Here’s What Was Missing

Ha! I finally got the computer to speak to my camera card. So that means photos! Finally.

You might have to go back to yesterday’s post for clarification if you missed any of the details. Anyway, here’s the rayon/silk velvet (actually rayon pile on a silk backing) as I was cutting out my modified version of Katherine Tilton’s B5891 View C/D jacket:

You can see just how much of the yardage is left and how I had to squeeze the sleeve in so that there’s barely a seam allowance left at the armpits. The unused width on the right there is needed for the continuous collar/front bands of my modified jacket/cardigan. You can also see how the selvedges on this fabric are kind of wavy. Hopefully this won’t give me too hard of a time when sewing the bands. It may need a bit of easing to avoid a rippling seam. We’ll see. That piece is going to be treated with the devoré paste first though so who knows what it will look like after that plus a couple of dyebaths, rinsing, drying and ironing!

And here are my devoré samples from Thursday’s Spectrum session:

Not terribly exciting but I learned quite a lot from doing them – it’s harder than it seems like it ought to be! They were drying on my deck table in the sunshine when I snapped the pic so they’re a bit wrinkled and more transparent. Later I’m going to mordant them with alum acetate so they’ll be ready for a natural dye session with Spectrum next month. The actual jacket will be dyed in Procion MX and acid dyes though so I probably should do more samples before I tackle the real thing. I have some scraps still left to play with as well as my own bottle of Fiber Etch. This velvet fabric is stupid-expensive (at least from Maiwa where I got mine) and I don’t want to ruin it.

In other news, I finished another test knit for Sanjo Silk. Jo had knit one herself in the small size (before writing up the pattern!) and accidentally shrank it in the wash! Oops. So I knit her a large size and found a few errors in her pattern as written. Which was the whole point of the exercise, no? Really, aren’t they cute together? They kept making me smile until I turned them in to the shop.

The yarn is a yummy silk/wool blend from Italy and obviously not superwash! It did hold up well to the many frogging sessions it had to endure while I tried different cast-ons for the cuff and different interpretations of the eyelet check pattern. Personally, I think it would be better for shawls or even a fine-gauge sweater than socks. I’m much too hard on my handknit socks for something this nice. It’s also available in undyed as well as this rich red. Maybe it’s a good thing they’ve sold out of the black or I just might have been tempted!

So it’s still raining today because it’s still the weekend, of course. I had to leave the squashes and cucumbers under the lights because I didn’t want to get soaked putting them out in the greenhouse. If it was nicer today we’d be cleaning out the greenhouse and getting it ready to plant the tomatoes. After all, if they can stay in the greenhouse overnight in pots then they can be planted in there too, right? There’s some work to do first however – clearing it out, washing down the inside walls and adding compost and Sea Soil to the beds. It needs to be dry for a few days sometime too to enable an attempt to caulk the annoying leaks in the roof. One of the acrylic panels is cracked and pulling away and the previous repair isn’t doing anything useful. We’ve had this greenhouse for quite a few years now so some wear and tear is to be expected. It’s been great though especially now that we have automatic openers on the skylights. They open when the temperature gets too warm inside and close when it cools down. Saves a lot of fussing on our part. Also the shade cloth that goes on in June or July (depending on the weather) helps to keep it a few degrees cooler in summer than it would be otherwise. In winter we store the tomato cages, water garden, deck pots and Lazy Rosie, my potted rosemary bush inside. And I’m sure you noticed how I use it in spring to help harden off the seedlings until they can get into their permanent spots. It’s an all-year-round important part of my garden.

Gee, seems like all I can discuss lately is gardening, isn’t it? No, it’s not all I do! Honest. This is simply the time of year when it takes the most work to get everything cleaned up and off to a good start so it’s the most time-consuming. Later on almost all that’s needed is watering, harvesting and an occasional weeding. Both Thom and I really enjoy the work. Much more fun than going to a gym! And with something more to show for our efforts too. We have a system between us that works well. He takes care of compost, digging, mowing, the majority of pruning, some weeding and helping me tie things up. I do the seedlings, transplants, shaping the beds, fiddly weeding, deadheading and harvesting. We both water. And a little at a time the job gets done.

