It was the last of the summer hiking trips for us.
Our cottage was decorated in “Wal-Mart for cabin.”
I actually miss the tacky painted saw blades, crude whittlings, and sh*t made out of driftwood and antlers of mountain/country crafts of yesteryear (or just a few years ago really).
Now it is plastic sh*t from China (often copied from domestic crafters).
But I managed to finally finish basting all of those damn letters.
The pile looks smaller than it really is.
I will never be so wordy on a quilt again.
Our CSA has been offering loads of lovely flowers.
It is a nice thing to have fresh flowers, but not in place of food – they really need to step it up in the veg department. And as vinyl village apartment dwellers, we can’t compost, so I don’t like to have too many fresh flowers.
The letters are ready to mingle with the as yet unmade quilt blocks.
I’m also getting wordy with a fair isle scarf.
I don’t love stranded knitting.
I don’t hate it though.
My Tour de Fleece spinning goals fell short.
But I finished plying my Pigeonroof Studios “lettuce” and have one braid left to finish spinning for a particular project.
I spun this one a little too thin and it came out lighter and softer in color, so it might have to become a different project.
Or the original project will be scrapped altogether.
I’ve come across many instances lately of people talking about having stashes so large they exceed life expectancy (aka SELE). I’m not quite there yet, but I think I’m awfully damn close (or you could live by the thought that you could always get hit by a bus at any given moment and then nearly ever knitter would leave a wooly estate). I don’t know what my comfortable stash level is or should be. It might be exactly where it is right now? If so inclined, I could start a few sweaters, tights, a drawerful of socks, and a whole sh*tload of accessories at any given notice. Yet it’s starting to make me a little uncomfortable… I feel almost as if I’m eating a giant delicious sandwich in front of a waif-child. I try to live as simply as a typical American (who still needs an auto, has outdoors hobbies, has tools for a major house renovation and small farm, has a teensy nostalgia problem, etc.) can, yet my stash requires a whole closet or very small room nearly all to itself.**
Some of my recent test-knitting has been a half-assed attempt to slim the stash, yet most patterns call for yarn currently on the market and easily available, so that also leads me to the occasional justification for a purchase when I don’t already have something quite right. My yarny souvenirs from travels are justified to some degree since they are only material thing I buy, but sometimes (but not so much these days) I’m a sucker for the $3 or less skein of 100% wool or bag sales of the stuff for a song (which is also how one can end up with loads of discontinued stuff). Wool can always be used in/for something – it felts/fulls, can be mixed and matched, dyed, used for embroidery, and in my mind never needs to be destashed.
I’m horribly tempted to catalog it all and post it on my ravelry stash page, but I’m embarrassed to show I have this much and I don’t want to turn off any current or potential ravelry friends. I have to admit when I see ginormous stashes full of primo yarn (though mine isn’t the fancy stuff for the most part) I think the person must be very rich, and if you are very rich you are probably evil (or you might be a designer with a sponsor or a LYS owner, so that’s ok). And then the work of photographing and logging the data would take a few days to do and it’s something that my tedious-loving other evil Gemini twin*** would love to do, but really is a waste of time. But on the other hand, I can choose to list things as available for sale or trade, so it could be a win-win – I may have something discontinued that someone needs to finish a project, or make a buck or two on the side. That, and I could check my inventory without having to unstack, unbag, or generally make a mess of things. But don’t I have other things that I should be working on…?
*There’s a good amount of spinning fiber and a couple of sewing machines in there too, so it’s a little deceiving, but then again none of my WIPs (or possible froggers) or sweaters waiting to be unraveled and harvested are in there…
**Really the bigger problem here is my fabric stash. So much bigger. So much more unwieldy. So much heavier. So much less organized and contained. So much it’s actually a problem worthy of an episode of reality TV hoarding show. So much that it really does need a room of its own. So much that I will never share the extent of it with anyone other than N. And my “fabric” is mostly carefully curated but old and wrecked clothing so it’s not like I can re-sell it or even give it away. Maybe to a rag picker… Ah, the olden days…
