217 Closer Than You Think

0:00 Knit. Knit like the wind. This is Cast On with Brenda Dayne.

0:09 217. Closer than you think.

0:15 [music]

0:29 Clothing as identity. Cultural dress for a culture of one. The spreadsheet is merely a jumping off point. It's time to cast on. Greetings, Knitsib. How you doing? A few years back at the Carew boot sale, I was sorely tempted by an ex-military camp iron. It was a charming thing. A small metal rack on which to place the iron, a little Bunsen burner below to warm the iron, and the iron itself, small, steel, with a Bakelite handle.

1:14 Everything tucked neatly into a smart leather case. There were even extra wicks. I think about the camp iron sometimes, the absurdity of it, and the thing underneath the absurdity, which is that it was used by the kind of man who pressed his shirts while living in a tent at the edge of survival. Military clothing wasn't vanity.

1:38 It was identity. The pressed shirt said, I am still myself, still a soldier who dresses smartly, even here, especially here. That's what clothing does when it's working. Not the fast fashion version, which says nothing except I bought this on Tuesday and I'll forget it by March. The version that matters.

2:02 The version where what you wear is an expression of who you are assembled with intention, made or chosen with care, and worn until it becomes part of you. My friend, Dr. Laura Bellows, writes about something she calls dress culture designed for a culture of one. The idea is simple and radical at the same time.

2:26 Every traditional dress culture in the world developed its garments in response to a specific life in a specific place. The Croatian shirt for fieldwork. The Tibetan panel coat for mountain weather. The Japanese kimono with its many layers of silk and padding for a climate that moves between extremes.

2:50 Each garment answers a question. What does this person need, given the life they actually live? Laura's argument is that you can ask the same question of yourself. What does my culture wear? The culture of one. The specific life you lead, in the specific place you live, with the specific body you have.

3:12 I've been building my culture of one for about five years without quite calling it that. The capsule collection I showed you in episode three is the blueprint. 20 garments across five categories, dresses, bottoms, tops, layers, accessories. Almost every material from stash, almost every pattern in hand.

3:35 The Mitchell pants are in there because the Philadelphia story is one of my insomnia films. Katherine Hepburn wore trousers in that film the way I want to wear trousers, like someone who has decided that comfort and elegance are the same thing and everyone else can catch up. The frock coat is in there because, after 27 years of living in Wales, I'm applying for citizenship.

3:59 The countryside has shaped how I dress in ways I didn't notice until I started making a wardrobe that fits the life I'm actually living. The manifesto says a handmade wardrobe containing all the clothing you will ever need for the rest of your life is closer than you think. Five episodes ago, that might have sounded ambitious.

4:21 Impossible, even. A full wardrobe made by hand from what you already have. But look at what we've done. A vest re-knit from yarn that's now been three garments. Trousers fitted from the body out, not the pattern down. A stash that stopped being a weight and became a resource. A coat, 13 years in the making, waiting for the right pattern to catch up to the right woman.

4:49 None of this required perfection. None of it required expertise I didn't build along the way. None of it required buying anything new, except a pattern or two, and the occasional button. What it required was knowing what I wanted. That's the hard part. Not the sewing, not the knitting, not the fitting or the fabric or the time.

5:16 The knowing. Figuring out what you actually want to wear, and then making that thing. Then doing it again. With purpose and a direction, one step at a time. Captain Robert Falcon Scott took a silver-backed clothesbrush set on the Terra Nova expedition. A search team found it among his possessions at the final campsite.

5:43 Even there, at the edge of the world, the clothing mattered. The impossibility was the point. You press the shirt, you make the coat, you build the wardrobe, one step at a time. It is closer than you think. It always was. I have a clothing spreadsheet. This is not a confession. This is not, or not only, the admission of a particular kind of making personality, the kind that color codes their project queue and tracks yardage with the intensity of someone who has been burned.

6:25 The spreadsheet is the capsule collection made visible. Twenty garments across five categories laid out in a grid so that the whole wardrobe can exist as an idea before it exists as clothing. I opened it at the start of this series. I opened it again this week. And here is what I can tell you. I haven't finished most of it.

