Fabulous New Refashion/Recycle Book: “The Sweater Chop Shop”

Just released two days ago:  this colorful book on turning recycled wool sweaters into new, beautiful garments and useful objects for the house.   

The Sweater Chop Shop is my new favorite book on clothing recycling and wardrobe refashioning.   It’s well written with clear instructions and illustrations.  It has a wonderful balance of introductory information and let’s-get-started enthusiasm.

Ms ffrench’s basic method is to create felted fabric from good quality wool sweaters in your washing machine and dryer, and then using the resulting fabric to create garments and household items. 

You can make the Renaissance Top with Bell Sleeves pictured on the book cover.  Or a Basic Pullover, or an Empire Vest with Gathers.  For the home, how about this:   

The processes involved are so simple that one doesn’t even need a sewing machine.  All the projects are designed to be sewn by hand; in fact, the hand sewing is a design element. 

Also—and this is important—the designs in this book are just cool, fresh, and funky.  Having now looked at several wardrobe refashioning books, I’m not interested in another way to cut up a t-shirt or make a halter top out of a scarf.  Those might be fine for twenty-something women, but I need something more substantial and higher-quality.  I found some truly new, innovative ideas here.   

Crispina ffrench photo from her blog, www.crispinaffrench.blogspot.com

Best of all, the designs are adaptable to pretty much any body, personality, age, or gender.  The author gives detailed instructions on how to make basic garments, then follows with a chapter on individual elements to personalize them, such as hoods, various pockets, etc.  If you don’t care for the rough-hewn, handmade look that’s pictured in the book, it would be easy to refine the designs by using a sewing machine and hiding the stitching. 

I’m sold.  I have to run to the basement now, to get my four old sweaters out of the washing machine and into the dryer for the next step in the Sweater Chop.  

It’s All in How You Look At It

“Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle.” 

Eric Butterworth

“In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.”

Simone de Beauvoir

Songs for Facing the Music

No more hiding for me. 

We knew it was coming but we didn’t know when.

My husband has gotten a job out of state, in Las Vegas.  With the Air Force. 

The job situation in the glorious place where we live is so dire this offer is too good to pass up.  It will be a three-year commitment, at the end of which we’ll have health insurance for life and a secure way to send our daughter to college.   

Why am I sad?  I usually am when things change, even for the better.  I’m also, of course, relieved and a little bit hopeful.  Yet sadness is a default emotion.  Maybe that’s why I wrote a series of posts about depression a few months ago.  Maybe I’m just a sad-sack, a fruit-loop, or a box of instant jello.  I don’t know.   

We will not, at least at first, be living all together in Las Vegas.  More specifically, at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas.  SeeSpotRun and I will be staying in Missoula for at least the first of the three years. 

This is probably my biggest worry.  SSR!  What do you need, dear daughter?  How will you tell me what your twelve-year-old self needs?  How will I know?  Is it better to stay, or to go?  

Change always brings growth, but it also throws me back into my bad coping habits.  I fear more, argue more.  If I’m not careful, pretty soon I’m reliving every change that’s ever happened to me, my loved ones, endangered species, the oppressed, and the entire effing planet.  This is not good for anyone. 

On a solo drive in the moonlight and mountains tonight, I metaphorically placed SSR and Hubby in the hands of a benevolent Higher Power.  Next I turned on some old and new favorite music on my iPod.  Nothing too serious or dour (Clapton/River of Tears-- definite no).  I needed beats and melodies and words and voices.  Here’s my short list.   

Mix Up, Mix Up…Bob Marley

Near Wild Heaven…REM

Hallelujah…Leonard Cohen

Stay a Little Bit Longer…UB40

Oh to Be in Love…Kate Bush

Seminole Wind…John Anderson

Yo Vengo Aqui…Compay Segundo

Two Princes…Spin Doctors

Paper Gangsta…Lady Gaga

Pocketful of Sunshine…Natasha Bedingfield

Not the Way…Gregory Isaacs

Hardstone—Uhiki (Pinye’s Remix)

Hello Stranger…Emmylou Harris

What about you?  What music comforts and grounds you in times of fear or flux?