in which we label all of our things with our names
April 11, 2012
Posted by jodi on April 11, 2012 at 9.00pm
more sewing for the broken city lab commission
February 15, 2012
Giant letters that will make up a sign that fills the side of a building; they’ll be changing the text periodically so we’re doing a set of letters similar to the letter distribution in a Scrabble set. Plus accents, as the text will be both English and French.
I already made a large black fabric backdrop, fabric squares that the letters will be pinned to, plus the bunting flags. Only the letters are left; this is where it gets tedious!
The letters are black fabric backed with various scrap decorating sateen fabrics with a layer of double sided iron-on adhesive in the middle. It’s more work than it looks, as I first have to break the letters into pieces, cut them from the adhesive, iron them onto the black, cut them out, iron them onto the backing fabrics, cut them out again, then sew around the edges with the serger (knife disengaged!).
That’s a whole lot of cutting with both rotary cutter and scissors, so I’ve been taping up various parts of my fingers to try and prevent blisters. With only moderate success.
Posted by jodi on February 15, 2012 at 1.59pm
football club joe fresh?
September 22, 2011
I picked up this bizarre, possibly copyright-infringing shirt at a thrift store last week, Joe Fresh brand with a fake FC Barcelona crest. The flag has been changed to Iceland, the stripes are turned sideways and the ball is white instead of yellow, but is that enough? Also, who exactly is the market for this? Surely fans of the team want the real thing. I guess I don’t know what the people who buy their clothes in the grocery store want (although I have bought clothes in the grocery store myself) (even my winter coat).
I’m now trying to decide if I actually want to wear it. I’d sleep in it, but the crest hits my boob in an awkward place. Aw.
Posted by jodi on September 22, 2011 at 9.42am
what i’m wearing
September 16, 2011
Layers season is my favourite season. Typical day-at-the-office attire:
-”Live to Print” bandanna, SGC conference giveaway from McClains Printmaking Supplies
-badass cardigan circa 2007, still missing the top and bottom buttons because I had to wait until Pennsic to buy two more, so I did that and now it’s been two years and I’ve misplaced them. (pattern: Wicked by Rachel Bishop) (ravelry links)
-black shirt with white polka-dots, thrifted right before I went up to North Bay to teach for a semester, as part of a since-abandoned attempt to “dress my age”. I like this shirt a lot except that it has silly puffy shoulders. Not cute puffy either, more like way high puffy.
-weird stiff skirt, thrifted this summer; it feels like parachute material and has a stiff hem that sticks out, and it makes a schwuck-schwuck sound when I walk.
-socks from Sock Dreams
-black wedge flats (Zellers), way too wide for me so I’m always turning my ankle in them.
Posted by jodi on September 16, 2011 at 12.20pm
on toplessness
July 20, 2011
Yesterday I received a message from a friend who works at the CBC, inviting me to comment on the 20th anniversary of Gwen Jacob’s arrest for walking topless down the street in Guelph, Ontario. Unfortunately, I’m sick with an awful cold this week, so sick that last night I resorted to sleeping sitting up on the TV room couch in an effort to keep the coughing jags under control. I’m drowsy, a little bit stoned on cough syrup, and my cough-ravaged throat is in no condition to be heard on the news. But! YOU ALL ARE IN LUCK. Just because I’m sick doesn’t mean I haven’t got anything to say about Gwen Jacob.
See: the Gwen Jacob case kind of made me a feminist. I don’t mean that this case changed my life or made me a radically different person (a more radical person? heh) than I would otherwise have become. If it hadn’t been this it would have been something else. I just mean that, for me, it was this. In 1991, at age nineteen, I had already experienced rape, sexual coercion (something that I didn’t yet understand then, but do now, is ALSO RAPE), being dumped from a car on a sideroad in the middle of the country for not “putting out”, various other non-sexual assaults including a friend’s boyfriend trying to crush me with a chesterfield (I’m not even kidding), and a massive amount of slut-shaming. This one incident, this woman I didn’t know who was my age and grew up near where I did being arrested and charged with indecency for taking her shirt off, seemed to highlight all of the double standards in the whole world, for me. It was something concrete to be angry about at a time when I didn’t possess the words to protest against things like slut-shaming.
(Incidentally, I tried going topless outside for a while once, the summer after Jacob’s arrest, when I was all alone on the farm, not likely to be seen by anyone but the occasional gravel truck driver out on the road. How it felt: silly, contrived, exhilarating, terrifying. And oddly itchy. And when my areolae starting feeling the effects of too much sun, I gave it up.)
After the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned Jacob’s conviction in 1996, when going topless effectively became legal in Ontario for all sexes, a few (very few) women started trying it just because they could. Once or twice Peter and I saw one in downtown London, always walking with a male companion, never alone, reveling in their new freedom but cautiously, self consciously, defiantly; drawing stares. Hardly free of any kind of double standard, and certainly not free of their bodies being immediately sexualized. Peter overheard one of these topless women in conversation with her (male) friend, and guess what the two of them were talking about? People’s reactions to her toplessness. In the days after the court ruling our options had expanded from living with the double standard of only men’s toplessness being socially acceptable to either that or being an activist, a test case, and having our bare breasts be a constant centre of attention. Our options hadn’t really expanded to include our toplessness being NOT A BIG DEAL.
