I periodically visit a multi-disciplinary holistic health practitioner (the amazing Katinka Locascio; New Yorkers, she will change your life, write in for contact info) who also grows and blends herbs. During our first session, she told me that my body was “asking for nettles,” and that taking them would help my oft-pain-addled lower back. Well, they did, and now it turns out the stinging herb (fast becoming a foodie favorite, too) can also be used to make clothes: it grows easily without pesticides, and its hollow fibers insulate beautifully.

Nettle fibers with bark...

...and cleaned up.

Wild nettles have actually been used for textiles since the dawn of recorded history, though they fell out of favor when industrial cotton production took off. (Although it’s been popular for tablecloths, and the German army in WWI used it for their uniforms during a cotton shortage.) Now that alternative textiles are taking off, it’s finding a new audience, and Bodkin’s Fall 2010 collection is going to include some Himalayan wild nettle-blend fabric! According to one supplier, 80,000 Nepalese are employed in harvesting and spinning nettle textiles. The stuff is richly textured and cool in an urban-Bedouin sort of way.

Nettle-blend fabric swatches

Time to have some of Katinka’s organic Vermont-grown nettle-gotu kola-goldenseal-echinacea “Katinkture” tea, also known as the Bodkin flu shot.

Here at Bodkin, we embrace our dorkiness. We tend to send each other pictures of funny animals all day, and today our studio-mate Jacqueline said, “why don’t you add that to your blog?” And why not? Learning about animals is, after all, a way to learn about your world, and why it’s worth protecting.

So here, without further adieu, is the narwhal. An Arctic and North Atlantic-dwelling member of the whale family, its distinctive twisted tusk is actually a tooth found on males only (it’s not for hunting or ice-cutting; it’s thought to be a secondary sex characteristic, like peacock feathers. So the bigger the tusk…you get the picture.) In centuries past, northern traders would peddle the tusks as unicorn horns to gullible merchants and royalty.

So, then…have a great weekend!

Domus is an Italian architecture and design magazine. My dad collected it in the 70s and I’ve saved a few copies. That woman is so cool that I don’t even know what else to say.