You know how there's days for just about any food/activity/disease/whatever? So apparently today was World Naked Gardening day. Seriously. (You learn about so many random things on Ravelry...)
Somehow, I don't think it's going to catch on, though. I mean, I'll give the originator props for trying. But some activities don't really go with naked, you know? And gardening is one of them (unless, of course, your idea of gardening is the Edwardian lady with a basket and a scissor cutting flowers to arrange indoors).
I was gardening today. There were shrubs to prune, and a rosebush. Would anyone care to try wrangling a rosebush 6+ feet high with no clothes on? On a nice hot sunny day? I didn't think so. At least the bugs aren't out yet, and there aren't any anthills nearby, but I think you would have been in pain by the end of the day, one way or another...
Pi Day I will celebrate happily. But I think I'll pass on the naked gardening, kthxbai.
Saturday, 2 May 2015
Monday, 20 April 2015
Must Be Monday
Otherwise known as apparently not a good day for getting things done...
Work started last week, and the weather was gorgeous. Today, not so much. It went from cold and overcast on arrival to cold, windy and raining shortly after we got to the first site of the day. We stuck it out for a couple hours, but finally admitted defeat with the place half-finished, and drove back to the shop (with the heater on full blast). Everything I was wearing was wet enough to need changing when I got home. Oh well, I'm dry now, and at least gardeners have the option to stop for the day, unlike mail carriers or the people who change advertising signs, both of whom I saw working outside today.
All right, so free day, what to do? I noticed the blue yarn in the sweater for my cousin's baby was bleeding colour onto my fingers when I knit, so I wound the yarn into skeins and washed it. Apparently the bar of laundry soap I used wasn't a good idea, because the yarn is all patchy now and will probably need re-dyeing before use...and since I already have that blue in the trim of the cuffs and sweater body, I will probably have to rip ALL of it out and restart with a different colour combination.
That was a depressing thought, so while I was working my courage up, I decided to sew some of the patches for the quilt square in progress. Got a piece done, corners lined up, and came to the conclusion that how I was lining this section up was wrong and I will have to rip out and redo. Thankfully it was only the first of the four sections with that layout.
I'm starting to sense a pattern here - and it's making me very hesitant to try and get anything substantial done. Maybe the best thing to do with my free day is going to be make a cup of tea, put on a movie, and (sigh) rip out the errant quilting seams, frog the baby sweater, and turn my attention to finding a new colour combination for the latter. Yeah. And with any luck, neither the stove nor the VCR will blow up when I try to use them.
Work started last week, and the weather was gorgeous. Today, not so much. It went from cold and overcast on arrival to cold, windy and raining shortly after we got to the first site of the day. We stuck it out for a couple hours, but finally admitted defeat with the place half-finished, and drove back to the shop (with the heater on full blast). Everything I was wearing was wet enough to need changing when I got home. Oh well, I'm dry now, and at least gardeners have the option to stop for the day, unlike mail carriers or the people who change advertising signs, both of whom I saw working outside today.
All right, so free day, what to do? I noticed the blue yarn in the sweater for my cousin's baby was bleeding colour onto my fingers when I knit, so I wound the yarn into skeins and washed it. Apparently the bar of laundry soap I used wasn't a good idea, because the yarn is all patchy now and will probably need re-dyeing before use...and since I already have that blue in the trim of the cuffs and sweater body, I will probably have to rip ALL of it out and restart with a different colour combination.
That was a depressing thought, so while I was working my courage up, I decided to sew some of the patches for the quilt square in progress. Got a piece done, corners lined up, and came to the conclusion that how I was lining this section up was wrong and I will have to rip out and redo. Thankfully it was only the first of the four sections with that layout.
I'm starting to sense a pattern here - and it's making me very hesitant to try and get anything substantial done. Maybe the best thing to do with my free day is going to be make a cup of tea, put on a movie, and (sigh) rip out the errant quilting seams, frog the baby sweater, and turn my attention to finding a new colour combination for the latter. Yeah. And with any luck, neither the stove nor the VCR will blow up when I try to use them.
Monday, 13 April 2015
Decision Making
To any quilters out there - how do you not go crazy deciding between options? There are so many options!
Where did that thought come from? Well, I'm working on a quilt block. One quilt block. A local quilting group is doing this for a fundraiser, and Mom and I decided to get in on it. Each person doing a block gets a packet with 2 pieces of fabric (the same 2 for everyone), and instructions. Basically, the idea is to add 2-4 more fabrics, and make a 12" quilt block. That's really all the guidelines you have.
