Lace Mitts
December 28, 2011
(Yet another pair of armwarmers! Lovely, lacey armwarmers.)
It’s after the holidays and I have lots of posts to make on holiday gift creations. But before that, what I want to talk about today here is something that is incredibly exciting! And that is new years resolutions.
For the last few months I have been pondering this idea that I randomly sort of thought about one day and have been getting more and more excited about implementing it. It is going to mean being more crafty, creative, and creating better blog posts! As well as being more, you know, sustainable, eco friendly, intentional, and all that other hippie dippie lovelyness.
By the end of 2012 I want at least 85% of my wardrobe to be hand made.
This means that after the new year I will go through my entire wardrobe, count how many articles of clothing I own, and tally how many of them are hand made, partially hand made, or factory made. I will then, throughout the year, begin replacing more and more of the factory items with handmade items.
I would like to make a lot of things myself—which is one reason why I’m doing this. To really push my personal creativity and personal productivity. I would also like to support fellow artisan crafters by purchasing their goods as opposed to corporate companies.
I realize that there are some blurry lines when it comes to what is truly “hand made” and what isn’t. For instance, there are some really great screen printers who make amazing art… on factory made shirts. There are also some amazing clothes to be made by simply altering factory made clothes. I’m going to count these sort of items as 50% hand made in the tally of things.
Things that are made mostly from scratch or raw materials are the 100% hand made items. And then obviously, store bought factory made items are 0% hand made.
Because my purpose for doing this also extends to my desire to be more eco friendly as well as less supportive of extortive big company practices I’m also going to as much as possible source the raw materials that I use in my own hand made goods from companies that use good practices, or (even better) from recycled materials. This means more domestically spun yarn for knitting, domestically woven fabric for sewing, purchasing such things from local stores, and scavenging free piles and thrift stores for other materials.
I also hope to make regular blog posts about my progress with this and really stick with it for the whole year. Maybe next year I’ll even step it up a notch and go for the 100%, though right now I’m trying to be realistic about what I am going to be comfortable and happy with, and that means holding on to a few articles of factory made goods. I do not, however, plan on purchasing any factory made clothing in 2012. The last bits of clothing that I received for Christmas this year (which includes mostly socks and long underwear, which DO count in the clothing tally) are the last ones I hope to purchase or have purchased for me.
So expect updates on this, as well as regular updates on other crafty endeavors, in the future!
Happy New Year everyone!