Work Should Be Fun

at the inspection station

Quality of life matters, and life doesn't stop when you're on the clock.  Find your joy.

Bark Strips for Chair Seats

My friend and neighbor Purl has been going crazy over repairing and making chairs for the last few years.  He's still learning a lot, but he has quite a bit to teach.  Some of us gathered around a fallen tree to see how to gather bark strips to weave a chair seat.



Wren scrapes away outer bark with a draw knife while Purl stars a new strip with hatchet and mallet.



The inner bark peels away in a long continuous strip.



If there aren't any twigs or knots in the way to break the grain, you can get a very long strip!



Wren coils the bark for storage.  This roll will fit neatly in a five gallon bucket for soaking when we are ready to weave.



An example of a finished seat, on a chair frame of Purl's own making.

Purl is obsessed with making and learning about chairs, so I'm sure I'll be featuring him again soon.

Beautiful Morning

I got up early yesterday morning to turn off the garden irrigation.  Early, in this case, is 6:20.  The grass was absolutely dew-soaked and my feet dripped all the way to the dining hall.  I took it easy and read a few magazines with my granola, since I haven't had a morning off in a while.  At 7:30 (an unseemly time it would have been a month ago) I walked back to my residence and passed the gardeners hoeing corn in the morning light.  It was irresistible.



After obtaining permission from all, I skipped from row to row photographing them.  Took a stroll around the block. More photos.  Returned.  Set myself to working, stepped outside, and turned right around for my guitar.  I sat by the willow and played all I knew to the perfect breeze, and when I was finally done, flute music wafted in from far away.  "Summertime, and the livin' is easy," it said.  Yet it smells and feels like a gorgeous fall.



Then I followed a woman with a saxophone to meet the flute music down by the dirt road.  Plans were made to sneak up on the gardeners with a dirge and a mock procession.  This morphed quickly into a parade of seven, with red costumes and red flag (and mock battle wounds and signs en francais), in honor of Bastille Day.



Then raw sweet corn and tempeh for lunch.  Yum.

So Kristy over at One Dress Protest has just listed a bunch of questions for people who did the ODP experiment for a month.  Because I'm lazy today (and annoyed that someone took my clothes from the dryer before they were dry, and I had to rig up a clothes line in my bedroom and now feel entitled to being lazy), questions and answers are separate.

1. What was the primary reason you felt compelled to ODP?
2. Did you feel that ODP allowed you to address and engage your initial reasons for joining?
3. Did anything surface that you didn’t anticipate as you ODP’d?
4. Care to share any reactions from others?
5. How did ODP affect your experience of yourself in a public setting? Did it challenge/boost your self-confidence? In what ways? In what circumstances?
6. How did ODP affect your experience of yourself privately?
7. Did you find it logistically challenging (i.e. laundry wise)?
8. Did you find it exceptionally restrictive or freeing?
9. How do you think this influenced your approach to future clothing consumption?
10. Any thing else to share?

1. Honestly, I jumped on it as a "reason" or "excuse" to try wearing something different.  I'd been wanting to experiement with Plain dress for some time, and it seemed easier to jump on the ODP bandwagon than to do it on my own.  If people asked for my reasons, I could say it was a blogger's challenge or something like that, without having to make them understand my pretty fuzzy reasons.

2. A few people asked me during or after the experiment if I were Amish, or Mennonite, or Quaker.  These have all been known as Plain people.  To me, this sort of signaled that I was on the right track. 

3.  I didn't anticipate being so annoyed with my belt.  I also didn't expect that the *style* of my dress would surpass onedressness as a source of worry.  My month ended up being less about wearing the same dress every day and more about wearing a weird dress at all.

4.  Notable: "So that's what you're wearing these days?"  "Just so you know, people have been wondering if you were Amish, with the dress, and the head thing [bandana]."  "In case you don't realize, I'm giving you an opening to talk more about your dress."  "Did you make your dress?  It's awesome!"  "I know you've been wearing that [dirty work outfit, one of my dress exceptions] since you arrived [3 1/2 weeks], but I want to say I really like that outfit!"

5.  I moved in with a bunch of hippies.  In many ways, my dress fit in.  I wasn't the only one wearing weird stuff, or wearing the same thing every day.  Sometimes that was nice.  Sometimes I enjoyed thinking that new people meeting me were assuming all sorts of things about me and my dress.  Prideful in a way.  Sometimes I liked having my own "brand" that people might know me by.  And sometimes I fiddled with my belt and the fit a lot.  I wanted people to see me as attractive.

6.  Many Plain and Modest people have different standards in public and in private, or among family/same sex versus strangers/different sex.  Since I wore my dress in private too, as much for me as for anyone else, it felt like a special gift to myself.  A kind of a secret.  It felt like me.  But an extension of that feeling is that it feels weird to put other clothes on now.  Like they aren't me.  As if I am what I wear...

7. I share laundry facilities (two washers, a dryer, a clotheslines) with maybe thirty other people AND with the community laundry (sheets, work clothes, all that).  So I couldn't just wash my clothes whenever I felt like it.  Actually, the drying was the problem.  Hand wash, OK, but I don't know if my things will dry overnight on the line, or if it will rain today, or if the dryer will be free when I have an hour, or if all of this corresponds to when my clothes actually need washing.  I feel like it should have been much easier for most people.  Was it?

