New distraction, and obsessed with Komebukuro

I have a new distraction, an ebike, and can now climb a hill to the house! That'll likely make me less productive, but I'll be smiling a whole lot...

I've tried to figure out what happened to my interest in mosaic. The answer is the Studio has become a dumping ground for all kinds of crapola... This week I spent some time organizing and cleaning. It'll need another couple of rounds then I'll back at in and finishing that little table.

One side of my komebukuro

I've also been spending a lot of time on the komebukuro kit I picked up in Oregon.  I'll be working on them again and should finish one just before Thanksgiving. Here's one of the panels, most of the embroidery done, bathed in the oversaturated light at the end of the day...  Currently wondering if I should make some bags using my awesome embroidery machine instead of doing it by hand? And wondering where to take the rice?

I'm mostly done threading the loom with ikat. I have low expectations for this project; there were a lot of issues getting the warp on. But the shifting looks better than I feared. Before I use the warp shifter for another project, I'll need to evaluate some best practices for both dyeing and dressing the loom.

On the knitting front, the body of the vest is finished and I'm working on sleeve bands, button bands, etc. I've got a start on a cashmere cardigan.  I also am not pleased with the silk sweater I made (Shiny) and need to maybe add a couple of darts and definately shorten the sleeves.

Ikat Warp shifter!!! Komebukuro, and some cooking

Warp shifter? More info in a later post

I asked DH to make an ikat warp shifter for me: I'm currently trying to learn how to use it. Here's a teaser photo! And when I'm weaving I'll publish a review and some notes. I suspect this won't be a good test as the warp was poorly dyed (by me)... but weaving it anyways.

The October cookbook was Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean... I choose a baked fish dish, covered with a tahini sauce and chopped hazelnuts; I'd cook that again. Paula suggested to eat it with pickled veggies, and yep, that's the right side dish. This cookbook is organized differently than most modern cookbooks, and may not appeal to everyone, and I enjoyed the stories about where she found the recipes... And the Eastern Med covers a HUGE area, which was fascinating as well. 

Pasta wanna-be

For DH's birthday, I made cheese canneloni and a salad with the last tomatoes from the garden... I took a photo at the start but failed to take one of the finished dish! I made a pan of 3 servings, and yep, they were all gone... but there are 2 smaller pans in the freezer to eat later.  We opened a bottle of 2007 Castello di Ama Chianti Classico that we bought at the winery on our 25th anniversary trip... it needed some time to open up and in act was a lot better on the 2nd day. We've noted that for the other bottle we have.

P. and I picked up a pattern and fabric kit for Komebukuro at Sew Creative in Ashland; awesome shop!!! Komebukuro are Japanese Rice bags, used to carry offering of rice to the temple... these bags are super popular for project bags or lunch bags right now. I bought a fabric kit for it but can easily see using leftover fabrics; these bags are embellished with applique, and sashiko and boro stitching.  So far I've sewn together the sides of two bags; the kit is supposed to have enough for three. I'll use scrap fabric for the lining and maybe get a couple more bags from the nice thickish fabric in the kit... (What am I going to do with a bunch of bags? Hmmm...)

On the weaving front, I'm working very slowly through warping with the warp shifter. I don't know what I'm doing and that makes me hesitate. I will likely warp up a runner on the other empty loom.

The beginnings of my komebukuro

Sewing wise, I have nothing currently planned other than the rice bags. 

I cast on the April Cardigan (a v-necked cardigan in blue cashmere) for travel knitting, repeatedly. I finally got the hang of the right facing and left facing increases and am knitting away. It's a simple top down cardi and it's going pretty fast in the DK weight cashmere.

Still working on the Modular Color Vest version 2, since I screwed up version 1 pretty badly. I'd unraveled it and cast it on a while ago. I'm about 2/3 complete. 

Craftsy! I'm using it!

I started this tote based on instructions in Christina Cameli's Craftsy Class (The
Scrappy Tote Bag). This is the 3rd bag I've made... the other two are in the trunk of DH's car and he regularly uses them for groceries. I made the two embroidered panels from another Craftsy class (Eileen Roche's The Machine Embroidered Quilt) when I first got the embroidery machine, and have been wanting to incorporate them into something since.

Craftsy, incidentally, is a learning service offering hundreds of video classes in mostly arts and crafts... Quilting, knitting, spinning, sewing, fine art, cooking, and a lot of other things. I joined during the pandemic; the first year is VERY inexpensive, and after the first year, a full subscription to as many classes as you can view is fairly reasonable. I do not use it to it's full potential, although I'd like to use it more often. I can give a free year to three friends so if you're reading this and want to check it out, let me know!

