ASTITCHMATISM

December 10, 2014 · 6:00 AM

Search me

I write this blog primarily as a record of things I do with my hands and a few notable (to me) life things. I used to keep a written journal, but stopped over a decade ago. I sort of keep sketchbooks and “idea” books, but only sporadically and they’re often hard to decipher. So the blog format does in its metadata what I don’t tend to do in life – keep track of dates and things in general in an orderly fashion – and has neat writing and doesn’t require anything sticky for pictures. So I really don’t care about having ~~thousands~~ ~~hundreds~~ tens of followers (although sponsorship and getting free shit would be nice, though I also find that annoying) and I don’t pay much attention to the statistics, however I’m finding some of the search terms people have used and (sometimes unfortunately) ended up here fascinating and/or amusing. The bulk of them are practical – people looking up patterns, ideas for recycling fabrics, and people and places I’ve mentioned, but a few stick out.

So I will try to give you what you were really looking for, answer your questions, or encourage you to come back to clarify, in honor of my blogiversary.

Though the web has gotten so vast that you no longer need professionals and masters degrees (like mine) to make an optimal query in a search engine (and I’m also guilty of occasionally just typing in short questions) some people are taking it a bit too far:

WHAT ADJUSTMENTS DO I NEED TO MAKE A HONEYCOWL OUT OF SOCKWEIGHT YARN

Um, if you know the Honeycowl, then you probably use ravelry, so get off Google and use their awesome search features to see how others did it, fool.

And of course for the dirtier of mind, I’m sure plenty experience disappointment in landing here – some terms are just dull, others I may intentionally use just for shits and giggles, like:

COCK SOCKS

Which no, I’ll not quite give you that, but enjoy the Red Hot Chili Peppers instead.

Another searched for:

SOCK MONKEY LUDE PICS

And I’ll happily oblige, that is if you really meant “lewd”… otherwise I do not know what a sock monkey would pop to chill out.

(I was too lazy or mildly creeped out to stage this in a more sexy setting…)

And one of my favorites:

DUSTY OLD THINGS

This might be the pass-phrase to my heart. And hopefully you’ve been back recently to take in my post about the dusty old things I recently found.

And an obsession with gender-appropriateness in which I do not understand:

DOES WEARING A POLYESTER SCARF MAKE ME LOOK GAY

Yes, if it is rainbow colored (but even then you could just be a supporter of gay rights). Otherwise you just look cheap and a supporter of petrochemicals and possibly slave labor.

MAN WEARING BAKTUS

Here’s a man in a baktus (and a lacy one to boot):

And one that I searched for myself:

BAD HAT QUILT

Not sure what this could mean – a quilt made of bad/ugly hats? Badly knitted hats? Then that would be an afghan of sorts… Or a tiny quilt to cover a bad hat? Or a tiny quilt to tuck in the unloved hat at night? Or by bad do you mean good?

And some mild WTFs:

SLIMY GREEN SNOT WORM

You should probably get that checked out, or if you are a child, get away from the screen and go outside to play.

BEER BOX QUILT

A quilt made from beer boxes? Are you a hobo?

UNEMPLOYMENT PAINTINGS

Yeah, aren’t those most paintings?

HOW TO DRESS A ROOM WITH SANDED FLOOR

One sleeve (curtain) at a time, or a little oil and vinegar.

IN WHICH FINGER SHOULD JADEITE BE WORN

Whoa, are you planning to surgically bejewel yourself?

SOCK FOOT MAN TUCK

I don’t know if this is supposed to be dirty or if it’s an inquiry about taking in now baggy socks after significant weight loss…

FLOOR SANDER TSHIRTS

Do you mean the best t-shirts to use as rags while sanding the floor? Or the logo of sanding machine? Or do you want to buy one?

If so, here are three from which you may choose that I made just for you!

Check out my redbubble shop for more ASTITCHMATISM swag including veggie weenie totes and phone cases – not sure how long I’ll have it up, so get stuff now!

I STILL HAVE JET LAG

I’m sorry, that really sucks, but at least you got home with all fingers intact and the luxury of leisure time or a tolerant boss who hasn’t fired your slacking-off ass yet.

