Category Archives: thrifting

October 21, 2013 · 12:30 PM

Hexed

I tend to get a little obsessive/fanatical about certain colors, textures, and shapes. For a few years, I loved the diamond. Not hard-assed sparkly rocks that people die for literally and figuratively, but the shape in a flattened geometric form. I had some awesome diamond-shaped eyeglasses back in the late 1990s that I wore to dust; I have some argyle clothing, jewelry with diamond shapes, some great vintage diamond-shaped buttons I’ve yet to use, and I’ve sewn and knitted many diamonds.

Little did I know I had a thing for hexagons too.

I knew I liked antique hex tile floors. I had an original one in my first roach-infested apartment (it wasn’t the first of several infested, it was the first and happened to be infested). And I fantasize often about having one again (a tiled floor, not an apartment full of cockroaches).

I photograph tiled floors when I see them, including this one in the late 1990s, which also served as evidence in case I was brutally murdered or came down with an incurable STD or sudden Bukowski-like alcoholism from the seediest hotel I’ve ever patronized in Niagra Falls (I mean seediest ever, not one of many in Niagra Falls).

And check out this awesome antique floor in a non-hipster cafe in Brooklyn I saw last year:

(And yes, I have a cheap-ass pre-paid phone and can’t figure out how to email the picture to myself, so yeah…)

When we first started fixing up our former house, I was completely and entirely ecstatic when I found this in the bathroom:

However, my joy was short lived when I found other things:

And the absence of the tile throughout and/or layers of cement and other impenetrables that prevented us from salvaging the original floor.

I wanted to put down a new authentic porcelain hex floor, but the high price sent me to the big box for the cheap alternative:

Still porcelain hexagons, but not quite the real thing – the real deal is more flat and matte with thinner grout lines. I loved that bathroom though, and I yearn for that giant cast-iron tub again…

But I’m still always on the look-out for hex floors and sometimes find them in surprising places:

Like out in the woods in the middle of nowhere.

But the fiber word is awash in hexagons as well.

One of the classic quilt patterns – Grandmother’s Flower Garden is all about the hex.

I found this in an antique shop last year:

Look how small the hexagons are! The tiny little hexes are just a little bit bigger than a hex floor tile.

I wonder if the maker was sick of it after one motif, this was a leftover from a finished quilt, it was made to be a chair pad or other small item, or yeah, maybe she (maybe he but not likely) died. I love the inconsistent greens as well – I wonder if it was made from old-time scrubs or nurse’s uniforms, or if the fabric was home-dyed.

For those of you in the knitting world, you’re probably expecting me to say I’m hip-deep in hexipuffs for the Beekeeper’s Quilt and that’s what this is all about. Nope, though I like it a lot, and considered it for a little while, I’m going to pass for now (even though I may have purchased a few mega-sale skeins of sock yarn with this in mind).

I occasionally find myself designing floors for bathrooms, kitchens, and foyers of homes we don’t have. In fact, one of the houses we purchased over the last year had a half-bath (I hate the name “powder room”) small enough that I could justify the price of the real thing and to my own custom design. But alas, I must settle on non-floor hexagons for now.

But look at this!

(Picture yanked from internet – no idea of its original publication)

Ok, so a floor again, but even though whatever house we’ll eventually get will eventually need to be re-sold, I’m really tempted to do something along these lines. I don’t know if it is paper or fabric, but it would be fairly economical and a more interesting alternative to the paper bag floor (which I also sort of like, but can’t get past that leather crazy quilt jacket look of it).

But back to what I can do now, which really isn’t something I can do since I must finish other things first, but what I’m fantasizing about doing is a traditional hexagon quilt. After a summer’s worth of basting letters for an appliqued quilt, and though at the time they often annoyed the hell of of me, I had the brilliant epiphany that a quilt can actually be as portable of a project as sock knitting. Though that is probably obvious to all already, I’d never thought of making quilts outside of hours-long blocks of time at home. And though my earlier thoughts of sewing a quilt by hand were along the lines of you’ve got to be f*cking joking, I now want to piece that bitch up one by one by one in airports, while visiting other people’s houses, in waiting rooms, and sprawled on the sofa while binge watching some mildly awful but addictive television series.

