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Blog move - Oui Bitte

I am finding my Tumblr not to be the best to eventually have a little shop so I am moving back to a new one!, show my photographs, sewing, art and adding shop items.  I think this will be primarily my source to look at a just fun images and little bite size nuggets of fun times.  So please visit my site if you get a chance! Thank-you kindly interwebs. 

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New soap I have in my etsy shop or email at sojones dot eh at gmail dot com.  I can invoice you if you prefer as I hoping to set up my own shopify eventually but for now, it’s a slow side hustle as I try to find some free time on the weekend to set everything up. This is a new rice milk soap and since this is the first time working with soaps and it’s has it’s imperfections it will be priced at:

$7 per soap bar

I will waive the shipping if you buy more than one.  It’s a great lather and it’s just a lovely soap to use.  Had hints of lemongrass and patchouli essential oils.  Used rice milk, babbisu oil, shea butter, castor oil, olive oil and sunflower oils as the base. 

This weekend I set some time to work on improving my packaging and logo as well as prototyping a new pattern.  I think the pencil case needs a few more tweaks and will show you the final results. I usually update my instagram page for anything new I do. 

How’s everyone’s weekend going? Stay safe out there!  

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I have finally sewn something.  This is the first pencil case I have made that is vertical.  I want to add this to my shop but this is the first one I have sewn and making a few light adjustments before actually providing a custom version of this with custom fabric! I am very excited about this side hustle.  It’s really slow and steady for me as I have a full time job and family.  Very thankful to have a full time job during these times so I have to make sure I prioritize that first but it’s been super intense and I work long hours. Sewing makes me happy though. 

I live in the Pacific North West and it’s really bad air quality wise with all the fires in Oregon, Washington and California. I hope you are keeping all of yourselves safe on top of an added pandemic.  Happy weekend everyone!

#sewcialists #sewinginreallife #pnw #shopsmall #smallbusiness #sidehustle #kawaii #disneyfabric #aristocrats #cottonandsteel #pencilcase

Let me know what you all think.  I’ll let you know when I posted it.  I used a thick pellon stabilzer which wrinkled a little bit. I am trying to figure out a way that it won’t but it holds up sturdy.  

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August garden update!  I am using my fuji camera for a vlogging and I am figuring it all out. I use my lavender for my soaps.  I hope to someday distill lavender and have my own local lavender essential oil.  

I also want to share more about creative things I am working on.  I am just coming off a really intense hectic work week so I haven’t had time to do things I enjoy and also planning out the kids schooling.  I have to remind myself. It’s okay.  Just breathe. You are just one person. The garden does help me stress levels but I know everyone has their own struggles and I hear ya, it’s okay, just one small step at a time.  You are awesome.

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Salt Creek, Washington

I have been thinking a lot about escaping.  I think about the adventures I have had and places to explore even in my own great state of Washington. I love the Olympic National Park area. It is my happy place.  I haven’t even hit Mt. Rainier another national park because I rather drive four hours to the northwest coast instead.  It’s my happy place.  Uploading and editing pictures from my camera is my happy place right now as I feel trapped living in the US right now. I can’t go and visit my family in Canada, I can’t travel, I can’t even trust going out to the stores anymore because our country is raging with the virus and there doesn’t seem to be any rest in site. I don’t quite see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

Funny enough, at this point, it’s is the CA/US border and my cell phone was picking up canadian mobile signals intead.  Maybe that’s why I love that point so much. I rather be up towards my homewtown. 

I hope I can run to a place where I want to be -- in my work, life, and mental state. Right now I just dream to be back near the water where the ocean waters calm me, the big beautiful fir trees smile down upon me. 

I long for it.  For now, I will find time to enjoy that in my kids stories, garden, photos, food and art. 

How are you all feeling today?

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Puttering around the garden in a Sunday afternoon. Here is the haul for today. I did haul a lot more tarragon yesterday and it’s not drying upside down in a closet. I am also trying to revive the hydrangeas in the front yard and it looks like hopefully I can but it will be a warm week so I will need to water in the morning.