***Both twins are evil – an uptight bossy bitch and an unmoored drifter.
It’s happening again… things have only ramped up by a quarter or a half turn and suddenly I can’t account for great blocks of time. Many things are in the works, nothing is ready to be finished yet, and my wrists now ache constantly. Part of the time is sucked away into to the house-seeking black hole – houses that have been on the market for months, years are suddenly going under contract the minute we decide to move forward (and after we’ve spent the mental energy and time it takes to look at the place, review the flaws, and decide to pull the trigger). Part of it is my part-time work is cycling up to the busy time, and the other parts when I’m not knitting, sewing, spinning? I have no f*cking clue. It’s so hot, it’s so humid; my spinning is sticky and not so smooth, the power keeps going out for short periods in the afternoon, and I can’t keep to my schedule although I’m working nearly constantly.
Some of my work doesn’t involve having to pay attention to words so I can listen to music while I do it. When I worked at my old full-time job I’d have days on end of correcting numbers, making database tweaks, and looking at thousands of images so I could listen to episodes of Radiolab and This American Life, those teach yourself a new language programs (though they never stuck), and even audio books while I worked… it was, and I mean this with no irony and with a shrill teenage-boy tone, awesome.
So lately I’ve been making an attempt to weed and dispose of my old cassette tapes when I’ve got a chance to listen to things. Unlike my peers at the time, I don’t have too many – I preferred vinyl albums (but made tapes from them to preserve the albums!) and then later bought CDs (for a while I even saved those ridiculous longboxes in which they came). I don’t think I ever bought a non-blank tape except a few from small local bands; most were mixes and dubs, and a few commercial ones were acquired second-hand (ahem, or shall I say out of the trash). The fact that I still (only) have a stereo that plays cassettes might say something – actually it isn’t even a stereo per se, just one of those old bookshelf boomboxes (c.1988) with a full-deck CD player (c. 1992). But it works and sounds surprisingly good. I also have a tape deck in my car (and yes, my car is that old) but it works, but it doesn’t sound that great, the air-conditioning is broken, pieces keep falling off, but it gets me around.
I came across this tape recently and I have no idea of its origins. It wasn’t mine – it’s not my handwriting nor my preferred type of cassette. And it also couldn’t have been mine or a friend’s because we all listened to alternative music so it’s odd to have labeled something “alternative music” as if it is an exception to the collection. It wasn’t from an old suitor as there are no love songs or particular attention to themes. And the songs are merely jotted down on the insert and not decorated in fancy fonts or different colors. A brief aside about tape decorating: I arrived at speech class one day and didn’t know or remember it was my day to give a demonstration speech. I had a backpack full of tapes so I demonstrated how to decorate them – I actually got an A – I wish my one ultra successful winging it episode wasn’t wasted on high school. Anyway, the last time I acquired some tapes was from the detritus of someone who left my old apartment building maybe 8 or 10 years ago, so that is the possible provenance, yet most of those tapes were commercial and I keep them in my car now… so it remains a mystery. And an even bigger mystery because many of the songs on it are the ones I listened to, but the biggest mystery is that it has several tunes from the Rocky Horror Picture Show on it. I went a few times back in the day but I was in no way a regular… Was this given to me by someone who wanted me to go more often? I have no idea. But I’m blaming the time warp for everything for which I cannot remember.
I’ve been dismantling the tapes since the spools take up a lot less room than the whole boxed cassette. But I haven’t decided if I’m going to knit, weave, or do anything with the stuff. I hear it’s toxic due to the metals in magnetic tape and I’ve tried knitting with it already and hated it, but sometimes my brain likes to dispose of things slowly and in stages, so I’ll let it this time. Let me know if you are a fan of cassette tape for purposes of making sh*t, and maybe I’ll hook you up…
Oh, and I saw this article recently about the Knit the Bridge project in Pittsburgh – looks like a very cool thing and they still need money, so spare some if you’ve got it!
[And one last anecdote about tapes – around 15 years ago my flatmate left a box of old dub and mix tapes on the curb for the trash (or a passer-by). Later that week, I found some of the tapes at a Goodwill several miles out of town! Yay for the considerate trash-picker!]
I’ve been wanting to start dying yarn for quite some time, but we currently lack the space, ventilation, and decommissioned cookware. So I finally got around to dying with the stuff you can’t technically die from, but I certainly wouldn’t want to ingest, though millions do.
