bdwater

we went to Bioneers by the Bay this weekend to get our yearly maybe-the-world-isn't-going-to-collapse dose of optimism and tales of people working on solutions. yeeha. It's a satilite conference from the mothership in San Rafael that we used to go to every year. They have an awesome youth program here, more so than in CA, and I ended up volunteering with them Friday afternoon. They had set up an ecofashion area and were working with a gizillion donated used t-shirts to create all sorts of wild outfits. Stenciling was a big hit (gotta love spray paint!) and then 2 very brave women had a sewing machine and a pile of scissors and some books with designs and away we went. I was mostly a gopher, but when it started getting crowded they had me work with a girl who wa making a sholder bag out of a t-shirt, very cool, and just needed some directions on what to do next based on a model. Then a girl named Jennifer grabs me and wants to know how to do the fancy braiding pattern on one of the mock ups that were hanging on the tent. She's got a crazy design with a low cut back and no sleeves and the braid on the front. so I talked her through a 9-strand braid and we tried to pin up the shirt the way she wanted it and kept bugging the ladies who really knew what they were doing and had a blast. It was a whole crew of girls who were trying stuff out- cutting snipping lacing tying- lots had never used the sewing machine before and a lot of talking them through rough spots and how can we change that to make it work. It was also about 50 degress on the porch and we were all shivering trying to pin things!  The funny part though is that at one point half way though round 2 on the 9 strand braid with the correct colors one of the girls asked if I was a fashion designer. HA! they didn't believe me when I told them I teach biology... but I thought it was a nice complement. :)