I want to be let alone.

Iris and Mark went to the movies yesterday. I couldn't resist taking a picture before they left. When she slipped on her jacket and sunglasses, there was something so adorably Greta Garbo about her look.

I really shouldn't brag that the temperature near LA was cool enough to warrant wearing a jacket. When the sea breeze kicked in, it was positively chilly-ish.

The look would have been more impressive if she wasn't wearing half her fruit salad on the front of her shirt. The shirt and the skirt are recycled clothes (in a fashion).

I bought a remnant of the pink skirt fabric from SAS fabrics on the corner of 135th and Hawthorne Blvd. in Lawndale. They sell leftovers from the clothing manufacturers by the pound. The pink remnant was just large enough to make mommy and me skirts. I topped it with mommy and me lace shells in two pink shades of the now extinct Cotton Ease yarn. I will dig up a picture and post that later.

The t-shirt is one of 6 old t-shirts that fit Iris in the body, but would no longer fit over her head. She asked me to replace the necklines on her shirts. It sounded like a reasonable request, but it took me forever to complete the task. (I had been just so ill, sewing just took too much energy. Knitting was more my pace lately.)

Why couldn't she have just let me buy a bunch of $4 t-shirts at Old Navy, made by children for children? Oh, it was because I told her about how children in other countries are used like slaves to make rugs, shoes and clothes for us. (I am not implying that those particular t-shirts were made by child and/or slave labor. In fact, I read that Gap was credibly trying to clean up their labor act in the face of a consumer boycott. I am just saying that it is hard for me, a consumer, to tell what kind of conditions under which an item is manufactured. The only clear-cut way to avoid buying into child/slave labor would be not to buy anything. That would be extremely difficult to do.) Back to the discussion about refashioning clothes.

Finally, I felt better and tacked the first shirt, using little bits of interlock or stretch jersey (bought at SAS) from my stash. Once I had the system down, the other 5 went very quickly. She loves the shirts. So that I wouldn't be a slave (working without pay), she emptied her piggy bank and paid me for my labor. I was moved.