Yep, good old Kool-Aid – and I stand by my opinion that the stuff really is truly horrid, but I’ve been wanting to try gradient dying with this tutorial and it’s cheap and I thought readily available.* A [not so] brief aside about my relationship to the beverage – the only positive thing I can associate with it is its endearing camp name of “bug juice.” We always had bug juice at summer camp, though I don’t remember drinking it. Why? Because I barfed fruit punch flavored Hi-C** as a small child and have always carried the world’s worst aversion to the scent/smell/taste/whiff/hint of fruit punch (and bright red beverages to a lesser degree) into present day. In fact, that is partly the reason that my only fear in life is anything to do with vomit – both my own and others’, and the pile on the sidewalk, or the remnants in the bowl in a public restroom, or boats, or amusement rides, or pregnant women, or drunks, or babies, or children, or hospitals and doctors offices, or even the offhand comment by someone that her/his stomach feels a little funny, can send me into a tailspin of fear and trembling. The other reason is my second grade teacher had me clean another student’s puke off some wooden puzzles. I was above average for my redneck school, so I was off quietly reading to myself – an Encyclopedia Brown book in fact – when the teacher was conducting a reading lesson to the rest of the class. I was absorbed in my book, and didn’t notice what happened in the back and the subsequent sudden shuffle of students and a teary girl running out of the room. Then my teacher sweetly asked if I could help her, and being a generally obedient child, I did. Usually the teachers wanted to rub their excess hand lotion onto you (which seems mildly horrifying now), or help watering the plants, or straightening the [outdated] books. No, I was presented with a stack of puzzles covered in chunky upchuck and told to take them to the restroom (or maybe she called it washroom) and clean them off. I did. I think I cried. I think my mom raised holy hell at the school afterwards. But all I remember is the spilled stomach contents and it haunts me to this day.
But back to the dye job.
I started unraveling this thrift store sweater around the time we moved a year ago so I never finished it and have only recently found the box in which it was shoved. I hate to unravel something hand-knit even from a big company that most likely exploited the labor (though I have no proof of that so don’t sue me) but this was a late 1980s, early 1990s monstrosity with gaping drop shoulders that reached the naval. Maybe I killed something really important to fashion history – I killed it for its pelt.
The wool is good – very sheepy. It was knit with two strands held together to make for a bulky weight – unplied you’ve got twice the yardage at a still generous worsted weight. I wanted at least 150 yards, so I wound off 100 thinking I’d go the worsted option and then have 200.
I bought several packets of the evil drink mix, though I was disappointed that there was no green or blue – what about lime or blue raspberry (even though there isn’t such a thing as a blue raspberry on this good green earth)?
What follows are notes to myself that I’m sharing so use the tutorial or check out the What a Kool Way to Dye group on Ravelry for technical details.
First bath was two packets of lemonade, and one of watermelon. The lemonade was basically useless as yellow, but it helped turn the pink slightly more coral. My ball was pretty dense and I was sure the dye didn’t get very far so I wound off all of the first color.
Then I left it out of the pot and stuck the bigger remaining ball in. Second bath was a packet of tropical punch and one of orange. This is where I nearly lost it, and unfortunately only later found out that cherry is basically the same color and I never had to endure the fruit punch in the first place. I can’t even begin to describe the odor – artificial flavor and scent, wet wool, the sh*t that was stuck to the burner and burning, and the remnants of eau de thrift store. (The sweater had already been washed once but the yarn hadn’t had its second bath yet). I couldn’t take it for very long, so before the liquid had gone clear, I rinsed and wound this around the little pink ball so the last undyed layer was on the top.
Then added one grape packet to the pot and sprinkled on another directly to the ball. It looks like mold. It smelled like hell. But the grape covered up the worst of the fruit punch stink.
Then I soaked it a couple of times in cold water and vinegar. I hoped that the vinegar would help with the stink, and it did to a degree, but I’m still picking up a whiff I’d rather not.
I don’t know the color fastness of the final product, and it’s faded a bit after drying, but I don’t mind if it fades a bit more. I suspected that the plies would felt and they did, so I’ll probably end up using this as 100 yards of bulky weight yarn.