I’m very attached to my wee piece of land. Come to think of it, it’s attached to me too – under my fingernails! Heh!

Well nobody wanted to hear my May Day song and I forgot to wish everyone a happy Beltane, so now I’m trying to resist saying “May the fourth be with you” but obviously couldn’t help myself…

You Can Tell

I am definitely feeling much better. For starters, I got my hair cut! It turned out really cute this time too. Probably helped that I had lots of hair for my hairdresser to play with, huh? At least now I’m not drowning in my bangs. I could just hear my dear old dad grumping at me from my teenaged years, “Get that hair out of your eyes!” It was looking exactly like it did when I was 15. Thanks, Poppy.

I also dyed my fabric for my next dress. I did all the usual things. First I soaked the already washed cotton/lycra interlock. Surprisingly more magenta dye was still bleeding out so I changed the soaking water a couple of times. Then I arranged it in my big stainless steel buffet tray. Of course it had to be scrunched up to fit:

I mixed a teaspoon (approx. 5 gm) of each Procion MX dye into its own plastic cup and dissolved it with warm water. I used yellow-gold, emerald (a proprietary Maiwa colour), and navy. I began by drizzling over the yellow-gold and then the emerald (a quite bluish-green). Then I mixed up soda ash at 10% of the weight of the fabric (which was 750g x 10% = 75g) and dissolved it in hot water. I sprinkled about 2/3s of this soda solution over the fabric in the tray and poked it all in with a gloved hand. Lastly I used a teaspoon to splash some navy on anywhere where it was looking pale. By this point the fabric was very dark. I covered it all up with plastic so nothing would dry out:

Since there was some of the navy dye and soda ash left, I stuffed a small plastic pail with a wet piece of cotton t-shirt knit, another one of the freebee fabrics from my former neighbour. I added a little warm water and the leftover navy dye. After about 15 minutes I added the rest of the soda ash solution and covered up the bucket with a lid.

The two dye containers were left overnight – not that they needed that long but because I ran out of time. Yesterday morning I rinsed out the fabric from the tray in cold water quite a few times. There’s always some wash-off of excess dye but this took a number of rinsings before it seemed to slow down. Then I plopped the fabric into the biggest dyepot with a splash of Synthrapol (which helps a lot with removing excess dye) and brought it up to a simmer on the dye stove. I also added the blue piece to the pot after rinsing it a few times too. It takes about 10 minutes at a simmer to remove any more excess dye:

Lastly I squeezed out the water and put it the fabrics in the washing machine and ran them through a regular wash and then into the dryer.

The results were somewhat disappointing because one of the dyes I used (the emerald Procion MX) was D.E.A.D. I was wondering why there was so much green washing out in the rinse water! Unfortunately I figured it out around about 5 minutes into the simmering step. Doh. The emerald dye had been in the stash for quite awhile and was pretty old. Possibly decades. So I don’t really blame it for kicking the bucket. The other colours I used (yellow-gold and navy) stuck nicely. However that left a lot of magenta areas on the fabric. Yes, several of my Faithful Readers. You may now do the happy dance. Damselfly has fabric that is not Dull and Muddy! One must be accepting of the results that one achieves, right? Besides, it’s kinda pretty:

That’s just one little section to give you a hint. Now I can’t wait to make the dress. However, instead I’ve been stuck back into the Bra Wars. You know things are bad when you dream of bra pieces all night long! But darn it, I’m still not there yet. The cradle is good; the wires are fine but the cups…not so much. I made a tester bra and as I suspected I need to go back to the drawing board (literally) on the cups. I also need to pick out the cups and wires from the tester cradle in order to try again with new cups. Sigh. Why is it that I just can’t get this right? I’m so envious of the other lovely lingerie I’ve seen others make and I SO WANT SOME!! Grrrr….

