A portrait of a squirrel, with bushy tail curled, to create a wind barrier against the chilling breeze.
This is my last project using watercolor paints, for the immediate future. I’m interested in going back to acrylic and want to pursue pastel, pencil, and charcoal drawings in 2024.
The race track of chipmunks, and the gymnasium of squirrels. Drawn in chalk pastel.
The sweater vest. It was on my radar but did not become an item I dreamed of until I saw a lookbook from Steal the Spotlight styling Friends-inspired outfits, inspired by Chandler, the sweater vest king. I continued down the rabbit hole and to Katie’s K-pop Comeback Fashion review and I was done for. K-pop fashion, Korean fashion, and the sweater vest were a layering piece I knew I was going to make. Maybe it is the color combinations or the accessories, but how these sweater vests are styled across different boyband concepts just got me. It felt fresh and fun, not preppy or stuffy.
A year later, I was ready to tackle this project. After making a few sweater projects, and learning how to pattern from garment construction, I felt like I had a good understanding of the shape needed to make the sweater. At Joann’s, I found a non-wool tweed yarn and I knew this was the yarn I wanted to start with. It looked like garments I love from Irish Aran Jumpers and was a way to bridge my heritage and this new world I was exploring through K-pop. I like the garments I design to have a story and intentionality behind them.
With US Size 8 needles in hand and one skein of Big Twist tweed yarn awaiting a new form, I began by casting on 65 stitches. Working my way up I did the basic knit-purl stitch and gradually binding off on either side when I reached my desired length for the armhole. I chose to make a cropped sweater vest to accentuate my waist and break up my long torso. The big moment though came when I did some research and made the decision to branch out and knit the shoulder and neckline on two sets of needles. This required knitting, casting off in the middle, and continuing to knit on a second set of needles. It worked!
Learning new techniques is always worth the time and the trial because eventually it clicks and you have something new, you didn’t think you could do, but you can!
Making two instead of four pieces on my straight needles was a time-saver! Honestly, I see why having a teachable spirit is important in all aspects of life because I thought I had a good technique before, but dang, two pieces are such a better experience. Four pieces was a mental game, and I got bored. Hence why my previous sweater projects have taken months and months, and months because I distract myself with palette cleanser projects and then avoid finishing the four-piece projects.
Afterward, I sewed the two pieces together and knit two 65-stitch pieces of ribbed trim for the bottom. I liked how rustic the sweater looked without the ribbing on the neckline and armholes. It looks like an old-fashioned piece, and a bit like armor. Which is cool.
This is how I have styled the finished garment so far! I like it over my black flannel and charcoal jeans for a moody look. It styled surprisingly well over this DIY project where I added a flared skirt to a cropped graphic long-sleeve shirt. This is where I saw the armor aesthetic come through. In 2024 I look forward to playing around with it even more!
Some things I plan on either finding or making, are basic layers I can wear under this vest. Currently, I have my flannels, that random diy-tunic, and maybe some long-sleeve tees but I’m not certain if they are long enough to layer out the bottom of the vest. This is the struggle of adding a brand new item to your wardrobe – how do you integrate it and style it well without buying a bunch of new things? Yeah, I’m figuring that out and until I do it’s going to be some time before I think I can make a truly amazing outfit with this piece. But I’d rather do this responsibly and be a patient person instead of draining my bank account for instant gratification. (Age has done me well in that respect because I used to do the opposite!)
Since finishing the garment, I have either lost weight or the vest has stretched a bit from wear and one wash. It was not sitting well on my waist anymore but ballooning out so I took it in. I took it in at the arm hole seams and gradually took in the waist at the back so the garment has a back center seam which is not the look I was going for but the fit is on point again. Lastly, I knit another section of ribbed trim to lengthen the garment to keep it from riding up, in doing so I made the ribbed trim addition of 60 or 55 stitches, I forgot to take note when I made it, to pull the waist in even more. I like the fit and plan to make another version of this garment with a smaller adjusted pattern.
Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.
My name Margaret, and middle name Elizabeth were chosen by my mom for her maternal grandmother, Margaret Elizabeth.
As a kid, I truly didn’t enjoy my name. Especially at roll call or meeting a new teacher, there was the Margaret haze that hungover the introduction. My classmates found it to be a funny, old lady name and in response I refused to go by it for years.
It was Maggie or Magz. I couldn’t see the beauty of the gift of the name. It wasn’t a curse, it was a connection to the past.
With maturity, I’ve grown to truly appreciate this name. I’m honored to carry both Margaret and Elizabeth of my great-grandma and grandma. I’ve discovered since those school days that I like being unique. I don’t meet a lot of Margarets. I’ve also had the opportunity to learn that I am a lot like Margaret Elizabeth I and Elizabeth. They both had a passion for sewing, and that has carried down to me.
I researched that Margaret traces back to Old Iranian and means pearl, and Elizabeth derives from the Hebrew Elisheva which means God is my oath.
People are ticked off regarding Selkie’s use of AI in their Valentine’s Day release, and I have to say, I can see their point! (Also, cupid, again? What is up with these dramatic “love-inspired” releases for 2024?)
Selkie made a creative, design choice. A big choice that may not have been the wisest decision for their brand reputation. As of three days after the announcement, the comment section is not pleased by the decision to use AI-developed patterns for their fabric instead of human artists to develop patterns for their newest crop of iconic dresses.
Now, right off the bat for me, I can see a contradiction in this decision just from an aesthetic standpoint. Selkie is a dress brand that took off in popularity in 2020, selling fantasy puff romantic dresses that evoke another time. They are fanciful, sometimes with corsetted bodices, other times they have high regency waistlines, but mostly they look like a dress to galavant around Versailles in with Marie Antoinette. They are not modern in the dream they sell, they have an intrinsic historical imagination.
They are princess dresses. Ladies of prestige in the modern time when none of them feel like princesses. Since the 1990s, we have seen a steep decline in formal fashion in our day-to-day life. Case in point, billionaire tech boys wear hoodies and t-shirts, not suits and hats like Carnegie and Vanderbilt. In 2020, this came to a head as remote work and social distancing created a new space of absolute nothingness when it came to fashion.
What was the point? You could wear pajamas and as long as you weren’t on a Zoom call, who would know? It was negligible. With face coverings, makeup became superfluous. Selkie, cottage-core, dark academia, etc. These movements in fashion revealed something deeper in our collective psyche. Although wearing pajamas and hanging out on our couches seemed like a dream, in reality, we were missing the fantasy of spectacle and splendor. Selkie is the typification of this.
AI pops the dream bubble. Suddenly the clouds of tulle and puff sleeves that carried us into a dream world of palaces, picnics, and girlhood, evaporate underneath us and the lifestyle falls back to reality. As much as AI sells a dream of fantasy, it is a tool of reality. The reality of cutting corners, fast fashion, and jobs being cut from creatives is to cut costs because AI is cheaper. But cheaper is not always cheerful. In the case of a lot of AI art and AI work, you are getting what you pay for. It’s not the real deal, something is just a bit off.
I’ve watched several videos in 2023 of creators I watch putting AI to the test, and in each case when it came to AI having to work in our space, in the humanities, it couldn’t hang. The results were surreal, not real. In these videos, AI was used to interpret history, recreate art in a historical style, create portraits in photography, show examples of historical dress, and give advice on how to give yourself a makeover. In each experiment, the AI was not able to replicate the human experience and seemed to get confused by things involving the story of humans.
With Selkie’s historical aesthetic being a key to its branding, it is not surprising to me that AI seems out of the aesthetic wheelhouse. This is an interesting reaction to me because it has appeared since the turn of the 20th century that we as humans have been lusting over technology as the ultimate fantasy until we have it and then the intoxication fades away like blood alcohol and late-night attraction.