And yeah, wear gloves. I did except for the one time I really should have been (see top pic).
*The fancy grocery stores that we as food snobs frequent do not stock the stuff, so I had to visit a grocery on the other side of the tracks to find it. But it is one that I will return to as I found lower prices on a few things I buy, and smaller sized things – though that is a crime – the smallest portion is always the most expensive in terms of the price per serving and the poor gets screwed with that, but for some things, I only want a little bit since I end up having to throw larger portions out.
**Never give a child with a stomach ache anything that contains food coloring.
I pre-wrote this post to publish while I was away on yet another brief jaunt to sum up a few things I recently finished. Yet the thoughts in my last whining rambling post have continued to fester and raise many more conflicting/contrasting brain furies. I still don’t have anything even remotely answered or concluded, but in a way I do have a decision. I am going to move forward on creating pieces for a portfolio and if they are done by the autumn (crazy insane deadline now) I will apply to school. If I don’t get in or I do get in but without funding, then I at least have a body of work to throw around out there (outside of the craft scene). And I don’t want to blog about it much apart from keeping track of new techniques I might learn or continued thoughts on craft vs. art, artist vs. art museum, academic artist vs. independent artist, lone-wolf artist vs. social media butterfly.
So on to finished sh*t that has nothing to do with the above.
Several members of my family are encountering hernia surgery these days so I made a Happy Hernia mini-quilt.*
And I have become very paranoid conscious about the way I lift things and contort myself these days…
I finished my Pigeonroof Studios BFL “Mimsy” May/June SAL roving as a felted/fulled single. I spun it with a heavy hand and dunked and steamed and iced and thwacked and whacked and unspun it and made it my fibery bitch. And for a much-abused yarn, it became surprisingly sturdy and bloomed beautifully. It’s a bit shy of 450 yards of a fingering-ish weight. I love fuzzy yarn but I rarely actually knit with it – just ask the balls of neglected mohair in my stash. But I did start something with it right away which I’ll show next time.
Since I was infected with group think during this spin-along, I joined team PRS in the Tour de Fleece (you spin during the Tour de France).** I don’t have any crazy goals for it apart from spinning my recent purchases (of which I have to confess that there was another, and then another).***
Finally, my brother and sister-in-law are the hiking sort too, so I sent a set of butt warmers their way.
With the oilcloth, I think these are a little more practical than my original ones (which have gotten a bit shredded) but can also brightly and gaudily serve as a distress flag to wave about. I’m concerned that they’ll be a bit slippery until they’re scuffed up a bit and unfortunately this sweater was thinner so it provides less ass comfort. Also my stashed oilcloth has some creases I can’t seem to get out – can’t iron the stuff, so what to do…?
Everything else is still half-baked. And I also recently realized that I needed to get much busier in order to become more productive, so I’ve taken on a load of new projects (and may also get to up my part-time work hours soon) but I’ve got also got a newly festering anxiety that I may have bitten off a little too much…something might have to give.
*Sh*tty picture intentional since I’m paranoid about image theft and f*ckery these days, and get used to seeing that annoying tag on everything too.
**I like bicycles, and I ride mine (awesome story behind it too) several times a week, but I don’t think I’ll be watching the Tour much… as Italophiles, we do often have calcio (soccer) on the tube though…
***I talk about this way too much! I don’t know the person/people behind the company in real life nor do I get kickbacks – just love the stuff, and the last acquisition was someone’s bargain de-stash so my spending is ending for the time being.
While in the White Mountains, we decided to use up a rainy day in Portland, Maine. I recently bought some Quince & Co.Osprey yarn and was anxious to hit a yarn store near its hometown to buy fondle some more. We underestimated the drive down to the coast on slow and winding country roads so by the time we got there, we were too hungry to do anything else. So we got some tasty-as-all-get-out lobster rolls at Fisherman’s Grill (and you can spot my old cardigan in action, or at least knotted around my waist and waiting for action, along with a tiny peek of my old sh*t “rain”coat, aka the sucky soaker).
