You may have noticed things looking a little bit different around here. I decided it was time for a blog refresh. So, what’s the what?

1. I got rid of the tabs across the top. While the idea of separating my posts on craftiness, paganism, and community into categories, I never bothered to set up separate RSS feeds or update all categories regularly. Plus, I seem to be unable to keep a post on any given topic from veering wildly into all the others before returning back to the original. So, there’s that. All my posts are now centralized, and my Patterns page has a more prominant place (which is good, since my goal is to work on more designing.)

2. I added Disqus comments. Now I’ll actually get emails when people comment, and hopefully be able to respond! There’s also nifty comment threading and the ability for people who comment to get email notifications if they wish. Awesome.

3. I decided to just put this whole blog under my pagan name. After a lot of hemming and hawing, I realized that the only place I use my real name anymore is work, pretty much. So if you’re wondering who this Ivy chick is….that’s me. It’s the other name I go by, and frankly, I like it a heck of a lot better than my actual name.

Eventually I hope to work on a custom header, and maybe even–gasp–my own template, but that will require facing down CSS so I’m going to have to prep for that battle. But in the meantime, hope you enjoy the new look! (Oh, and I’ll be updating my blog roll as well, with actual links. Exciting!)

After realizing that my blog reader is full of links that I keep taking note of with the thought to write future blog posts on them only to run out of time, I figured I might as well just share the links with you straight out. There’s not much rhyme or reason to this–just things that I’ve been reading or watching recently that caught my eye for some reason. It’s a pretty mixed group but, well, that’s what the inside of my brain looks like. Welcome.

Green Links

Treehugger deconstructs the phantom China vs. US Clean Tech war. Particularly interesting in light of Obama’s recent remarks on energy, which are woefully deficient in the areas of renewable power sources.

A Treehugger post on the FTC and bamboo. I always thought bamboo was a great sustainable fiber, but turns out that the processing might be just as bad as plastic and rayon? (Note: Not sure if this applies to bamboo yarn as well as fabric; further investigation should be done.)

Is Drinking Milk from Bags Weird? by Treehugger. Not really applicable to me, but I still like the idea of things like milk being sold in bags like it is in Canada. If only because it would give me an excuse to have an adorable milk pitcher.

News, Media, & Entertainment

The New York Times takes a look at the most emailed news stories–turns out, it’s the ones that inspire awe. Makes me have a little bit more faith in humanity.

The Wall Street Journal takes a  look at the life of one of the original “news doctors” Frank Magid, and how he helped turn news into entertainment. This makes me have much less faith in humanity.

The Demoiselles ask you to Check Yourselves: Accidentally Contributing to Media Standards. I love their take on body image and standards.

Smart Pop Books has a handy recap of last night’s Lost episode, in case you missed it or, like me, find yourself feeling confused.

Spirituality

Sawtooth Sage: A Soothing Southwestern Nerve Tonic from The Medicine Woman’s Roots. I don’t think Sawtooth Sage is local (any of you green witches know?) and I don’t know how you would get the seeds to cultivate it, but damn it, I want some of this!

Modest Extremes by Wendy Shalit take a fascinating look at modesty. I certainly wouldn’t say I’m leaning in that extreme of a direction–but there are some really great thoughts in there around preserving some mystery in life and relationships. Something that seems increasingly forgotten lately.

The Non-Muslim Hijabi’s videos “Why wear Hijab?” and “Thoughts on Hijab.” Some of you may (or may not) know that I’ve been toying with the idea of covering my hair in some fashion (so far sticking mainly to wide headbands) and I really connected with a lot of what she said.

General Awesomeness

Cup Pies! From the Craftyminx. I want to make Cup Pies to go with my Cupcakes! I especially want to figure out if there’s a way to do, like coconut cream cup pies that’s not super messy….mmmm…

Calling all Lovers: Body Image from the Other Side by The Demoiselles. If you’re a man or woman (or any other gender identity) who loves women, you should absolutely go leave a comment on this post.