It is an interesting time for fashion brands for sure because I think this may be the era that humanness and authenticity to the world the brand is selling may prove to be more valuable than gold. I appreciate the commitment to humanness and personal ethics that consumers are voicing. Especially when it comes to human artists. We can’t change the fact that AI is a thing and it is easy to replace humans with technology, all we can do is voice our opinion and make choices based on what we believe.
I’ve looked through the comments on Selkie’s newest release and there were echoes of disappointment and displeasure from consumers, a lot of them being artists themselves. There was a different tone in these comments than the commonplace cancel culture of our current age, there was genuine sadness. Like when a parent isn’t mad, just disappointed.
The criticism was delivered respectfully but firmly. This gave me hope that we can begin discussing things online with more frankness and kindness than in recent years. If you are a big proponent of AI, I ask dear reader that you don’t take my thoughts on the subject of AI personally. Maybe you can be the one to show us all what makes it great? 🙂
I have exciting news! Yesterday, while I was transferring larger video files from my phone to my Google Drive, something amazing happened. Honestly, it was one of the most surreal things I can remember happening to me.
As the files transferred, a folder with several documents that I swore were deleted, showed up in my cloud. At first, I thought they must be just showing the recent files I had looked at because, to be honest, I don’t go into my drive very often. I saw old work documents I deleted and Udal Cuain. So, as a joke, I clicked on it expecting my drive to tell me that the file did not exist anymore. But to my surprise, that’s not what happened!
I found every draft version of my unfinished manuscript from 2018 – Udal Cuain in this folder. It had the original version, the version with an updated timeline and calendar, the version when I divided the document into two books, and the draft where I began revising and changed the beginning.
It was all there, but it shouldn’t be. I clearly remember deleting it. I remember deciding I never wanted to work on it again. And dang, after looking through all the work I put into this story over two years, I am so glad that whatever glitch happened, did happen because I regretted deleting it. I really did.
I looked at the word count yesterday, around 124,000 words or 250+ pages single-spaced. There’s too much work there to abandon. I have to revise it, right? If I took out the dark directions it drifted towards and reengineered those motifs to a place that reflects who I am instead of who I was trying to be, it could work. It could really work!
I already had a non-fiction book idea I was planning to write this year, so I guess, what is one more project? 🙂
I’m grateful and excited to get started on the revising process because this shouldn’t have happened and I am pleasantly surprised that it did. It makes those lost years of confusion and wandering in a desert of shut doors feel like they were all for something important, something that started that I should have never given up on just because I got a job.
I never thought I would see that project again, and in some way, that’s what I needed for a time, but in 2023, I began to question if I made the right choice abandoning it. I wish I hadn’t but learned to accept that I made a choice and that was that. It’s taught me to keep hold of things, and wait and see instead of making snap decisions. I guess it’s maturity. But, I’m getting a second chance here and that’s pretty freaking awesome!
In this watercolor painting, I wanted to explore the magic of lanterns being released into the night sky.
It’s January, mid-winter. It’s the NHL mid-season, a time when we look to the championship season, it’s all the internet can talk about. The Stanley insulated cup in hot pink and red versions. THE Stanley cup.
What is the Stanley Cup? The oldest championship trophy that is currently awarded in North America. Dating back to 1892, it was commissioned by Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada at the time. It is the symbol of victory in the NHL. (The Hockey Writers 2023) The ultimate goal of players and franchises alike. It is the most coveted Stanley Cup, right? Not even close.
Enter 2023, the year the Stanley insulated cup with straw, handle, and lid, retailing for USD 45 each became THE cup of choice. These two cups may be shiny, metal, and iconic holders of liquid but only one has sent a wave of chaos in 2024. Specifically the Target x Stanley Cup Valentine’s Day Tumbler and the Starbucks x Stanley Winter Wonderland Tumbler. These two limited drops have made me question, truly, how empty the cup of humanity is. And how do we refill this empty cup with improved priorities?
