MG: eat local challenge

first, have you heard about the hopeful development in Australian sheep welfare? hooray for the sheep! i'm relieved and elated--changes on such scale are possible (assuming all goes well, that is).

a little sock progress before i get to the point of this post... i started hubby's second sock, successfully evading the second sock syndrome. tiny toes on little dpns:


foot grown on mini-circulars, then the heel half went back on dpns, which are slightly smaller in diameter (denser heel):


ok, i read about the eat local challenge on Absinthe Knits and mellowtrouble. this was a while ago, but i never got my act together while i was away to post about it or officially join. i have been making efforts for the challenge however.

when i'm in berkeley, it's easy to eat in the way i prefer--deliciously and sustainably most of the time. while i was in dayton, ohio this summer, eating well was hard for me. in the discouraging landscape of corporate chains for restaurants and stores alike, grocery shopping became a depressing event. i got lazy about making an effort for fresh, sustainable goods.

the eat local challenge reminded me to work a bit harder for more options, so hubby and i drove to the Webster Street Market downtown. look what we found!


it's a sampling of what we brought home: freshly baked salted rye bread, gorgeous blueberries, local yogurt cheese, cannelini beans (for soup!), and unrefined raw sugar. we also found a stand called "Azra Desserts" where this friendly man sells his beautiful cookies--just a small number of simple things on his ingredient list. you know, flour, butter, sugar; no hydrogenated oil in sight. we bought some linzer cookies w/ raspberry jam. they were so yummy--buttery and sweet with a tiny bit of tartness from the jam.



i know not everything we purchased was grown in the area (in the 100-mile radius sense). i'm guessing the sugar and the beans came from elsewhere, but for me, there are layers of eating local... if not grown locally, then baked, roasted, pickled, crafted, sewn, marketed locally.

i like supporting small merchants (instead of the shipping and administration of large corporate chains). at places like the webster market, i also have the benefit of variety. raw sugar and cannelini beans are not everyday items in the dayton supermarket. and the prices were excellent too.

my market goods were fresh and flavorful. the blueberries were plump and dusky blue. we also brought home a canteloup whose sticky sweet scent you could catch at arm's length... just the way it should be.

MG: deeper into the fiber fold

Lelah has been blocking for a couple of days; this yarn takes a while to dry. here it is waiting impatiently on my towel-on-a-basket blocking system:


my thoughts about the yarn... though there was a learning curve involved, i thoroughly enjoyed Cadiz (50% silk/50% viscose by Jaeger). once acclimated to the 12 (i counted) itty bitty plies (great potential for pulling in different directions or splitting) a lovely fabric emerged. as long as i didn't work against the twist, the yarn created beautiful definition and dimension. post-wash, the fabric plumps into marshmallow-y texture and drapes beautifully. i really love this yarn.

but i don't think i will use silk again... sigh... i recently found out about how most sheep are treated in the Australian wool industry. such practices are... i don't know how to describe such knowing infliction upon living beings...

i'm still working out what this means to me in detail. i will not use Australian wool from now on, unless it's specified cruelty-free, but how much do i know about where the wool in my yarn comes from? most labels do not reveal this.

i don't think petro-chemicals (e.g. polyester, acrylic, etc.) are a healthy alternative for me or for the earth. and for now, i don't think using wool is inherently cruel. i can imagine some ideal situation: if a flock were lovingly tended and caringly sheared, the use of wool would not be extracted at a cost paid by the sheep. it's important my wool should not be bought with physical or mental trauma. but really, how much do i know about how the sheep who produce my wool are treated? how much do i know about whether shearing traumatizes them or not. i don't know... i need to learn more about this.

this prompted me to re-evaluate what i know. i do know cute little silkworms die in silk production. so, no more silk for me...

well, one needs positive conditioning as well as negative, so what fibers can i be excited about? organic cotton, hemp, tencel, bamboo, soysilk; all lovely to covet but expensive and/or hard to find. i know i say this a lot, but i'm a graduate student... i'm poor! which led me to this:


i went to a spinning class at Deep Color Studio this week!!!!!!!!!!! [please tolerate a few more]!!!!!!!! I LOVE IT!!! i'm addicted. spinning fibers are much cheaper than yarns, but still i have to ration; if i'm not careful, there is the distinct possibility i would spin myself out of house and home.

for the duration of the class, i can rent a wheel at $5/week. which means, there is an Ashford Joy in my apartment RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!! the photo above is the yarn i spun in class--my very first. it's all lumpy, uneven, undertwisted, overtwisted, but Claudia at Deep Color Studio, the instructor, promised it would still knit into an object of beauty.

deeper and deeper... and quite content.