I haven’t decided whether or not to use my current stash and scraps or come up with something a little more uniform and floor-like, but I’ve sure as hell had fun playing with the possibilities – at least in my head, of course, since I really can’t be spending any real time on it. (And I haven’ t yet printed off a bunch of blank hex sheets I found on this site).

I’d be remiss in not mentioning the hexing possibilities with crochet in the form of hexy granny afghans – see this Flickr group for pics – but alas, I don’t crochet. I don’t like the looks of it sometimes, but that’s usually the maker’s fault for choosing crap acrylic yarn, or poor colors, or having no general aesthetic sense.

But I’d like to learn one of these days…

Oh yeah, and my inner jukebox plays this every time I think of the word hex:

The 1990s infected me with a whole wiggling writhing wad of ear worms…

Biggest-assed yarn bomb

It’s all over and too late to see now, but Knit the Bridge was pretty cool (and record-breaking).

We went to Pittsburgh for a little jaunt over Labor Day weekend and caught the bridge on a bright summer morning.

(Got the ass-end of one of those obnoxious duck tour thingamawhats too!)

It was quite a bit more Crochet the Bridge, rather than knit, but they certainly couldn’t call it [yarn] Bomb the Bridge, which would have been more accurate, inclusive, and alliterative, but sadly we can’t say such things these days.

The cheery hanging flower baskets were a nice touch too and complimented the bright acrylic yarns.

The whole thing had a campy, homey feel which was nice, but also played a bit into the knitting/crochet stereotype.

But I won’t criticize that too harshly – overall it was a good thing and acrylic had to be used as the blankets will be massively laundered and donated to people and places that don’t have the knowledge, time, space, or frankly have much bigger issues rather than proper care of woolen hand-knits.

(There were actually many people out too, I just chose the pics without them.)

Stash

No, not that kind of ‘stash you silly hipster.

I’m referring to yarn. Lots and lots of yarn.*

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.

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Filed under knitting, recycling, sewing, thrifting

Tagged as anal work, balls, boxes, cataloging, closet, evil rich, evil twin, excess, fabric, fiber, gemini, hoarding, knitting, moustache, organization, plastic tubs, rag picker, ravelry, rich, SELE, skeins, spinning, stash, storage, tedious, too much stuff, waif-child, wool, yarn

July 12, 2013 · 11:30 AM

Gradually getting kooler…

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.

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Filed under dyeing, recycling, thrifting

Tagged as 1990s fasion, artificial food coloring, aversion, bad teachers, bug juice, colorful, coral, dye, elementary school, fear, fruit punch, gradient dyeing, grape, kitchen, kool-aid, kool-aid dyeing, orange, pink, puke, purple, recycled, red, stank, stench, stink, stunk, sweater, thriftstore, ugly sweaters, upchuck, vomit, watermelon, wool, yarn

June 23, 2013 · 12:18 PM

Stick a fork in it…

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.

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Filed under hiking, quilts, recycling, sewing, spinning, thrifting

Tagged as BFL, blues, butt warmers, camp seats, greens, handspun, hernia, hiking seats, Mimsy, mini-quilt, oilcloth, oranges, Pigeonroof Studios, quilts, recycling, reds, sewing, singles, sit-upons, spinning, TdF, Tour de Fleece, wool, yarn

June 2, 2013 · 10:38 AM

Meet (some of) my sewing machines…

I learned to sew (or rather I learned how to use a sewing machine) on my mother’s 1960s era Singer. I made some shapeless elastic waist skirts, “Jams” style shorts, and a few odds and ends in my youth. During college, I borrowed the machine to make hats to sell at raves. You heard me, raves – and the real kind back in the day, illegal and last minute and fun as a bucket of monkeys. I loved her machine – it was metal and solid and felt like well, a machine in the masculine sense. A few years later I acquired my first vintage machine at my favorite thrift store for something like $6.99.

I’ve had it for nearly 20 years and it is the machine I use most often, however I just had to put it on a time-out due to a tension issue that springs up after an unpredictable amount of time (sometimes after 3 days of use, sometimes after year or so) and it seems to always fix itself as long as I don’t use it for a month or so.