CHEAPER ALTERNATIVE TO HEXAGON FLOOR TILE

Hex tile (not the fancy-pants marble or 100% authentic reproduction stuff) is really some of the most affordable (and attractive) floor tile available, but it’s most cheap if you learn to install it yourself – it’s really not that difficult – you can do it!

YARN OPENESS

My yarn and I have a really special relationship, I know that my yarn can come to talk to me about absolutely anything, no matter how embarrassing or scary – the key is to set boundaries but always have a swinging gate of dialog – and maybe you’ll be proud of your yarn someday too.

ORGANIC FARM CURTAINS

I think that is evidence that we’ve lost all hope.

HOW DO YOU SPELL TCHOTZKIE

Tchotchke.

(But if you landed here, does that mean I spelled it wrong somewhere…?)

SISTER BROTHER FISTBAD WAP

And with that, I’ve got nothing (hopefully it’s not something awful).

Thanks for reading and do stick around for another year!

8 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as answers, baktus, blogging, give them what they want, keywords, knitting, questions, searching, sock monkeys, t-shirts, veggie weenies

December 3, 2014 · 6:00 AM

What I’ve been reading…

Thank you to dre at Grackle & Sun for nominating me for the One Lovely Blog award!

This will be the only dose of fiber this week – I’ve been sewing curtains, but not thinking enough about them first – a blue curtain throws in awful cold blue light… duh. But it looks pretty snazzy at night with the lights on.

And now, I will give my acceptance speech.

I once got a (real paper) letter from a classmate with whom I wanted to be friends, but she was the elementary school equivalent of being out of my league. My mother broke the sad truth that it was a chain letter, and a particularly difficult one because the rule was to send it to 25 people, and living in a rural area, this popular classmate had probably run out of preferred recipients at around no. 17. It promised good fortune and riches if I passed it along, but alas, I didn’t know 25 people, even if I included the kids who ate glue, so I have lived my life without riches, though perhaps with some fortune since things could always be worse.

So I’m a little conflicted about participating in these blog activities that feel a teensy bit like a chain letter – yes, I’m honored that someone thought about me, but my non-conformist self said to just say thank you and do no more, but I’ve enjoyed living vicariously through other bloggers as well as benefited from their comments and support, so I’m game for this today.

The rules are:

Thank and link back to the person who nominated you.

List the rules and display the award.

Include seven delightful facts about yourself.

Nominate 15 other bloggers and let them know about the award.

Follow the blogger who nominated you.

(I was already following dre, so here goes the rest of it.)

7 things some of you don’t know about me already, probably none of which are delightful:

1. I’m not a picky eater, but there are many many things that I’d rather not eat (we’re talking actual food here, when it comes to packaged/fast food, I don’t eat that shit). Example: I was invited to dine at a lovely person’s house last month. She served venison-stuffed peppers with tomato cream sauce. I am a good sport and it was delicious, but I spent the rest of the evening in a rictus grin from gut pains and stifled farts. So I don’t eat peppers and cream unless I’m at home, and generally don’t eat the larger animals at all.

(I’m tempted to make this an entire TMI list, but most of it would involve my GI tract.)

2. I barely have a cell phone and it ain’t smart. I’m mildly addicted to lurking on other’s Instagram accounts, but I can’t make one of my own though I’d like to have one. I don’t want a computer in my pocket (even though most of those things wouldn’t fit in my pocket). I hate marketing and fees for nothing – a small fee for infrastructure is okay, but otherwise those things just make other people rich. And they’re hell on the environment – charging that shit (made by tiny children) constantly and tossing away the old. Maybe I should start my own marketing campaign that your smartphone runs on coal – icoal. Or fracking – ifrack. Or nuclear – inuclear.

3. I used to have a largish (but round) mole on my cheek. The kids in junior high school called me “Mole Face.” I had it excised by a plastic surgeon. Then the kids called me “Scar Face.” I kinda wish I never had it cut off, but I’m sure it would be sprouting wiry shit by now.

4. I like true crime/mystery stories – to read, watch, or listen – though I’m sometimes ashamed about it. If someone went through that hell with a family member or friend, it would be a vile entertainment genre to face again and again. But count me in as one of the devoted Serial listeners, and don’t bother me first thing on a Thursday morning.

