CPSIA + Handmade
Many of you probably have heard about this, but in case you haven’t, there’s a debate going on about the impact of the new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act on small businesses. It is scheduled to go into effect February 9.
The Act was intended to address toy quality concerns after the recall of toys from China that contained toxic substances. It’s important to note that the new requirements introduced by the Act are designed to target the quality control of large-scale manufacturing concerns. That’s great, but what isn’t is that the new rules and testing standards also affect small producers of toys and clothing. Sellers who produce handmade or small production items for children are finding themselves in a quandary: they, too, have to prove their items are free of toxins X, Y and Z, a process often costing thousands of dollars that they can’t afford for products that were never in danger of being toxic.
It’s an interesting dilemma – no one wants children to be poisoned, but we should still be able to somehow have a market doesn’t stifle small producers through inappropriately targeted legislation. For more, you can visit the Handmade Toy Alliance, or visit Cool Mom Pick which is doing the Save Handmade button campaign (the button I posted here) and has actions to take and resources, or read this Open Letter from Etsy, or this article from the Craft Zine,
Cute and warm
I am sitting here waiting for some medication to take effect. I am sick again. This hardly seems fair, and I am endeavoring to not be a grumpy Gus about it. So I find myself with a half an hour until sleep, just enough time to post pictures of my dog. As promised, I have completed Audrey’s dog sweater. See?
The sweater was originally a different project, a sweater for a cousin, begun way before this blog started. It began to be a dog sweater when I messed up the stitch and ended up with a fairly wide bit of fabric I couldn’t use and wasn’t sure what else to do with it. I discovered that the length of fabric fit around Audrey well. She was then 11 pounds, which is a tad bit on the hefty side for a Yorkshire Terrier. Now she’s about 9.2 pounds through cat-inspired exercise and illness, which means the sweater had to become a wrap sweater in order to fit. I still need to shorten the wrap ties, but those ties make this one of the easiest-fitting sweaters I’ve ever wrestled onto a dog.
Honestly, dog clothing is on the silly side, and Audrey doesn’t like wearing it. I mean, she’s a lapdog, but she’s still very much a dog‘s dog, if you know what I mean. Nevertheless, I made this because Yorkies have fur issues – they don’t actually have fur, it’s hair, and they don’t have an undercoat. That’s good ’cause they don’t shed, but bad when it’s freezing out, because she takes a step out the door and starts shivering so much her paws skitter on the pavement. So you can see that her getting deathly ill in January sorta made me think – hey, where’s that sweater!?
This one was designed to be loose in the right places, cover her tummy but leave her legs bare. Audrey has this funny (really hysterical, actually) problem with her legs and feet – if they’re covered, she stops dead and refuses to move. If you really want her to stay in place, put shoes on her. She’ll stand there for hours on three legs.
As a last step, I am going to sew a harness right into the inside of this sweater, because separate harness + sweater = 15 minutes wrestling with dog. That way I’ll just put this on and clip on her lead, and there will be less fuss for everyone, and a dog that doesn’t end up shivering pathetically!
Now I’m going to go collapse in bed.
P.S. So the Lion Wool (the royal blue in this sweater) … after about 5 minutes I had to get a hand covering. It started to feel like I was rubbing my fingers with steel wool or an emergy board. That can’t be good. I guess this isn’t what it feels like to people who aren’t allergic? What does it feel like? I really don’t know. Surely Lion Brand wouldn’t sell any if it felt like that to everyone.
Portes et Fenetres
I was browsing through my blog reader today looking at some of the curious things it brings to me, and realized I have a number of things in there just because they show me things that are pretty or curious or interesting. When I go through the reader I always end up with about 20 new windows open with things I might like to make, or things that gave me an idea, or something like that. I have a thick notebook of cut-outs and notes of things I’m contemplating. Often I build an idea out of notions suggested to me in a wide variety of these places. I thought I might share some of them …
The first one I picked is Portes et Fenetres, a blog that is entirely about pictures of doors and windows. In various parts of Europe. “Curious, strange or simply beautiful.”
I really love these brief, focused pictorial tours outside my own small part of the world, and I really love this idea! It’s so brilliant, the views of entrances into other worlds, transitions of some sort, or just the many, many ideas that go into defining the space where you go from one place to another. Doors/windows are invitations, inceptions, outlets, chances as well as closures, completions, obstructions, endings. Opaque or transparent. Embellished or simple.
Sometimes in these photos you see where you are, sometimes you see through to somewhere else, sometimes it’s the colors of the photo, sometimes it’s just a strange kind of iron door.
I am a lurker here (my French is past rusty and I admit I shy from speaking English), but a fascinated and loyal reader. One time they showed this little shop in rural France that made me want to go immediately. Recently the pictures came from Spain, which I loved, although I really don’t mind wherever these three photographers decide to go. I’m just happy they share.
The sample picture here is from SE France in Avignon, at the Palais de Papes (papal palace) of the popes-in-exile. The photographer is the younger Guy.
