Dancing On The Vibes Of Spring

Who had thought that only minutes before spring started the lovely postman would bring me two items which turned my moody self into a dancer on the vibes of spring. I'm so manipulable by retail therapy.

One of the two items is Howies' Pd Polo in breton blue + citrus. The other one is Yes Pet Shop Boys etc.



I'm on my fourth run through Love and I'm simply loving it. It's both day-glo and pastel, bleeding heart and political, artistic and commercial. The boys are in good shape. The best track is The Way it Used to be - simply stunning. Where is the mascara? I want to dance all day and night.

Tonight will be aera's night of the flowers party. We'll have to go. There is no alternative.

PS: this the thousandth post on gomad.ch

Buy Land

howies

Added later
I found something on the made in Fiji in howies' spring catalogue:

Back in 2000, I fell in love with Merino. I loved its function, its quality and
most of all that nature provided it. And because it came from the land, one day after it had come to the end of its day, it could return to the land too. I was sold. I still am.

It was my answer to all those petro-chemical base layers out there, which I know from using them, just don’t do what the packaging says they do. (Nice packaging though.)

Around a year ago, we started a project to find out what the footprint of each of
our products was. David Hicks sat in front of a computer collating the data, and also working out what it meant. To find out the truths and not just what we had assumed.

And the truth of it is we didn’t like some of the results.

Moving the production of Merino from New Zealand to Fiji a couple of years ago to save a few pennies had increased our carbon footprint many fold. And we didn’t even know.

What we had not been aware of was that the fibre goes from New Zealand to China by boat to be made into yarn, and then the yarn goes back on the boat to New Zealand to be made into fabric. Then it goes off to Fiji to be made into our garments. Once made it then goes back to New Zealand before it is flown onto LA. Then to London. Then finally to Cardigan. No matter how you looked at it, it didn’t make for good reading.

That said, Merino is a truly great product. The best there is.

And because we use the highest grade that we can find, ours has a great reputation. And regularly wins the awards against all the big boys.

But making it right now in Fiji doesn’t fit with our aim to produce the lowest impact clothing that we can. That hurts. But the truth isn’t always what you want it to be. So we have to change.

So right now, we are looking into spinning the yarn in New Zealand and making the garment there. If we can’t, then it makes more sense to make the garment in China rather than Fiji. Doing that would mean each Merino product would travel 17,181 km less miles per garment. And this would cut our carbon footprint down by 95% (down to 0.12kg).

Only when you can measure something can you improve it. A hard lesson learnt.

Going Bionic

It seems to be true, global warming is a fact we have to deal with. One of the side effects is that the weather will be much extremer. But as we know, there is no bad weather - only bad equipment.

When it comes to waterproof and breathable fabrics most people still choose Gore-Tex™. But remember, we have to deal with the threats of the 21^st century, and Gore-Tex™ is so last century if not last millennium. Thus I decided to go bionic for my mew exposure to nasty weather gear by choosing howies^®' Long Way Home Jacket:

Around whole collar and front arm panels, it has Schoeller’s fabric called reflex which looks black in day light but becomes a large reflective area in the dark. But the real stand out thing about the jacket is it uses the bionic (sfx: six million dollar man music) C-Change™ membrane from Schoeller. It was voted ‘2006 Frost & Sullivan Award for product innovation of the year’.

It’s clever stuff. You see during activity, the structure of the C-Change™ membrane opens as body moisture levels rise. Excess heat can escape to the outside air. Which makes it great for those long rides home. Correspondingly, when you’re cooling down, the structure of the membrane closes, retaining the heat directly at the body.

Slick Treadly Flat

This afternoon I was supposed to give a workshop on motivation. But ironically, I just could not motivate myself to go for it and I had to cancel.

The last month was just too demanding. I'm dragging an only half cured gastric flu around, and I'm totally exhausted. Yesterday, I even went to bed at 10pm. Imaging me, getting pre-midnight sleep.

So this weekend is totally dedicated to recovery. I just started with a bit of retail therapy by ordering a Recycled Slick Tread Tyre Belt from howies^®:



It's absolutely useless, nevertheless I reckon, it perfectly matches me right now.