Q2 2018 Completed Things (7)

April:

Not a summer top...

I call it ramatamadingdong.

I'm procrastinating everything, so decided to clean up the studio by finishing a T Shirt I started a year ago and never finished because I did not like the neck. Sleeves are a little short and I'm still not sure I like the neck, but it's moved from the bin of unfinished projects to the laundry pile by way of my sewing machine and iron. You can't tell in the photo, but it's a lovely dark green interlock. Perfect for wearing around the house or out and about! And finished, on the second day of Q2...

The Tam is complete, with seven rams circling my head... I have enough fiber left for fingerless mitts!

This is the summer top!

I wanted to make the summer top out of one of my batiks, but after I washed it, I realized it's a little stiff. It'd make a lovely camp shirt, but not a tank. So back to Joann's, and found this lovely blue denim type fabric with embroidered flowers. Shirt features flat felled seams and Hong Kong finishes on the armholes and neckline in a cotton knit T-shirt fabric.

The Ruana is complete. I am loving it,  and wearing it multiple times a week, even though the fall colors are slightly unseasonal... I'll need to take a photo!

And I made a couple of back scrubbing clothes for my DH out of some plain old kitchen cotton. I ended up with 2 scrubbers, woven with some texture and handles sewn into the hem at both ends, and one face cloth. He likes them! And a bonus, they coordinate better with the bathroom colors. His old one will retire to the shower by the workout room, where it's green color is a better match.

May:

Can I count painting the garage as a May accomplishment? Probably not. But it took 3 long days.  I'd like to say it looks great but the two cans of paint I used were not close enough in color (yes, I bought them at the same place); after the nice men finish with the new cabinet installation,  I'll see if it needs some touch up. I think there's two spots that will bug me, easy to fix...

Delavan almost complete, with Owl
photobombing.

I made a second pajama top out of flannel sheep fabric, since I enjoyed the first one so much. Flat feel seams, hand hemmed sleeves and bottom, contrasting color and pockets. Otherwise nothing interesting here.

I finished my version of the Delavan jacket, the Delavan vest. See my blog post for all the details.  I added self lined patch pockets on the front (after blogging).

Aglets

Here are the laces looking for an aglet solution!

A brief search of my blog shows that there are no indications of my growing obsession with aglets!!!  What are aglets, you might ask? According to Wikipedia, an aglet is a small sheath, often made of plastic or metal, used on each end of a shoelace, a cord, or a drawstring.  

My quest has been to figure out how to finish a card woven band for a bootlace. John Mullarkey, at a class I took from him at Stitches West in 2017, suggested saturating the lace in glue and then rolling it between two fingers until dry; then perhaps coating with nail polish. John's laces look fabulous; really; but I was hoping for a different finish.  Google query yielded Ian's Shoelace site which is phenomenal;  there are a bazillion ways to thread your laces, tie you shoe know, and sure enough, a section on aglets for those who have lost an aglet or wish to shorten their shoelace. 

So I ordered a hot air gun, and a bunch of heat shrink tubing. I initially tried 3/16" (5mm) clear dual wall with adhesive... it looked lovely, though a little clunky, but would not fit through the thingy the lace goes through. What are those called? There's got to be a word for it. So I enlisted DH's help, and he ordered me a set of different sized heat shrink tubes. One of the tubes barely fit and had to be coaxed on to the laces and pulled by a string, but it seems to be the right size; without a metric ruler, I'm guessing it's either 2.5mm or 3mm diameter. And it fits his boot!

5mm on top (pudgy) unknown but suspected 2.5 mm (svelte) on bottom, untrimmed!

A brief history of the laces... I decided that my DH needed cool bootlaces for his hiking boots, which double as his scooter boots.  So right before I went to Esalen, I warped up the loom to make them,  and ASSUMED that three yards of lace was enough. Sadly, I need approximately 10 feet, so despite all my rapid work, I only have one lace, plus a whole bunch left over. At least I have plenty to play with the aglets!  So I'll need to warp up again for shoelace #2. And since DH uses the scooter to bring me coffee on Sunday mornings, maybe I'll use the remained for a tie on a coffee thermos bag?

Mat! and summer top!

Last weekend,  I took another Navajo weaving class from Linda Teller Pete and Barbara Teller Ornalez... What a amazing pair of sisters, and another amazing class. Here's the mat I made; it's about 7 by 10 inches. Note that the bottom square are done a whole lot better than the top squares!!! I got better as I went along :) The only thing I didn't care for about the class was the speed at which we had to work... there's a lot of techniques that change as you work from the bottom to the top of the mat, so you need to finish in a very intense 3 days.  Still, a very amazing class from two amazing women, and I loved my classmates. And! I bought a loom, so more to come!