6:49 The pegs are very nearly there, just the waistband and hem. The sewing equivalent of being told your flight is delayed by 20 minutes. Big Love, the teal cardigan, finally reached the length that I wanted it to be. I worked a tubular bind-off, in the round, on the sleeves, and at the lower ribbing. It's done.

7:18 That was a skill I needed to become reacquainted with. I've worked a tubular bind-off before, but it was years ago, and all I needed was a quiet hour to just figure it out. The cream blouse has lost the ridiculous ruffle and purposeless tie of the neck. The cuffs have been liberated from the blouse. I'll use the fabric of the larger cuff to bind the sleeve gathers.

7:43 These three are the near-dones, the things that exist in three dimensions in my house and are not technically complete. Everything else is further back. The billy trousers are gray crinkle linen draped over the back of a chair, waiting for me to apply the top-down, center-out fitting method and cut a one-legged toile.

8:08 The Mitchell in camel heavyweight linen, the Joni Mitchell tribute, still fabric. The three shirt patterns are still in their envelopes. The frock coat is in the wool, which has been in my stash since 2012 and has waited this long so will wait a little longer. The charcoal sweater's replacement doesn't even have yarn yet.

8:30 I'm still looking for the right one. Knitters do that. Twenty garments, three in the final straight, the rest in process, in stash, in intention. I'm telling you this because I think it matters. There's a version of a final episode where I show you a finished wardrobe, where everything in the spreadsheet has been ticked off, And I stand before you, metaphorically, in the culture of one made fully manifest.

9:02 Twenty garments hanging in the wardrobe I've been building toward for five years. That version of the podcast has a satisfying narrative shape. It is also not true. And I've been doing this long enough to know that not true doesn't make good audio. This is not a shine haul. It doesn't work like that.

9:23 You don't fill a basket, pay, wait three days, and open a parcel containing your identity. A maid wardrobe is built the way any real thing is built. Slowly, in the gaps, one piece at a time. And then one day you look up and realize that what you've been making has become the life. The capsule was never going to be finished by the time a series ended.

9:47 The point was not to finish it. The point was to have a plan. To be in the middle of it. And to know, with the particular confidence that comes from having made even a few of the pieces, that the rest is possible. That the stash is a resource and not a reproach. That the fitting method works. That the shoulder hack does what Sandra Betsina promised.

10:12 The spreadsheet isn't a to-do list. It's a map. You use a map differently when you're in the middle of a journey than when you're planning it from the armchair. In the armchair, you're counting the stops. On the road, you're just watching for the next landmark. I recorded this stash dive you heard in Episode 3 of the series yesterday morning.

10:34 I had planned a stash dive for that episode, but I hadn't recorded it yet because I wasn't sure what yarn I was actually looking for. Was I buying new yarn and knitting Frigg? Or using yarn I have on hand and knitting something else entirely? Yesterday, when I finished knitting the last stitch in the lower ribbing of Big Love, I finished the bind-offs.

10:55 I wanted to know what the next sweater project was going to be. So I set up the recording equipment for the stash dive. The shepherd's wool worsted is still a good choice for the capsule collection. It really does work with everything. And since it's here, and the yarn for Frigg is not, I decided to look for a pattern.

11:15 A top-down raglan in worsted weight. My go-to shape and yarn weight when I want to bust out a sweater. I very much want the next sweater to fly off my needles. I intend to begin swatching the moment Big Love gets pinned to the blocking board. I knew when I recorded the piece that Stalactite was coming from left field.

11:36 That I'd say, Stalactite, and you'd think, wait, what? It wasn't on the spreadsheet. It probably felt like a wild card, and it is. It's a project that began in the impulse of the moment. You know that moment. When you're finishing a project and begin to wonder, what's next? Stalactite was in my Ravelry favorites, and now it's in my library.

12:01 That's what's next. A claret sweater with a slip stitch pattern running like a jagged stripe at intervals of about four inches. I have yet to settle on the contrast color. Possibly charcoal? Possibly hot green. Possibly Malabrigo Rios oddballs. What would it look like if every slipped stitch stripe were worked in a different hand-painted color?

