On the Origin of a Sweater

It can't be that hard...

 I love burritos. They are almost as perfect as food gets. They can be eaten for breakfast. They contain all the food you need for a meal, wrapped inside a warm, soft, chewy tortilla blanket. Convenient and portable. A few weeks ago, as I was taking the tortillas out of their plastic bag, I thought to myself, "why can't I make these from scratch? It can't be that hard."

It wasn't that hard. It did require a bit of explaining when my partner walked into the kitchen, which along with myself was lying beneath a dusting of flour. Now, after some practice, I love making tortillas. I can make choices about what goes into them. I have more control over what I'm consuming. Not total control, but more control.

It was a Pandora's Box of sorts. Since then, I've started making bread, and cinnamon rolls, and pasta sauce, and noodles. I began to think about what can be made that we mindlessly consume. And once the pandora's box is opened, it's never a good idea to ask what's on my mind. 

The things that clothe us

One of the things universal of human beings is that we are all integrated into these soft, squishy, sort of gross things we call bodies. Unlike a wolf, or raccoon, or duck-billed platypus, our "fur" is less fur, and more just a couple of hairs here and there that pretend to help when you get cold, but aren't really all that effective. Although we are warm blooded animals, naked, we would be pretty useless against anything that's not considered "tropical". Even there, a good rainstorm and slight breeze can be enough to stop any human in their tracks. 

So we wear clothes. Humans have done so for a while. A study that used the age of a body lice that lived in human clothes found that humans likely wore clothes at least 107,000 years ago. The clothing that humans have wore has certainly changed over time. Right now, we are living through a time where some people are fundamentally disconnected from many of the products that they consume. It's certainly true for me, and the clothing I wear. 

Think for a moment of all the things that must happen for you to wear the current thing you're wearing. (If you're reading this naked, way to be you. For now, think of some clothes that you aren't wearing at the moment.) You may be wearing a piece of clothing that's made from a blend of different fibers. Some of them may be synthetic, or invented by humans, or natural, which is a way of saying the fibers are found in nature. It might more accurately be used to say the fiber COULD be found in nature, and was more likely grown on some very-un-natural looking industrial agriculture operation, in some place you've never thought about. 

This creates a snag. To exist in this physical space, there are a few things that are required of us. For instance, we must stay relatively healthy. This entails eating nutritious foods, wearing clothes or living in some sort of shelter to keep us from catching cold, drinking clean water, and sleeping in a way that actually restores our waking selves. In the 21st century, this is easier than ever. Whoa. Sorry. That was my privilege talking. Let's try that again. In the 21st century, for some percentage of the human population on the planet, it can be done mindlessly. 

The mechanism for this is what I'm going to call the Giant System. This is a manipulation of people and resources for the well being of the well-to-do. The Giant System has things like supermarkets, where you can go mindlessly buy food, shopping malls, where you can go mindlessly buy stuff, and Amazon Prime free two day shipping, where you can mindlessly buy anything you can't be bothered to stand up on your feet and go buy yourself. 

It's a system for buying things, different from the commerce systems humans have participated in due to the way the money flows. The Giant System has a large number of consumers and a small number of producers. It's set up in a way a component of the System that may appear to be a producer, say, a corn farmer, can't actually consume the things they produce without those things being processed by another member of the System. In this way, that producer becomes a consumer, relying on the System for sustenance instead of their own means of production. The Giant System is what makes it possible for me to have clothes that I've forgotten I own sitting in the bottom of a closet. The Giant System is what makes it possible for a person to live an entire life without actually knowing where any of the products they consume come from. 

Let's say, for a moment, that you want to circumvent the Giant System that exists so you can wear some clothes. At first glance it would seem the simplest thing would be to produce everything yourself. This may have been possible a few hundred years ago, and was the only way to exist thousands of years ago. When there's not a mall to go to, homo sapiens must find clothing some how. You can still do this, however it requires a bunch of patience. And probably a therapist.

The Shirt, The Sweater, and The Shorts. Photo: Matt Beattie

Right now, as I sit typing this, I'm wearing athletic running shorts from New Balance, a 100 percent cotton t-shirt I got from a sunglasses manufacturer, and a 100 percent merino wool sweater I found at Goodwill, but that was initially from Banana Republic. In all, I've spent about $55 on the clothes I have on my body. (The majority was for the running shorts, which I bought new. On sale, but new.) All this to be comfortable in my kinda-drafty above garage apartment that my partner and I rent. Let's say you're tired of the Giant System, and want to make these three items yourself. Let's say you want to embark on a written journey through a thought experiment where we grow things and make clothes in our minds. Great. Keep reading. 