I've also been trying to make a top for my sewing class. When I made a muslin from the commerical pattern (Simplicity 8061), I realized it needed some adjustments. First I lowered the darts. Then noticed that the armholes gaped a bit... I added a dart at the front armhole, and walked it down to join the french dart... then raised the back shoulder to eliminate the back armhole dart, and redrew the armhole to compensate, which made the armhole gape more. Ronda, our instructor, suggested back darts which make it lay amazingly smooth on my back! But that made the front gape. And adjusting the back shoulder seam made the shoulder not line up where it should, and after I fixed that the bust dart was too low again. so I redrafted it to a lower point. What a lot of changes. I made four muslins, then constructed the top out of cheap material I didn't care about ruining. The husband's comments? It's flattering, and seems well constructed, and it fits really well. I'm thrilled enough to use the same pattern on some batik he brought me from Indonesia :) All in all very satisfying.

Minor progress on my hat, on my skirt, and no progress on weaving. I wound a couple of warps for the upcoming Kathrin Weber dye workshop, but need to wind 3-4 more PLUS label the bejeebers out of them. Slowly but surely I'm working through being over-committed!

Nothing to do with fiber or food!

I just got back from a five day Mosaic intensive taught by Wilma Wyss at Esalen... Fabulous class, beautiful venue...  I learned so much!!!

After making a test piece, we sketched a design. I challenged myself to make it representative of something at Esalen. I thought about poppies; they're just starting to bloom. Then I though about Monarch butterflies, which were everywhere, and resolved to mosaic a butterfly. Then I went back to the art room, where folks had been choosing colors, and making sure they had bountiful glass for their mosaics and there was no orange left... So I resolved to use the colors that I had. This view inspired me.

Which became this sketch. Wilma helped me simplify the design and gave me suggestions on how to run the grout lines to make it interesting.  A quick perusal of the glass that was left made me decide on a grey sky, green ocean and purple hills.

I also dived into Wilma's scrap bins and found some blues for the ocean and some browns for the hills. Richard, my Esalen big brother, donated some blues as well. The big step was freeing myself to quickly and un-fussily place the ocean tiles without pre-planning... 

Finally, I debated the grout. A lighter grout would have served the sky better, a darker grout better for hills and sea. I picked the dark and have no regrets. I am thrilled beyond belief at how it came out.

And Esalen? I feel I should say something. Such a stunningly beautiful place filled with exceptional caring people offering love and respect.  And I heard over and over how people don't feel alive outside of Esalen, that they can't create the same sacred space in their everyday, that their community in the outside world is unexceptional or non-existent. One woman wailed that she could not bear to leave Esalen and go back to her old existence. How sad that is to me! I find myself wondering what the world would be like if these people brought all this wonderful energy and community home with them?

Q1 2018 Completed Things (4)

Feb: Pale blue pajama top, just waiting for night time!

If you know me, you'll know that that I never feel like I'm doing enough. This blog is one way for me to visually see some of what I'm getting done! I'll update this post through the year (in quarterly bites) to show what's getting finished, as it gets finished, using small photos if it's pictured elsewhere in this blog.

Esalen Mosaic Landscape

January: Nothing finished all the way in January... lots of work done through.

February: Lots of work, again, primarily in quilting, sewing, and knitting. For finished projects, there's this pale blue all cotton flannel pajama top; I used Tumble Dye spray dye on the flannel to get the gradient affect; it's subtle and I love it. It features both flat felled and french seams, as well as a Hong Kong finish on the lower hem and double binding on the sleeves. The collar seam is enclosed using a facing-less technique that was a little fussy but effective. I'm wearing this all the time.

Small Navajo rug, now in the collection of my DH...

March:   I completed the above smallish mosaic at a Wilma Wyss workshop at Esalen; I've treated the grout so it's now suitable for hanging outside.

And I finished this little mat from a Navajo Weaving class with Lynda and Barbara...

And Yay! I finally have a pattern that will work for my sleeveless summer top. I cut and sewed it today out of come cheap (but cute!) sale fabric from Joann's; it's got typewriter keys all over it and I want to call it "My Sister the Author". Since it worked and got DH approval for cuteness, I'll cut and sew the same out of some lovely batik he brought me from Indonesia. Then I'll have two super cute and unique summer tops to add to my wardrobe.

Olympics and the report from Stitches West!

This weekend was the big Stitches West show... I took 3 classes and tried to avoid buying things in the marketplace.  Here's a synopsis.

