Michelle Obama feels like a real person. No pretense. Not precious. She was not brought up in wealth and privilege – she came from a working class family. She attended public schools. Neither parent went to college. She rode city buses for 3 hours per day to get to magnet high school. She earned her… [Continue Reading]
Today the New York Times featured an article on the risks of having a Brazilian Blowout. I was so struck by this photo by Richard Perry – I felt like it captures perfectly the dangers women will subject themselves to in the pursuit of beauty. Apply formaldehyde to your hair to make it look Supermodel-straight?… [Continue Reading]
Recently, I walked my first runway. But it wasn’t New York Fashion Week. It was a straw-bale runway in rural Point Reyes Station, CA. Does that challenge your idea of fashion? Make you rethink glamour?
Pokeberry, which grows around my home as a weed, is a natural lymph cleanser. Synthetic dyes are associated with allergy, asthma, bladder cancer and cause genotoxicity. Some synthetic dyes mimic estrogen in the body. Poke is a beautiful example of a dye that can create gorgeous color, and actually improve your health. This is a… [Continue Reading]
Oak galls (or Oak apples, as they’re sometimes called) fascinate me. They are a result of the puncture of the bark of an Oak tree by the female Gallwasp, Cynips Gallae-tinctoriae, who lays its eggs inside. Five to seven cm in diameter, they make a smokey grey or black dye. Beautiful. Thank you to Rebecca Burgess… [Continue Reading]
When I lead my Cleanse twice/year, alkaline broth is front and center. Why bother? What could it possibly do for you? We tend to love acidifying and mucus-producing foods. You know the culprits: sugar, dairy, meat, coffee, processed foods. Getting Things Back in Proportion
Today I sit with the question: If we are all so clear about eating organic, why are we not wearing organic clothing? Our conventional clothes contain toxic fertilizers/pesticides/herbicides/insecticides, heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, teratogens (causes birth defects) and carcinogens. The question lingers from a blissful day yesterday spent at a “Native Dye” workshop with my friends… [Continue Reading]
Was surfing Etsy last weekend, minding my own business, when I came across a mystic from North Carolina named Andrea Crouse. Check her out. That’s Andrea (above), modeling her Tulsi dress in organic stretchy wool.
Maybe you didn’t quite get just how obsessed I am with knitting. Here’s an example: I could not properly express the joy I feel with my new socks, knitted from delicious “soft girl” yarn from local Petaluma sheep, until I came across Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Socks, excerpted way below in English and Spanish. Thank you,… [Continue Reading]
Learned today that the European Union has rigid boundaries on the type of cotton they import – no toxic dyes, no cheap cotton laced with DDT, as several cottons from China and India were recently demonstrated to contain. The EU regularly tests their imported textiles carefully; we in the US do not. One of the worst… [Continue Reading]