The Shirt

Let's talk about the shirt. It's made from 100 percent cotton, according to the label. Cotton happens to make up 38 percent of the world's textile consumption. Some cotton basics: it's a plant, it grows best in sunny conditions, and it can not tolerate frost. 

In order to make a cotton t-shirt, first we have to plant some cotton. Cotton takes about 25 weeks to grow, so we would have to spend roughly half a year tending to my crop (totally naked, of course). Luckily, it only takes about a half-pound of harvested cotton to make a t-shirt. If we were really going for efficiency here, we would plant a bunch of cotton and make a whole outfit from it. You yourself might be wearing multiple items of predominantly cotton clothing. Jeans, for instance, are made from denim, which is primarily cotton. We're not going for efficiency though, so we will wait 25 weeks, harvest some cotton, and move along. 

While we're waiting, let's ponder some stuff. Such as: How did t-shirts become so ubiquitous in our culture? What is the point of t-shirts, and why do I have so many? Finally, our t-shirt here is made from cotton. Is there more sustainable or otherwise superior material to use? 

The short answer to the first question is: it's the government's fault. And Marlon Brando's. In fact, this may be the only thing for which we can blame both the government and Marlon Brando, and possibly to some extent the hippie culture of the 60s. 

Some time between the Spanish American War, which ended up 1898, and 1913, t-shirts were invented. This actual invention is enveloped in a cloud of internet mist. What is fairly well documented is that in the early 1910's, prior to World War I, the U.S. military began issuing t-shirts as undergarments to be worn with soldiers' and sailors' uniforms. In the 1930s, they were beginning to be sold in department stores, but still largely as undergarments. Occasionally in this time they might be warn as a standalone piece of clothing on someone's top half if that person were tailing in the heat, and not by anyone who wanted to impress anyone else. 

It wasn't until the 1950s when Marlon Brando wore a thin white t-shirt in A Streetcar Named Desire that t-shirts became a standalone item. They became a symbol of rebellion; a rejection of the suits and ties and blouses of the baby boomers and signal that a teen was not going to be chained down by oppressive formal wear, which was also likely a sign of some race and gender privilege. There is a social cost to not dressing within the expected or acceptable range of wardrobes for a social station. This is why, if you want to receive better service at a store, wear a suit. (Also have a penis.) By wearing a t-shirt instead of a collared shirt with buttons, a person was sending a signal, and that signal wasn't free. 

We've far since the mid 1950s. In 2021 it's commonplace for Very Rich White Guys to loaf around in tees and hoodies. T-shirts have become fashionable in a trend where it's considered a luxury to wear items that come "dirty". (For example, jeans that have a "dirt wash".) The t-shirt has utilitarian roots; very early advertising portrayed the item as underwear for single men who couldn't fix buttons. 

In the past century, t-shirts have become the the most mindless pieces of clothing that we wear. Morphing from underwear, to a cultural symbol, the tee has ended up a ubiquitous part of the western wardrobe. So common in fact, you may have never thought about where it came from. 

The reality is if you own a t-shirt, you've likely contributed to an industry that still uses sweatshops, grossly underpays its workers, and generally gives no shits about the people it uses or serves. The simple (but complex to a caveman) t-shirt, first a piece of government issue clothing, then a 1950s sex symbol, now everywhere, is, in addition to being one of the most common articles of clothing on the planet, the most under-appreciated status symbol in the world. Simply put: if you have a t-shirt, and you've never had to think about where it came from, you're privileged. 

And that's why I have drawers literally overflowing with t-shirts that I forgot I own. To continue bringing mindfulness into this void of ignorance, let's consider the cotton itself.

Cotton fabric is a powerhouse textile. However, not all cotton fabric is the same. The percentage of material that's in a garment is far from enough to make accurate consumer decisions as to which option will actually suit one's needs in the long run. (The System isn't necessarily concerned with the long run, which is why I'm sitting here writing this.) The first fact of cotton clothing is that, simply because so much of it is produced, it contributes a substantial amount of greenhouse gasses to our atmosphere in its production and processing. We're not planting cotton on an industrial scale, but all of the cotton that is consumed by the clothing industry has to be grown somewhere, and it requires many resources to do so. 