First things first, I needed to find two more fabrics. Mom and I went through a couple baskets of scraps. When your starting point is a blue solid and a blue print, there are a lot of colours that go with them. After trying several different combinations, I ended up with a buttery yellow and a white with a flower print that picked up the blue and the yellow.
Next, pattern. I'm pretty much a novice, so I wanted something fairly simple - i.e., nothing where I had to accurately match eight points together or something. But not too boring. And of course it had to be doable in 4 colours. Um, so we have a couple books with names like "400 Quilt Blocks". And a few with a more specialized focus. I skipped the magazines; that would have been too much input. Finally settled on a block called Canadian Gardens, which seemed appropriate.
Four fabrics, quilt block, all right...Wait, I still have to decide which colours are going where. So out come the coloured pencils and the paper. I'm sure this is a lot easier if you have a vision of the finished quilt in mind - which colours you want to emphasize, for instance. If all you see is a pattern of triangles and squares, there are a lot of possibilities. (If I was doing a whole quilt, in fact, I would be tempted to try out all the various permutations and combinations of colour arrangement for the same block layout.) But since I had only one block, and didn't want to spend two days choosing the colour placement, I sketched just four and picked one of those (the top left one, if you're wondering).
Got the pattern pieces drawn and cut out (the 8-squares-per-inch graph paper I had for school made that SO easy), traced onto cardboard and cut out for templates, and traced and cut appropriate pieces of fabric. Which was a job, not because of the cutting, but because the cat decided she needed attention, and accurately tracing and cutting pieces of fabric is much harder when there's four feet and a tail in the way and a cute face purring and trying to rub your face...Now I get to do the sewing, and hope everything lines up.
But not right now. Because it's beautifully sunny and nice out (supposed to be 23C today!), the birds are chirping, the crocuses are blooming, and I need to finish cleaning up the garden before work starts later this week.
Where did that thought come from? Well, I'm working on a quilt block. One quilt block. A local quilting group is doing this for a fundraiser, and Mom and I decided to get in on it. Each person doing a block gets a packet with 2 pieces of fabric (the same 2 for everyone), and instructions. Basically, the idea is to add 2-4 more fabrics, and make a 12" quilt block. That's really all the guidelines you have.
First things first, I needed to find two more fabrics. Mom and I went through a couple baskets of scraps. When your starting point is a blue solid and a blue print, there are a lot of colours that go with them. After trying several different combinations, I ended up with a buttery yellow and a white with a flower print that picked up the blue and the yellow.
Next, pattern. I'm pretty much a novice, so I wanted something fairly simple - i.e., nothing where I had to accurately match eight points together or something. But not too boring. And of course it had to be doable in 4 colours. Um, so we have a couple books with names like "400 Quilt Blocks". And a few with a more specialized focus. I skipped the magazines; that would have been too much input. Finally settled on a block called Canadian Gardens, which seemed appropriate.
Four fabrics, quilt block, all right...Wait, I still have to decide which colours are going where. So out come the coloured pencils and the paper. I'm sure this is a lot easier if you have a vision of the finished quilt in mind - which colours you want to emphasize, for instance. If all you see is a pattern of triangles and squares, there are a lot of possibilities. (If I was doing a whole quilt, in fact, I would be tempted to try out all the various permutations and combinations of colour arrangement for the same block layout.) But since I had only one block, and didn't want to spend two days choosing the colour placement, I sketched just four and picked one of those (the top left one, if you're wondering).
Got the pattern pieces drawn and cut out (the 8-squares-per-inch graph paper I had for school made that SO easy), traced onto cardboard and cut out for templates, and traced and cut appropriate pieces of fabric. Which was a job, not because of the cutting, but because the cat decided she needed attention, and accurately tracing and cutting pieces of fabric is much harder when there's four feet and a tail in the way and a cute face purring and trying to rub your face...Now I get to do the sewing, and hope everything lines up.
But not right now. Because it's beautifully sunny and nice out (supposed to be 23C today!), the birds are chirping, the crocuses are blooming, and I need to finish cleaning up the garden before work starts later this week.
Thursday, 9 April 2015
Spring: Finishing And Starting
Despite the fact that we had a winter wonderland outside (again!) Sunday morning, spring is just about here. Things are coming up in the garden, and work starts next week.
A lot of my fibre projects seem to be either finishing or starting right now also. On the finished pile, I have all 5 skeins of that pewter-grey llama I was spinning, plus my first official weaving project, hemmed, washed, ends trimmed, and ready to go to the Guild on Monday.
