the latest excitements in my life are that i sewed my first denim garment (a men's jumpsuit - ha!) and have fallen in love with how easy denim is to sew, AND i put my first fly zipper into my first pair of real pants (ie. not sweatpants/pyjamas): some surprisingly hot purple-red silk jeans-style pants. sounds gross, right? no. they are so rad. i'll post pictures or a link when i'm allowed to (they're both for work, and part of my boss' summer 2010 collection, which will be shown in april at edmonton fashion week).

because i've become so enamored with denim, and increasingly conscious of how bad non-organic cotton is for the environment*, i've been trying to find organic cotton denim but can hardly find it ANYWHERE. but i contacted a few girls on etsy who use organic denim, and they recommend a few places to buy online. whew. seriously, if you can avoid buying non-organic cotton, do it. there are quite a few places that sell organic cotton t-shirts and denim jeans and stuff. and make sure you're paying fair prices for the labour too. being paid a fair wage for sewing garments myself makes me feel pretty strongly about this. so no more h&m or urban outfitters (or their affiliates), okay?

*"Cotton is considered the world's 'dirtiest' crop due to its heavy use of insecticides, the most hazardous pesticide to human and animal health. Cotton covers 2.5% of the world's cultivated land yet uses 16% of the world's insecticides, more than any other single major crop.
Aldicarb, cotton's second best selling insecticide and most acutely poisonous to humans, can kill a man with just one drop absorbed through the skin, yet it is still used in 25 countries and the US, where 16 states have reported it in their groundwater." (taken from http://www.ota.com/organic/environment/cotton_environment.html, which paraphrases the EJF article linked above)