters

My mania for pine needle weaving that started in Florida at Christmas continued over spring break in San Diego. I love pines, but had never thought of them as useful trees until a friend mentioned that her mom had always harvested pine nuts from the pines in her neighborhood in San Francisco. I’m not sure where it was I thought pine nuts came from before that, but afterwards I got really in to gleaning the pine nuts dropped by these beautiful giants. It’s a challenge to crack them (we use a hammer) but rewarding and delicious.

Pine needle weaving is also laborious, as the baskets are stitched together with raffia, but I’m pretty happy with the functionality of the coasters . They don’t slip, are absorbent, and they smell like the pine tree on the street I grew up on that gave the needles. My technique is still a bit sloppy, and the result does look tidier if you use embroidery floss instead of raffia…. But I like the rustic look. Hoorah for pines.

April 14, 2016
by cablackmar@yahoo.com
Comments Off on Luna Pantsalong Day 1: Cheapsnapped??

Luna Pantsalong Day 1: Cheapsnapped??

For the past few weeks Mr. Life Partner and I have been discussing whether there is a good word for ‘when you get burned by your own cheapness.’ Hate to admit it, but it’s something that’s been known to happen in our household, even though I’m assured by Mr. L-P that I’ve “never really been cheap.” (laughing… I’ve always been cheap, but never as cheap as Mr. L-P!)

If you know of such a word (I must believe this word exists… Urban Dictionary? Yiddish? somebody??) let me know. In the meantime, the best term that we’ve invented so far to describe this unfortunate phenomena is the neologism “cheapsnapped.”

I offer this as a preface to my latest sewing project: I am participating in what the sewing blog world calls a “Sew A Long”– where a bunch of bloggers/blog lovers all do the same project at the same time. I’ve never participated in one, but I’m a huge fan of this blogger, pattern and fabric designer Rae Hoekstra who blogs at Made-By-Rae.com. She has a new pattern out for groovy summer pants, and even though I’ll probably look awful in them, I couldn’t resist getting in on the fun by participating in the “Luna Pantsalong“!

Now, back to to ‘cheapsnapped…” I like to sew. But fabric is expensive, and one of my many (many!) flaws is a seamstress is my tendency to under-purchase fabric. I have done some crazy (CRAZY!) things in the past (sewing together random scraps and then cutting them out per pattern, cannibalizing otherwise acceptable garments for parts or extra fabric to finish projects, you name it). In addition, I rarely ever purchase fabric for projects. Just like my cooking, my sewing is generally motivated by a desire to use up leftovers from something we had the night before. I’m the most excited for something when I get an idea about how to re-purpose something for greater results. My life in sewing is like like the ‘cat-in-the-hat’–one project leads to another ad infinitum.

And so, dear readers, you will not be surprised to hear that I have decided to sew a pair of pants with a mere 1.5 yards when 3 yards were recommended. For 3 years I’ve had a big plan to make a quilt for my bed. Embarrassingly, I have purchased FOUR of the wrong shades of yellow (well, one is going to need to be the right one) on my way to trying to get all the materials together. These misbegotten cotton purchases are now leading to other projects.

Which is why, at the top of the page, you will notice me trying to squeeze enough fabric out of the yard and a half I have to make these pants. As you can see, I have literally ‘cut a corner’ of the pattern. The corner I’ve had to cut is the crotch, and so the results may be very bad–especially since I generally need extra ‘ease’ in the hips of my clothes to accommodate my pear shaped figure.

But what is life if you aren’t living on the edge. So, Luna Pantsalong, here I come day 1! The goal is to get here:
Cheapsnapped? Probably, yes.

April 11, 2016
by cablackmar@yahoo.com
Comments Off on Photobombed By Pumpkin

Photobombed By Pumpkin

Spring is springing, and a new volunteer emerges from the chard. In Sourhern California pumpkins and squash always seem happiest when allowed to operate on their own schedules and when they select their own locations. I’ll let this interloper go wild, and we’ll see what comes of it.