Since we're not planting on an industrial scale, the decision as to which type of cotton we planted in our minds at the beginning of this section is slightly more manageable. By that I mean: we in our little mind experiment won't have to deal with the marginal tradeoffs between organic and conventional cotton. (We in our mind experiment don't actually have to deal with anything, because it's an experiment in our minds.) 

The question is: should the cotton we planted in the first part of this bit be organic, or conventional? Organic cotton has been documented to cause less of an impact on the environment than conventional cotton. The details of this can be found in a paper by Kathleen Delate, Ben Heller, and Jessica Shade. The trio also outline that there are some potential issues in moving large scale cotton production away from conventional methods towards organic alternatives. The issue is similar to one faced by potato growers: bollworms. Conventional cotton (and potatoes) are both genetically modified with a compound that is toxic to those animals and prevents them from flourishing on the crop. The benefit of switching to organic growing is that it can be a more holistic approach; instead of fixing problems with bandaids, the "issues" fix themselves as the entire farm ecosystem changes. However, crop yields from organic cotton farming operations are not as high. 

While we're at it, let's expand the question: should we have planted cotton at all? Is there something else we could have grown that would have been more effective for making a t-shirt? Our tee needs primarily to be comfortable. We are "breeding" for comfort here, and cotton is comfortable, but it's also fairly ubiquitous. So is there something better that perhaps does not have such a stronghold on the textile industry. It turns out there is. A paper from Brazil compares clothing made from a processed soy plant, clothing made from cotton, and clothing made from a synthetic material called lyocell. The soy-based t-shirt was more comfortable and more durable that it's cotton counterpart. However, the processing that the raw plant must go through is so lengthy that the soy shirt is actually considered a synthetic material. Also, we thought of this too late since we've already planted our cotton, and we're susceptible to the sunk-cost fallacy. Bummer. 

Well, that was a lot of pondering. I'm glad we had 25 weeks to do it. At this point, we can go out into our patch of cotton and pick off the mature seed pods. With the cotton baled, we would then have to put it through a gin to separate the cotton lint (the white, fluffy stuff) from the cotton seeds (not ideal for being in a shirt). While my American readers are now vaguely remembering something to do with a guy named Eli, cotton gins have been around for many centuries and were originally developed in India. A simple hand cotton gin would do the trick. (It would also give our arms a workout.) This raw cotton lint needs to be cleaned, since the gin won't remove all of the non-lint material. 

The cleaned cotton is then processed into yarn. This is done by taking the lint, getting it wet, compressing it, and then drawing it out into a ropey substance called a sliver. The slivers are then twisted together to make a yarn. Once the thread is made, we can use a loom to turn the thread into a fabric. This fabric would have to be dyed, but we'll talk about that more in the upcoming section on the sweater. Out cotton fabric can be sewn together into a big tube for our torsos and smaller tubes for our arms, with some holes in it for the rest of our bodies to stick out of. (We'll just assume that we, you know, have the skills to do that. Speaking for myself: I most certainly do not.) 

Ok. So that's one out of three things done. In real life, I actually wrote this in multiple sittings, which means I'm wearing a completely different set of clothing by this point. We're in a mind-experiment together though, so we can just ignore that fact, and pretend that those are going to be the only three pieces of clothing we'll own. Aren't mind-experiments fun? On to the sweater. 

The Sweater

The sweater I was wearing was made from 100 percent merino wool, according to the label. Wool comes from sheep, so after trying our hand at cotton farming, we'll have to become shepherds. 

Like having bees, having sheep is something that you probably shouldn't just "do", at least without doing some research. The first thing to say about sheep is they are more than just animals you keep around the house. They are livestock. Living stock. Sheep are a commodity as well as living, breathing, feeling animals. They don't exist explicitly for our exploitation, and deserve respect in this regard. 

Our first step in the process of becoming sheep farmers is figure out why we want to have sheep at all, and not some other animal. (In our case, to make a sweater. Specifically, a sweater that I was wearing one day made from wool. It has not escaped my attention that plenty of folks wear sweaters made from the fleece of an alpaca or the hairs of a special goat, and it suits them just fine. But we're sticking to our completely arbitrary and collectively imagined rigor.) 

Scottish Blackface Sheep. Photo: Jenn Johnson

Our main goal for owning sheep would be to harvest their wool. Our goal might change over time as we get to know the flock and the breed. With this goal in mind, let's consider wool production. One merino sheep provides about 4.5 kilograms of wool. Now grab a coffee and a pencil (or whatever's handy) and settle in, because we're doing to do some sheep maths. 