Also going to the Guild will be my basket from the class I was taking. I must say it's not exactly a perfect basket, but hey, it's my first try. The reed we used was really light-coloured, and the basket sticks out like a sore thumb, since every other basket I own is patina'd and rather darker. But by a nice coincidence, I've been doing my first dye-bath of the season - walnuts - and thought that the exhaust bath might be useful to stain the basket darker, even if it takes a few coats. So I'm trying that right now.
The walnut-dyed yarn is hanging up to dry. The darker skeins are going for a sweater for a cousin's new baby, commissioned by my aunt. It's wool from their sheep that they had mill-spun at MacAusland's, and the weight and texture are similar enough to Briggs and Little that I will add some colours out of my stash of B&L to get enough yarn for the sweater.
The lighter skeins had a cold soak for 30 min or an hour in the exhaust bath - I just want enough there for a tint, which gives lovely reds with a cochineal pink/red on top.
While waiting for the yarn to dry for the little sweater, I'm finishing off a pair of socks for me. Fleece Artist BFL Sock I bought at Rhinebeck last year. The only picture I have so far, though, is this one of Pumpkin having a lovely nap on my laptop case and knitting bag, with the sock sticking out of the sandwich.
And the last current finished thing is the first Cowichan-style sweater Joan commissioned (we're still waiting on the yarn for the kid's version). It's really cozy, even if knitting with Lopi does make me feel like I've got a hairball in my throat. And I found out that taking a picture of your own back is rather tricky, but I got some sort of picture in the end! (All right, so the easiest was taking pictures while not wearing the sweater.)
Saturday, 14 March 2015
I See An(other) Addiction Looming
This is for all of you weavers out there who keep saying things like, "Come on over to the dark side! We have yarn!" You know who you are. I did not need another hobby. I can knit, spin, tat, dye, embroider, sew, and crochet, and that's just the fibre crafts on my list. My mother weaves; I didn't need to.
But I thought it might be nice to try making a Linus blanket to contribute to the Guild's initiative. And here's my mother, aiding and abetting, volunteering her stash and loom and knowledge to help me....
I had a dentist appointment Thursday morning, came home minus one tooth, and started my period. Notwithstanding, I learned to calculate yardage, and started measuring warp. We only had enough to warp up for one blanket, unfortunately, but it's the process that counts...
Finished measuring and chaining up the warp Friday morning. Between us, Mom and I got the warp through the reed, rolled onto the back beam, and threaded into the heddles over the afternoon and evening.
The one thing that you never hear of or think of, if you're not a weaver, is how much of your set-up time you spend tying and untying various parts to each other. I know when Mom got her loom, the lady who sold it to her sent a whole bag full of random pieces of string with the rest of the accessories, saying we would need it. At the time it seemed like a really random thing to send. But really, you tie up your warp, you tie the beater in position, you tie the shafts in position, you tie the lease sticks on place, you tie the extra heddles back - it all adds up. The box of string bits is an essential tool.
Anyway, this morning saw the sleying done, and the warp tied to the front beam, and I did a little math and worked out a random stripe pattern. Two and a half days into the project, and I finally got to sit at the loom and actually weave after lunch today. It's a twill weave, in cotton yarns (DK-ish weight, I think). I got a quick run-down on how to weave, change colours, and advance the warp, and off I went.
It is going surprisingly fast and well, in my opinion, for a first project. And I can see how this could get really addictive, really quickly. I'm over 2 feet in already. Wove for a while, refilled bobbins as needed, and wove some more. Wandered downstairs for a break - tea, bathroom, and a Motrin to take the edge off my headache (always happens at this time of the month) - and went back to weaving. Made a few mistakes in treadling, corrected myself, and wove some more. Answered the call to supper, and went back to work. Dad went off to the Irish concert in town, Mom settled down with her knitting, and I wove. Finally stopped a little while ago, and discovered my back muscles were stiff, so I think that ought to be it for the night. But I think I like this weaving thing.
I did tell Mom she might have competition for the loom now. She says when they find a buyer for the piano, maybe the other loom, currently in storage, can go in that space...
We all see where this is going, right?
But I thought it might be nice to try making a Linus blanket to contribute to the Guild's initiative. And here's my mother, aiding and abetting, volunteering her stash and loom and knowledge to help me....
I had a dentist appointment Thursday morning, came home minus one tooth, and started my period. Notwithstanding, I learned to calculate yardage, and started measuring warp. We only had enough to warp up for one blanket, unfortunately, but it's the process that counts...