February 11, 2016
by cablackmar@yahoo.com
Comments Off on Winter Greens @ School Garden

Winter Greens @ School Garden

January 11, 2016
by cablackmar@yahoo.com
Comments Off on 2015 Babies

2015 Babies

Part 1:
Here’s a statement that could get me in trouble; when someone tells me they are pregnant, my initial reaction isn’t usually one of joy. I feel bad just admitting it! But it’s true. I can’t even articulate what goes through my head–it’s a weird mix of maybe jealousy and sadness/fear. The jealousy I believe to be biologically entrenched (I think jealousy often is). To my primordial, lizard mind, every baby that some other woman is having is a baby that is going to be out there competing for resources with the children that carry my own DNA. It’s a knee-jerk dislike, I think it’s probably basic evolutionary biology, and I don’t worry too much about it. The feeling passes very quickly, which is why I think it’s the shadow of something from a deep past that possibly doesn’t apply to the life I live today.

The fear/sadness, however, I’m inclined to take more seriously. I think it comes from my appraisal of the human situation that these potential new souls will be joining–and when I’m being honest with myself, I feel like that situation is rather bleak. My concern over this situation haunted me through both of my own pregnancies, and hovered menacingly over my decision to have children at all. When one thinks about the damage we do as humans, being pregnant feels a bit like your are willfully incubating disaster. Accordingly, I often felt the desire to hide my condition–some weird puritanical feeling of shame, re-cast for the 21st century. While I will admit that this concern was largely in my head, I did have to attend several meetings for work where we were discussing how the ‘natural increase’ of the population in Southern California made our attempts at net greenhouse gas emissions reductions difficult if not futile, all the while feeling rather chagrined at my pregnant belly–my own culpability in this state of affairs. When I see pregnant women on the street, or when I talk to friends planning additional children, there’s some part of me that always wants to ask how they feel about this world we’re bringing our children into–we have a choice, we can choose not to. But, but, but…

And here is the most miraculous/rediculous thing about my preggophobia–it evaporates completely, in fact, it reverses, when I meet the babies themselves. I love babies, and I love toddlers more then babies, and I especially love elementary-aged kids, and teenagers crack me up, and adults are pretty great too, and then they have more of those adorable, absurdly wonderful babies. Once the idea of one more person stops being abstract, and becomes an actual person, there is no room to do anything but to love and to forgive us all. We are just animals, and we have gotten very lucky biologically that there are so many of us, and that, even with so many of us, lots of us get to live these wonderful, insanely rich lives. We don’t have much capacity to do more than grow up, find love, make love, make more of us, and die. We just don’t. And once I meet the babies, (my own incredibly absorbing, time consuming, messy and loud baby included) I get all tangled up in the laces of my love and their lives, and forgiveness flows easily.

—-
Part II.
2015 was a bumper year for babies. My friends and I are all in our mid-thirties, the 2008 financial crisis is a hazy memory and the stuff of Hollywood fiction, and the time was ripe. When I tallied it up, I realized that I have something like 10 friends that had babies this past year– add in my brother, myself, and a few acquaintances–2015 was a year of 16 babies! Each one dawned on my consciousness with that feeling of dread. But now, the world would feel incomplete if any one of them were not in it.

It would be disingenuous to say that in my happiness at seeing their baby pictures, meeting them, or hearing the joy in their parent’s voices, that my fears for their/our future vanish entirely. The same year that brought all these babies also brought a feeling of even greater precariousness to our human experiment than the years before– with refugees, so many of them only babies themselves, moving across the globe– and worrisome weather patterns threatening to dislodge even more people…

The challenge I feel is set for us is to keep both things in our sights at once–this very personal joy and challenge of parenthood, and at the same time, engagement with the broader world whose functionality we will one day have to trust in as we release our grip on our children’s lives. Some days the balance tilts too far one way or the other, but I tell myself that I owe it to the babies of 2015 to keep the balance.

—-
Part III.
Now that I’ve said all that profound stuff, what did I do with my last week? Yep, that’s right. I made gingerbread bear ornaments! I made ornaments out of baked cinnamon, glue and applesauce for each Baby of 2015 that I could get a picture of, and then I mailed them to all my friends. It actually took a fair amount of effort. It was Oliver’s idea at first. My Suegra had made a set of ornaments for us when Oliver was born, with pictures of us as young parents, and one of Oliver, his head glued on a little cookie bear shape. Honestly, when I first got them I thought they were pretty wacky. But six years later, something about seeing that 1 year old picture of Oliver’s face on a sparkly cinnamon bear melts my heart. When Oliver and I hung the originals on the tree this year, we agreed we needed to make one for Oran, so that we’d have everyone in the family represented. And, once we’d made one for Oran, we decided we needed to make one for my new nephew, and then one for my friend, and then it became a great winter break activity for Oliver…

