redirection

Under The Root journal has redirected to a new home.  This comes on the heels with a redesign, revamped, streamlined brand.  I hope you will visit us with minimal effort: click the link here.. or begin underneath with the website link here.

the ascent of the hemp we dreamt

     I have been gathering up the courage to take a brisk leap, once again, shifting the business of fable inspired, eco lingerie, independent design.  Research and development takes time.  A zillion locomotives are onboard with the hopes of bringing opportunity to the United States.  The alignment of fields in a row, planting the seeds, placement of hands in the dirt, and eventually coming up for a much desired sigh of relief.  The plant Cannabis sativa has made a rejuvenated surge alongside the manufacturing industry.  
     I was first interested in hemp fabrics for lingerie around 2008.  The price point was out of my league even though the stars in my eyes were bright as the moon.  The next option quickly led a journey for upcycled materials.  Jump forward to 2014, hemp farms are legalized in a couple of states, barring the hoops and red tape for those farms, and wham! bam!  My heart and mind all aflutter for the prospect of what this means to us.
     The samples have been ordered to take a closer look, choose wisely, support the growth of hemp farms, and actualize my love for our planet with the ascent of the hemp we dreamt.  Upon the initial research, I found some outstanding tidbits of information on what will be seamed into the designs of Under The Root.  Here is what I found in regards to the history and present day:

The Statesman 
"First, lobbyists do not want to legalize cannabis because it would affect many industries: paper, fuel, clothing, pharmaceutical companies, etc.  Second, most people are not aware of the difference between hemp and marijuana, primarily because of a misrepresentation in the media and a personal lack of interest in the issue."

Hemphasis
"But the laws of supply and demand were effectively thrown out the window starting in the 1930's when the market wrecking pogrom that is Reefer Madness was unleashed on an unsuspecting populace.  Hemp's association with marijuana undoubtedly caused reluctance in farmers to grow it, while the bureaucratic red tape surrounding the enforcement of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 effectively regulated the hemp industry out of existence, destroying a huge money market in the process!"

Hempethics

The weaving of hemp fabrics is one of the world’s oldest industries, and soon will be the only sustainable path left for our future. Our ancestors used hemp 10,000 years ago because of its extremely high fibre content and multiple uses. By planting hemp instead of cotton today, we can produce 250% more fiber on the same amount of land. Since hemp is resistant to insects and diseases, it requires no pesticides. By way of contrast, non-organic cotton growers are responsible for over 50% of world pesticide use. Since non-organic cotton is often rotated with certain food crops, toxic pesticides build up and find their way into our meals. Run-off from non-organic cotton fields further pollutes streams, lakes, and all the creatures that depend on them. - See more at: http://nomadshempwear.com/about-hemp/#sthash.H05StdGB.dpuf

"It is unfortunate that the federal government has stood in the way of American farmers, including many who are struggling to make ends meet, from competing in the global industrial hemp market," said Representative Ron Paul during his introduction of the bill yesterday before the U.S. House. "Indeed, the founders of our nation, some of whom grew hemp, would surely find that federal restrictions on farmers growing a safe and profitable crop on their own land are inconsistent with the constitutional guarantee of a limited, restrained federal government.  Therefore, I urge my colleagues to stand up for American farmers and co-sponsor the Industrial Hemp Farming Act,"

Huffington Post
"Twenty-three states have now enacted pro-industrial hemp legislation (Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie signed the latest bill this past week), making the cousin crop to marijuana a national phenomenon.  Since the beginning of the year, more than 70 bills related to hemp have been introduced in more than half of the country's states.  Passage of the recent Farm Bill, which legalized the crop for research purposes, further cleared the way for industrial hemp production."

     The quotes and links above merely scratch the surface of the importance that revolves around a shift of environmental action for humanity.  It is with a giant warm hug that I am able to choose a hemp option for fabric used in the coming continuity of designs.  I will document the unfolding process and cite facts about what becomes of hemp production in the United States.  For now, the hemp knit is imported via Organic Trade Association sources.  
Here are some statistics, taken from Design We Need, about the countries where it is legal to grow industrial hemp:

AUSTRALIA began research trials in Tasmania in 1995. Victoria commercial production since1998. New South Wales has research. In 2002, Queensland began production. Western Australia licensed crops in 2004.

AUSTRIA has a hemp industry including production of hemp seed oil, medicinals and Hanf magazine.

CANADA started to license research crops in 1994. In addition to crops for fiber, one seed crop was licensed in 1995. Many acres were planted in 1997. Licenses for commercial agriculture saw thousands of acres planted in 1998. 30,000 acres were planted in 1999. In 2000, due to speculative investing, 12,250 acres were sown. In 2001, 92 farmers grew 3,250 acres. A number of Canadian farmers are now growing organically-certified hemp crops (6,000 acres in 2003 and 8,500 acres in 2004, yielding almost four million pounds of seed).