Finished measuring and chaining up the warp Friday morning. Between us, Mom and I got the warp through the reed, rolled onto the back beam, and threaded into the heddles over the afternoon and evening.
The one thing that you never hear of or think of, if you're not a weaver, is how much of your set-up time you spend tying and untying various parts to each other. I know when Mom got her loom, the lady who sold it to her sent a whole bag full of random pieces of string with the rest of the accessories, saying we would need it. At the time it seemed like a really random thing to send. But really, you tie up your warp, you tie the beater in position, you tie the shafts in position, you tie the lease sticks on place, you tie the extra heddles back - it all adds up. The box of string bits is an essential tool.
Anyway, this morning saw the sleying done, and the warp tied to the front beam, and I did a little math and worked out a random stripe pattern. Two and a half days into the project, and I finally got to sit at the loom and actually weave after lunch today. It's a twill weave, in cotton yarns (DK-ish weight, I think). I got a quick run-down on how to weave, change colours, and advance the warp, and off I went.
It is going surprisingly fast and well, in my opinion, for a first project. And I can see how this could get really addictive, really quickly. I'm over 2 feet in already. Wove for a while, refilled bobbins as needed, and wove some more. Wandered downstairs for a break - tea, bathroom, and a Motrin to take the edge off my headache (always happens at this time of the month) - and went back to weaving. Made a few mistakes in treadling, corrected myself, and wove some more. Answered the call to supper, and went back to work. Dad went off to the Irish concert in town, Mom settled down with her knitting, and I wove. Finally stopped a little while ago, and discovered my back muscles were stiff, so I think that ought to be it for the night. But I think I like this weaving thing.
I did tell Mom she might have competition for the loom now. She says when they find a buyer for the piano, maybe the other loom, currently in storage, can go in that space...
We all see where this is going, right?
Tuesday, 10 March 2015
New Projects From Old Stuff
I've been thinking I wanted to do some spinning on my old wheel again. I started spinning some wool on it a while back, but the wool was full of nups (my fault entirely, I thought it was something else when I was carding, and the teeth on the carder were way too coarse). I thought I could salvage it, but the spinning was so tedious that I kept abandoning it. So I just sat down yesterday, took off what was on the wheel and plied it - a small skein of white could be handy.
Then I took out the carder, and a heap of pewter-grey llama fibre. I think the fibre was from the first time I went to Rhinebeck, several years ago. I had washed it, carded and spun and knitted a couple skeins, and wrapped up the rest for later...it's lovely fibre and time it got used. I did get around to picking it all before Christmas. It only really needed one pass on the carder to make it reasonable to spin, happily, since it produced 16 nice little fluffy batts, now rolled up and ready to go. That was most of the afternoon.
And you know what? It's so much nicer to spin than that blasted wool that I have more of it spun already than I had of the wool. I feel so much happier!
The other thing I'm tackling that's been taking up space is some cotton yarn. I had leftovers from a couple baby kimonos made 3-4 years ago, plus some destashed to me, and I thought it might turn into a baby blanket. Knit a bunch of squares and started putting them together, decided I wasn't overly enthused with it, and put it away. But even thought the squares were small, the length of the pieces of yarn in them is long enough, I figure, for a few rows of weaving. So it's all getting frogged and rolled up, and maybe it will be a baby blanket after all - but a woven one instead. And that will clear out a project bag, and keep the yarn from gathering (more) dust. So nice to feel there's progress being made!
Then I took out the carder, and a heap of pewter-grey llama fibre. I think the fibre was from the first time I went to Rhinebeck, several years ago. I had washed it, carded and spun and knitted a couple skeins, and wrapped up the rest for later...it's lovely fibre and time it got used. I did get around to picking it all before Christmas. It only really needed one pass on the carder to make it reasonable to spin, happily, since it produced 16 nice little fluffy batts, now rolled up and ready to go. That was most of the afternoon.
And you know what? It's so much nicer to spin than that blasted wool that I have more of it spun already than I had of the wool. I feel so much happier!
The other thing I'm tackling that's been taking up space is some cotton yarn. I had leftovers from a couple baby kimonos made 3-4 years ago, plus some destashed to me, and I thought it might turn into a baby blanket. Knit a bunch of squares and started putting them together, decided I wasn't overly enthused with it, and put it away. But even thought the squares were small, the length of the pieces of yarn in them is long enough, I figure, for a few rows of weaving. So it's all getting frogged and rolled up, and maybe it will be a baby blanket after all - but a woven one instead. And that will clear out a project bag, and keep the yarn from gathering (more) dust. So nice to feel there's progress being made!