5. I think I make a decent pot of chili.

6. Though I’ve been a card carrying member of various counterculture and arts scenes since my tweens, I don’t have a tattoo – I never could decide what I wanted to have for the rest of my life and I didn’t want to spoil the blank canvas that is my body and could have ended up immortalized on canvas.

7. I’m pissed off that the USA seems so stupid these days, but we need to lighten up and have more silliness.

And I really don’t want to have pass this along to others in the sense that they may feel obligated to do this too, or that I’m singling them out in a stalkerish way, but I’ve found blogs I enjoy from others posting their blogrolls or through things like this, so this is more about what I’ve been reading minus several written by people I know in real life that might reveal my secret identity, and a few that dre already mentioned, and a few that I stopped reading when the writer had a baby and now it’s just all about the freakin’ baby, and several bigger knitwear designers that I assume many already know (like Kate Davies), and a few from dyers and fiber suppliers I patronize, and a few I’ll pop over to read from time to time via ravelry and aren’t on the top of my head now. But I have to be honest that I’m not a huge blog reader – I’m distracted easily for better or worse and I’m trying to reign that in; and I care about the many injustices of our day, but can’t feed those flames too much without boiling in my seat, so I stick to the lighter subjects of fiber and travel and the shorter picture-heavy blogs for the most part.

And for the record, I haven’t really vetted most of these, nor gone back and read every post, so if there are some right-wing nutjobs in the mix, I didn’t realize it.

So let me state again, these are the blogs I’m either following or read fairly often via ravelry right now that I am in no way pressuring to participate in such shenanigans:

completely cauchey – I love her work, but most of all I love her drive, creativity, and amazing feats of productivity

dayana knits – she’s a “Rowan Ambassador” and I often like Rowan patterns, so I think about making some of the things she’s made, and her notes will probably be extremely helpful.

Drawn the Road – this blog is just sketchbook pages, and it blows my noggin.

eggton – I don’t often read food blogs and I can’t remember how I bumped into this one – perhaps it was recommended via wordpress, but she’s good for some laughs (and cute dog pics too).

A Ervilha Cor de Rosa – beautiful pics of Portugese woolmaking – I don’t always translate it, so I assume she’s talking about that too.

ever green knits – hiking, knitting, travel – we share similar past times (and there’s a dog).

L’AquiLANA – Valeria makes the lovely wool I’ve brought home from Italy, and Antonella at I Campi di Mais often makes delightful things from it.

Lime Scented – another woman I bumped into via ravelry and realized I read most of her blog entries, so I started to follow – she gives a lot of good knitting and sewing tips, especially in regards to fit that I have every intention of going back and digesting, and I appreciate her occasional bits of feminism.

peoplecake vs. yeti – I’ve been known to publicly (and perhaps unfairly) malign millennials but she is just so damn positive and her enthusiasm is contagious (and she has a cute dog).

shutterhoney – I click on this one through ravelry fairly regularly – she posts pics of interesting art and her own knitting – just a pic and a few words – refreshing.

soknitsome – we seem to share a love for self-striping socks and she’s just hopped continents.

Tricot Gourmand – knitted foodiedom – just awesome.

woshoudebuhao – I know her from a point in time in real life, and she’s writing about her adventures (and occasional frustrations) abroad in places I’ll probably never get to go to.

Wren House Yarns – this is a pleasant little blog with a few pictures and fewer words from a new indie dyer & spinner (I haven’t bought any yarn yet).

The things behind the radiator

I’m thrilled that our new-to-us house has radiators.

But they aren’t much to look at – just a single pipe covered with a smooth boxy cover rather than an ornate cast iron multi-piped lovely.

The cover around the one in my office wiggled though, and didn’t sit flush against the wall.

So I jabbed some pliers around behind it and found yet another pile of child detritus – further evidence of the slobs who owned the place just before us.

But the cover still wouldn’t go flush with the wall, so I fashioned a slim jim out of a thin piece of aluminum threshold and went to town on the thing, once again playing archaeologist…

And unearthed a many decades mother-lode of kid shit.