Is Refashioning Really a Word?

I just read a really interesting post on A Fashionable Stitch. (Do read the thoughtful comments too.) Sunni talks about refashioning and expresses the same views that I share: it’s difficult and the results are not always worth the effort. Not to say that some creative and skilled people don’t do a fabulous job with making new clothes out of old ones! But I think that other people don’t have the kind of brain that can easily see those kinds of possibilities. I believe that it’s in the same area as draping – a 3-dimensional way of perceiving – that I, for one, have difficulty with. I’m much more of a 2-D thinker. Flat patternmaking stuff. I can use voluminous garments as yardage. I can piece flat bits together. I can shorten hems, take in sides, chop off sleeves. But I totally blank at the really creative metamorphosis that results in the kind of attractive and wearable garments that I admire most. Ones that don’t look jury-rigged in some way and that you can wear in real life. I guess I’ll just leave most of the really cool refashioning to others while I gaze at their works in awe.

In crafty news, I forgot to show off the ATCs that I made last week at our Spectrum Study Group meeting.

These are for a swap we’re having at my weaver’s guild meeting this month. I used some hand-dyed cotton (parfait dyed with Procion-MX) and stamped it with a couple of my hand-cut leaf stamps and metallic fabric paints. Then I stitched on a few seed and bugle beads to make kind of a little flower thingy for each card. To keep it simple I didn’t do too much beadwork. After the decorating I used Steam-a-Seam 2 to attach cardstock to the back which was printed with my name, the date and some other info such as the techniques used. The previous steps were all done with the cloth in one piece, i.e. ganged. Then I finally cut them apart and machine zigzagged the edges. And there ya go – 1 dozen ATCs. I really didn’t want to spend too much time on these because I’m unsure as to how many others will be trading. Though even if I don’t swap them all at the guild, I’ll have some available for future swaps.

Don’t tell anyone, but 3 extras came out 1/4” too small. AAAK!! Illegal ATCs! Guess I’ll hang on to them. Obviously I can’t measure accurately some days.

What else? Oh yeah. The weather has been mostly sunny and quite a bit warmer so we’ve been spending some quality time in the garden. I have the dirty pants’ knees to prove it! Still schlepping a ridiculous number of seedlings in and out every day though. This is getting old. I can hardly wait until they get planted so I can stop the madness! Unfortunately it’s still too cool at night for the tomatoes, cucumbers and squashes to stay out yet.

Obviously I haven’t had much time to spend in the studio. I have quite a number of top patterns to work on now. I also finally broke down and cut the BurdaStyle pleat-neck blouse out of an old sheet to test the fit. The fabric is a lovely mid-weight cotton in a supremely ugly shade of light brownish-pink. No, it wasn’t mine but rescued from T-Man’s late auntie’s stash. The label even says “100% cotton muslin, made in USA” and you sadly can’t buy this quality of sheets any more. I’ve decided to sew it in green thread so that if by some miracle it actually fits, I can over-dye the blouse in my favourite moss green Procion-MX (a proprietary mix from Maiwa). When used in low-water immersion techniques it separates out into some lovely effects. Polyester thread won’t take the dye so if I use something that is closer to the final colours it will be more inconspicuous even if it doesn’t match exactly.

Gotta get out in the garden. Pull weeds while the sun shines! I’ll leave you with this interesting shot taken by my friend Cathie near her house:

Yes, that is a partially albino robin. Still has the red breast and the dark eye but is missing the grey colour. One in 30,000! Do read the article I linked for more interesting info.

Even More Random Friday

For those who weren’t able to guess, that was a raccoon who visited my water garden — again — and left his or her muddy footprints on my deck. Often they will knock the spout and The Auk (my lovely rusting metal bird) into the water but this time they left it alone. I used to have glass bubbles in there and water plants but they were too big of a temptation. Both for the raccoons and the grandkids! So I just have pretty rocks in the bottom now. The raccoons tend to come around early in the morning while it’s still dark, even earlier than I get up, so I rarely see them. They are not discouraged by the motion-sensor light on the garage either. Cheeky brats. No wonder they wear bandit masks.

