Modern Fashion On Trial

Here's the deal... the owner of the fashion company Forever 21 was on trial for selling knock offs of another deisgner's creations. Not that she cared much since she's had 50 other lawsuits slapped at her, denied even knowing how much her company grosses in a year (over $1.5 billion), and was a perfect master at the art of playing dumb. But as someone who loves, wears and sells ethically made clothing her ignorance to how & where the clothing was made is absolutely fascinating... I think her words on the witness stand (quoted below) spell out exactly everything about the fashion industry's attitude towards the world a large ---> aka- the little poor people don't count for shit, as long as they slave away sewing cheap imitations & the almost poor people buy it up like desperate hungry dogs. Personally the fact that she is on trial for knocking off some other garment is kind of the last rung on the ladder of a larger problem of how these types of businesses are run without any ethical standards- being the greater crime to humanity, but oh, the pity for the other whiny but vandalized designer who also makes unethical garments for us! It's like having two bratty children arguing in the school yard, when both are just as much an asshole as the other.

" As head buyer for the chain, Chang oversees a team of six or seven who select what to purchase from vendors. She doesn't know how the garments are made — "we simply trust the vendors and they manufacture the garment for us.” Selecting from the samples is easy. "We choose pretty ones," she explained. " - New York Fashion, The Cut

PS- In the picture, her garments are on the top row and the original designs are on the bottom. lol. Accurate to the button color!

In The Beginning...

This is an apple tree and a berry bush bearing fruit in it's baby stages. Everything little is cute, even food! It's magical how the flower becomes a fruit and then we eat it and the seed makes a new plant and the whole thing starts over again... but really my favorite part of the whole thing is that the insects do all this work, like secret soldiers. We (humans) can be doing whatever - standing on our head, drinking elderberry wine, driving a car... all the while bugs are making food for us without hardly a notice or nod. Without bugs there'd be no apple sauce and blackberry popsicles, which is what I want to make this year... so hail to all non blood sucking creepers. :)

xoxo

View To A Still

I like to stand on this hill along the fence line marveling at the Big Sandy Mush valley. From this spot I can see where two mountains are diving down towards one another forming a space in between called Robinson Cove Rd. ... I used to live there 3 years ago in the most rustic log cabin your imagination can conjure up. Not even a toilet was there, but there was a antique claw foot tub with the most dated & extravagant looking tub handles, facing a window with a view similar to the one in this picture. Breath taking and too real to be real. Now I live in a rustic converted barn that has a toilet but no working tub, which I only notice when I realize I smell funny & worry that I am like the stinky person on the NYC subway that no one wants to sit next to... but really I just smell like fairy dust, angels, and rainbows. ;)
(Which is wood smoke and trees.)
xoxo

Adventures In Basket Weaving

This isn't basket making 101 because I have never had a lesson on how to actually make a basket from scratch... although I shimmied through two survivalist books that breezed over this skill. The books didn't tell me jack toodles, used words I had no idea what they meant (waft?), and didn't have enough pics to really give the mysterious instructions any real meaning. So I started this basket from the skills I learned first when I was 16 sitting under a weeping willow tree with a rad girl named Mara, she looked just like a drag queen and knew how to make wreaths out of branches for dream catchers... and second from Mr. Bort, who makes wreaths of vine that carry sentiments without words and discussed with me various ways that maybe a basket could work.So I started out with basic circles, wrapping the privet (very invasive) vine around itself to create a bottom piece & a handle. Then tied the two together with Honey Suckle vine. I attempted to make some 'spokes' by wrapping thin vines around the bottom circle, keeping the image of a spider web in my mind's eye as a guide.

I used the 'spokes' then to wrap under and over them continuously in a circle...which took FOREVA' and eva' and Evaaaaaaaa.....

I tied the third loop where I wanted the height of the basket to be. Really I wanted it to have alot of depth and be bigger, but my hands were getting cut and my mind was starting to lose itself in all the winding. I kept thinking if I knew what I was doing, it would feel so much smoother... metaphorically and literally. Possibly soaking the vines in water first makes it all alot softer.

I found the wrapping part for the sides of the basket to be a little confusing, but was beginning to get a pattern going by simply wrapping in and out, around the top and bottom breaded wreathes.

I only used two types of invasive vines to makes this basket and I think after hours of working on it, that I can't help but put up this dorky pic below of me with my beloved basket, it's the kinda shit a grandmaw can love!

XOxoooo

More Baby Chickens!