CHILE has grown hemp in the recent past for seed oil production.

CHINA is the largest exporter of hemp textiles. The fabrics are of excellent quality. Medium density fiber board is also now available. The Chinese word for hemp is “ma.”

DENMARK planted its first modern hemp trial crops in 1997. The country is committed to utilizing organic methods.

FINLAND had a resurgence of hemp in 1995 with several small test plots. A seed variety for northern climates was developed called Finola, previously know by the breeder code “FIN-314.” In 2003, Finola was accepted to the EU list of subsidized hemp cultivars. Hemp has never been prohibited in Finland. The Finnish word for hemp is “hamppu.”

FRANCE has never prohibited hemp and harvested 10,000 tons of fiber in 1994. France is a source of low-THC-producing hemp seed for other countries. France exports high quality hemp oil to the U.S. The French word for hemp is “chanvre.”

GERMANY banned hemp in 1982, but research began again in 1992, and many technologies and products are now being developed, as the ban was lifted on growing hemp in November, 1995. Food, clothes and paper are also being made from imported raw materials. Mercedes and BMW use hemp fiber for composites in door panels, dashboards, etc. The German word for hemp is “hanf.”

GREAT BRITAIN lifted hemp prohibition in 1993. Animal bedding, paper and textiles markets have been developed. A government grant was given to develop new markets for natural fibers. 4,000 acres were grown in 1994. Subsidies of 230 British pounds per acre are given by the government to farmers for growing hemp.

HUNGARY is rebuilding their hemp industry, and is one of the biggest exporters of hemp cordage, rugs and fabric to the U.S. They also export hemp seed, paper and fiberboard. The Hungarian word for hemp is “kender.”

INDIA has stands of naturalized Cannabis and uses it for cordage, textiles and seed.

ITALY has invested in the resurgence of hemp, especially for textile production. 1,000 acres were planted for fiber in 2002. Giorgio Armani grows its own hemp for specialized textiles.

JAPAN has a rich religious tradition involving hemp, and custom requires that the Emperor and Shinto priests wear hemp garments in certain ceremonies, so there are small plots maintained for these purposes. Traditional spice mixes also include hemp seed. Japan supports a thriving retail market for a variety of hemp products. The Japanese word for hemp is “asa.”

NETHERLANDS is conducting a four-year study to evaluate and test hemp for paper, and is developing specialized processing equipment. Seed breeders are developing new strains of low-THC varieties. The Dutch word for hemp is “hennep.”

NEW ZEALAND started hemp trials in 2001. Various cultivars are being planted in the north and south islands.

POLAND currently grows hemp for fabric and cordage and manufactures hemp particle board. They have demonstrated the benefits of using hemp to cleanse soils contaminated by heavy metals. The Polish word for hemp is “konopij.”

ROMANIA is the largest commercial producer of hemp in Europe. 1993 acreage was 40,000 acres. Some of it is exported to Hungary for processing. They also export hemp to Western Europe and the U.S. The Romanian word for hemp is “cinepa.”

RUSSIA maintains the largest hemp germplasm collection in the world at the N.I. Vavilov Scientific Research Institute of Plant Industry (VIR) in St. Petersburg. They are in need of funding to maintain and support the collection. The Russian word for hemp is “konoplya.”

SLOVENIA grows hemp and manufactures currency paper.

SPAIN has never prohibited hemp, produces rope and textiles, and exports hemp pulp for paper. The Spanish word for hemp is “cañamo.”

SWITZERLAND is a producer of hemp and hosts one of the largest hemp trade events, Cannatrade.

TURKEY has grown hemp for 2,800 years for rope, caulking, birdseed, paper and fuel. The Turkish word for hemp is “kendir.”

UKRAINE, EGYPT, KOREA, PORTUGAL and THAILAND also produce hemp.

UNITED STATES granted the first hemp permit in over 40 years to Hawaii for an experimental quarter-acre plot in 1999. The license was renewed, but the project has since been closed due to DEA stalling tactics and related funding problems. Importers and manufacturers have thrived using imported raw materials. 22 states have introduced legislation, including VT, HI, ND, MT, MN, IL, VA, NM, CA, AR, KY, MD, WV and ME, addressing support, research or cultivation with bills or resolutions. The National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) has endorsed industrial hemp for years.