12:27 Maybe a bit crazy. Or maybe a bit beautiful. Maybe a bit of both. Anyone who's listened to my podcast for any length of time Knows that my 2012 pilgrimage to SR Harris Fabric Store near Minneapolis was a very good shopping day. Three hours in a warehouse full of mill-end bargains yielded about $400 worth of fabric that cost nearly that much to ship home to the UK.

12:59 The box was huge and heavy. It had to go by boat and took nearly six weeks to arrive at its destination. I made it home before the fabric did. Fourteen years on, and I still haven't sewn my way through all of it yet. But I have never once regretted that purchase. I didn't have any specific plans for any of the fabric.

13:22 It was mostly linen in two weights, prints and solids, plus a single length of silk brocade. The brocade was mossy green, glowing, as if lit from the inside. It made my heart sing. The fabric was purchased in lengths of three yards, which is the sort of length one buys when there isn't a plan. Three yards are enough for a skirt or slim-fit trousers, and more than enough for most shirt patterns.

13:52 I chose the colors of autumn, and every single length of fabric worked with at least two of the others. Thinking back, this was probably the inception point of the capsule collection. I just didn't know it at the time. Of the 15 to 20 lengths of fabric in the box that eventually arrived in Wales, only one of my choices was a dud.

14:15 A floral print. The colors were correct, but the print itself was a bit English country house floral. My friend Katie said it looked like curtains. She wasn't wrong. Every other length of S.R. Harris fabric still in stash is waiting to become something fabulous. This piece was waiting to be used. Last summer, the fabric got its moment.

14:43 I'd been eyeing the pocket skirt designed by Tara Vigo for Paper Theory. The name is apt. The pattern is for capacious pockets with a handy skirt attached. I wanted the pockets. I wasn't sure I wanted the skirt. What I needed was a test garment made in fabric I didn't care about. And I reached for the cottagecore linen.

15:09 The make was perfectly straightforward. The pattern simple, the sewing quick. I cut it out in the morning, ate lunch, and by dinner, I was wearing a new skirt. The fit is good. It's comfortable and very easy to wear. And the pockets are a triumph. Wide, deep, gaping, but on purpose. The opening is right there at hip level, just where you need it.

15:36 The pockets are large enough to hold a sock on DPNs, or a drop spindle and some fiber, to say nothing of phones and keys. They are voracious, these pockets. I bet I could drop an apple into one from a height and not miss the opening. The pockets, sadly, were not enough to make me like the fabric any more than I did when I chose it for the test make.

16:01 It is still quaint and a bit too precious. The fact that it works perfectly with my autumnal palette is not enough to save it. And yet, the pockets are quite good. The skirt is exceptionally comfortable. With a slim-fitting chambray shirt worn untucked with long tails and fisherman sandals, it's actually not a bad outfit.

16:28 The silhouette is correct, I think, even if the fabric is slightly wrong. That is worth knowing going into the next make. That is the thing about making at least some of your clothes. Making lets you ask a garment a real question and receive a real answer. Not every piece of fabric has to sing. Not every garment has to become a favorite.

16:55 One does not have to become a person who wears cottagecore curtains, Just because one has sewn that. Sometimes a make gives you something better. A useful skirt with magnificent pockets and a much clearer idea of what you want to make next. I want this shape, again, in a plain dark linen where the pockets can get on with their work without having to compete with the curtains.

17:22 The fabric has done its job. And now so does the skirt. I asked a question, I wore the answer, and now I know more than I did before. A handmade wardrobe containing all the clothing you'll ever need for the rest of your life is closer than you think. I've talked about the handmade wardrobe, and I've talked about the road you walk to get there, Let's talk about the rest of my life.

18:01 I'm 66 years old. Realistically, if I live into my 80s, which I hope to do, the 20 items on my spreadsheet are, probably, very nearly enough clothing for the rest of my life. Not quite, but if I replace just the items that eventually wear out, making a new garment or two a year, the spreadsheet is not too far off the mark.