A partial repair tag still clings to the handle – perhaps this tension issue gave the previous owner troubles as well… After finding this machine, I was on the lookout for more. Why? I think I figured it would be nice to have the same one to use for parts if need be, I wanted one with zigzag and other stitch functions, and I just really fell in love with solid things made of metal that could last lifetimes – yes, the plural form. I hate everything about the objects of our disposable society these days, but then again, obsolete, near-obsolete, and old timey things weigh a ton and are a pain in the ass to move. But after a few years, I had amassed a collection of around 15 sewing machines, not to mention several typewriters and boxes of cameras and film equipment. I didn’t move much then and used much of the equipment as furniture in my cramped apartment, but eventually most of it had to go. Since I used the sewing machines on a fairly regular basis, I kept a half dozen of them or so.

This is the back-up machine for when the pink Atlas is being temperamental. It too came from a thrift store and I gasped when I opened the box – I’d never seen one that looked so like an automobile of the same era and I loved the deep green. It sews strongly and steadily but the needle needs to be coaxed into the fabric in just the right way each time that I tend to get a little impatient with it. Its best use is for sewing long seams or quilting.

This is the prettiest and the oldest of my current machines and it works just fine. The bobbin is a little fiddly to work with so I don’t like to change it as often. When I had more space (and when I will hopefully have more space again) I’d leave it set up with thread in the opposite color of what I was using in the other machine if I needed to hop on it for something else. I believe this was originally a treadle machine and motorized later, so I have intentions of trying to turn this back into a manual machine, but I’d rather find a treadle machine for a reasonable price (and I could fit in my car or have delivered) instead. It is also in a re-purposed Morse case that is annoyingly without a lid, so at the very least, I need a new lid/container for it.

My brother found this lovely Singer for me, but it’s probably been a decade ago… I have it nearby because I intend to try to find a couple of missing parts for it, but haven’t done much searching around for them yet. Ironically, it also came with the manual and a few extra tools, so someone was meticulous about keeping it all together only up to a certain point. This one is also a more compact “portable” model, so it would be convenient to get it up and running as soon as possible. I’m also slightly afraid to plug in anything old, so the first time I like to be prepared in case of an inferno.

And then I have perhaps two more? I’m a little nervous that I can’t find them at the moment, but I believe that they could be in storage along with the other third of our stuff. Hopefully I didn’t get rid of them in the frustration of the move. One of them is another Atlas similar to my old stand-by that I found left in the trash on the curb in my old neighborhood. Its cord was cut, perhaps indicating that the motor was blown or that it needs to be re-wired so I can use it for parts, or get it up and running again. I believe the other machine is another Singer with a bad motor?

The machines I had but sold years ago included a couple of really old ones that had been motorized but weren’t very functional, I believe yet another Atlas, a less attractive 70s machine, and a blue White that I still can’t understand to this day why I got rid of it – it had a zigzag stitch, WTF? But I think I thought I’d find another…

Some days I’m a little envious of others with the fancy-schmancy machines that will practically stitch up a cup of coffee or an offspring but mostly I love my hunky metal beasts and will continue to do so…

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Tagged as Atlas, black, compact, design, green, heavy, hoarding, metal, motors, moving, needles, old things, pink, repair, sewing, sewing machines, Singer, streamline, tension, thrift scores, thrifting, Universal, vintage, vintage sewing machines

May 19, 2013 · 9:06 PM

My old cardigan friend, (damn you golf again), and bullying because of thrifting…

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?

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Tagged as alpaca, alternative, angst, assholes, bullying, cardigan, golf, golf sweater, holes, shithole, small town, small-minded, smocking, sweater, teasing, thrift score, thrift store, thrifting, time travel, used clothing, vintage, vintage sweater, youth

April 28, 2013 · 12:57 AM

Winter hoarding, Spring sewing, a change of the light…

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?

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Filed under knitting, recycling, sewing, thrifting

Tagged as bad kids, craft business, crafting, disillusion, disorder, felted, flophouse, fulled sweaters, Harris Tweed, harvested wool, herringbone, labels, leaves, light, material, neps, plaid, recycling, Spring, stuff piles, thrifting, tweed, windows, wool, worsted

March 24, 2013 · 7:20 PM

An improved jacket

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?