Using a knitting calculator, I calculated that to make a sweater that would fit me out of merino wool, I'd use a little over 2000 yards. A 180 yard skien of merino wool was weighed at 50 grams, and we'd need to use 12 of them to make the sweater, so in theory we should be able to produce one sweater from the wool we harvest from one sheep. However sheep, like alpacas, are herd animals, so having just one would not be advisable. Sheep can actually die from isolation. It's probably best to have at least 3 to 5 animals to start with. Plus, our math here could be way out of sorts, so we might need the extra yarn anyway. If not, we could make two sweaters and adorably match with our favorite people. We may even be able to make some hats. 

Armed with this bit of napkin sheep mathematics, we can move ahead. To ensure our flock is going to have an adequate space to be, we're going to need to buy some stuff. As the saying goes, you need to spend money to make sweaters. To start we need some mode of shelter, brass tacks (buckets, halters, feeding equipment, storage for all of that, etc.), a first aid and lambing kit (because, our sheep are going to make more of themselves), hay and grain, and some land for them to graze. There are also a few services we'll need to consider, like veterinary check ups, vaccines, and deworming. We can definitely count on spending a few thousand dollars, plus the land we'll need, plus another thousand per yer per animal for food and vet services.  Added to this will be un-planned expenses, because the one thing everyone who has sheep says is, "Nothing ever goes wrong!" That's not really true. I just made it up. Nobody who has sheep says that. Nobody who has animals says that. Actually, nobody at all says that. 

Sheep are eaten by other animals that wander around in nature. We'll need to protect them, since we just learned in the previous paragraph what an investment they are. Also, we need the wool to make our sweater, so we need the sheep to be alive and warm. And while we're reasoning this out, since we're going to plop them on a plot of land without really asking their say in the matter, the least we could do is try and make sure they're not eaten by coyotes. To accomplish this we'll need to do is make sure they have a good enclosure. Fences make good neighbors, especially when the neighbors want to eat your sheep for breakfast. Another possible option for herd protection is to use some sort of guard animal, like a sheep dog. Employing guard animals for our sheep isn't absolutely necessary, and our decision to use them or not would probably depend on where our sheep ended up, how good of a fence we get, and what sorts of predators are out there. 

Photo: Jenn Johnson

Another thing to keep in mind is that sheep need specific amounts of minerals in their diet to ensure their survival. Except copper. Copper will kill them. Luckily, our small isolated bubble-verse here doesn't contain any other animals, because all of those other animals would die without copper added to their diet. While we can easily do this in our pretend farm, in actual practice if we're doing to have a small flock of sheep, we'll probably have some other animals as well. 

We'll have to tend to our flock for a year, so we can shear their wool. A helpful website has the following motivational quote on shearing sheep: "Anyone can attempt to shear a sheep, but not everyone will do a good job." More than that, you can actually damage the wool and the sheep by not knowing what you're doing. For our flock, we are probably going to want to either hire a sheep shearer who has spent the years it takes to actually know what they are doing, or spend hours learning how to shear sheep so we can then go hire a sheep shearer who has spent the years it takes to actually know what they are doing. 

Once the grease wool is sheared, we're going to need to process it so it can be spun into yarn. The wool needs to be cleaned, although agitating the wool too much during the washing process can ruin it for any further use. This cleaned wool can then be transported to someone with a loom who can spin it into yarn. The spinning process is also one that we could spend a few years learning how to do, but for our purposes here, it's probably best to just find someone with that expertise. 

Now, we can learn to knit and knit ourselves a sweater. Almost. The sweater I was wearing was definitely not knit by hand, and you'll observe, was a lovely shade of red. If we were making this ourselves, we'd have to be excellent knitters, using a very small set of needles to create such a fine weave. We'd also have to dye our yarn, because if our sheep are that lovely shade of red, it means we didn't read the Protect Your Sheep From Coyotes paragraph closely enough. If it was just me, making a sweater to keep me warm, I don't think I'd care what color it came out. However, since we're doing our best to recreate that outfit I was wearing we'll consider this process. 

Next to our cotton patch (have you forgotten about that yet?) we'll have to plant some madder. Actually, our madder would have to be planted some distance away, because it prefers a colder climate to cotton. There is some overlap in the range in which the two plants could flourish, so if we happened to be located there we'd be ok. Also, remember, this is a mind experiment so we can conveniently ignore this fact. Madder (rubia tinctorum) is a perennial flowering plant, in the same biological family as coffee. It's roots can be cultivated and processed to produce the a red color similar to the one of the sweater. To find that exact shade of red, we'd likely have to blend a few different raw materials together and do some trial and error with our processing. Our madder plants will have to be at least three years old to produce harvest-able roots, and should be allowed to grow for five years for the best results. 