18:29 This is the thing about making your own wardrobe. The timeline is yours. There's no sale ending Sunday, no limited stock. The fabric doesn't expire. The pattern will still be there in October or January or whenever the Mitchell is done and it's time to cut into something new. You can take your time. You're not competing with anyone or chasing a trend, not trying to be ready for the season, the industry invented.

18:56 You're just making what you need. For the life you live, with the body you have, at the pace that body and life allow. My spreadsheet has 20 rows. Six of those rows have a completion date or the word soon or the word next written in the final column. Fourteen do not. I consider this a success. This series has been about building a value system as much as a wardrobe.

19:27 In my culture of one, wise use of resources is a core value. Not as an aesthetic, not as a brand, but as an ethical position embodied in what I wear. Clothing that fits and feels good to wear is a value. A garment you're adjusting all day is a garment that's fighting you. And you have better things to do than fight with your clothes.

19:52 Sufficiency is a value. I don't need more clothing than I can wear. Having enough, being enough, turns out to be a more radical idea than it sounds in a world built on the premise that you aren't. In my culture of one, I get to decide what is revealed and what stays hidden. Not fashion. Not the male gaze.

20:16 Me. And making, the radical act of claiming a handmade wardrobe for yourself, means I have a personal relationship with every item of clothing I own. I know where the fabric came from. I know what the fitting took. I know what I was thinking about when I cut the pattern and what I was listening to when I sewed the seam.

20:37 The wardrobe is never finished, and that's not a failure. That's what a living wardrobe looks like. Every piece, every make, takes you one step closer to knowing exactly who you are. Not because 14 unfinished projects is, by any objective measure, a triumph. But because 14 projects exist in that spreadsheet that would not have existed without this series.

21:05 Without the blueprint from episode 3. Without the decision to name the wardrobe I was building toward and write it down. The charcoal sweater's replacement wasn't in the queue until I admitted I needed a replacement for the one that wore out after 20 years. The frock coat wasn't earmarked until I looked at the wool.

21:26 All those years in stash, still waiting, and said, that coat. Finally, that coat. Naming the thing you want is the first act of making it. Everything after that is time and yarn. One last note on support since this is the end of the series. Cast On is made possible by the people who back it. Seven pounds a month on Substack.

22:00 Supporters get each new series whole on day one. Everyone gets it free one episode a week. That's the arrangement and it's the reason the next series gets made. To those already supporting the work, it exists because of you. Thank you. Support details are in the show notes if you're looking for them.

22:19 Hit the big red subscribe button and consider a paid subscription to help support the work. Thank you to everyone who helped make this series. To Cal Patch for the conversation about fit. To Felicity Ford for to be of use and the sound design that carried it. To Laura for her many conversations about clothes.

22:40 To the patrons and paid subscribers whose support made the work possible, and to everyone who came back after the gap and listened, thank you. That's it from me until the next series. I'll talk to you again at winter solstice, when I'll drench the world in color during the grayest days of the year. Dye, pigment, paint, culture, design, psychology, anthropology, and history.

23:08 That's a teaser, and it's the only one you get until solstice. Until then, if you're cold,

23:16 put on a sweater.

23:17 That's what they're for.

23:21 Maybe you will find me funny Maybe you will find me true I cannot think about how things will do Steal my way together, I'm staying in the beach just fine. If it's you and I, babe, wouldn't it be nice? Maybe you will call me darling. Maybe you will call me dear And do you think about me Wondering if I'm near Gonna build ourselves a cabin And fill it with the family Or will we travel the world See it in everything All the world is making, living, far away dreaming.

24:53 There is just one hint, hint. How I'm gonna make you mine, mine, mine. How I'm gonna make you mine. How I'm gonna make you mine, mine, mine. How I'm gonna make you mine. Shake me down and you will see. Lovely little eyes for you waiting, but for now I'll live my life fully. We will see, we will see, we will see, we will see, we will see.

25:47 How I'm gonna make you mine, mine, mine. How I'm gonna make you mine. I'm gonna make you mine, mine, mine. I'm gonna make you, make you, make you.