The weaving of hemp fabrics is one of the world’s oldest industries, and soon will be the only sustainable path left for our future. Our ancestors used hemp 10,000 years ago because of its extremely high fibre content and multiple uses. By planting hemp instead of cotton today, we can produce 250% more fiber on the same amount of land. Since hemp is resistant to insects and diseases, it requires no pesticides. By way of contrast, non-organic cotton growers are responsible for over 50% of world pesticide use. Since non-organic cotton is often rotated with certain food crops, toxic pesticides build up and find their way into our meals. Run-off from non-organic cotton fields further pollutes streams, lakes, and all the creatures that depend on them. - See more at: http://nomadshempwear.com/about-hemp/#sthash.H05StdGB.dpuf

Conventional fabric manufacturing is one of the most toxic processes in the world. Traditional crops like cotton dump millions of tons of pesticides into the environment worldwide each year, while sucking up our precious water supply. Just why are pesticides, dyes, and chemicals so terrible? Well, anything designed to kill indiscriminately can’t be good (see Aliens 1-4), but did you know that many of these chemicals are also epigenetic? That means that the changes they make to us at a genetic level in our generation become heritable to our children, grand-children, great-grand-children…Does this suddenly make “wrapping your goodies in environmentally friendly goodness” seem like a really good plan? - See more at: http://nomadshempwear.com/about-hemp/#sthash.H05StdGB.dpuf

Conventional fabric manufacturing is one of the most toxic processes in the world. Traditional crops like cotton dump millions of tons of pesticides into the environment worldwide each year, while sucking up our precious water supply. Just why are pesticides, dyes, and chemicals so terrible? Well, anything designed to kill indiscriminately can’t be good (see Aliens 1-4), but did you know that many of these chemicals are also epigenetic? That means that the changes they make to us at a genetic level in our generation become heritable to our children, grand-children, great-grand-children…Does this suddenly make “wrapping your goodies in environmentally friendly goodness” seem like a really good plan? - See more at: http://nomadshempwear.com/about-hemp/#sthash.H05StdGB.dpuf

Conventional fabric manufacturing is one of the most toxic processes in the world. Traditional crops like cotton dump millions of tons of pesticides into the environment worldwide each year, while sucking up our precious water supply. Just why are pesticides, dyes, and chemicals so terrible? Well, anything designed to kill indiscriminately can’t be good (see Aliens 1-4), but did you know that many of these chemicals are also epigenetic? That means that the changes they make to us at a genetic level in our generation become heritable to our children, grand-children, great-grand-children…Does this suddenly make “wrapping your goodies in environmentally friendly goodness” seem like a really good plan? - See more at: http://nomadshempwear.com/about-hemp/#sthash.H05StdGB.dpuf

Seattle Model Search

Seattle Model Search is on! 

Under The Root is on the hunt for neck, arm, leg models.. message me or share with someone you think may throw wishes, and come Spring romp with us!  xo

annebelle whitford moore and thomas edison

fairytale friday with fairy tale about the wicker chair

Fairy Tale About The Wicker Chair
written by Hermann Hesse

     A young man sat in his solitary attic.  His greatest desire was to become a painter, but first he had to overcome quite a few obstacles.  To begin with, he lived peacefully in his attic, grew somewhat older, and became accustomed to sitting for hours in front of a small mirror and experimenting with painting self-portraits.  He had already filled an entire notebook with such sketches, and he was very satisfied with some of them.
     "Considering htat I never went to art school," he said to himself, "this sketch has turned out rather well.  And that is an interesting wrinkle there next to the nose.  You can see that I'm something of a thinker or something similar.  I need only to lower the corner of the mouth a little.  Then I'd have my own special expression, quite melancholy."
     But when he reexamined the sketches sometime later, most of them no longer pleased him.  That was irritating, but he concluded from this that he had made progress and was now placing greater demands himself.
     The young man did not live in the most desirable attic, nor did he have a very agreeable relationship with the things lying and standing around this attic.  However, it was not a bad relationship.  He hardly noticed the objects and was not very familiar with them.
     Whenever he failed to paint a good self-portrait, he read for a while from books and learned what had happened to other people who, like him, had begun as modest and completely unknown painters and then had become very famous.  He liked to read such books and read his own future in them.
     So one day he was again somewhat sullen and depressed and sat at home reading about a very famous Dutch painter.  He read that this painter had been possessed by a true passion.  Indeed, he was frenetic and completely governed by a drive to become a good painter.  The young man found that he had many traits in common with this Dutch painter.  As he read further, he also discovered many that did not exactly fit him.  Among other things he read that whenever the Dutchman had not been able to paint outside due to bad weather, he had painted everything inside, even the tiniest object that met his eyes, unflinchingly and passionately.  One time he had painted a pair of old wooden shoes, and another time an old crooked chair--a coarse, rough kitchen and peasant chair made out of ordinary wood, with a seat woven out of straw, quite tattered.  The painter had painted this chair, which nobody certainly would have considered worth a glance, with so much love and dedication and with so much passion and devotion that it became one of his most beautiful pictures.  The painter's biographer found many wonderful and appropriately touching words to say about this painted straw chair.