And ate them (along with some badass insanely delicious onion rings) in the car!?!?! This is a strange and rare thing* for us and it felt very very wrong, but the food tasted very very good. And after our onion and roach of the sea feast, we were sleepy so we decided to drive all the way back to nap away the rainy afternoon in the cabin and skip the rest of Portland. (Sorry Portland, see you more next time).
But back to the Maine-based Quince & Co. yarn. I loved the stuff. At first I was a little unenthused about it since they offer few tweeds or heathers and their advertising is beautifully photographed with feminine and ethereal and often pastel colors, and I feel a little too mannish for the stuff. If I see another baby chick yellow or sea rose pink drapey cardigan paired with a demure sundress I may sprout a chin hair.
So I chose some of the murkiest colors they had to offer, but I must say I love murky and they did a great job with a green that sometimes looks brown (Marsh) and a grey that sometimes looks blue (Storm). And the yarn base feels soft but durable and has a wonderful spongy sproing factor. It reminds me a lot of the wool I bought in Abruzzo last year about which I have yet to write and made a huge impact on the products I buy.
The yarn also has a great stitch definition and does that thing where the stitches appear in column-like rows on one side, but I can’t remember the term for it… But regardless, I’m in love with the stuff and will buy more at a later date. I’ve pretty much taken a blood vow to only buy domestic/North American products when I can, especially wool, and especially buy wool from places and people I visit. I’m making an exception for a couple of American indie dyers who source globally but have an incomparable and awesome product, but for the most part it’s all red white and blue (and just white and red for Canada) sheep for me (and of course the colors of another country’s flag when I’m visiting said country…. you get the drift).
So of course I wanted to make a short detour on our way back through Vermont to Green Mountain Spinnery. Sadly I wasn’t there at a time they gave tours, but I happily inhaled the lovely sheepy perfumes and peeked at some of the equipment. I was also exceptionally restrained in my purchases since I knew I could always buy online from them, so I just picked up a few skeins of their Yarn Over yarn. I love the stuff – it’s made from leftovers spun together in unrepeatable muted colors and is sheepy and rustic and feels like a good strong wooly yarn (my camera liked it too and got excitedly saturated, but it’s a bit more faded in life). I’m sure I’ll regret not buying a sweater’s worth, but I really don’t have the dough or a lack of sweaters to justify it now.
And I really couldn’t justify spending much at the great local gear store Farm Way but you bet I nearly spun around in the-hills-are-alive fashion in the Ibex section. Yep, wool, mostly American-made (except it’s Australian Merino), Vermont-based, comfortable, practical, and sadly, pricey even when on sale, and what I do have of it fits a bit strangely since the really on sale stuff isn’t usually in my size. So instead I bought a pair of Vermont made Darn Tough wool socks and N became my Sugar Daddy for a new rain jacket.
It’s a little weird to buy wool socks since I knit them, but I’ll never want to knit (or be able to) really fine-gauge ones or cushy-soled hiking ones.
And my old and continued favorite of domestic wool yarn is Brown Sheep’s Lamb’s Pride – I can’t neglect to mention them and I have a huge aging stash of the stuff…you can find it on crazy sale sometimes.
Now I’m putting some pressure on myself to come up with some White Mountain inspired patterns, but for now I must finish other things.
* We/I eschew and abhor many aspects of American culture, especially in regards to its foodways and habits of eating fast “food” shite in cars. Yes, we are snobs but love our tasty tasty Euro-centric, farm-to-table, fresh out of the garden, local, locavore, low on the food chain, sustainably raised, only when in season, not from a factory or feedlot, organic, chemical and preservative-free, not-out-of-a-box-or-bag, Mediterranean-inspired, stuff that has been eaten for thousands of years and should be for thousands more, grub. Although I have to admit I cringed violently when a server at my favorite restaurant mentioned that the veal they were serving that night was hand-fed by children… I call that 4-H, or child-labor, or just plain f*cking ridiculous, or Portlandia come to life (only it wasn’t in Stumptown)… And those onion rings above? Yeah, I watched the guy take an onion and slice it up, dredge it by hand, and dunk into the fryer – they didn’t come pre-breaded and frozen, yee hah!
I’ve had this c. 1950s/60s men’s alpaca cardigan sweater since the late 1980s.