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I am working on simple packaging as the whole point of bar soaps is to not use too much plastic so I wrapped it in paper that can be recycled. It’s so wonderful to see my logo on the packaging! This is going out to Canada. This is bar soap has lavender, cedarwood and peppermint notes. Babbasu oil was used instead of coconut oil as some people find that it doesn’t smell that great on their skin (this girl included), castor, sunflower oil, olive oil and shea butter for moisture. My little ballerina monster helped out with the colours and chose pinks, rose golds and white to swirl. It’s a family made business for sure! One of the reasons I started making my own soap and whipped body cream is that I have a lot of skin issues and when my littlest one arrived, she inherited my skin issues. I started with making cream and her redness and eczema would calm down. Once I became a mum, I really started to break out in my skin from all the constant washing using liquid soaps and then I got interested in soap bars because for one thing, it has less packaging and I was interested in putting ingredients that would be good for my skin. I know lavender was soothing for my skin and brought inflammation down – these were notes I had taken when making creams. Once I made my first batch of soap, I was hooked. These soap bars didn’t irritate my skin because I knew the ingredients going in and what worked and what didn’t work. I am whipping up some more goodies for you all that are just kind to your skin and the planet. 142g or 5 oz net weight soap bar. $8 each or if you buy in multiple quantities, I’ll wave the shipping. Visit my etsy shop or message me at sojones dot eh at gmail dot com. Here is my instagram as well for some inspiration! These are small batch soaps made by me. I have some new soaps curing which I’ll post once it’s ready to cut but thank-you so much for all the love and supporting small businesses!

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An update on the progress of my garden here in the Pacific North West! Keeping calm through gardening and other activities. 

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Made some soap. This is coconut oil free and includes Shea butter for extra moisture. Small batch handmade. Notes of peppermint, lavender and cedarwood essential oil.

$4 plus shipping or free shipping if you buy more than one item. At my Etsy or message me at sojones.eh at gmail dot com. Shop small!

I will be posting up more goodies once I have some free time to myself. Life during this pandemic is so different. It has slowed down in some areas and not so much in others.

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I have started posting items on the etsy shop!  First one is the luggage tag that has handmade felt from Nepal and an original embroidered design.  

I am posting up other goodies into the shop during my spare time. Limited supply and once it is gone, it’s gone.  These are all handmade by me. $10 each. 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/ouibitte

#handmade #etsy #felt #travel #luggagetag #robot

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Photo from the office back in March by a colleague.  It’s weird you are looking below at Pike Place Market and normally that is full of people and cars and it’s looking like a ghost town.  The traffic has never been better here funny enough and it looks like people are staying at home to bring that curve down.  We live in a really strange time but I was listening to an infectious disease doctor and really this is the only way to do it if there isn’t enough testing and something to really show that you are fine.  I think New Mexico has liberally tested and found a lot of negative cases and their curve is relatively flat. 

I feel like this is the new normal for awhile. I am sad to see the deaths and how this virus is different in so many people.  Some have mild symptoms, others have it really hard regardless of age. 

Stay safe out there friends.  

#seattle #stayathome #pnw #pikeplace 

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Quinault Rain Forest Trailhead, Grays Harbor County, Washington - #rainforest #hiking #lifeatexpedia #quinault #olympicnationalpark #washington

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire

On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burned, killing 145 workers. It is remembered as one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history, as the deaths were largely preventable – most of the victims died as a result of neglected safety features and locked doors within the factory building. The tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories, and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers.

The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the Asch Building in Manhattan. It was a true sweatshop, employing young immigrant women who worked in a cramped space at lines of sewing machines. Nearly all the workers were teenaged girls who did not speak English, working 12 hours a day, every day.

There were four elevators with access to the factory floors, but only one was fully operational and the workers had to file down a long, narrow corridor in order to reach it. There were two stairways down to the street, but one was locked from the outside to prevent stealing and the other only opened inward. The fire escape was so narrow that it would have taken hours for all the workers to use it, even in the best of circumstances. The danger of fire in factories like the Triangle Shirtwaist was well-known, but high levels of corruption in both the garment industry and city government generally ensured that no useful precautions were taken to prevent fires.