Grocery bag, all scraps; the embroidered
panels are a little wishy-washy

I like working on these bags because it gives me a chance to practice some basic skills on a small and low stress project ending with a lovely useful item. They are, however, not low effort projects; after piecing the panels together, they are hand quilted, then the bag is sewn together and lined. 

On this one,  I used Bernina's Pinpoint Placement for the applique, and the Stitch Regulator for the free hand quilting... I also used the walking foot for the bulky things like sewing on the straps, and a variety of other methods, tools, etc. All of the materials are scrap from my stash. 

This really refreshed many of the things I learned when I did the last bag in 2021... I really like to combo of colors and textures (you can't see texture in the photo). I do wish I'd used softer blues and reds to match the center panels better; they are pink on hand dyed indigo dyed cotton. But I didn't want it to be too feminine, and I suppose I have the election on my mind and am channeling our patriotic colors. The word Patriot, and things that are red, white, and blue, belong to both parties, although I suspect both sides forget that too often.

Construction wise, I need to remember to leave enough room on the straps to edge stitch the top after the lining is put in... that and relax and enjoy the quilting. I had one mishap with the rotary cutter (my nemesis!) where I destroyed one of the embroidered panels and had to do another. It's good to remember to be careful with very sharp things.

I do intend to make a bag for a charity auction in the spring... gotta get going on that... And the quilting is motivating me to do more quilting. Maybe finish a couple of the quilts I have in progress.

There's nothing on the looms right now. I started tearing strips of sheets for some rag rug weaving but wow! it's very slow. Meanwhile, DH has finally implemented the ikat warp shifter he's been thinking about for over a year now... it's ready and now I need to get a project on it!

I'll blog separately about the Knitting Retreat.

Now I know why they weigh the dough when
they divide it.. the runt tasted delicious !

I've been cooking a lot, too. I'm just back from a trip to France followed a week later by a trip to Ashland, Oregon for a knitting retreat. So I guess I'm "nesting" a little. Yesterday I cooked sheet pan ratatouille, and today I made slow cooker dal using olive oil instead of ghee, and Paul Hollywood's Ciabatta. All was tasty although the ciabatta didn't have the large airy holes it ought to... The bonus to both of the dishes is that I can store it in the nearly empty freezer for the next few months.  I did revive my sourdough starter and will try some sourdough later this week; I also do it to save the discard to make crackers for DH. It's nice to make him something he really enjoys :)

Q3 '24 finished list (7/19)

Motif from a 4000 year old Iranian pot

Let's face it, I'm not going to finish anything else before EOQ tomorrow...  This quarter I finished:

• Red fabric and a shirt from it just in time to wear to Sweden (counting as two items)
• A swedish rag rug while in Sweden
• 2 runners, one of which now lives in France. I'm keeping the on with too many mistakes :) It doesn't look much different from the sample on the loom I showed in an earlier post.
  
• Cowl using planned pooling, which looks like flowers on a brown background.  I don't have photos yet. 

  Crappy watercolor but fun cards?

  
  
• I carved a stamp depicting Zig, and made a small run of cards, Zig, the dancers, and my frog. And I took an old watercolor drawing and chopped it up into a few cards as well... Now I have a dozen cards plus 4 or 5 postcards.

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September's cookbook challenge was Plenty: I made the Veggie pie, which was pretty much a quiche with roasted tomatoes, onions, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, and feta. I'd make that again. 

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I think I said this a few posts ago, but I need to shift some of my attention from making things to working out; I've lost a level of fitness and frankly it's now or never. I need to revisit my time and priorities... But I'll still be working on things. 

I'd like to spend more time printing... so I'll be looking at a periodic goal to carve a new stamp or learn a new technique.

I'd like to work through some of the stuff that's on Craftsy.

I'd like to set a periodic goal to work though that list of unfinished projects I came up with last March.

SOOOOO.... having said all of that, this is what's on my list for Q4. Note that having said I'd devote more time to it, the list has gotten longer than any other quarter.

Finishing: 

• Those two darn towels I just can't seem to finish.

Printing:

• I need a Christmas card, and have no ideas.
• I'd like to carve a block depicting G&M's Zig.

Knitting:

• I frogged and restarted the Modular Color Vest. It should go fast, it's thick yarn; I'm about 1/4 done with it now.
• The Day Dream sweater (Frogging, need to start over), or another sweater.

Spinning:

• The Diver's Cove roving is singles, needs to be plied.
• I have a bobbin of merino/tencel singles that need to be plied.

Weaving:

• A basket? I have the materials
• I've loosely promised some vegetable towels by April or so. It would be nice to make one or more veggie bags to go with it.
• I have double weave pillows designed and colors picked out... I need 2 for me and two for K.
• An Ikat (DH is working on a warp shifter for me)
• Placemats for the lodge using rag rug techniques.
• The poppy table, so I can start the table by the pool. I came back from France with some ideas.