It was among my first “thrift scores” and I have loved it ever since. It warmed me through the amalgamated post-hippie/punk/ folk/college-rock years dubbed “alternative” (or “art-fag” if you were stupid and from my neck of the woods), a dabbling of grunge, a decades long love of emo-ish hardcore, and even got away with looking like a hip “boyfriend” sweater the last few years. It’s been paired with Sex Pistols t-shirts and vintage hippie skirts, over-sized R.E.M. t-shirts and leggings, strategically torn jeans, boot cut jeans, and then leggings again. I’ve mended it many times, but my elbow finally poked through one of the sleeves the other day.
So at the moment, it’s not doing very well – I don’t think I want to sew on the classic professorial suede elbow patches, so I may go with some wool tweed. And I can’t get Weezer’s Undone out of my head to save my life (even though this isn’t what the song is about).
Highly uncharacteristically of me, I never noticed or looked up label before until now…
And oh holy hell, what have I got here, something to do with golf again!?!?
Yep, Gene Littler was a golf champ and probably got his own line of sportswear in the 1950s or ’60s. At least he had good taste in fibers and got behind a smart timeless design…
But back on the subject of thrifting – I’m not quite sure when and how I got started. Like most families in our rural area, we had a single modest income and were extremely conservative* with money. Our food budget was supplemented by a lush garden and the slaughtering of our chickens and rabbits. Horse camp? Nope, I couldn’t go, or any other childhood activity that required fees. Clothing was homemade, handed-down (yes I wore my brothers’) and never purchased at full price. However, as a small child, my mother liked dressing me in Polly Flinders hand-smocked dresses from a previous decade. I believe she found them in consignment shops or garage sales and recognized some of the quality handiwork that went into them (possibly from sweatshops in the ’60s maybe?). And thankfully she stopped acquiring them when my tomboy-hood banned all things smocked, gathered, and frilled, but I believe this is what set the precedent for obtaining used clothing.
I also have a clear memory of the second grade and being on the outer ring of a group of girls surrounding a lone victim wearing a dress I had secretly liked but was clearly from an earlier generation – a blue pinafore or jumper** with colorful embroidery (I think it was a pattern of small fish). The ringleader of the mean girls, whose name I recall was actually Ashley, taunted the girl (I’ll call Pam) without her realization of what was happening along the lines of:
Ashley: [Sneeringly] I like your dress Pam.
Pam: [Shyly blushing and looking downward] Oh, thank you!
Ashley: Where did you get, it?
Pam: [Brightening] Oh, I actually found it at Goodwill!
Ashley: [Sneering even more] What is that? Is that a fancy new shop downtown?
[Ashley’s friends break out in cruel giggles]
Though this taunting was pretty tame, I am ashamed now that I didn’t punch Ashley, but I pretty much knew from then on I wouldn’t be friends with her or the others for the next ten years at school. I remember going to a small birthday party for Pam at the local trailer park once, but shortly thereafter something started to go terribly wrong with her or her life and she often just cried by herself on the playground. Though the school was tiny, I lost track of her. She was one of the first to die from our class after graduation – I don’t know what happened.
Knowing I too was on the fringe and would never be a cheerleader, jock-cock sucker, star athlete, or sweet hometown homecoming queen, and I’d always have a long strange ethnic name in a sea of Smiths and Jones, was not the same religion as most of my peers, came from a liberal outspoken family, got good grades, was a band freak, was tall for my age and flat-chested to boot (then), and even the stupid fact of being the only one with a summer birthday and never having the class recognize it, and therefore me, gave me a solid f*ck-all-ya’ll attitude that the “alternative” culture embraced. So even though I was shoved and locked in lockers, voted off the lunch table, and hid in the bathroom whenever dodge-ball was assigned, I knew life was better outside of that shithole school and town. Thrifting was an escape, a way to time-travel, and it felt good to occupy the fabric skins of others who had passed through their shitty youths and were on to something better.
Though once in a while I did think about how the former owners of my duds could have died long lonely deaths, or still be around and be even more miserable than me…
*Conservative only in personal finance, certainly not in politics – many in the area were crazy right-wingers and their children are probably teabagging preppers these days… hopefully they don’t believe in voting.