A disclaimer, I’m not judging people’s interests. I have wanted an old-school Stanley thermos for years. It’s a cool technology and built to last. These cups are pretty cool. The handle looks sturdy, and it’s easy to drink from too. The colors are cute, even the ones featured in these winter drops. What I am unimpressed with is the scarcity of marketing tactics for these limited drops, the dark side of a highly individualistic culture that rears its ugly head in these situations, and the out-of-control reseller market. What was concerning about this release was the character exhibited by a few which echoed louder than the positives.
On December 31 the Valentine’s Day cups were released at Target to customers camping out, harassing Target employees, and caught on camera running others down, shoving, and fighting over cups to get a piece of the merchandise. Similarly, the Starbucks release (in Target) on January 3 had extra spice on top. Thanks to the modern age of TikTok and filming in public, a Starbucks drop in San Bernadino showed how far people will go to get their hands on these exclusive water carriers. First, there was fighting in the line, next a man jumped over the Starbucks counter, working in tandem with his sister, they attempted to grab merchandise and dash. The man shoved the barista out of the way and grabbed a box of cups while his sister tried to grab cups already purchased by customers and ran for the doors. Luckily, they were not the best burglars because the man was tackled by others in line before he reached the door. His sister was only able to rip the Starbucks paper bag. The most amusing part of the video was that they left and came back because the man left his phone, and left again as the police were on their way. These clips I saw by the way through Kiki Chanel’s Youtube channel, she put together a great video about the subject that put this on my radar. (Kiki Chanel 2024)
In her video, she also shared clips of these limited-edition Stanley cups being listed by resellers online with a ludicrous. (Side note, I realized I don’t know how to properly spell ludicrous without looking it up – my brain defaults to Ludacris.) There were also clips she found on TikTok of people purchasing a substantial number of these cups, with reselling appearing to be the intent. After I saw the markup these cups have on the resale market it became clear why, in this economy, holy moly it is quite the profit! These USD 45 Stanley cups are being resold online for between USD 90-230. That’s an insane return if you can move them. And this is where I believe we can reclaim our empty cup of humanity.
I understand the economy is rough, inflation is happening and everyone could use extra income but this is silly. It’s a reusable cup, and price gouging, hoarding, and stealing to resell to pay the bills? This is hardly Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family. The Stanley tumbler is not a necessity, it is a status symbol for social clout. Its market value is also not permanent. As we know from the virality of TikTok, this will be replaced by a new thing before those who use these have time to even enjoy these cups. I’m more of a water bottle girl so I’m not participating in this trend, but a lot of people have. They are a symbol of social standing, but they don’t have to be. It’s not that deep.
This morning on the radio, I heard a story that truly was a shame to hear but I know it’s true because I remember this happening when I was a kid. It’s human behavior. A girl received an off-brand tumbler for Christmas and took it to high school to use because she liked it. The girl was bullied for not having a Stanley Tumbler and her mom bought her a Stanley Tumbler to stop the bullying. (WayNation 2024) I know why her mom chose that as the solution, her mom gave her the off-brand tumbler for Christmas, and as moms do, she probably felt like the bullying was her fault. She wanted to fix it and I got it, my mom would do the same. What sucks about this whole situation is the barometer of the culture and the values prevailing by the bullies.
Gen Z and Millenials are supposed to be environmentally conscious. If she was using a reusable cup, who cares? It’s hypocritical to bully her and then encourage overconsumption by prompting the parent to buy a new cup to stop the bullying. Brand names do not maketh the man or woman. Manners do, to quote Agent Galahad of the Kingsman (Vaughn 2014). Bullying will continue its bullying ways because the manners and moral convictions of the bullies were not addressed. That’s not the responsibility of the victim or the victim’s mom.