That incubator box is a crackin' factory now! Three baby chicks, with a few more cracking out their shells right this minute... and, oh my gawd there is a little black chicken that I want to steal away and hug on forever. These guys are just coming out whenever they feel like it, and not at all on schedule (the expected 21 days). Makes it all the more magical and exciting. :)

Ah! Cute!

xoxo

Wolf Spider Carrying Egg Sack

Bad...ass...! Ya'll shoulda seen this thing running across the freshly ho'ed dirt in my garden, holding that perfect sphere full of spider babies. Wolf spiders are no joke, they look like what I imagine a baby taranchula would look like... meaning they are huge and startling. Fantastic how so many things in nature are so much like each other, like the sack looks a little like the stuff wasps make their nests out of, and the sack itself is in a circle like most eggs (chicken, human, etc...). (Sigh of love.)

xoxo

Incubator Born Baby Chickens

My homesteading neighbors, Nikki & Cody, have been incubating chicken eggs for the last few weeks which has been really exciting to wait for. The first birth and death have finally come along... both of which are fascinating. Two chicks began hatching, one made it out but in the pic below this chick couldn't get all the way out the egg before it seemed to have drowned in it's embryotic fluid. Terrible but true.

With the macabre news out of the way right off, now we can focus on the cute-tastic explosion pictured below that cracked out it's egg and is a fuzzy peeping ball of perfection. The red hue is from the heat lamp it's lounging under while it gets adjusted to being alive. These chickens are being bred mostly for their yummy organic & free roaming eggs. It's nice to see that baby born and not just in a frying pan for a change. :) I had to hold it and love on it, and since the weather actually got really cold here in the smokey mountains in the picture below I was breathing hot air into my hands so it would stay warm... possibly more for my own entertainment then anything. But oh, look how small it is, so soft it's like it has fur instead of feathers! Baby animals are magnetizing.

xoxo

Creating Gardens with Bottles and Bamboo

This is what I have been working on the last few weeks, in spite of the non stop rain storms we've had. Creating a place to garden, which is alot like putting together an art installation or some wild 3-D project that actually can feed you in the end.The space in the picture above was just a hill covered in brush. I found an old path under the dirt which I dug up and lined with rocks, some of the dirt got hoed some tilled, and the terraces on the hill are made with the plentiful (taking over & invasive) bamboo growing next to the house. I found a few treasures in the ground like the cool light post in the left corner of the pic and tons of old dried up snail shells (they get ghostly white and brittle).
One of my favorite trash to treasure garden borders though are bottles - which there seems to be tons of around here between the alcoholics, parties, and my personal consumption of olive oil ... would be super neat to build a "cord wood" style hut using some bottles too! I am using the bottles for my new herb garden. Drink up people, I've still got half way to go with it! ;)
xoxo

Injured Baby Bunny

Awwwwww. Poor yittle bunneh got caught by a cat... until I scooped him up into my hands and fell in love. Normally when a cat has another animal in it's clutches I don't interfere in fear of leaving the injured party to a long slow bleeding death & therefore being a waste completely. All things change when a tiny baby bunny's soft fur touches my hands, with black pearly eyes that S.O.S for mercy and freedom.

The injuries appeared to be superficial to me, in that I saw no puncture wounds but rather some exposed skin and ripped off fur in a few places. I wiped them with a wet rag and put aloe vera on the tender skin - for lack of any better meds to sooth the terrified ball of cuteness. Apparently in the world of animal rehabilitation rabbits are not a very big deal, being called the "popcorn of the forest" and usually the effort isn't made to save them. Whatevs. I am saving it.

So it's survivor warrior name I've given it is Desmond. Not very fierce but that's what came to me, and after Desmond got a name it also pooped, pee'd and perked up quite a bit. YAY! Hopefully the skin will repair quickly enough to put the fuzz muffin back out into the woods to live out a more natural life & death cycle then a house cat's blood lust.

xoxo

Cardinal Crazies

This is Mr. Coo Coo Clock Cardinal. He's been at my window for about 5 days now... the first few hours were beautiful and I thought for sure he was just eating bugs out there joyously while singing. Then 24 hours passed and he was still at it, increasing his bravery, singing, and pecking hard at the glass. By day three I was about to lose my f-en mind because before the rooster could even crow Mr. Cardinal was banging at my window like an Alfred Hitchcock movie at it's frightening climax. I wondered if he was going to actually break the glass and when I shoo'ed him away he went and begin rounds of every window on the house - pecking in perfect strategic patterns (swoop down past right pane, bang the hell out of left pane, swoop to bamboo, sing, move on the next set of windows...). The cats inside the house were jumping in the air, but that didn't stop Coo Coo Clock - he just went on obsessing over that mysterious bird reflecting back to him in the window- from sunrise to sun down, rain or shine. Sometimes I don't know if he makes me sad or if I want to hold a cat out the window in his predictable path to catch him and put a deadly end to the insanity. He's made me laugh, he's made me cry, Coo Coo has made me even beg for mercy.Gawd help me to not wanna kill him. What do you do with a bird gone Edgar Allen Poe's the raven on ya ?

xoxo