Once our madder plants are mature, we'll dig up the plants to get to the roots. Once the roots are dry, we will shake the dirt off and then wash them by dunking them in two buckets. The first bucket will get most of the dirt off, and the second will allow us to continue to wash the roots without mixing them back in with any dirt we've washed off. They will then need to be cut. It's best to cut them soon after washing while they are still wet, as the roots can be difficult to cut when dry. They should be cut into small pieces and allowed to dry. 

Before we dye our wool we'll have to mordant it, which is a process where we soak the wool in a solution with aluminium potassium sulfate and sometimes cream of tartar. The mordanting process is crucial if our fibers are going to be dyed. Because we plan to dye our wool with madder, we will only use the aluminium and not the cream of tartar when we mordant the wool. For best results, we'll soak our wool in our aluminum solution for a few hours before we plan to dye it.

Our mordanted wool can then be added into a vat with cold water. You can use hot water for madden dyeing, but the cold water will likely give us the brick red colour we're aiming for. We'll also add the cut and dried madden roots and calcium carbonate (chalk). This vat will be left covered for about a week while the dyeing takes place. The wool will then be dried for a day or two, and then shaken to rid the wool of any bits of madder root that have attempted to take up a residence in what is to become our sweater. 

This process is the best one to use if we were trying to recreate the red v-neck sweater with our own two hands. In all likelihood, the actual sweater was dyed using a synthetic dye. These were invented in the 1850s, and have been used ever since, progressing in step with advances in chemistry. 

Any piece of clothing that has been dyed has been chemically altered. The process of dying is a process of getting molecules that reflect one particular wavelength of light (and absorb all of the others), to bond to the molecules of the fibers that are used to make the thread or yarn that makes up that piece of clothing. It would take years plus an advanced degree in chemistry to understand fully what goes on during this process. Mosty likely, the yarn for the sweater I was wearing was dyed using an industrial acid dye. The process is fundamentally the same as the one we would reproduce with our madder, just on an industrial scale. 

The Ethics of Wool

Now for an ethical caveat. If you search for "merino wool" you'll find in the first couple results some websites explaining how you shouldn't buy it because of the way merino sheep are treated. With any animal industry, you'll likely find similar results. We're about to learn about the alternative to "natural" (plant or animal) fibers, which, are basically the same thing as the oil you put into your internal combustion engine bolted to four wheels in which you drive around. The moral of the story is this: they're not better.

Working with animals is something that is going to be a necessity in the coming decades. Doing so while considering the animals quality of life is a viable way of producing goods. We can't revert back to the way things were hundreds of years ago; it would be like putting toothpaste back into the tube. (At least, we can't do it without cutting open the tube.) For example, things like shearing sheep can be done in a way that's harmful to the sheep. In an operation that's designed for maximum output with minimum cost might not have room to consider how the sheep are actually living, which might be a problem with the system more than a problem with that specific operation. 

A wool sweater that's bought in any store you'd find in a modern shopping mall - as the sweater I wore was - probably isn't quite as ethically produced as you'd like to think, if you think about it at all. Which I do. The cheapness of those clothes when compared to ethically and sustainably produced clothing is an issue. The way to a sustainable civilization must be financially viable for all of its citizens

It's worth noting that this sweater I was wearing I bought at Goodwill for $10. Before that, though, someone bought it new for much more than $10. You could probably argue that because I bought these sweaters at Goodwill and not brand new, it doesn't drive demand in the same way. You could argue that and I'd probably let you, but without being an expert in wool fiber textile systems, it would be about as meaningful as that one internet blog that defends the daily consumption of one glass (or bottle) of wine, or the one that says coffee, whisky, and chocolate are all "good" for you. By that I mean: I'll definitely reference it in any conversation in which I'm a participant for the foreseeable future, but it's not going to lull me back to sleep at 4 A.M. when it really matters. 

At this point, we would knit a sweater. I'm hoping one of you, my dear readers, actually knows how to knit. Please teach me. With two of the three items sorted, let's get around to the shorts. 

The Shorts

The shorts are the thing I've been dreading writing about. They are made from entirely synthetic fibers, which from what I can tell, is the modern alchemy. (It's not really. It's just more chemistry, but it does seem like magic.)