Sewing:

• The tote bag from the embroidered piece I made a few years ago.
• Finish a started quilt
• Work more with the embroidery class I started.

I'm including the UFO LIST from March just to keep me honest... And yes! It's getting shorter.

Knitting: 

• Anna Zilboorg Sweater- I need to fish it out and make a plan 
• A Capella- frog and return the yarn to the yarn pool 
• Sunset and Sand- needs a decision frog or finish! 
• The jacket with the embroidery that needs rework. If I recall correctly there's an issue with the collar, and the sleeves, and I'm not sure what else...

Weaving:

• This is super easy, since it's either on the loom or not...  and there are projects on both looms. 
• However, there are two hand towels that need hemming. 
• I do have four ikat warps (one I dyed, two from Indonesia, and one from a friend) that need weaving. 

Quilting (Can the list really still be this long?):

• Fan blocks: I've been dithering about what to do with them for 20 years or so.
• The first Judy Niemeyer quilt (straighter pieces): I may need to figure out setting strips but otherwise I think I photoed a layout and I should be ready to finish the top.
• The second Judy Niemeyer class (curved pieces): I stopped while piecing the top together but I did photo the layout; so I need to remember what I was doing and do it.
• Judy Niemeyer place mat kit: it's in the bookshelf, waiting to be made.
• Chili pepper quilt: Ick
• Around the Twist quilt: It's done except I think a couple of the corners need sewing? This'll probably go to donation
• One or two Hawaiians (small) that need quilting
• A cute but fussy quilt that I started in pinks and blues but I'm not sure I'm precise enough to finish

Sewing:

• I have all the pieces ready for a big grocery bag, just do it

Spinning:

• Honestly I have no idea.

Mosaic:

• A table: Unsure of how I want the background to be
• A stepping stone: there's an area I made that needs rework.

Clearly I'm not counting raw materials (quilting fabric, knitting yarn, weaving yarn, tiles, sewing fabric). Let's not go there.

Some cards...

I took a class on my birthday from Molly Hashimoto, a print artist who's work I admire greatly... The class was relief printing (lino block) combined with water color. My goal was to create something quickly and get feedback before I went on vacation!

Photo, drawing, 
drawing transferred to block

I settled on a photo of the Ziggle... Carved in the rubbery Speedball speedycut block.  I don't happen to like this material; I feel like I don't have much control, and in fact struggled to get the lines around the eyes correct (I finally fixed them with a Sharpie). I also gouged out too deep of a line on one of the whiskers. After some reflection, and thinking about how Molly carved in her demo, I think my issue is that I'm going too deep. 

Colorized. Molly suggested I tint the mouth pink
and add some shading with blue (bottom right);
I don't have the water color skills for the shading

Here it is colorized; I fixed a section of the nose and drew in the right pupil by Sharpie. It's printed on watercolor paper or postcard (whatever I had) with a water soluble oil based ink, then watercolored with leftovers from my water color class. The eye color is pretty close to Zig's and I prefer the bluer green in the background. It definately captures his character, and I feel it's got a rough feeling of the old Kabuki posters... The one on the left is affixed to a card. I'm ridiculously pleased with these. 

I also printed up a few more frogs, and some of the dancers I'd copied from a 4,000 year old (chalcolithic) vase from Iran... Looking forward to carving some more!

Things that work:

• Putting a border around the print frames it and prevents some of the carving chatter marks. Breaking the border with an element of the picture can be effective.
• Carving deep on the speedy cuts doesn't work, but carving shallow might be fun to experiment with. I have colored ink; Molly uses almost exclusively black.
• Need to wait for the ink to dry to water color; 2 days seems good (depending on weather).
• A drying rack is a good idea.
• I ripped the paper which give fun edges, but I didn't rip all sides; maybe rethink this, or use the paper cutter for straighter sides. It might have been easier to use paper that was larger than I needed, I cut them pretty close.

And a quick note... the Cowl is done, the runners are done. No photos of them yet.

Going deep on a couple of subjects...

Let's face it, getting Covid on my trip to Sweden has derailed my travelogue...  I will get back to it... but meanwhile, this is some of what I'm doing; I'll go deep on a few things instead of being comprehensive.

Sourdough

There was something wrong with my starter... I suspected mold so I discarded it and tried to capture wild stuff. It's an interesting process; at first it smelled like dirty socks, then more dirty socks... but after a week it had a nice sour taste and smelled like beer. I assume it goes through phases as it acidifies (lactic acid) then finally settles on a colony of yeast and bacteria that are more pleasing to my nose. 