Monday, 9 March 2015
Spring Forward
March so far has been coming in like the proverbial lamb. And like actual lambs, I suspect there will be a lot of busy-ness and bouncing around going on. I just got a call from work to schedule a meeting for next week, so I know the season is showing signs of starting, despite the snow still on the ground.
In the meantime, let's see. There's a pile of stuff to go to Jo again, including the scrappy fingerless I was working on (they came out nicely, but the ends! They practically had a fringe inside!), a pair of mittens, two skeins of yarn, and another pair of mittens on the needles which may become something else, since the yarn seems to be going faster than anticipated - I'll have to weigh the remainder after and see.
Also there's a pair of socks for Joan, for her daughter.
Hopefully we will be able to work out a meet-up this week when I go down to the parents'. I have to deliver Jo's stuff also, visit the dentist, and then (Oh, excitement!) Mom and I will warp up her loom and I will have my first go at weaving on it. A baby blanket, towards the Linus Blanket project, which the guild is also working on things for right now. Oh, and I have to choose some fabric and a pattern for a quilt square for a community quilt that Mom and I signed up for last summer.
Then back to the guild and more weaving of a different kind - I'm taking my first class there in a couple weeks, in basketry - we're making a wool-drying basket. Very exciting, and it will be a busy day, since after that, I will just about have time for supper, and then a friend and I are going out contra dancing!
It's been a few years since the last time I did contra, but the subject came up recently in a conversation with the same friend, I went looking, and not only is the Ottawa Contra group still going strong, but they've moved nearer to me! And hey, with spring and work coming, it's about time I did a little exercising after sitting on my butt all winter, right? They had a dance this weekend that I went to, and it all started coming back pretty fast, and was super fun. Only, I am being very impressed with the fairy tale of the dancing princesses, because my feet were tired after only a few hours, whereas they danced all night! Well, I will have to experiment with different shoes, try something with a little more cushioning. But I definitely hope to make this a permanent part of my schedule. I've never really been much for the club-fashion, unstructured dancing. Contra, however, is as much a mental as a physical work-out, since you have to remember a different sequence of moves for each dance, and they change every dance - and you have your partner, and your current neighbour couple(s) interacting with you in each sequence. We get a walk-through of one repeat before the music starts, then the caller helps keep you on track for part of the dance. From the sidelines it looks like organized chaos, but it feels wonderful when it all comes together.
In the meantime, let's see. There's a pile of stuff to go to Jo again, including the scrappy fingerless I was working on (they came out nicely, but the ends! They practically had a fringe inside!), a pair of mittens, two skeins of yarn, and another pair of mittens on the needles which may become something else, since the yarn seems to be going faster than anticipated - I'll have to weigh the remainder after and see.
Also there's a pair of socks for Joan, for her daughter.
Hopefully we will be able to work out a meet-up this week when I go down to the parents'. I have to deliver Jo's stuff also, visit the dentist, and then (Oh, excitement!) Mom and I will warp up her loom and I will have my first go at weaving on it. A baby blanket, towards the Linus Blanket project, which the guild is also working on things for right now. Oh, and I have to choose some fabric and a pattern for a quilt square for a community quilt that Mom and I signed up for last summer.
Then back to the guild and more weaving of a different kind - I'm taking my first class there in a couple weeks, in basketry - we're making a wool-drying basket. Very exciting, and it will be a busy day, since after that, I will just about have time for supper, and then a friend and I are going out contra dancing!
It's been a few years since the last time I did contra, but the subject came up recently in a conversation with the same friend, I went looking, and not only is the Ottawa Contra group still going strong, but they've moved nearer to me! And hey, with spring and work coming, it's about time I did a little exercising after sitting on my butt all winter, right? They had a dance this weekend that I went to, and it all started coming back pretty fast, and was super fun. Only, I am being very impressed with the fairy tale of the dancing princesses, because my feet were tired after only a few hours, whereas they danced all night! Well, I will have to experiment with different shoes, try something with a little more cushioning. But I definitely hope to make this a permanent part of my schedule. I've never really been much for the club-fashion, unstructured dancing. Contra, however, is as much a mental as a physical work-out, since you have to remember a different sequence of moves for each dance, and they change every dance - and you have your partner, and your current neighbour couple(s) interacting with you in each sequence. We get a walk-through of one repeat before the music starts, then the caller helps keep you on track for part of the dance. From the sidelines it looks like organized chaos, but it feels wonderful when it all comes together.
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