The shorts I was wearing are made by New Balance. They contain 3 layers - 2 body layers (I'm not quite sure why there are two) and a liner. The first body layer is made of 86% polyester and 14% elastane, while layer "body 2" and lining are both 93% polyester and 7% elastane. 

What the heck are Polyester and Elastane?

At this point, you may be wondering (please, at this point I HOPE you are wondering): What on Earth are polyester and elastane? Polyester is plastic. It's a shortened name for polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is a synthetic material made ethylene, glycol, and terephthalic acid. It's a human-made thing, so it likely only exists on this planet. 

Polyester is a great example of human naivety and the exploitation midset. In the desire to conquer, humans (men, mostly) will lock onto a goal and go to absurd lengths to achieve it. So now, we have polyester. It's a material that can display desired qualities; it can dry very quickly, it's easy to wash, it's lightweight, all things that make a great pair of shorts to go run in. The only thing is, it's not sustainable. It's like wearing gasoline. It's plastic. I'd better hope someone of my approximate height and weight is around in 10,000 years to go for a jog, because my shorts will still be around waiting for them. In our desire to demonstrate our mastery of the world, we've created materials that will destroy it. 

The basics of how my synthetic running shorts were produced are these: There is some raw material that's bought by a big company. It is heated up and squeezed through a tiny tube then out through a nozzle. This plastic string is what's then woven together to produce the clothing. Variations on this theme are used to create different materials, like a mesh for the inner lining, compared to more tightly woven outer shell. 

Could we actually make them?

Now, to get back to our task. How will we produce polyester running shorts?

Basically, we won't. Since we're not a company with an advanced chemical facility, it's highly unlikely we'd produce these. Or, we might be able to replicate some part of the process that created those shorts, but putting the whole garment together isn't feasible. 

The trouble is this: there are not many other options out there. The best alternative to buying new polyester running bottoms is buying new polyester running bottoms that have been made with recycled materials. Even shorts that use natural materials such as merino wool don't use 100% wool. It's a wool-polyester blend, often with lycra, spandex, or elastane added in as well. Companies that specialize in wool products do make shorts that are advertised as "wool shorts", but really, the only wool is found in the inner liner. The shell, the actual material that makes it a pair of shorts and not just underwear, is made of polyester and spandex or elastane. 

Conclusion

Where does this leave us? I'm not entirely sure. 

On one hand, we need clothes, just as we need food. Our bodies are pretty pathetic, and in order to go to places that aren't the living room, we need clothing of some sort to in some cases, just be comfortable; in other cases it's necessary for survival. 

It's impractical to make all of your clothes yourself. We - humans - face a world where systems actively work against the well-being of the planet-human-animal system. Synthetic clothes are not sustainable. However, it takes years of work, a crazy amount of financial investment, and expert level knowledge in experience in multiple trades, to make clothing that would even halfway resemble the ones that I photographed. It's the sort of thing that hypothetically might be done. However, the process of creating even one of the three things I was wearing to sit comfortably inside my house is something I could make a feature length documentary about - one that would probably go in so many different directions as we round each corner in the process. 

Like almost everything I spend too much time thinking about, this problem really isn't about clothing. It's about the whole system. We move around outside. We are advertised at constantly about how we should look while we do this. We - humans - are terrible at standing up to the power of these ads EVEN when we know what's going on. So, we spend our money on clothes and gear that we really don't need to go and have ``adventures" that are really just the way that some humans somewhere have to life to simply survive. I choose to go hike 10 miles through woods and over mountains for fun; someone else has to do that to get drinking water for their family. 

Could we make all of our clothing ourselves? Not if we wear the same sort of outfits we buy from the mall. Does that mean you should change what you wear? That's not for me to say. Does that mean we should all be more mindful of where our outfits come from? Ab-so-fucking-lutely. What materials am I going to wear tomorrow? I'm still not sure. 

Ultimately, this is where the blend of technology and people might come through. This line of inquiry is one of many that humans face right now. We can't go backwards and we can't keep going down the path we're going. I am hopeful that enough people will become curious about the world to push us over a threshold where we might alter course; not back to a simpler time, but sideways to an alternative version of our future. 

For now, I'm going to go back to browsing the internet for overpriced running shorts made from "recycled" synthetic materials. Maybe I'll make soft tacos later. 

A sheep, probably judging me for wearing a sweater. Or eating too many tacos.  Photo: Jenn Johnson

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