Some adorable wish tickets from A Fanciful Twist.  I want to print these out and leave them random places! So cute.

And finally, a short story for you–“The Cannonball Run” by Andrew Fitzgerald. Andrew is one of my co-workers and he’s doing this crazy Kickstarter project writing short stories every week based on words, characters, settings, and sentences submitted by the projects backers. It’s a great opportunity to watch him be tortured by all of us see some crowd sourced fiction get written.

Happy reading!

This past weekend, I finally watched Food, Inc. Now, most of the information in this wasn’t new to me–I’ve read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and various eco-blogs of all kinds. But I still wasn’t prepared for the kind of visual impact this film had.

So this weekend, isntead of heading off to the Supermarket, I headed to the farmer’s market. Surprisingly, I was able to get most of what I needed for the week for close to what I’d spend at a store.

You can see some of it–avocados, garlic, onion–here, but I also picked up some eggs, pasta, grass-fed steak, and a bunch more veggies. Potatoes, mushrooms, beets, salad greens, and brussels sprouts. I was worried I wouldn’t have enough, but I think I may have overshot it a bit.

I meant to do a bunch of prep yesterday, but didn’t quite mange it. It’ll take a little more effort and organization this week, but I’m still going to attempt a week of eating (mostly) local. Here’s hoping it’s a success!

Since my post earlier in the week, I’ve been contiuing to think about some of the points brought up in the Story of Stuff. Particularly around the idea of consumerism and identity.

In order to create a continuing mrket for stuff, that stuff has to be disposable. Now, that can be achieved my producing goods which break or wear out quickly, but that doesn’t account for the ingenuity of people, who my have the audacity to fix or care for such goods. So, there’s got to be another way.

Why not convince people their identity and self worth depend on what they own?

And not just how much they own, but what type of things they own. An example here, is shirts.  Ever notice how you can’t find all shirt colors all the time? I’ve been looking, this year, for  scoop-neck, long sleeved, brown shirt. I have one, but after many years, it’s becoming obscenely thin, so I figured I should get a new one before I get arrested for indecent exposure. I’ve looked, and looked, but despite finding many shirts in black and grey (colors that I couldn’t find last year, when I my black shirt had shrunk to  a size better suited for a pre-teen) brown was nowhere to be seen.

Why? Because colors cycle. Aside from the annoyance factor–it’s brown, folks, a staple, it’s not like I’m looking for neon green–the message, of course, is that you need to dump all your staples every season and replace them. Obviously, wearing brown this year makes you hopelessly out of touch and unstylish. Black is in. But next year, when it’s brown, or taupe, or ivory, you had better dump all those black and grey shirts and get on board.

Note. It’s not your shirt that’s out of style. It’s you. It doesn’t matter if you really like a certain look or color or style–it’s you that the judgments are placed on. On  less fashion oriented note, think of the Mac vs. PC commercials. I’m a Mac. I’m a PC. It’s not about the computers, it’s about the idea that if you own Mac, you’re young, cool, effortless. A PC–sorry, dude, you’re kind of  loser.

None of this is exactly news, but I’ve noticed things online that make me wonder how this is coloring our debates in this country–online, or even political discourse. It’s not enough to have differing opinions. It turns into a full on character assault because we have lost the ability to separate a differing opinion from an attack on ourselves.

Say I go on a website, and I make  post….say, hypothetically, a well-meaning relative gave me some skeins of inexpensive acrylic yarn for my birthday. It’s decent yarn, but I prefer natural fibers and choose not to shop at chain retailers where at all possible, and am wondering if I should say something or not. Now, someone who knits exclusively with that particular brand of acrylic reads that post. Instead of reading what it actually says–that I personally make those choices, but don’t know how much to communicate them without being rude–she reads something along the lines of Ugh, I can’t believe someone gave me this crappy yarn, anyone who buys this stuff is cheap and ignorant. So she responds with something snarky about how it must be nice to have so much money to blow on expensive yarn when people with families are struggling, which of course my mind reads and attacheds the unspoken addition of People who buy expensive yarn are wasteful and single people don’t deserve to make as much money. And so on and so forth, until it’s a flame war of epic proportions.* When the reality is, had people stopped reading what they thought the other person was saying, and started reading what was actually said, most of it could have been avoided.