Blanck and Harris already had a suspicious history of factory fires. The Triangle factory was twice scorched in 1902, while their Diamond Waist Company factory burned twice, in 1907 and in 1910. It seems that Blanck and Harris deliberately torched their workplaces before business hours in order to collect on the large fire-insurance policies they purchased, a not uncommon practice in the early 20th century. While this was not the cause of the 1911 fire, it contributed to the tragedy, as Blanck and Harris refused to install sprinkler systems and take other safety measures in case they needed to burn down their shops again.

Added to this delinquency were Blanck and Harris’ notorious anti-worker policies. Their employees were paid a mere $15 a week, despite working 12 hours every day. When the International Ladies Garment Workers Union led a strike in 1909 demanding higher pay and shorter and more predictable hours, Blanck and Harris’ company was one of the few manufacturers who resisted, hiring police as thugs to imprison the striking women, and paying off politicians to look the other way.

The Tragedy

On March 25, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers at the factory when a fire began in a rag bin. The manager attempted to use the fire hose to extinguish it, but was unsuccessful, as the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. As the fire grew, panic ensued. The young workers tried to exit the building by the elevator but it could hold only 12 people and the operator was able to make just four trips back and forth before it broke down amid the heat and flames. In a desperate attempt to escape the fire, the girls left behind waiting for the elevator plunged down the shaft to their deaths. The girls who fled via the stairwells also met awful demises–when they found a locked door at the bottom of the stairs, many were burned alive.

Those workers who were on floors above the fire, including the owners, escaped to the roof and then to adjoining buildings. As firefighters arrived, they witnessed a horrible scene. The girls who did not make it to the stairwells or the elevator were trapped by the fire inside the factory and began to jump from the windows to escape it. The bodies of the jumpers fell on the fire hoses, making it difficult to begin fighting the fire. Also, the firefighters ladders reached only seven floors high and the fire was on the eighth floor. In one case, a life net was unfurled to catch jumpers, but three girls jumped at the same time, ripping the net. The nets turned out to be mostly ineffectual.

Within 18 minutes, it was all over. Forty-nine workers had burned to death or been suffocated by smoke, 36 were dead in the elevator shaft and 58 died from jumping to the sidewalks. With two more dying later from their injuries, a total of 145 people were killed by the fire. The workers union set up a march on April 5 on New York’s Fifth Avenue to protest the conditions that had led to the fire; it was attended by 80,000 people.

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Many publications refuse to run broadsides against me and my family, while others happily repeat the distortions. They repeat that my allegations were made during a custody dispute, which is not true. In fact, Allen sued for custody of me and Ronan only after the investigation into child abuse began. Charming. Many point to a questionable 1993 report that concluded no abuse had taken place. The author of that report never interviewed me, and the team later destroyed all of its notes without explanation.

Although the culture seems to be shifting rapidly, my allegation is apparently still just too complicated, too difficult, too “dangerous,” to use Lively’s term, to confront.

The truth is hard to deny but easy to ignore. It breaks my heart when women and men I admire work with Allen, then refuse to answer questions about it. It meant the world to me when Ellen Page said she regretted working with Allen, and when actresses Jessica Chastain and Susan Sarandon told the world why they never would.

It isn’t just power that allows men accused of sexual abuse to keep their careers and their secrets. It is also our collective choice to see simple situations as complicated and obvious conclusions as a matter of “who can say”? The system worked for Harvey Weinstein for decades. It works for Woody Allen still.

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Imagine having control of more money than you could ever spend in your lifetime, and then going out of your way to try and bleed even more money out of people who can barely make ends meet. Imagine being the kind of person who could literally just spend all your days painting or writing or playing with dogs or helping to nurse orphan baby sloths, with no worry that you will ever lack the funds for housing, entertainment, health care, vacations, etc, imagine reaching that point, and then deciding you are going to work your ass off to screw everyone else over instead. You are going to spend your days bribing politicians so that you can charge some minimum wage single working mother an extra $40 a month for her ability to use Facebook. So that you can charge some uninsured kid so much for his insulin that he can’t afford it and ends up dying while he begs strangers on the internet for help. That’s what you want to do with your life.

I do not understand billionaires.

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And.... Like father like son. @overclockedtim same sense of humour. #letthekids #clickinmoms

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@kyotea you have to try this. It's near our house. 🍔🍟mmmmm. #100%grassfed #burgers #food (at Katsu Burger)