More precisely, shit from the kids who were in here in the late 1950s to early ’60s (along with the last people here from about three years ago).

There are kid scribbles (properly on paper this time, not the walls).

(And I’d rather not think of what could have been munching on the paper.)

The pencils that perhaps created scribbles.

Part of a deck of Old Maid that could now never be won.

Food things that have no business outside of the kitchen.

Correspondence that confirmed the owner’s identity (with an addition that could been viewed as ironic commentary on today’s ridiculousness of availability and popularity of weapons in this country and the truly terrible acts of kids killing each other).

Play things and a knitted thing – and it feels incredibly familiar to me – I may have had a doll sock just like this one…

Cheery red things.

(And I almost bought a vintage toy tin washtub with these same little clothespins at a flea market recently, but though the design could be considered charming, and had in fact charmed me momentarily, ultimately I was disgusted that something like that was made to give to a child (girl) to play with instead of a book or a microscope or something enlightening and useful and creative and educational… )

And little once precious things – perhaps given to a child once they were deemed crap.

(Yes, I did get a little excited for half of a second when I thought the tie clip could be gold…)

And things that don’t make sense without other things.

And evidence of what I thought were nicotine stains on the walls (though this too could have been a teen-child act of hiding her/his own evidence…).

And finally a few random toy things that were played with by a far-from-child again for a few minutes…

And if you spotted the snakeskin, that was my contribution to the mess behind the radiator rather than a living snake leaving it behind. I think part of the reason so much shit ended up back there is a perpendicular breezy window. Moments after I took a picture of it, it blew out of my reach.

Meet the rest of my sewing machines

A sequel to my first post about some of my mechanical herd…

I’m finally reunited with the two “lost” sewing machines trapped for too long in storage.

I’m a sucker for a pink Atlas – my other one has been a favorite over the years, and this one still hasn’t gone for a test drive since the cord is cut. I found it on garbage day (or maybe the night before) on my old street. I can’t remember if I was late for work and trotting down the long hill to the bus, but found this and had to lug it back up and start all over again and ended up being really late, or I found it at the end of dusk slogging up the hill after a long day at work and it made my day. Either way, I schlepped this beast up a fairly substantial hill and haven’t gotten around to rewiring it for more than a decade.

And my fuzzy memory about rescuing it from its dump fate is because I found and lugged home lots of great sh*t on that street – including an old metal headboard from one of those old long narrow beds that prompted the comment by a passerby, “Do you always carry your bed with you?” And I believed I said yes, I’m very tired. But I don’t know what happened to that – I think it was a casualty in the move from that place…

And this Singer hasn’t had much love – I’m pretty sure it’s a 66, and maybe I already had that 99 and got this thinking it was the same and I could use it for parts? All I know was it was an early thrift find and I don’t remember if it works now, and maybe I’ll part with it eventually.

So I am done buying old sewing machines… unless I find one that has stitch functions I don’t have, is non-electrically operated (like a treadle in a lovely cabinet), or something that is uniquely and fantastically awesome – and all must be for a great price and reasonably sound condition. So, I’m really not in the market for them anymore unless I find something truly special. And that’s a problem. I wasn’t looking for a zig-zag machine a few weeks ago because I had been looking for the last 15 years or so and gave up – then, presto!

This lovely beast followed me home.

My current localish thrift is pretty decent – not a lot of vintage stuff, but good prices – I got this for $12.99.

Not sure what the inked-on “W” marks or means – hopefully wonderful or wondrous or woo hoo or wildly fantastic or wicked good or woot or wow, and not wonky or wah or wacky or whoops or whoop-de-doo…

I’m also not sure if and how well it works yet, but the needle goes up and down which is the most crucial part. So as long as I can get this up and running, and if I ever get around putting a hand crank on one of my others, then I’m really not in the market for another, right? (Really, I’m not trying to jinx myself for the better, I don’t want more heavy old things).

I’ve never owned a new, or less than 40-years-old, sewing machine but I’ve been wanting a serger for some time. I never felt I had a right (or the money) to buy one since I wanted it for making napkins and small bags and such, and those things can be made with any machine, just with folding and ironing added to the mix. But I wanted to take out folding and ironing, and in some cases, preserve as many millimeters of the fabric as I could, so I asked for and received this for my last “big” birthday – thank you mom & dad!