It was a really silly activity. No telling if the ornaments will survive the trip in the mail to their designated recipients, or if the people who get them will think I’m crazy… But the act of doing it was good medicine. I shelved my worries, let go of concerns for the class of 2036-37, and lost myself in the joys of glue and glitter, and the happiness of thinking about all these adorable little people and their wonderful parents. I’ve been too busy this past year to do much to send cards or even emails to welcome this troupe of cherubs, and it felt really good to do something to mentally welcome them all. My aunt has knit a beautiful blanket for many of the new babies in our family , and she says that as stressful as it is to finish the blankets (especially in a year like 2015), that each one is stitched through with good intentions for the recipient, and that the act of making them is a joyful act. I thought of her, and my mother and her christmas stockings, and my grandmother and all the things she handmade for us as I worked on my little project.

20 miles northeast of where I worked, methane gas was seeping uncontrollably into our atmosphere from the leaking natural gas well at Aliso Canyon. As of Dec. 22, this one leak had emitted as much greenhouse gas as 330,000 passenger vehicles produce in a year–and it will take another 3-4 months to shut the flow of methane down. I like to hope that making 16 glittery christmas ornaments will somehow allow me to return to work in the morning, ready to face challenges like this one with something like hope. At the very least, it reminds me of who we are working for.

Happy Birthday and Welcome to all the Babies of 2015!
[simple-flickr set=”72157661077781634″]

January 8, 2016
by cablackmar@yahoo.com
2 Comments

2015 Holiday Card Competition

This year our family had a ‘competition’ for the best “Christmas in Los Angeles”-themed holiday card. The entries were as follows:

Oliver’s was a ‘open the door and find a surprise’-style card, with Knights in suits of armor hiding behind the presents (sorry that this cannot be digitally demonstrated). One might ask what this has to do with Christmas in LA– and the answer would be: it has more of a plot/premise to it than your average children’s holiday film, and Oliver could therefore be credited as a screenwriter. Here is the card front:

Andy’s card depicts an imaginary scenario with Christmas carolers singing on the I-405 freeway, with a backhanded ‘enjoy peace and joy’ while it lasts tagline. (All of those apocalypse movie posters must be getting to his head.)

Mine was by far the most tame–Santa in the hills of LA on a bicycle:

And because I was the one most initiative, I did a color version of mine:

This year, everyone was a winner. Oliver and Andy’s cards were reproduced in a limited run for distribution to select audiences. I turned mine into a holiday postcard with no return address, and with the address box on the incorrect side. If you didn’t get a postcard from me, it’s because it’s probably lost in the mail for all time due to the improper address placement. I thought the holiday postcard would be more environmentally friendly since it didn’t have an envelope and was small. The Zero Waste people among us frown on holiday cards as a rule, and then there’s the very sage tweet from my brother-in-law, who asks “How long are you supposed to hold onto a Christmas card before it’s acceptable to throw it in the trash? 2 yrs? 5 mins???” My preference is to give only cards that nobody would feel badly about recycling shortly after they receive it (hence, no baubbles, glitter, plastic). I suppose one would ask why I do holiday cards at all?

And the truth, like so many other environmentally damaging activities, is that I love getting holiday cards, and am not quite ready to part with this tradition. Here’s my wall of cards from 2015– thank you to everyone who continues to send cards. I love them!

December 28, 2015
by cablackmar@yahoo.com
Comments Off on Vacation Crafting

Vacation Crafting

Waaaay back somewhere in school I feel like we may have made a pine needle basket–but I think I was too young and likely impatient to get very far with it. Oliver has had an interest in making one (I don’t know why)–possibly related to the fact that his summer camp had a lot of pine needles and he had the idea of making them into bracelets for sale (I think he successfully sold one to our babysitter for 50 cents.)

I bought a ‘learn to make a pine needle basket’ kit on the first day of vacation– but you definitely don’t need a kit to do this. A tapestry needle, some raffia, pine needles, and you tube videos would suffice. It’s lovely to sit out on the screen porch with Oran and stitch away on it.