The thing is, double standards don’t just disappear overnight because the Court of Appeal says they’re unfair. Body policing and slut-shaming and rape culture don’t just disappear overnight, and the evidence is all around us, every day, that they haven’t even budged one bit. 20 years after Jacob’s arrest, 15 years after her conviction was overturned, what does her case mean for women in Ontario, exactly? If I went outside right this minute, took off my shirt and walked down the street with my breasts visible, here is what it does NOT mean:
-that I will not be perceived as behaving with indecency;
-that my body will not be sexualized or consumed in a sexual manner;
-that I will not be catcalled or otherwise verbally harassed;
-that I will not be groped;
-that I will not be propositioned;
-that I will not be raped;
-that I will be treated with respect, or even with indifference.
Also:
-that if I am perceived as behaving with indecency, that will not be perceived as my fault;
-that if my body is sexualized or consumed in a sexual manner, that will not be perceived as my fault;
-that if I am catcalled or otherwise verbally harassed that will not be perceived as my fault;
-that if I am groped that will not be perceived as my fault;
-that if I am propositioned that will not be perceived as my fault;
-that if I am raped that will not be perceived as my fault.
What it means: that at least I won’t be arrested.
Posted by jodi on July 20, 2011 at 1.57pm
red on red
May 29, 2011
For Project Spectrum: cozy red legwarmers, completed just as the weather got warm, as is the custom around here (I haven’t even shown y’all the shawl I finished 3 weeks ago, because I’ve got all summer to block it, now). These are knit in a 2×2 rib with two different red sock yarns that change halfway down. So I can wear them two days in a row with my boots and nobody will know!
Probably they won’t actually be worn like this, but rather will be flipped the same way so as to be matchy.
Whoops, I didn’t mean to show off quite than much leg (but hey, check out my strong new thigh! Everybody loves a bonus bare thigh shot, like that time last fall when Sergio Ramos went out on the pitch in the wrong shorts and then had to change them on the sideline. . . oh, oh yeah).
This is finished object #2 in my ongoing project of getting rid of all the sock yarn with which I will never knit socks (and freeing up a whole lot of studio storage in the process); finished object #1 was that shawl you haven’t seen yet (soon!). The semi-solid dark red is something I bought from Mama E years ago, ball band is long disappeared but it feels like merino, soft and a bit pilly. The red/black is “newspaper” from Spritely Goods, which I think might be a discontinued colour. I’d originally planned knee socks with it, and had one sock completed before burning out on the second. These legwarmers, while goofy, will probably see more wear than the socks ever would have.
Come winter, depending on what sort of new home the Brawlers find for skate practices, the legwarmers may also be worn rather frequently like this:
Or rather, similar to this only with knee pads. Safety is sexy, yo.
Bonus bare thigh shot! Not quite as much bum as our broadcast showed, but still, I’ll take it.
Posted by jodi on May 29, 2011 at 4.12pm
we are hard core
May 12, 2011
One of the fine ladies in the Border City Brawlers swapped me this totally rad pair of toe guards for a couple of old bike tires I had kicking around. Now my beautiful skate toes are protected, Mad Max style. The barter system is alive and well! But if anybody out there wants some without trading away your tires, she’s selling them for 5 bucks a set, so just let me know and I’ll hook you up.
Posted by jodi on May 12, 2011 at 3.32pm
turn me loose
April 19, 2011
Posted by jodi on April 19, 2011 at 3.07pm
deep water
October 2, 2010
I finished this sweet little vest just as the first heat wave of summer hit, so now is the first time I’ve been able to wear it and take some photos.
The details:
Pattern: Watershed by Amy Swenson
Yarn: a wool-alpaca-nylon blend that was – need I even say it? – recycled from a secondhand sweater.
Mods: none, baby. Knitted exactly as written.
Verdict: LOVE.
It’s cute hanging open too, but as I biked to the university library to crash a staff party in it, I pinned it shut at the front so as not to have it bunching up in my armpits under my bag strap. The glittery PVC puffy heart pin was a gift from the ever fabulous Krista, proprietor of Pixie Fashions.
The back:
Here’s hoping we enjoy a few more days of transitional temperatures before winter comes. I’m not ready yet to put this pretty thing away in my closet until spring.
Posted by jodi on October 2, 2010 at 4.09pm
what i’ve been working on this past week
July 30, 2010
5 cholis
2 vests
2 jackets
5 prs. of salwar (poofy pants)
6 shirts
2 ghawazee coats
And all so I have something pretty and not deathly hot to wear on vacation.
Posted by jodi on July 30, 2010 at 9.26pm