I took it out for a test run a bit ago, and it’s going to be fun and quite useful, but like the others, it’s waiting patiently and safely until I get its room in shape, and more importantly, I find the damn bolts and wing nuts for the tables to put it on.

(And my brain is on an endless loop saying: “janome-baloney, janome-baloney, janomey-baloney…”)

So it’s even more fitting that my last find was a New Home/Janome to go with my new serger – hopefully it will teach its younger sibling lessons in durability and perseverance.

2 Comments

Filed under collecting, home, sewing, thrifting

Tagged as collecting, janome, metal, new home, old sewing machines, old stuff is better than new stuff, serger, sewing, Singer, thrifting, trash picking, zigzag

November 12, 2014 · 6:00 AM

What’s in the basket?

Not my brother…*

I say I’m on a buying of all things, especially old things, hiatus… perhaps even a lifetime ban.

But I couldn’t resist a gourd.

I could plant some gourds, I could probably get one free from a neighbor, but I actually paid $4.00 for this one.

Why?

Because it was used as a darning egg!

And came with a basket filled with other useful things.

Needles are always handy and I love that they used to be promotional items (not to mention I love the graphic design and re-use of other little packages)…

And things that were once made in Europe but are now made in China…

(the notions, not the dust wads.)

And evidence that the original owner was perhaps a Nervous Nellie as well as a photographer…

And another mysterious notion – what is it?

It’s got “Waldes Perfex” stamped on it as a registered trademark. I couldn’t find the trademark, but several patents on “Perfex” exist for textile, cleaning, and photography products. I find anecdotal evidence of others finding these with old knitting supplies, so perhaps they’re stitch markers? They seem a bit pokey and impractical though… I can’t think of an application for them with photography unless these were poked through the sprockets in film for some reason or another…?

Anyone know what they are?

I’ve never seen the movie, but I just might have to check it out…

8 Comments

Filed under recycling, sewing, thrifting

Tagged as 1990s, basket, basket case, darning egg, eon, film canister, gourd, matchbox, nervine, perfex, pins, rave, raves, sewing basket, sewing needles, sewing notions, spools, techno, thimble, thread, thrift score, thrift store, vintage stuff, waldes perfex

November 4, 2014 · 6:42 AM

Get off yer asses and go vote!

This country has been f*cked up for some time (and perhaps always) but it’s not the fault of one man (maybe a bit because of the man before the current man) but it is largely the fault of men.

Mostly white men.

Dividend yields, offshore accounts, hedge funds, trust funds, mutual funds, stock options, investment portfolios, tax loopholes, year end bonuses, wealth management, and even pension plans are meaningless to most of us – we’re not gaily frolicking under a shower of golden nuggets pissing down from above. And yes, a few votes don’t have more strength than a fat wallet, but we can at least try to elect people who look and act more like us to represent us at the lower levels to push our sh*t up from the bottom, right?

I had a doctor appointment in a busy hospital on the outskirts of a poor urban area last week. The the door to my exam room was left open and I could see and hear what was going on in the room across the hall. In it was a young man who had been shot in the head while driving 6 months before. Now, I’m going to make a whole bucket of assumptions here (and he could have been an investment banker for all I know) and say what options do men like him (before the shooting) have – join the military so he can legally pop others in the head? Our education systems fails too many, our healthcare system is inhumane, our environment is getting scary, and our culture and humanity is disgustingly and alarmingly low or gone.

Last week we were also in DC to do some research.

We had a fine view of the Washington Monument from the crapper in the hotel room.

And I saw evidence that for hundreds of years people like some of my ancestors who couldn’t read and write or even make a decent X for “his mark” lived and mildly prospered in this country. They were able to slowly transition from hard manual work to have educated and more comfortable offspring after a few generations.

But somewhat more comfortable should not mean complacent, especially now the momentum on those generations is slipping backwards.

But the lower class individual can only do so much…

But you can do a lot of knitting while on trains to and from DC.