The Bailey Button Sweater Uggs, Miss Me jeans, the Sidekick, the iPod classic, Livestrong bracelets, the North Face jacket, Abercrombie’s Moose Logo, Rhinestone Affliction Tees, etc. These were some of the sought-after items of my high school experience that we coveted and felt less than for not having, but at the end of the day, it was just a thing. An item. None of those things matter now. Are Affliction or Miss Me even brands anymore? The point is people matter, and things pass away. Isaiah 51:6 NIV says, “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath; the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment and its inhabitants die like flies. But my salvation will last forever, my righteousness will never fail.” God created us for more than this social construct.
We are giving material goods too much agency in our lives. Materialism and overconsumption are rotting our brains. We thought Black Friday madness died in 2020, but the terrifying reality is that it has risen from the ashes like a phoenix in the name of scarcity marketing. After the holiday rush and spending from November to Christmas, scarcity marketing created two Black Friday-type scenarios less than two weeks later. And it can happen again and again and again, if we let it. But we don’t have to buy in. We can choose to not let our worth be defined by our participation in trends and we can keep our greed from taking advantage of others who are lost in their greed and worship of trends, to preserve our humanity.
USD 45 can do a lot of good. It can feed members of our community at a food bank, it can provide toiletries and shelter to homeless missions, mosquito nets, provide education and reconciliation through prison ministries, help those who are rebuilding after natural disasters, and provide necessities and shelter to refugees of war. The possibilities are endless for what that money can do. I get caught up in consumerism too, I have gone through waves of shopping addiction and still struggle with retail therapy. The first step though, is acknowledging the problem and taking a step back to evaluate and reconsider. Not living solely for ourselves but for our communities and for me personally, living for my Savior has been instrumental in freeing me from the crushing weight of overconsumption and trend cycles. Because at the end of the day, it is an empty cup.
References
The Hockey Writers. 2023. “Stanley Cup: Stats, History, News.” The Hockey Writers. https://thehockeywriters.com/docs/stanley-cup/.
Kiki Chanel, dir. 2024. Episode The Stanley Tumbler Craze is Out of Control, “Kiki Chanel.” Aired January 4, 2024.
Vaughn, Matthew, dir. 2014. Kingsman: The Secret Service.
WayNation. 2024. The Wally Show, radio program, daily morning show. Nashville, TN, USA: WayFM.
I smell snow. An iconic line from a one-of-a-kind character, in a show that successfully captured the magic of winter despite being filled in southern California. They have me fooled every time!
Gilmore Girls has some of the most inspiring winter fashion of any show I’ve watched! I get excited as the temperature drops each fall because I know it’s almost coat season, hat season, scarf season, etc. From season one onward, Lorelai’s love for winter is magnetic! She has a passion for the flakey white accumulation, wrapped up in the atmosphere of cozy nights, and of course her cold weather accessories. She shares this dynamic winter wardrobe with Rory who can rock a good scarf with the best of them.
These items are not just layers or bulk, they are a canvas upon which to paint and express who the characters are by what they wear. They are sentences without words. Personality in yarn. A conversation starter, or simply a colorful way to brighten the gloomy and the gray. A bright point in our day. When I was thinking about adding a new cold-weather accessory to my wardrobe this was my ethos. It had to be special, something I would treasure and wear until it fell apart.
My goal for this winter season was to make a striped, colorful, skinny scarf in the early 2000s, aka prime Gilmore style. To accomplish this I thought I would need a myriad of colorful yarns. You can see from my inspiration photos above, there is a lot of color. In my extant garments from that time in my life, there was also a lot of color. My skinny scarves from Aeropostale in the early 2000s were blended with a myriad of shades, but to my surprise, when I began to work on this project, a small color palette of three produced the most impact.
On US 8 needles with worsted weight yarn, knit for 40 stitches, purl 40 stitches, and swap colors every 2 rows. To a desired length, I believe my finished product is around 48 inches. If you make one, I wish you happy knitting!
A study of a honey bee, building honey comb and filling the cells with golden stores.
One Rabbit Riot 