After 10 days, I'm baking bread... the starter doesn't seem as robust as it could be and I frankly was out of time baking-wise so I had to just slam it in the oven; it hasn't risen as the other batches did.  I've parked the starter in the fridge for the week (too much discard to process into crackers!!) and will revive it and try again next week; if it doesn't work I'll start over in October with the freeze dried starter I just got from the mill. 

V. mentioned that you can ask a nice baker to give you some starter in France... I may talk to Tartine if that doesn't work.

Cowl

I realized I didn't have enough yarn to finish... And I don't want to buy more (it's an indy dyer, so probably couldn't get any to match well enough anyways!) The cowl has an interesting feature where it increases 10 stitches then decreases 10 stitches then joins for the neck part. I asked my knitting buddies and we have no idea why the pattern maker did that; the only thing we can figure is that it might be to make it lay flatter on the back? So I ripped out the section of 10 increases and 10 decreases and joined it. I will have plenty of yarn now to finish. I need to buy a brown top to wear it with...

I think the reason I ended up short on yarn is because I've doubled the icord edge on both sides (knitted the 3 stitches twice), to make it lay flatter. I'm happy with that decision.

Weaving Stuff

Crappy hotel room pic of 
the rag rug

I might have implied I was in Sweden to weave a rug (I was) and so there is a new rug... It has these cute little bow inlays that probably won't survive an vacuum cleaner so it'll be a wall piece. Right now it's laying over an ottoman at the lodge, and I think I'd like to weave a rug to lay over the ottoman...

The rug is about 2'x4'. I was inspired by the water lilles (neckrosen) I saw in the Lund botanical gardens and in the river backwaters in Broby. The challenge I gave myself was to use whatever yarn was left after folks picked their colors and make something attractive... It's based on a VERY similar rug made by Nina <last name> our stand in teacher in <get the books name>. 

I'm currently dyeing fabric according to Marie Rollander's instructions, but using procion dyes.  Looks like the ingredient quantities are the same, but she uses washing soda instead of soda ash; I assumed I needed half as much soda ash as washing soda (I need to verify that). I used WAY too much blue dye and not quite enough green dye, so I have dark blues and lighter greens; I like them though. I dyed sheets I had here, plus some from the Thrift Store in San Carlos; the thrifted ones cost me less than $5 a sheet and one was a fun grey pattern with green animals on it. These will become placemats and a runner for the lodge.

Runners on the loom

I'm also making a couple of runners... One for a hostess gift, the other? Maybe we'll use it or maybe it will go in the potential hostess gift pile. I'll attribute the designer and pattern source in a later post.

Other

I've been trying to recover from the Covid episode... mostly I've just been fatigued. Until late last week, I could do one thing per day and the rest of the time I laid around or napped. To be fair, sometimes the one thing was two hours of chopping down brush and hauling it to the chipper pile, so it's not that bad. But I'm finally able to get back to a normal level of activity, and starting to build fitness back. 

I've been doing a fair amount of cooking as well... the only recipe of note was the peach ice cream recipe from The Perfect Scoop.  The fresh peaches give it a beautiful taste and a wonderful peachy pink color. If I made it again, I'd use half and half instead of heavy cream, but it was a delightful dessert along with a plate of fresh berries and sliced peaches.

Travelogue, Broby part 1

 I took the train from Copenhagen to Hassleholm, Sweden to meet up with the tour. The trains are neat and well kept and relatively ontime. What a pleasure to see Sarah and Simon again! We settled down in Broby to start our explorations the next day...

Broby Gastis

We stayed at the Broby Gästgivaregård, a 17th century building that was probably originally an old farmhouse... During the years that Skania was ruled by Denmark, the Danish King established a chain of stables through the region so he could change out his horses when travelling through the region; this became one of them. The last remodel re-exposed a lot of the old beams and gives the building a lot of character; despite it's age it's a comfortable place to stay. It wasn't clear to me if Sylvia and Frederick own it, or just run it; but it's well run with exceptional food.

The very. next morning, I woke up feeling super-crappy and emailed Sarah asking her to bring me a covid test. I tested positive and crawled back into bed. I had about two days of mild fever and slept a lot; then spent the next few days taking slow walks around town while the rest of the group went to the weaving class. Of course I could not join them.

Usually when we travel, DH and I are quite active and busy seeing everything we can possibly fit it... We don't have the concept of "slow travel" figured out. This forced quiet time for me was actually very enjoyable, just to slow down and look at what was around me. 

An old bridge

There's a history park with some old buildings

View from another bridge... this place is beautiful

Old railway converted to a rail-bike path

I also walked through the grocery store a few times, masked... I found this in the cat food aisle. The brand is pronounced Meow...

On the day we left Broby to transition to Lund, I tested negative, but a couple folks were not comfortable sharing a car with me; they took the tour van and I took the bus and train, which was frankly more enjoyable than a trip in the van!