Bonjour!

After much procrastination and shilly-shallying, I have decided to introduce my clothing line, Fancy Clothing, to the blogging world! Being a colossal techno-dolt and queen of demurral, I can only look beyond my current e-failures as I take on yet another networking site-- Twitter is proving too much of a time commitment (all of those tiny little posts!), and Myspace makes me feel old and crotchety. Sigh. Enough about me. Let's talk about Fancy.

Fancy Clothing was born out of the desperation that resulted from 2 months' unsuccessful job hunting in Portland. My husband, Caleb, and I had just returned from our 3 month residence in Eldoret, Kenya, and had (randomly) picked Portland as our next place to live. After papering the streets of downtown with my impressively perky resumes and receiving nary a bite, I began to sew in earnest. I lobbed wads of my clothing at every boutique I came across, and in the cutthroat fashion climate of Portland, I was fortunate to eventually worm my clothing into three stores. Meanwhile, my sister Natalie whispered the sweet sound of Etsy in my ear, and with the substantial help of that herculian bazaar of handmade bliss, Fancy Clothing was off!

Materials for this line have always been scavenged from church thrifts and rumble sales, but most recently The Bins in Portland have been my deep and true love. Going there is always an adventure, but I like to think that I've earned my little niche in the ranks of regulars that line up on either side of the raised rubber dividers with hungry looks in their eyes, almost salivating as that new cart piled high with discarded whatever comes rumbling down the aisle. These days I have a nodding acquaintance with nearly every shift's cashiers, and my faithfulness has earned me preferred customer status, which equals not necessarily being price checked on every item in my cart. I always wonder if they ever question what I might be doing with the pounds and pounds of fabric that I extract almost weekly from their bins; but then, a rumpled-looking redhead with a penchant for outdated curtains possibly does not arouse the curiosity I hope for. Oh well...