craft – Composite

Re-dying some boots

March 19, 2019March 19, 2019 Liz

I have these amazing boots in black and blue, and love them quite a lot, so much that I mail ordered the same boots in red. But the contrasting color to the red was way browner than it looked in pictures. Every time I put these boots on I just felt like, Yuck, this brown is too peachy-ochre, and I want to look at my feet & think “YAY!! I have red boots on! RED!” instead.

OK! I’ve never done this before but I am accustomed to dying things, so here goes! I ordered 4 colors of leather dye and some de-glazer (4 bucks per color, very cheap!). After work today I went out on the porch and tried to strip the brown dye. It didn’t seem like a lot of it came off to be honest.

On to the dyeing! The toes and heel and straps I dyed a wine color and the main uppers of the boot are now red, a somewhat different red than the other original bright red (on the… lower part of the body of the shoe, and the tongue). The triangle part on the back calf is now black.

I forgot to get sealant! After these dry overnight I’ll touch them up, condition them, and maybe the sealant will come by then. Can’t wait to see how they come out.

pair of boots

It was so soothing after staring at Firefox stuff all day on my laptop to do something concrete with my hands. The other day I remarked to Danny how it’s so good for me now that the sun is out & I am gardening a little every day. “Why?” he said, cocking a eye from his cozy blanket nest, covered in different computer parts and cables and perhaps crumbs, analyzing me like I am an alien being, which he does every time I do something like load the dishwasher efficiently or remember to brush my teeth without a technological object telling me how and when. “Why is it good for you? What makes it good?” Perhaps I will now unlock a further level of the secrets of happiness with my homely domesticity! “Uh…. I dunno? I like… dirt?! Dirt is amazing. I like getting my hands in it and seeing what it’s doing. Like being aware of the tides! ” “So like, happy bugs and worms?” “Happy mycelia of good soil fungi! I guess it’s exercise too.” But, really it may have this component of being concrete and physical, it isn’t made of words, and I also feel like I’m caring for and preserving something. Exercising craft, or creating things, and also being nurturing in some way. Well, anyway dying my boots felt like that too. I like physical labor when I am capable of it.

Oh yeah and my hands and half the porch look like a very creative murder just happened, because I’m also a huge slob.

No Sweat: a startup idea

December 15, 2010 Liz

Today I was looking at my pajama pants and thinking about how they were produced. I’ve seen my sister sew fleece pajama pants and it doesn’t look very difficult. So, to make these, someone or some clothing label company decided to product pajamas, they would have the label “Coffee Time” and be distributed through Mervyn’s, and they lined up some factory in China to produce the pants. I haven’t the foggiest idea how that industry works.

However, I have watched from the sidelines as Etsy people got popular and started outsourcing their “DIY” craft work to other crafters and then overseas. I got to thinking suddenly about Ravelry and other social software for crafters. They are extremely robust. Many people have small independent businesses based on DIY web tools.

As I thought of all this I also thought of Kevin Carson’s book The Homebrew Industrial Revolution and his conviction that we can use tech to reinvent mass production.

I do think there is a startup idea in here. Write something like Ravelry that would have a component that allows people to associate themselves in cooperatives to produce stuff. That way there could be some help with buying materials, people could share out the work and fulfill orders, but retain their individual identity as crafters and artists with a particular style and following. But if 1000 people suddenly want to buy crocheted meerkat Doctor Who dolls for christmas presents, and only 2 people are making them, a bunch of other crocheters might temporarily associate to make some money and make a bunch of people happy. It could work well. Not as “mechanical” as Amazon Mechanical Turk, but with a sort of DIY Flash Mob Capitalism vibe – and without the sweatshop. People shouldn’t have to incorporate to work together.