8.  No, neither.  Just easy.

9. Well, I've already been trying to reduce what I have.  I've already cut out most things that are extremely occasion-specific.  I still have struggled with browsing at Goodwill and buying clothes I don't need (though sometimes I do need what I buy there, like jeans).  I don't buy many clothes.  And now I have zero clothing budget and a source of free clothes for lending.  I probably won't be buying any clothes.    And I feel like all of that information has to be stated, because it's happening simultaneously with ODP, and it’s hard to discern the impact from ODP.  Did it change my views, strengthen them, or merely confirm what was already there?  I think I did learn this: It’s worth it to have clothes that fit, look good, suit a majority of situations, last a long time, and are easy to take care of.  If they don’t fit those criteria, they’re not worth the materials and energy that went into making them.

10. I might shorten this dress, give it a waist, or make thin, permanent ties.  I really love the fabric and the color.  It makes a great nightgown and cover to and from the shower.  It’s fun to wear long, tied with an empire waist.  I like my dress.  It’s special to me.  I will probably wear it, and patch it, and wear it out, and cut it down to make new things.

Whew!  That's that.  More reflections later.

The End of ODP Month

Sooooo...yeah.  That's that.  One month of wearing one dress (with limited exceptions).  I regret not being able to keep better track throughout the month, but I wanted more socializing with my new neighbors and less of sitting in my room on my computer.  I would still like to mention a few things about my experience.

First, my exceptions.  I was very often wearing my hiking pants and T-shirt for garden work, woodshop work, and other jobs that were dirty or where a loose skirt would be impractical.  Sometimes this was for a few days in a row, and sometimes I changed back into my dress at the end of a shift.  I did put on a costume to be in a small marching band.  I put on colorful and flowing festival clothes for the huge community holiday.  Part of my festival attire became my contra dance attire.  And when I ripped the seat of my hiking pants during a shift, I changed them out for similar pants that I have worn in their place since that time.

Now on to explanations.  My exceptions do agree with my internal sense of fairness; that is, I don't feel I broke the spirit of the rules with them.

My "work" clothes stayed the same throughout the month, besides the tear.  Same shoes, same plain grey T-shirt.  The replacement pants felt like they occupied the same stylistic space as the hiking pants (having an "outdoorsy" feel to them).  I wore this outfit for all types of physical work and physical play.  And I'm mending the tear while creating this blog post, never fear!


I only realized I'd torn my pants when I tried to brush the dirt off my bottom.




















It was very important to me to wear festival clothes when the big holiday came.  I knew this before my ODP month started.  This was the sort of holiday where practically all work stops because everyone has taken off of work.  It is THE holiday in this community, a holiday in the old, nonreligious sense.  I wanted a sort of visual suggestion of Pagan merriment and frolic.  Perhaps braiding my hair and making a crown of flowers would have filled this need for me.  In fact, I would have loved that.  But I went the route of attire and temporary tattoos this time. 

What some of the festive people chose.
pic by Cloud




The marching band was the day of the festival.  The uniforms were cobbled-together outfits of black.  I helped make epaulets and cockades of gold rope scraps, which we then stitched to coats and hats.  The ecological angle of these band uniforms is that they came from the community's common closet, and when we were done with them, they returned again to be worn by someone else (perhaps without the rope).  Nothing was purchased; no money exchanged hands.  It's a nice arrangement.





See, I've still been wearing the One Dress!

 


















Ah, contra dance.  It eventually deserves a post of its own.  So lively.  So high-energy.  So much spinning.  If belly dancers need a little jingle-jingle, contra dancers need a little swirly-swirly.  That means that most women and some men wear skirts that flair nicely during a spin.  So I recycled my festival attire, thereby minimizing the total number of outfits I wore this month.

  

Contra dance/festival skirt on the move.


  



 I eventually stopped being nervous about what people might say about my One Dress.  In the three weeks since I moved and met new people, I only got two pieces of feedback that weren't positive (they were neutral, sort of general remarks with skeptical expressions).  By far, people told me they liked my dress, it looked good on me, they liked how I wore it, and so on.  It's hard for me to know whether all this feedback comes from the dress's style (which is not mainstream) or from the fact that I was wearing it all the time.  However, if I were to venture a guess, I'd say people were reflecting on the style.  I think they really didn't care that I was wearing it every day.  No one remarked about how often I wore it, ever.  I understand that different social groups and classes have different rules.  I understand that my social group is not mainstream.  Yet I think what I learned can apply to everyone: People don't care about your appearance as much as you are afraid they do.

Everything drying on holiday morning, skivvies too.

I wonder if I will go on a clothes-wearing binge next week.  I will surely wear something new tomorrow while I do laundry.  Laundry has been the biggest problem for me.  My residence is dorm-style, and laundry is public (in another building).  I can't do laundry naked.  All my clothes get dirty, and the least dirty (my dress) ends up being what I wear while I wash the rest.  I could have given myself a laundry outfit, I suppose, to wear a few hours a week.  But this is being legalistic, I think.  I wanted to play by the rules of the game, and "laundry outfit" was not in the rules I made up.  Still, lesson learned: My biggest problem was laundry, not what people thought of me and my dress.



Last day of ODP month!

What is more likely than a binge is that I will slowly start wearing "new" garments.  I'll wear the One Dress often.  And when I receive the box of clothes that I didn't move with me, many of those garments will likely go into community use.  I sort of dread having to go through them, remembering the memories I've attached to them, remembering the ones that I wished fit better than they did.  ODP made life pretty easy.  Yay.

I will post some reflections on ODP month in the future.  Stay tuned if you're interested.