Thursday, I took a class in Kivrim style card weaving from John Mullarkey. If you ever have a chance to take a class from John, do it! It was delightful AND I learned so much! And wove a short band! Turns out this particular pattern is not that difficult. I'm suspecting with a little concentration, I could possibly be a card weaver...

The Tam class was very useful. As always, I learned a lot from Candace Eisner Strick.  I won't post another Tam photo until it's done. Candace is the author of Knit My Skirt, so I showed her the skirt I made from a knitted shirt that was WAY too big (see my 11/27/16 post); she was very entertained.

The Bohus class didn't yield much more information than the class I took from Susanna Hansen... I did finally buy the Poems of Color book, and a background color for a sweater. I had hoped to design a Bohus inspired yoke myself but I'm thinking I'll see if I can adapt something from Poems of Color, and save my designing energy for another project.

A small number of fiber items managed to come home in my market bag...

On other topics, we have been watching a lot of the Olympics! Hurray for the Women's XC relay Gold!!! I've been knitting primarily on my skirt, since I can pretty much do that without looking, and I've made Olympic level progress!  Maybe I'll measure it. I am now thinking it might be ready to wear by summer.

I also finished my Pajama top for my sewing class; my denim yarn still needs blocking; and my quilt blocks for the Clamshell quilt are all together!  I'll put most projects on hold for a week or so; I'm heading to Big Sur for a 5 day mosaic intensive in a week, so will be trying to wrap up some garden projects before I leave.

A Little Bit of Everything!

With two college classes and all the other classes I've been taking, it's been busy. I'm feeling a little recklessly hectic! I'll try to catch up on the highlights here...

My denim colored singles are now all 2 ply yarn. I need to wet-finish it and I want to try steam blocking it; then will publish photos. I've done so many demo days on this yarn, I've got basically two different weights... At this point I'm debating whether to pin weave it into a shawl, like I'd originally thought or weave a blanket out of it for the TV room; the colors match in their perfectly. Pictures will come once the yarn is wet finished.

Stephenie Gaustad's workshops were stupendous. The first day, we spun wool and talked about spinning for weaving. I learned the basic characteristics of a good warp (it can't drift, not one little bit) and how to figure the sett for a yarn. Apparently there's this formula called the Ashenhurst formula, which relates the yards per pound (YPP) to the number of warp threads per inch for a balanced weave; Stephenie says it's spot on about 90% of the time. I'm so excited to try this! The second day was cotton, linen, ramie, etc... I can spin cotton a lot better now.

Clamshell quilt color layout

I took a Judy Niemeyer Quilt class at Scruffy Quilts in San Mateo; what a lovely little shop!  The class was one Sunday near the beginning of January and another Sunday about a month later. I worked very very hard at getting almost all of the blocks done in time for the class so I could get instructor help with the color balancing the layout. The other student cancelled at the last minute so it was just me and the instructor; she not only helped with my layout, but also did a lot of the repetitive tasks for me. Thank you Gretchen! It's like getting a bump up the hill on a bicycle. I've still got a long way to go but I'm so much closer...

Speaking of classes, my two academic classes are Intermediate Sewing and Fashion Illustration. I'm loving the Intermediate Sewing class... Our first project is a pajama top, which I'm making from light blue flannel. I bought some spray dye and darkened the hems. It's either going to look great or look silly; we'll see.  I've started working on the second project, which is a sleeveless shirt; I've been looking at this for some time and I'll be able to get instructor help to fit it! The pattern has a number of necklines and sleeve lengths, so if I can get one to fit...

Time for Tams!

We had to do an exercise for class that involved a closet clean out. I've done this recently, before we moved... and probably still could clear out more but I'm pretty much there. So I used it as an exercise in determining a personal style, then identified holes in my wardrobe. I like the look of a skirt, jeans or slacks, paired with a shirt and a short jacket or a shawl, leaning towards art clothes. I also decided I can't slouch around in sweats every day, and made a resolution to try to look nice when I leave the house. We'll see how that goes.

On the knitting front, it continues to be a slow slog on skirt, I'm ready for ball #3. I also cast on and knitted the corrugated ribbing I wanted on a tam for a class I'm taking at Stitches.

These want to be my spring garden

Finally, I took a one day class on planting for the spring garden; these are food crops that will be harvested before the summer crops go in. I'm going to try covering them with a cover cloth to see if I can protect them from the rodents. Meanwhile, the peas are decimated but the Brussels are finally sprouting; they're so darn cute, and who knew they'd be at the bottom of the stalk!

What's up next? Honestly, at this point I'm just staying ahead of what's due! But having a blast doing it...