So…how do we stop doing this? I don’t know. But I think it begins with the idea of prying our identities back from being so entangled with stuff. (And that includes intangible things.) Recognizing that opinions and tastes are just that–that if someone else cares about a TV show, it’s okay. It doesn’t make them shallow/bad/uncaring about everything else. It’s one facet of them. That if someone choses to make other, non-harmful** choices, that’s up to them. And it’s not an attack on us when they do that.

And we have to be willing to make these changes. I think that may be the hardest part of all.

* I chose yarn for this because it’s  common flame war topic, but slightly less controversial than an example using  political topic, where people tend to gloss over everything except one sentance and commence attacking. For the record, I’ve used both acrylic and natural fibers.

**Obviously, things get stickier when you talk about the things that come up around the environment. What should be self-evident, based on scientific evidence or flat out common sense–dumping toxic chemcials in the ground or water is just a dumb idea, y’all–is rejected by people. Whether it’s a panic response to a problem that seems to big to tackle, or the result of a campaign that plays on emotions to convince people of things that are actually quite bad for them, it results in people who will stubbornly insist that they are being attacked when it is pointed out that what they are doing harms not only them, but everyone else on the planet. There is a point when things do cross the line–when what you do is no longer an opinion, but something that has an adverse affect on the lives of everyone else.

So, I’m starting to become a litte bit peturbed at the willingness of our society to bury its collective head in the sand and ignore the fact that we are rapidly heading down a path that cannot be sustained.

Let me back up. Someone on Twitter linked to this dress from Anthropologie. My first thought was cute, followed by expensive. Pretty typical reaction when I see anything from Anthropologie. Then I read the description.

A patchwork of crisp cotton, Maeve’s corset-style frock recalls a time when each and every bit of fabric was used and treasured.

*raised eyebrow*

Excuse me?

Making the best use out of materials is not–nor should it be consider–quaint. It is smart. It is practical. And it is a lesson we would all do well to learn from our grandmothers. (Or great-grandmothers. Or maybe great-great-grandmothers. Pick your generation, folks, it’s like a choose your own adventure novel. Which at least some of you are probably too young to remember. Moving on.)

Now, Iwill freely admit here that I am as guilty as anyone. I am not a minimalist, and I have what many would say is too much stuff. This is made even worse by the fact that I come from a family who expresses affection by giving gifts–and while the thought is lovely, it can also mean finding places to put things. But the more I read things like that–and the more I watch things like The Story of Stuff, the more I question this.

So, this has me thinking. What do I get rid of? How can I do better–and what can I reuse. Some of it, I already do, without even thinking. Yarn is saved for other projects (leftover sock yarn becoming the never-ending blanket of doom, for example, and what’s left from that is made into ornaments or other wee tiny things) or given away if I don’t think I will use it. Fabric scraps are saved, with the hopes of eventually becoming quilts or other patchwork objects. Clothes are generally hoarded until they are unwearable, but since I haven’t changed sizes in any meaningful way since the 9th grade, I’m thinking I should probably revisit that strategy. Wearable things I’ll donate to thrift stores or take to a clothing swap with friends, but what of the  unwearable? I should remember, in the future, not to just toss my torn or threadbare shirts–they can, at least, make serviceable dust rags or cleaning cloths. But I wonder. What else am I tossing that could be re-used?

This year, I want to pay more attention to these things, and work to build new habits that are more sustainable. The hardest part of this is going to be, I think, remembering that I can’t do this overnight. I have a tendency to want to jump in with both feet, then break down when I get overwhelmed with the enormity of the thing.

And I’ll still save and use all my fabric and yarn scraps.