chicote

I'm broke right now and have no business shopping for engineer boots, but these Motos are up on Yahoo right now for an excellent price, if anybody wants to grab them: https://item.rakuten.co.jp/jumblestore/2342862227545/?scid=af_pc_etc&sc2id=af_106_0_10001056

fromjapan link:

 https://www.fromjapan.co.jp/japan/en/special/order/confirm/jumblestore:29760214/2_1/

Happy new year everyone!

as i've mentioned to a couple of folks here already, i'm going to be moving back to south america later this year, either heading down thru mexico & central america by motorcycle or flying to venezuela to visit family & making my way around from there. hoping to do some more writing work in the amazon & some photojournalism while travelling, which i'll be sure to share here. anyway, planning for this has got me thinking a lot about what jeans i'd want to bring along... probably only 1 pair, sadly... my heart calls me either to some tender 132s or the tcb good luck jeans, tho i worry about fabric weight being an issue with both. might just go with some okinawas from @roomtemplacroix's collection. but today i have my trusty old cane's on, am gonna give em a wash n patch both knees again, lol. here's to a lovely & restful start to the year for all!

Not mine, just wanted to share this faded pair I came across on Grailed, here’s a link if interested… no affiliation just passing along a nice fade…

Thanks for the info @julian-wolf! That helps a lot. I might end up with a large then and see if it will shrink down. Appreciate it!

Any reason you aren't carrying any smalls in those thermals, @kiya? i'd consider one as an underlayer for a motorcycle trip, but would like it to be a little more snug-fitting than the measurements suggest. Or is there any shrink left in the merino? Thanks in advance, beautiful colour choices this time round!

Feliz navidad everyone!!!

Incredible job! I can't wait to see how they wear in!

Any recommendations on loopwheeled tees with ribbed sleeves? I love the Lee Kung Man-styled shirt as well as Tender's ribbed sleeve shirt, but would like something without buttons or text if possible. Thank you!

@81FXR maybe these story mfg trousers would fit the bill, i looked at these myself a year or so back in brown but ended up passing. Link

I wanted to share a post made by Jonah of Blackbird Spyplane, who I had the pleasure to meet on our motorcycle trip through the Bay this summer and have been really enjoying reading since. His blog and paid newsletter cover topics throughout the fashion world, primarily focusing on smaller-'artisanal' brands, which places them somewhat adjacent to us here, at least ideologically. In a recent newsletter that I want to discuss a bit, he asks: Should clothes never go on sale?

Jonah outlines several reasons for his position -- that sales are often contrived marketing tactics by larger luxury brands who can overinflate their base price most of the year and then trim during 'sale' season, a game which smaller brands with smaller margins have trouble playing; that clothes coming in and out of "season" is an arbitrary distinction that pushes people to make unnecessary purchases for the sake of helping clear stores' inventory; and that lower market prices for clothing fuels the race-to-the-bottom epitomized by fast fashion, where workers and the environment are endlessly exploited in an effort to maximize the bosses' bottom line.

An additional point that I have spent some time reflecting on comes from Daniel Garrod, a designer for the brand James Coward, who Jonah interviewed for the article:

“Maybe there’s a brand you like that costs a lot,” he said, and when sale time hits “you decide to buy in and get yourself a piece, but it’s not your choice piece, and — as much as any object can create a sense of fulfillment — you don’t feel fulfilled by that object at all.”

This is a striking and relevant reminder to me because it's something I have felt somewhat often in my time as part of this community. As someone who has worked at or around minimum-wage for the past decade, I feel it's necessary to either budget for weeks to get a piece that I want, which often rules out jumping on the really excellent low-volume brands like Ooe, Roy, At Last, etc., or to find my clothes secondhand, which often leads to the exact situation Garrod describes above: you compromise on the exact piece you're after to get something more accessible, and aren't able to form a meaningful relationship with the piece you ended up with as a result.

I'm curious what your experiences are with this issue, whether or not you agree with the points made in the newsletter, how you factor things like price and availability into your purchases of specific brands, and would love to also hear which items you have that feel meaningful to you in a way that justifies the cost and effort to procure them.

@sensy that's amazing!! i remember a couple years ago you saying you planned to make yourself a pair of boots and were teaching yourself other leatherworking skills along the way... i really admire your dedication, and the skills you've learned really show in how cleanly that boot turned out.. looking forward to seeing the next one!!

@reallypeacedoff where I am in the states they go for 2-300 in working condition, some online prices may exceed that, but this was one of Singer's most popular and enduring models so you shouldn't have trouble finding one locally with a bit of searching. There are a few variations of the 201 (as with most Singers), so it's best to make sure you do some prior research to make sure you're getting something that will work for you. Here is a good resource for them. The 201-2 is my personal preference as it has a potted (integral gear-driven) motor which provides more torque and stability than the standard belt-drive motor, but maintenance on these motors can be a bit more complicated. There's also an aluminum version that came out in the 60s that cuts the weight of the machine by 15 pounds or so lol. But the 201 itself is a great heavy-duty domestic machine that can definitely handle most denim-related work you'd want to do. Highly recommended!

That's a perfect fit @MJF9, pretty much exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you!

Any recommendations for indigo-dyed sweatshirts? I'm looking for a boxy fit, dark dye, and prioritizing warmth as much as possible. I had looked at Strike Gold but was disappointed to see they seem to have increased the length of their new run of sweatshirts dramatically. Thanks in advance!