2 Comments

Filed under knitting, travel

Tagged as democracy, knitting, knitting on trains, rant, socks, the country in the crapper, vote, voting, washington monument

October 29, 2014 · 6:00 AM

The hat with the incurable case of wanderlust and amazing feats of reproduction

We got a surprise in the mail last week.

N’s favorite hat came back after being left behind in our August vacation cabin. I wasn’t too terribly upset when he lost it – I felt sympathy for him, but not anger because he lost something I made.

(And this isn’t the first time he left it behind somewhere – it regularly has alone time far away from us.)

It was the first of a series of Botanic hats from Stephen West that I’ve made over the years. N picked the pattern too – riffled though a big box of printed ones while I tactilely browsed in a LYS in the state where we now live, but haven’t been back to since (it’s a good shop but a bit far away still). But when I made it, I messed up by making an unnecessary and unsightly seam where you alternate between the two colors – in fact, I messed it up on more than one hat, but this was the first before I knew it was wrong, and the one that didn’t get ripped out.

And though I love knitting with you, oh Malabrigo, you really suck in the long term. I pay too much for you to collapse in a miss-spent pile of pills, though I did get this batch of yarn with my customer loyalty discount (meaning I’d spent too much previously) at my old beloved LYS.

And the pattern has a weird habit of scrunching upwards and flailing outwards – so even though it’s long enough just off the needles, a few weeks later it exposes the ears.

So even though I have to routinely pick and brush and shave the hat, I was willing to make him another in the same yarn (I have some left anyway) only this time without the mistaken join seam thing that annoys the hell outta me every time I see it. But he didn’t want a longer brim on the new one – this is mostly an indoor hat to keep his hair out of his face and take off a bit of chill, and to wear to bed which is where it usually likes to go rogue and fling itself between the wall and the bed frame.

My other Botanic hats were one for one of my brothers out of Cascade 220 superwash in two shades of green.

(And yes, my blog banner was on this same chair with the yarn for N’s first hat).

This is is the unnecessary seam issue I’d had (you have to drop the the old yarn before picking up the new rather than wrapping around it) so this hat got ripped and re-made.

And I had enough yarn left for another for N, though he doesn’t like this one quite as much as the other – but I like it more since the yarn is virtually pill-less, though more prone to stretching out…

Then one for me. Oddly, the grey of the ribs is the same as the non-rib part in N’s first one – it’s my favorite colorway in the yarn – “Pearl Ten” – and though the color is greyish, tanish, lavenderish, in his hat it turned tan, and in mine it looks grey (and he calls his hat his “brown hat”). I think the peach color in mine is “Applewood.”

One day I might add more length to the brim, though I too like to wear mine indoors or only when it is just a little bit cold – I can’t tolerate exposed lobes even within 15 or so degrees of freezing…

And finally, one for an old friend at work who underwent chemo.

I didn’t know if he was a wool person or not, so this is a synthetic blend, and though a single color defeats the purpose of this pattern, the texture is still interesting, and it is especially soft when the ribs are worn on the outside.

If you count the green one I ripped and re-knit, I’ve made this hat 6 times – my most knitted pattern besides my vanilla sock recipe.

So I’m slightly relieved to not have to make a replacement hat for N, but can you truly replace a “favorite” something anyway? A new one might be a little more tight or loose or feel generally different without the several years wear (and probably not enough washing). So I have to deal with looking at that ugly-ass seam again.

But I do enjoy making this hat and really like that it is reversible, so I’m sure another will find itself on my needles again…

5 Comments

Filed under knitting

Tagged as botanic hat, cascade 220, handknit hat, hats, knitting, malabrigo, reversible patterns, stephen west, superwash, wool

October 22, 2014 · 6:00 AM

Quilts (okay, a pieced top) in my past, part V

The last (I think) in a series including part I, part II, part III, and part IV.

I had a few contractor bags of textiles in storage. Normally, I would never store textiles in what was essentially a garage, nor recommend anyone to do so, and if I was staying at someone’s house and knew the bedding I’d be using had been in storage, I’d really consider sleeping uncovered on the floor, or in my car.