I went along to my Spectrum Study Group yesterday. We had a lovely time solving Guild problems. working on small projects and deciding what we were going to do for the next few months. Our new Study Project that we came up with could be really interesting. Since we usually manage to avoid finishing anything and instead collect a heap of samples, this time we will actually insist on a completed product: make a bag or purse or tote using a particular word for inspiration. We each picked a book (there are a lot of them layered on Jo Anne’s coffee table!) and randomly selected a page and chose a word from the text there. Then we passed that word to the person on our right. I got “sari” from Cathie and passed on “landscape” to Masami. Some of the other words were “pandemonium” and “checkerboard” but I can’t remember the rest because I was already thinking about how to use “sari” and what I would make. I even spent some time this morning thinking about it while I should have been sleeping. I could use a small wrist bag that will hold a ball of yarn while I’m knitting. And I would like to use my Indian metal sequins and wooden block stamps from Maiwa on it. That’s as concrete as I’ve gotten so far.

Speaking of Maiwa, they have some excerpts from the last Symposium in podcast format. You can download them individually or subscribe in iTunes. I was present at two of the lectures (Elizabeth Barber and Jane Callender) but it’s lovely to hear some of it again. Jane’s is a video podcast too so you can see as well as hear. Her indigo shibori is breathtaking! And I got to see and touch some of it in person. Whee!

While the members of Spectrum were all working on various projects (beading a name tag, pasting another Miao sewing kit, knitting paper yarn into a scarf, needle felting etc.) Masami and I poured over The Scary Page of Symbols in my Knitting Patterns Book 250. These are the truly complex ones that aren’t diagrammed, just written instructions in Japanese. And my new Clear & Simple Knitting Symbols book doesn’t go quite that far since these are very specialized symbols that are rarely used, maybe only in this book? I don’t know for sure, but Masami can both knit and read Japanese so we puzzled many of them out together. It was excellent brain exercise, that’s for sure! I will try to write up what we discovered in more detail later in case there are others out there having trouble with this book who don’t have a dear, patient and most generous friend like Masami handy.

And speaking of study groups, I just realized that I need to have 8 pieces completed and sent off for a Complex Weavers Beads & Interlacements Study Group swap before the end of the month. The theme is “hearts” and I’ve decided to knit and felt hearts and apply beads to them after as a small ornament. I plan to use the Heartfelt pattern from Berroco because I thought it was cute with its little curly point. However I haven’t located any suitable yarn in the stash yet. Whether I will spin or dye or purchase or some combination of the above, I’d better get a move on if I want to meet the deadline.

Meanwhile I’ve almost finished the second leg of the Unmentionables. I had to join in a new ball of yarn which made me very nervous. It’s not like cotton will spit-splice like wool. And I was knitting circularly which means there are no side-seams to hide the join in. I had to separate the plies and twist them together. It’s fairly inconspicuous if not entirely invisible. I just hope it holds up to washing and wearing.

I also got a little farther on the feet of the Sea ‘n’ Sky Socks while at the Spectrum meeting. Though I did screw one sock up somewhat and had to switch to the other one until I could fix the mistake this morning when I was fresh. Luckily having two socks on the go at the same time means that I have options. I also got in some more on the fronts of the Hepburn Cardi while watching TV last evening. It seems that working on so many projects at once that none of them go very fast but at least there is some visible progress on each one.

It’s raining today so I can’t really take any good photos nor can I get out to plant my belated peas and onions. While I’m waiting for the weather to cooperate, I can peruse the Thr3fold Journals that I borrowed from Jo Anne so I can see if I need to get them for myself. These are inspirational surface design books each with accompanying CD which include videos as well as picture files and other information that complements the books. The authors are a British mother and daughter, Linda and Laura Kemshall, and a local Canadian quiltmaker, Catherine Nicholls. Jo Anne’s copies are personally autographed by Catherine!