**Brits call sweaters and pullovers “jumpers” but what do they call the sleeveless dress that you have to wear a shirt underneath?
Thrifting over the last few months has provided some bright weekday moments in my otherwise bleak and depressing winter of vast underemployment. I obviously have a thing for wool, but especially for tweeds and plaids. I once had a crush on someone because of his worsted houndstooth pants – take away the pants and he was just an ordinary, rather boring, man – with the pants, he might as well have been Adonis. Luckily, N appreciates a good piece of wool clothing, so he is practically turning into a man-sheep with my woolen finds in his size (and the occasional score on his own)…
But back to the new additions to my stash. Most of these fabrics will be re-used, re-purposed, recycled into other things for other lives; some for sale, and some for me.
I love the yarn in these two pieces. Some tweed yards have primary colored neps [those little color balls] and I hate those – primary colors = 1980s or preschool, ’nuff said. I love these secondary colors, and you gotta love orange and turquoise – 1970s tube socks! But with the beige and black yarns they are reined in. The black is a vest that doesn’t fit me right – I may try to alter it as-is, but I’ll likely frog and re-knit it. The beige is another unfortunate cropped sweater that also has some shrinkage, definitely a frogger or a fuller.
And some various woolens. One (I won’t tell you which) I cheated on – it’s got a lot less wool than what I usually require, but I liked the colors and pattern too much to walk away from it. Two of these will probably become bags. And I was excited to find the brown herringbone Harris Tweed jacket and had plans to sell it, but I sadly discovered many little holes – perhaps too many to keep it as-is, but we’ll see.
But let’s be honest, eh?
This is how matters really stand – piles of sh*t and blurry images.
My shooting gallery (say hi to the dummy) is also my sewing corner and is also the only spot in the room that gets any natural light from its one dirty window.
A dirty window that will soon be even further blocked by leaves. Don’t get me wrong, I love leaves and love them even more for blocking the parking lot that attracts unsupervised juveniles who like throwing rocks at cars and the adolescent ne’re-do-wells who lurk about drinking and sucking at skateboard tricks. I just won’t be able to take many pictures indoors soon.
I hope to have my new and improved Etsy or other online shop up and running in another month or two and possibly do one booth at a small fair this year. I’m discouraged though, the crafting biz ain’t what it used to be… And you know, I’ve never felt like such a stereotype more in my life. Educated urban/suburban white female in early middle-age, gone through job crisis, deludes herself thinking she can turn to craft for substantive* income. In an attempt to be slightly more competitive, I bought some “professional” labels since my hand-printed ones looked well, too handmade (which is how they should look dammit) but I didn’t calculate the size very well in the order. They are too long and unwieldy, but I don’t want to waste them, so on they will go.
*At least enough to cover health insurance – do you realize how breathtakingly expensive private plans are, or how much most of them suck? And forget about the fact that I’ve spent my entire career in non-profits and have precious little saved for retirement, but what is that anyway? Do enough diners still exist to hire crusty old cantankerous broads? Can you still get a trailer in Florida cheap? Are there any knitter-friendly flophouses?
Lately I’ve been re-working woolen clothes – both my own old ones and new thrift shop scores. Or rather, I have an overflowing box of items I intend to re-work, but have only managed to completely finish a few lately. I found this jacket or blazer in early January and it perfectly matches a scarf* I made a few years ago. And yes, I previously raged against pink a little when it falls under a raspberry or pepto influence, but I love this dirty old lavender-ish rose.
The jacket had some issues though – the plastic buttons looked wrong and cheap and were probably a replacement, there was a large hole in the bottom hem, the sleeves were hack-hemmed way too short, and at first I liked the little brown triangles at the pockets because I thought they were suede and I like mixing browns and greys thank you very much, but on closer inspection they turned out to be Ultrasuede or other sort of microfiber… ick. And then the label puzzled me as well:
It looks like an older style, but the little content tag underneath it looks more recent, but the sizing is oldschool too – says it’s a 14, but fits more like a 4 or 6 – or is it foreign? I can’t find anything online about Ms. Alice Carol except a few other pieces [mis-dated in my opinion] on Etsy, so my best guess is that it’s from the late 1970s…? I also feel that it was sufficiently altered from its original state so I could continue to monkey around with it. It doesn’t look like I did much now, but I:
let out the cuffs to the bitter end removed the sleeve buttons stitched up the side wrist gap re-hemmed the cuffs re-attached the sleeve lining repaired the hole on the bottom took off the Ultrasuede triangles cut new grey wool triangles but then didn’t like they way they looked and didn’t feel like sewing them on then made and attached my own covered buttons** out of a pair of my brother’s old grey wool pants of about the same age that match the grey stripe that you really don’t see in the pictures [did you get that in one breath?]