Of course I am thinking of bedbugs, lice, scabies, mold, crabs, moths, cooties, fungal infections, anal worms, stranger’s aerosolized sneezes and vomits, rats, mice and their hantavirus, cockroaches, and anything that can crawl, slither, hop, or stroll from someone else’s locker full of filth and dead bodies into mine. But I thought it would just be for a few months – but then it wasn’t…

But we checked on it three or four times a year, and I monitored it for stench and discolorations and chew marks and desiccated insect corpses (there were a few stinkbugs, but I’m used to those mysteriously making their way into our houses old and new anyway). But everything was fine – even the upholstered furniture. Everything that could be was washed was, and the furniture sprayed with diluted white vinegar and set out in the warm sun for the better part of a day.

One of the items bagged up for the last few years was a randomly pieced flannel duvet cover I made around six years ago.

The fabric is entirely N’s and my shirts and pajama bottoms – most dating from the Grunge era. Among my eclectic-dressing high school chums, we called a plaid flannel shirt “flaid plannel,” as in:

“What are you wearing to the show tonight?”

“Oh, a flaid plannel and my oxblood docs.”

(And do I need to remind you that was before docs were made in China?)

The orange and green shirt was a favorite of mine in high school (and paired well with reddish boots.)

And the yellow and black a favorite from college (paired with a secondhand and smelly, but awesome, pair of black docs). Some of the patches have oil paint and darkroom chemical stains. The grey and black was one of N’s shirts and one of the softest flannels I’ve felt, but also several sizes too large for him as was characteristic of the ’90s.

I don’t use actual quilts very often – in the summer I prefer a coverlet (or I need to make a lightweight quilt) and in the autumn, winter, and spring I have to have a down duvet. On the coldest nights, I’ll throw a wool blanket over the duvet, but down is the only thing that gets warm fast and stays evenly toasty but not too hot, and makes me a happy snoozer.

So this is not really a quilt, but a duvet cover with a pieced top, and since it’s washed more often than a quilt, some of the seams have popped open and are in need of repair. It’s also a bit too small – I hate that full/queen size in standard manufacturing since queen is bigger than full, they are not interchangeable – so I’d like to add another few inches to the width for better drape even if the feathers don’t fill it out.

Eventually.

The UFO has landed!

So yeah, I think this is the second-longest project I’ve had going, and it’s not amazing, and it wasn’t difficult, and I guess this is a great example of me going off on a tangent, getting sidetracked, distracted, moving-on-to-other-things-before-finishing-something-else-first, etc., etc., etc. In my defense, cotton is painful to knit and I got the confidence (or my sometimes slow brain started firing up) to move past plain old garter stitch when I was halfway through it. (I still do love garter though, especially since it rhymes with farter).

I first mentioned the blanket here, as one of my publicly declared UFOs I sort of intended to finish that year, and it was also somewhat responsible for the start of my blogging.

In the beginning, I wanted a cotton blanket for summertime sofa use. I wanted it to be reversible, and portable, so I made stripes/strips to sew together – only I didn’t pay attention to how long I made them and ended up with several (stupidly bound-off) in different lengths. The above image shows the way it looked c. 2008, and I don’t even know when I started it, but it was around 2001, and most of it was done c. 2001-2002.

(I’m tempted to go though my actual physical photographs to see if I can find one with it visible – crumpled in on the side table in my old apartment, but that would be yet another massive distraction).

I finally started back to work on it and came up with the plans for its final design in the Adirondacks last year – we traveled a lot when we lived in our last shitty apartment – if not for these fun weekends away, I probably would’ve have been eaten alive by the ner-do-well teens that spent too much time in the parking lot.

And I made a little more progress in the White Mountains last year when the power went out.

Then I put it down for a year while I worked on other things, but I left it in a handy place when we moved this last time so I wouldn’t have “loosing it in the move” as an excuse not to finish it.

I worked on it in the White Mountains again this summer – this time I had a nice chunk of time since I could’t hike.

I forgot to bring the yarn for one too-short multicolored stripe (I actually wondered why I had the stuff, and forgot what it was for!) and just finished it in white instead, which ended up to make for a better design in the end anyway.

And then I f*cked it up – I forgot that I had planned to do the two white stripes in the center (I even had photo evidence of the plan!) and I thought about keeping it as-is, but I ripped and re-sewed instead.