     Here the reader stopped and contemplated.  That was something new that he had to try.  He decided immediately--for he was a young man who made very rash decisions--to imitate the example of this great master and to try this way to greatness.
     He looked around in his attic and realized that he had actually not paid much attention to the things among which he lived.  He did not find a crooked chair with a set woven out of straw anywhere; nor were there any wooden shoes.  Therefore he was momentarily dejected and despondent, and he almost felt discouraged, as he had often felt whenever he read about the lives of great men.  At those times he realized that all the little indicators and remarkable coincidences that had played roles in the lives of the others had not become apparent in his life, and he would wait in vain for them to appear.  However, he soon pulled himself together and realized that it was now his task to be persistent and pursue his difficult path to fame.  He examined all the objects in his little room and discovered a wicker chair that could serve him very well as a model.
     He pulled the chair closer with his foot, sharpened his art pencil, took his sketch pad on his knee, and began to draw.  After a couple of light first strokes, he seemed tohave captured the form sufficiently, and now he inked in the thick outlines with a few firm and powerful strokes.  A deep triangular shadow in a corner attracted him, and he painted it full of strength, and so he continued until something began to disturb him.
     He worked a little while longer.  Then he held the sketch pad away from himself and examined his sketch carefully.  His very first glance told him that he had completely failed to capture the wicker chair.

John Foster Dyess

     Angrily he drew a new line into the sketch and fixed his eyes grimly on the chair.  The sketch was still not right.  It made him mad.
     "You demonic wicker chair!" he screamed violently.  "I've never seen a beast as moody as you are!"
     The chair cracked a little and said with equanimity, "Yes, take a look at me!  I am as I am, and I won't change myself anymore."
     The painter kicked it with his toe.  The chair swerved backward to avoid the kick and now looked completely different.
     "You dumb chair!" the young man exclaimed.  "Everything is crooked and wrong about you."
     The wicker chair smiled a little and said softly, "That's what's called perspective, young man."
     The painter jumped up.  "Perspective!" he yelled furiously.  "Now this clown of a chair comes and wants to play schoolteacher.  Perspective is my affair, not yours.  Remember that!"
     The chair said nothing more.  The painter stomped loudly back and forth a few times until someone began pounding beneath the floor with a cane.  An elderly man, a scholar, lived under him, and he could not bear the noise.
     The young man sat down and looked at his last self-portrait.  But it did not please him.  He found that he looked more handsome and interesting in reality, and that was the truth.
     Now he wanted to read his book again, but there was more in the book about the Dutch straw chair, which irritated him.  He now felt that the writer had really made much too much of it, and after all...
     The young man looked for his artist's hat and decided to go out.  He remembered that he had long ago been struck by the fact that painting was not very fulfilling.  One had nothing but bother and disappointments, and in the end even the best painter in the world could portray only the simple surface of objects.  For a man who loved the profound aspects of life, it was no profession for him in the long run.  And once more he seriously thought, as he had done many times, about following an even earlier inclination and becoming a writer instead of a painter.  The wicker chair remained behind in the attic.  It was sorry that its young master had gone.  It had hoped that a decent relationship could finally develop between the two of them.  It would have liked at times to speak a word, and it knew that it certainly had many valuable things to teach a young man.  But unfortunately nothing ever came of this.

James Gulliver Hancock

    

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weekly wednesday eco lingerie design discount

Week 2 of the Armoire Wonderment Inventory Clearout
     The decision has been made to offer a leap and bound discount every week on Wednesdays.  I personally agree with Wednesdays most of the time.  They do not stand in the way and open a breathe of aire like the tallest perch you can see from your window.  Yes, Wednesdays will do.  As each week may be juxtaposed with new ideas, so flies the weekly design love from our Under The Root shop.

    This is week two of a bit more brilliance by the continuation of 50 percent off an entire section of the ready to ship designs.  The prices all reflect the decrease.  This discount will be ongoing for one week, until next Wednesday begins the succeeding design choice on the chopping block.  There are nearly 40 pieces ready to go and sparkly and new.  The sizes range from small to large with the measurements listed with each design.  There are lingerie drawer satchets, arm spats, and blindfolds too.

     The authentic reason for these peculiar discounts is to deplete the materials in our stock, for the next evolution can certainly use some padding of the kitty.  We have aspirations for using organic hemp in our designs.. possibly added organic materials as well.  That's right, it is time to move into a more sustainable, extra whopping, super monster fireflies on these pieces.  Yes, there will continue limited, one of a kind materials in the work for some designs, but I am ravenous to push the envelope of what is possible with hemp... and it is essential to inquire for your assistance in the purchase of materials process.  You receive our designs at out of the ordinary prices as we build the revenue for extraordinary materials of the future.  

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