So strange, repros of repros. I noticed that there's a brand selling reproductions of Rising Sun Blacksmiths on ebay currently, as well as a couple other models.. red tornado i think was the brand? Anyway, seems like a similar approach. I was tempted for a moment, but something about it felt strange, not to mention workers must not be getting compensated well at $90 a pair.

It did make me wonder, though, about some of the larger and more popular repro brands here, eg. freewheelers, toyo, warehouse. I've been curious to know what their production processes are like, how many employees they have, and so on, seeing as they turn out a relatively large number of new pieces every season, completely dwarfing smaller brands like TCB and the like. Even brands like At Last seem to have huge catalogs, and someone has to be producing all of it--anyway, just a side curiosity that spun out of this discussion of these new repro-repro brands.

Wow, amazing!!!

Wow, that is truly amazing Duke! Are you doing all the stitching by hand or have you got a leather sewing machine? I’m patterning a new leather bench seat for my truck at the moment, but the thought of all that hand stitching is daunting…

That looks great Julian!! Any reason in particular why you oriented the denim in that direction? I’ve been thinking about orienting my next knee patch so the bias runs vertically, to see if it might give the fabric there a bit of a break from constant stretching. As a trade-off, the knees might bag out more, but I’m not sure. Anyway, beautiful work on the patch and those jeans too!

^Good point ... it's been in the 40s fahrenheit the last couple of weeks where I live, and i've only broken out my n1 on the absolute coldest evenings when i'm riding my motorcycle or working on my truck. Even then, it feels too warm sometimes. I probably won't bring it with me to the warmer place I plan to move to soon, wherever that is --- and for what it's worth, that Freewheelers lining looks substantially warmer and thicker than the mccoys jacket i have. But, if it's just something for freak snowstorms or the like, it might still be useful!

Dark red is a much more interesting shade imo

I'm really looking forward to further advancements in humans' understanding of some of the things other species seem to have already learned well regarding tolerances for certain kinds of foods. It's really interesting to me how so many people my age, including my partner and several of my close friends, have developed severe intolerances to foods that they were generally able to eat as children. Obviously, there are individual cases, such as my partner, who learned after some testing that they have a rare mutation in their enzymatic system that prevents complete digestion of a pretty wide variety of foods (wheat, most legumes, most eggs, and some starchy or fibrous vegetables) while handling others with no issue whatsoever. But I have noticed a broader, gradual development of digestive and nutritional issues among younger people, which could (and probably does) have many causes: nutrient deficiencies in soil (or bacterial and fungal imbalances in soil, depending on who you ask); nutrient deficiencies in foods themselves; overuse of chemical fertilizers OR improperly processed organic additives; residue from pesticides, insecticides, fungicides and defoliants accumulating in the foods we eat; overuse of antibiotics weakening and destabilizing our microbiomes, and so on... i'm not a real scholar of this stuff but have done a bit of reading over the past couple of years, and notice that people seem to be starting to make connections between all of these emerging fields of research. The news site Civil Eats is a really amazing source of long-form agricultural and food journalism, I've linked to a couple of their articles above for anyone who's interested. I hardly read paywalled news these days but it's been really worth it to me to subscribe to them.

As an aside, when I was working in the Amazon in Ecuador years ago, I spent several days on food-and-medicine gathering trips with Walter, the síndico or political/spiritual leader of the community I was staying in. He would bombard me with information about the medicinal plants we were looking for, much of which I sadly no longer remember, but one thing that stuck with me was his recounting of the process a shaman takes to familiarize themselves with a new species they come across in the jungle. Upon coming across it, the shaman will approach it, study it visually, remember where it is, but mostly leave it alone. They will return home and spend some time thinking of what they found, where it is in the ecosystem, what it's around, and perhaps searching for information about it during a spiritual journey, if they can contact an ancestor or friend of another species who might tell them something of its use. Then they will come back to the plant, and touch it. Then, days later, they will come back and smell it, maybe crushing a leaf or stem in a mortar, but not making any skin contact. Several further trips will get them to the point where they will touch the plant, taste it, infuse it in water, dry and burn it, and so on, to get a sense of whether it is safe to proceed with further experimentation. This process is how, over time, and dozens of generations, humans at least in this part of the world came to such esoteric cures as squeezing the juice from a mushroom into your ear to cure a sinus infection, placing tiny bugs that live in the eyes of toucans into your own eyes to enhance the clarity and intensity of your colour vision, or crushing the berries and leaves of a plant called barbasco and dumping it into a small river to stun (but not harm) fish downstream when hunting. I like to think of our own scientific explorations in the West as a continuation of that same cautious curiosity, and am hopeful that as we move forward into the future, that we gear our findings towards the healing and advancement of ourselves as a species, and as an important but singular link in an endlessly complex and endlessly interrelated web of physical and spiritual life that is, for the most part, struggling towards the same understanding of one another and themselves.

@spidereye beautiful bike, wow!! Must be so fun riding a 4 cylinder. Thanks for sharing!

Excellent work on those, Mike - i really appreciate seeing how your belt-making skills transfer over to so many different applications. I notice the slits on the rabbit ears have a small hole punched at the end - i assume that's to prevent the leather from tearing?