Born In The USA...Kids Clothes...

I crochet, design, create and sew....a lot...I design clothes and cute stuff for your home....darn near anything except formal wear.
(I have a short attention span)
That's me in the links on the right...eBetty DIY....


So...I loved the Mini-EyeCandy...for kids clothes...I have made thousands of kids things....since I have 3 kids and 4 grands!

Cookie Magazine has a fab article on kid's clothes Made In The USA !

More Art Walk and Tacoma.....

Ahh yes, The Elks Club...No. 164 dates from 1916...
Everyone loves it.....some want to decorate it...
some have even
proposed fixing the old girl up
and selling beer
I vote for nothing less than a full bar.......

Williams and Dame had a hand in Portland's Pearl District...





I've been there...strangely, I liked it .....a lot...
because it had what makes a downtown/urban area inviting....Human scale store fronts, neccesary services and lots of fun things to do...
mini-parks, water features, respect for familiar old buildings and a minimum of confusing modern architecture......













From the Broadway side, a righteous doorway, and along the side.....

Below is a pic of the building from the front side.....from the City of Tacoma's Filthy 15......Tacoma is soooo stupid....more on that later......









along the southeast side are The Spanish Steps,
both lovelies are on the
National Historic Register....
and built by Architect Edward Frere Champney
in the classic Second Revival design. The steps lead down to Commerce Street and Tacoma's Link train....why is that important to me?? (See me standing there in the dark like a college-educated hooker?)


Because.....you can take the FREE Link Train from The Elks Club/Spanish Steps to the other end of downtown Tacoma, just a block from the funkoma vintage shop...and back again...How cool is That???
just nod approvingly......


The real ones in Rome
...

BioDiesel in Tacoma

Back in mid 2003 we first bought a Mercedes diesel car.....After Mark took classes to learn the chemistry and then made biodiesel, well, we had to find a car!
I'll post pics later....
(this is a similar car in Memphis)
It was a 1979 brown Mercedes 300TD and the symbol on the hood was in the glove box....so we replaced the missing trinket with Bowling Lady.....our mascot that we twisted off an old trophy and attached to the hood...this became my car after Mark bought a yellow 1980 Mercedes wagon ...the kind of car John Lennon drove....Mercedes that is.....
Everyone thought we were goofy...and we are........
Biodiesel? What's that?
Folks pretty well know we'll drive a beater till we kill it and then move on...because our old cars go the same places as new cars...it's amazing, I tell ya!....
Example: Had a lovely dinner last night at Harbor Lites with my sweet inlaws, and parked the Volvo wagon between a new Lexus and a new BMW.....
Biodiesel....at first we had to drive up to Seattle to get biodiesel at Dr. Dan's in Ballard.
Mark and I were interns for Take Back Your Time Day....and we would drive up for the organizing meetings and encourage people to Smell Our Tailpipe! Hey, it smelled like French Fries.....
When I was taking law classes in 2004 through 2006, I had the same car as a nice lady who well, came from the right side of the tracks ....if you know what I mean....she carried a
Dooney and Bourke bag, and so did I!

Sadly, the transmission launched....and we sold it to a fellow up near Bellingham.....which is only slightly more
Hippie than Olympia.....
We Went to School in Olympia...yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.....
Biodiesel!!
It's almost mainstream now.....with redneck farmers and that ol' environmentalist George W. Bush allocating money to manufacture it.....and now in Seattle and all over the Puget Sound are truck stops and a few gas stations carry it.....but back in the Wild West Days....Mark and I were pretty much on our own......
Now of course, everywhere we look, folks are copying us....(as if)...and driving old diesel cars exhausting French Fry aroma!
So, are we really so weird? I mean, we have something in common with farmers w/ rednecks and Bush....
Who woulda guessed?
Well, me, for one......I know that we are far more alike than different...really..

Good Karma...Buy Vintage...Bad Sarah Jessica Parker

Well, Sarah Jessica Parker has a new fashion line! Yippee....It's called Bitten...and I hope it comes back to bite her in the butt....Why???
Because the only possible way to produce new clothing to sell for under 19.99 per item is to use sweatshops around the globe.

And...Right There...is another reason to buy vintage clothes.....Many items were made in Union shops where workers had a way to organize for fair wages and safety....remember Norma Rae?


When you buy something already made you are not exploiting a new worker...and you're saving energy and materials today...

We can't change the past.....but we can change the future!
Want to know what you can do and get some more information? Yes!

Below is a small example of well-known companies that use underpaid and exploited labor around the world...Here is where America's labor union factory jobs went:
http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/rs/profile.cfm?id=24
Labor

In April 2001, Nicaraguan court ordered Chentex, a Taiwanese-owned maquila that was making jeans for Kohl's, J.C. Penney, Kmart, and Wal-Mart to rehire nine illegally fired union leaders. Chentex had been targeted by the National Labor Committee for its union-busting activity, while workers earned just 18 cents for each $24 pair of pants they sewed.

-- U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project
Source URL: www.usleap.org/Maquilas/PastMaquilaCampaigns.html#nica

Go here for more information:
coopamerica
corporation information
how Chinese sweatshops skirt the law

Harborside Skunks In Love In Tacoma?

Oh sure....we know 70s shirts were often silly....wild prints, odd florals or tiny calicos and refashioned urban scenes, cracked Old Master paintings, Disney cartoon characters inserted into photo-realistic pictures.....
Here's one I have now.....and lucky you ....it's for sale in my ebay store.
At first glance....just a print of ships and boats in the harbor....but look closer..green skunks...painting art....giving flowers! what is going on? I don't know...but somehow, I can't help but think of Tacoma's waterfront...and in honor of Third Thursdays ART WALK today......I offer to the universe....this!

Why So Skinny ?

Ok so I'm sitting here in a 70s poly shirt...and they are skinny thru the shoulders...thank goodness they are knit! I have broad shoulders but I love the color and breezy/silliness of those 70s shirts!!!!



If you were there...or if you are wearing 60s and 70s vintage clothes.....you know they are slim thru the shoulders and everywhere else...

this might explain something......
"[Biba founder Barbara] Hulanicki found her niche designing clothing for the postwar, protein-deprived young women who were growing girls when rations dictated the size of their suppers."
click the Fashionista.com link for more...and a link to The Telegraph for the full article.

Oh yeah....Love that shirt ?? click it to go to funkoma vintage on ebay....

Drinky Crow... as art...and motion......

funkoma vintage has always been a big fan of Drinky Crow...appearing in Maakies cartoon strip.....we've adopted the "dialogue"...
dook dook dook....and use drinky crow as an affectionate knickname for anyone we see that maybe has had a wee bit of too much of the "Liquid Funmaker"......
so I have mixed feelings about the strip becoming a TV show....I don't have cable....but I guess I can watch on my computer...ha ha!

here's an article in the New York Times!

I love the back story because I love it when an artist.....an Art School graduate... makes a living from....art!
And Tony Millionaire is gonna make some big Coin!
the mixed feelings come from the weird idea that it is so esoteric....only a few thousand people, heretofore, prolly knew about it and refer to it in conversation.....so...the Crow is out of the Bag, well, no, the Crow is in the Bag.....but is out......and coming to a paper and/or a screen near you!

from gawker.com