December 24, 2015
by cablackmar@yahoo.com
Comments Off on Santa’s Supply Chain

Santa’s Supply Chain

Ah, Christmas. Arrived once again, on the doorstep, with SO much baggage. We never questioned whether we would raise our kids with the Santa tradition or not. As a young child, I was a true believer. My mom produced beautiful Christmas mornings. One Christmas evening before I turned five, I have a physical memory of waking up in the night and hearing the sound of sleigh bells–a sound of pure joy. That morning and I recall receiving a plastic trumpet in my stocking, and a spring-suspended rocking horse that left me wondering if somehow Santa had gotten a key to the door. I was the type of kid that worried about embers being left in the fireplace, and whether they would set Santa’s coat on fire.
My extended family took the gifting of Christmas quite seriously, and with nine aunts and uncles and ten cousins, the sprawl of presents extended ten feet from the branches of the tree–designated ‘runners’ were required to pick their way through the wrappings and bows to ensure that each gift found its recipient. My Grandmother, (and then my mother, after my grandmother died), hand-needlepointed beautiful stockings for each new member of the family, with pictures of rosy cheeked Santas, smiling children, and snowy windowpanes. This year, my mother in a burst of handcrafting prowess completed a 3 ft long stocking for my 7 year old, and then a second one for our new baby.
How could I possibly deny my children this tradition?
But as my 7-year old gets older, I have my doubts about it. For one, facilitating his belief requires a substantial amount of subterfuge on my part. Oliver, like me, is a believing (gullible?) kind of person, but not unthinking enough to buy into just anything. With many friends who are Jewish and Muslim, the possibility that Santa’s work is done by parents in the night has definitely come up. There have been moments when the subterfuge has been fun; for years, Oliver’s primary wish from Santa has been the power of flight. I had to devise an elaborate story to explain why the gift of flight was one Santa could not bestow–something about how the king of the birds made a pact with Santa where, in exchange for flying around the world in a sleigh on an annual basis, that Santa wouldn’t extend the power to other humans (jeopardizing the preeminence of birds). After taking this one in stride, he was willing to switch to the more do-able wish for an entire child sized suit of samurai armor. (Wooden katana from the cheap Japanese import store saved the day).
I think the primary reason that I now wonder about the wisdom of our household Santa hoax is that it undermines the reality of what it takes to produce, consume, and dispose of the gifts we receive on Christmas day. After a recent watching of ‘True Cost’, the possibility that the toys and clothes my kids get on Christmas morning were produced by children themselves, or came at the extreme expense of other children’s health, can’t help but to be at the front of my mind. Adding insult to injury, here I am telling my kids that these gifts are somehow produced by magical elves in a (melting) north pole. In many other aspects of our life, I’ve worked to articulate the cost of our decisions in a way that is fair, and comprehensible. So it feels a bit disingenuous to have this one part of the year that is completely divorced from the realities that the other 7 year olds of his world are experiencing.
I remember how I realized that my mother wrapped Santa’s gifts. Shopping together before Christmas, I had fallen in love with a fat, round stuffed animal penguin at the department store. And on Christmas morning, there it was– from ‘Santa’ but wrapped in the wrapping paper I knew to be my mother’s. Though I rationally understood that my Mom did Santa’s work, the bells I’d heard as a toddler still rang in my ears, and it took a long time for the warmth of the belief in Santa to fade entirely. But I did become increasingly annoyed (and I think inquisitive) about how Santa acquired gifts from Mattel, or Hasbro. And, ironically, I think it fired up my initial curiosity in where these things were made, out of what, and by whom. Could elves mold plastic? What was plastic made out of?
The loss of innocence and that dawning awareness of industrial production processes has informed my adult performance as Santa. Generally, I give gifts that could conceivably have been handmade, or actually have been handmade. Hilariously, my 7-year old has responded by increasingly asking Santa for gifts that he knows it will be a pain for me to handmake– on the premise that it will save me the effort to have the elves do it. This year Quittich Pads and faux chain mail pants are on the list–neither is commercially available unless you want to contract with a Cosplay expert. Stacked amongst those gifts, though, are some products that were likely made with what can only be understood as slave labor. A stuffed animal puppet for his brother, a plastic car that runs on an a balloon– who made this stuff? When will I talk honestly to my son about the many people whose misery subsidizes our morning of joy?
So this year I’m not working as hard as I might to hide the truth. I know the day he stops believing is soon upon us, and half of me relishes the sweetness of his last innocence while the other half is morally shocked by the ‘true cost.’ I hope that as he grows, we can scale back (and scale back again) to a Christmas that was not produced through slave labor, or the labor of other children, or at the expense of his future.