Much better.
* For those who are savvy or nebbie, you could find this scarf pattern for free on ravelry, but I’m in the middle of re-writing and charting it and hope to re-post it soon as a buy-it pattern (never mind that only very few have made it for free so far) but one can hope [or have the right to have delusions] right?
** Oh how I love you, DIY button blanks – why were you waiting so long to come into my life? Will I ever tire of you? But have you been in my life long enough to know that you’ll hold up through many unbuttonings and buttonings and banging into things?
This is my first winter wearing this scarf made from recycled sweater yarn especially selected to match my red coat. (Stupidly, I also wore it in NYC when all the kids dress like slutty, sexy, and sloppy Santa and go bar-hopping – I fear I may have been mistaken for one of them at a distance).
But all Santas aside, last year I found this moth-eaten semi-fulled [felted] cropped turtleneck sweater at a thrift store. I thought it was god-awful, or “gawful.”* I like bright colors, wool, and three big cheers for gay pride rainbows, but I thought this was just something that few should wear – it might just be best for a child. Since it was already ruined by holes and aggressive washings (and had the magic unzippy seams) I happily frogged the bitch.
Nice balls, eh? It then dawned on me that half of the colors** matched a Harris Tweed coat I scored months earlier.
I don’t wear much red – I prefer orange, and I think red generally washes me out. I have nothing against it per se, I just don’t choose it, and don’t have anything to wear with it – green would look way too x-masy, yellow would make it mustard and ketchup, and my rusty murky colored things don’t work. I have a grey scarf languishing on the needles, and another dark cowl that would look decent enough with the coat, but I decided it needed an equally loud accessory. I wanted a sideways constructed scarf or cowl so I could have long skinny rows and few, if any tails to weave in. I was also itching to do a large project in linen stitch – I found Cerus Scarf by Hilary Smith Callis in ravelry, and though it’s not so much a pattern as just cast-on-this-many-stitches-and-then-do-this-stitch, I linked to it for the sake of conformity, much like the drunk Santas do every year.
Thankfully I didn’t wear any green so as not to be confused with the drunken masses attending the St. Pat’s day parade in the city yesterday. I would have worn this cacophony of reds in opposition and protest of toxic colored alcoholic beverages*** and the assholes who spew them on the streets and trains, but alas the weather was a bit wicked and I lurked about in my muds and rusts.
*I didn’t realize this was already a used term, see here.
**This was another project that surprised me in terms of color and color dominance. I only did one row of the pale yellow and it absolutely screams out and takes the pink along with it, bleaching it down. And where is the orange? Though I did an extra row of orange, you almost don’t even see it. If I had more yarn, I’d like to try a version without the yellow and pink and see if that gives it more of a murky glow. And I’m still on the fence about removing the kinky fringe and stitching it into a cowl… I usually opt out of fringe, and I’m not sure why I don’t sorta like it, but I think it’s because if it’s too close to your face on a windy day it goes into your mouth? Or maybe it is something from childhood. I don’t have a specific plan for the harvested blues and greens yarn yet, but the smaller balls make them excellent for sideways designs…
***Nothing wrong with a good alcoholic beverage, just those that involve dye, or a culture of mass sloppy public drunkenness.
So I chose some of the murkiest colors they had to offer, but I must say I love murky and they did a great job with a green that sometimes looks brown (Marsh) and a grey that sometimes looks blue (Storm). And the yarn base feels soft but durable and has a wonderful spongy sproing factor. It reminds me a lot of the wool I bought in Abruzzo last year about which I have yet to write and made a huge impact on the products I buy.
ASTITCHMATISM 