I got back on track, though sometimes I think I prefer the mistake version…

And went I home with most of the ends sewn in and only the border to do. I don’t love that knitting on the border made it no longer reversible, and I considered sewing on the border too, but I wanted the satisfaction of running the last few laps round and round, though they were very long and painful ones.

So it got a simple mitered corner.

And it actually matches our living room again – at least the yellow walls, and the [temporary] beige linen curtains.

Though we already need wool – the cotton doesn’t cut it for more than a few degrees of chill…

2 Comments

Filed under home decor, knitting, travel

Tagged as blanket, cabins, cotton, distractions, finishing things, garter stitch, knitting, lily sugar n cream, pooling, self-striping, throw, UFOs, white mountains

October 8, 2014 · 6:03 AM

Deer john and the changing seasons…

Random things of late…

Our garden is done, but the CSA is finally paying off – we completed a massive tomato and tomatillo salsa canning session last weekend.

The deer called Doe [rhymes with Zoe] might have had some babies, joined up with a larger family group, and has been bringing along another five or six to nibble at our backyard smorgasbord and leave an astounding number of shits – making me re-consider putting in a perimeter fence.

I found another alarming pile of poop of another kind when N moved one of our new window-unit air conditioners. I identified it possibly as:

1. bat guano

2. squirrel turds

3. roof rat droppings…

Amazingly, all of these beasts leave remarkably similar scat. I’m leaning toward bat though, because of the height of the window and I don’t want rats in our roof. Perhaps a bat took up residence in or under the air-conditioner while we were on vacation? But it didn’t stick around (at least I don’t think it’s in there still).

And I forgot to shoot the shit.

And speaking of bats, I do love them, and we’ve got plenty around here – I love watching them swoop in in the evenings and take out a sizable chunk of the even more sizable population of ‘skeeters. Eventually we’ll get around to building some bat houses.

I found out by accident that the giant spotty crickets that I found living near our well (that I was so startled by and didn’t bother to photograph in case I was the only one who saw them and they didn’t really exist) turned out to be another Asian invasion and quite common in the area. And now I’m wondering if they’re edible…

And we’ve finally experienced the yard in every season, and have identified all of the flora. The last hold-out was a large Burning Bush – I suspected that it could be one, and hoped it was so because otherwise it was a somewhat boring green thing.

Some of the weeds I never got around to pulling ended up being lovely flowers. I see the stuff around the roadsides here, so perhaps it’s native, or perhaps it’s an invasive beast? I wished I’d paid more attention to what it looked like when it was coming up, so I don’t pull it out next year, unless of course it is something to be rid of… I think it’s a Sunchoke. Anyone know if this variety is native to the Eastern states, or a nasty invader? I haven’t gone digging for the tubers yet.

And I have another pair of socks on the needles – these might end up being a gift.

I’ve been traveling for work a bit, and have enjoyed going by train, even though it adds another three hours to the trip. But the leg room is astounding, the cars are nearly empty (come on Americans, use it or loose it!) and the scenery on this particular route is nice.

I never wrote down (or can’t find my notes) my formula for going down a needle size or two for my standard socks, so I have to go through the misery again of figuring it out. In the meantime, I’m just using a heavier yarn and my old numbers…

And because of the new-to-us house and its ongoing expenses and labor (and my continued hobbled state) we decided not to go to Italy this year. The weather turning to autumn reminds me of my boots crunching along the trail in the warm central Apennine sun, so I’m a bit bummed out about it, but hopefully we’ll be back next year.

I also decided not to go to Rhinebeck to save money too – and since we’re often in Italy when it happens, this year was good timing for it – but I got enough of a fix at the New Jersey festival a few weeks ago.

I’ll have my own personal wool festival when I can finally unpack my boxes of the stuff soon…

5 Comments

Filed under gardening, hiking, home, knitting, travel

Tagged as Abruzzo, amtrak, Apennines, deer, dpns, floral and fauna, hiking, italian pottery, jerusalem artichoke, knitting, mountains, poop, Rhinebeck, saving money, scat, sock yarn, socks, sunchoke, tomatoes, trains, wool, yard

ASTITCHMATISM

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The UFO has landed!

Deer john and the changing seasons…

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