duck bucket sewing

Two things are kind of ticking me off this week: 1. Gwyneth Paltrow's extremely expensive GOOP "basics."  Made in Italy, and she says they're "luxurious ready-to-wear at a direct-to-consumer price." The tagline is Buy Now, Wear Now, Keep Forever. Hahahahahaha. Let's take a quick look at the fabric content of that  affordable $695 blazer : 37% wool, 29% acrylic, 22% polyester, 6% nylon, 5% silk, 1% elastane. I'm guessing that acrylic/poly/nylon isn't all in the lining. Which means it's going to pill like crazy, no? (FWIW, I have a similar blazer from the Gap. It's ~10 years old (wait, no, it's around 20! holy shit, I am old), 100% wool, and still holding up great. It was also less than $695, I'm pretty sure. 2. This story's been making the rounds over the past few days, and the comments are driving me up the wall. I'm really tired of (presumably) well-off women instructing each other to buy less, by which they

The Seamworker's Guide to Amsterdam is up! I found out that Amsterdam — like  Antwerp  — is a really great source for knits. Especially sweatshirt fabric. (I'm really regretting not buying some as I get ready for fall sewing!) I loved Noordermarkt — it was like an open-air Mood, just stalls and stalls of every fabric you can imagine, lots of them organized by type: gingham, lace, etc. Albert Cuypstraat was like a New York street fair, with off-brand socks and makeup, food trucks, and — unlike most New York street fairs — fabric stalls (and permanent fabric shops behind them). Also, I stumbled onto a hippie restaurant with no set prices — at the end, the cashier told me to "pay what you feel or pay what you think." I laughed, but the food was very good. And they had cucumber-lemon-orange infused water. On the way back, I stumbled across an amazing shop called Sprmrkt . The entrance was filled with trees, s