Cha-cha-cha Changes!

Just to announce that I've decided to adjust my prices (for the better) for the time being in light of the change in the Canadian dollar, and also to make way for some changes in my shop in the coming year. Take advantage while you can! I hope to change my focus a little more towards an offering of more children's clothing and fewer accessories. I will still be keeping the favourites, but this will also let me make way for some new fabric options as well. I am really excited about some baby sets that I have coming up along with some new designs in the way of tops and pants for young children - all 100% sustainable of course! As my own two little ones grow it has always been my goal to have my offerings grow and change, while keeping a few signature pieces from each stage. So to new beginnings! Here we go!

Ho ho ho!

Here is a sneak peak at a festive onesie and hat set I made for the upcoming Fine Craft and Design Fair. I hadn't actually planned on making anything festive, but I was fiddling around with one of my hat designs and one thing flowed into another and I couldn't resist doing this little green elf hat. Then I decided to add the onesie to provide the option of a set. When I re-open my shop in the next day or two I will include one of these.

Meanwhile it is a balmy 19 degrees celcius here today when it is normally around zero! I don't know what's going on but it is starting to feel like Christmas in July!

Papa's Harvest

Here is proud Papa (Grand-papa, that is) with little M. preparing some of his apple harvest for the winter. Don't those apples look delicious! He grows these apples in his back yard along with pears, cherries and of course his vegetable garden. When I was growing up we lived for a couple of years on a farm "across the bay" (in Gillams to be exact) where along with being a principal of a high school, he managed to run a small farm. We left there when I was 4 to come back into town but he always kept his farmland, and he uses it to this day to grow and sell Christmas trees locally (despite my mother's best efforts to slow him down). Did I mention that he just celebrated his 75th birthday in September? It is nice to see that my little ones will get to witness this part of his life and to learn what it is to have an appreciation and respect of the land (and what it can offer us if we properly tend it).

Children Behind Our Cotton

Have you ever wondered where the cotton you buy comes from, and under what conditions it was grown in? If you haven't, consider this chilling fact cited in a report titled "The Children behind Our Cotton" by the Environmental Justice Foundation:

'The Children behind Our Cotton’ details the shocking conditions endured by more than an estimated one million children – some as young as five – who work 12-hour days in extremes of hot and cold weather, many suffering physical, verbal and sometimes sexual abuse.

Also . . .

In countries like Uzbekistan and Pakistan, children spray pesticides, commonly used in cotton production but which pose serious health and safety risks. EJF field research in October 2007 in India discovered children in the fields during the spraying season where plants were soaked with chemicals.

“Children were working on cotton plants that had been sprayed with chemicals only moments before, without any protection,” Duncan Copeland, EJF campaigner, says. “Most of the children we interviewed complained of nasty side-effects like fainting and sickness from exposure to pesticides, which is obviously a serious cause for concern in conventional and Bt cotton production.”

I find it really frustrating to walk into a store and to look at a label and find that it is ALMOST NEVER made in the U.S. or Canada, but almost always made in a third world country. Sometimes the manufacturer will try to fool you by printing, Designed in Canada, and then you find another tag that says it was made somewhere else overseas. (And yes, I realize that Made in U.S. or Canada does not necessarily mean that the cotton used to make these garments was not made under such abhorrent conditions - another reason to ask lots of questions!)

To be completely honest with you, up until a year or two ago, I never ever looked at the tag to see where the clothing I bought was made, it never entered my mind to consider it. But things for me have changed considerably.



Why do we import this stuff in the first place without strict guidelines that consider the human cost of our "cheap" goods? I can't help but think it resembles a form of slave labor so that we can buy lots of cheap stuff, much of which we don't really need in the first place. When I pick up a garment and I see that Made in X label, I can't help but think about the other end, and about the potential human cost it took to get in my hands.

But hey, the good news is we can make a difference collectively! What can we do? EJF suggests:

EJF is also calling upon consumers to demand accountability from their retailers to help put an end to child labour in the world’s cotton fields; to ask questions about where their cotton comes from, and under what conditions it was produced.

To read the full article and judge for yourself, you can follow the following link . . .

http://www.ejfoundation.org/page481.html