Reclaimed

February 15, 2019 / Jazmin / 2 Comments

Slowly, oh so very slowly, I am healing. (Oh so VERY slowly.) Spindle spinning was the last thing I lost to the sore arm, and seems to be the first thing I’ve gotten back. I have to be gentle, break it up into shorter sessions, but still. It means that the cotton candy mystery fleece has FINALLY gotten spun up, and I’ve gotten myself going on a glorious 120g of Lincoln, which should last me a while at the rate I spin.

Candy cotton singles

The cotton candy fleece was a gift in a dye exchange approximately forever ago, and got a bit felted somewhere along the way. It fought every step of being spun, and got used to show people how to spin, and in the dark, and when I was half asleep and perhaps had a couple too many now and then. Consistency is a bit of a not thing with this chunk of yarn, but that’s alright. Everyone’s life will go on just fine. Most string things are surprisingly forgiving, all things considered.

I decided I wanted it 2 ply, in theory to help even out some of those inconsistencies, and to use up every last bit of the ‘not much’ I have, I chose to Andean ply. In short, make a centre pull bracelet and grab each end and ply all the way through. Traditionally, one wrapped it around their hand to accomplish this, but it quickly ends in all the blood being cut off from a finger, and no ability to set anything down if the phone rings. So many clever people on the internet have ideas on how to improvise. Some cardboard and a freebie pen later, and I win!

Andean plying without losing fingers

Plying has begun! It will take me a while to get through it, but that’s alright, there’s nothing wrong with working with sunny coloured singles in grey grey February.

Soap survey

February 1, 2019 / Jazmin / Leave a comment

At Birka last weekend, I got to chat, and pick up supplies from an Aethlemarc soap maker (Mistress Elska), which meant that the bonus day off I gave myself once I was home, I got to play with soap.

I decided to take three plausibly period fats (beef, pork and olive oil), and make soap from each using modern lye to have an idea on how each fat makes soap differ. Most modern soaps are a blend of all sorts of fats, but before I start playing with my own blends, I want to meet each of them individually. Because I’m also entirely too fond of compare and contrast, I also took each batch and split it after I got to trace. One half straight into molds, and the other half got cooked down.

L – R Olive oil, pork, beef. Cold process on top, hot process on the bottom.

I absolutely overcooked the beef tallow soup, I fear I might have undercooked the pork lard soap. I expect the cold process soaps will provide the best comparisons, but I need to wait 3-6 weeks for those to be ready.

The lard soap was /so/ hard to get to trace. I rendered that lard myself, so I do wonder if it’s not quite pure, or something.

Now to wait! All of the soaps will be at Kingdom A&S in March to compare.

Soap

January 18, 2019 / Jazmin / Leave a comment

To continue in the alchemical 2019, I finally got around to trying soap making. It’s one of those things that I’ve mused on for years and years and years. I then got as far as ‘have everything in the house’ for weeks at least. Finally, a quiet afternoon over the holiday break and I dug in.

I made no attempts towards period anything on the first attempt. I hunted up a basic soap recipe on the internet that used nothing I didn’t already have in the house, and off I went. Working by weight seems normal to me, I didn’t have that mindset hurdle to overcome, I bake by weight as well. I decided on hot process, because well.. I’m impatient. Brewing already challenges my patience, two things hanging out forever to cure.. let’s just go with one thing I have to wait to try.

Fresh soap in snowflake molds

Non-food crockpot at the ready, and all of my fats. Basic soap.. lard, shortening, coconut oil and olive oil. Everything that lives in my house normally. No dye (other than what came off the crockpot) and no scents. I learned that lye solution will get most of the dyepot stains out of a white crockpot. I also got soap! I think I overcooked it, it got rather lumpy, and I should have been more forceful about shoving it in the snowflake molds, there’s bits that aren’t filled in. It’s not pretty, but it washes hands just /fine/. Not the gentlest soap either, but it’s also January, I’m not sure there’s any help for the dry of my hands anymore. Next up.. different combinations of fats!

Snowflake soaps

Not the best fill job

2018 in review

January 11, 2019January 6, 2019 / Jazmin / Leave a comment

Yes yes, I’m supposed to write these on Jan 1, but I didn’t get that far. So I’m now sitting down while feeling hard done by that I can’t knit (it’s not that bad, but the scarf unfinished is irritating), and thinking on what did get accomplished in 2018. There was a lot of mundane A&S (oxymoron much?), but it’s part of my world, so you get that too. I used to keep better track, I tried to again in 2018, and did not /bad/ at doing so. Let’s see what I have in the notes and the eternally faulty memory.

Consumables

Strawberry Lemon Jam
Ginger Rhubarb Marmalade
Smoked Strawberry Balsamic Jam
Apple pie jam
Peach jam
Peach Chutney
Peach butter with wine
pickled onions
Sliced peaches
Onion relish
Dill relish
Mustard pickles
Curry pickles
Dill pickles
Fermented sour pickles
Maple whiskey mustard
Applesauce
Tomato Sauce
Coffee Stout (Good Morning Stout)
Spiced Christmas Ale (Mulled Barley Ale)
Wilma, the Pennsic yeast sourdough starter

String things (and not string too!)

Sheepy garters (tablet woven)
2 basic coifs
Embroidered coif w. handspun silk
Maroon tunic
16th century court outfit (corset, smock, petticoat, overgown, 2 sets of sleeves)
basic wooden feast box
silk hairnet (including fingerloop braid edge)
underdress with silk trim
Celestarium
14 tiny sweater ornaments
8 snowflake ornaments
11/12 of the temperature scarf
giant woven wool shawl
one knit bunny
one wee knit doily
one dragon mystery sock (out of yarn for the second, whoops)

I’ve probably forgotten stuff, my canning notes are especially sketch. There’s also plenty of baking and general cooking that happens in all of this, but somehow that doesn’t seem to bother counting. Not a bad year, I’d say. 2019 is going to look a whole heck of a lot different!

Plot Twist!

January 4, 2019 / Jazmin / Leave a comment

When something goes wrong in your life, just yell ‘Plot Twist!’ and move on.

It’s a ubiquitous meme all over the internet, and it’s trite and vaguely irritating, but I’m willing to run with it. This isn’t the New Year’s post I’d planned on writing. Instead of a post all excited about some of the knitting I’ve been doing, and showing off my temperature scarf and plotting for silk knit gloves, I’m on the rehab list.

A repetitive strain injury (tennis elbow, no racquet required!) in my dominant arm means no knitting, embroidery, drop spinning, crochet, hand sewing, needle lace, bread kneading.. basically everything in my world. Physio and my RMT are working on it, and we’re making progress, but the main thing is resting it, and reality is that I heal Very Slowly. I am looking at easily months away from my primary hobbies, and 2019 might be a write off for the knitting needles (and all of their needlely, hookey and spindlely friends.)

There was some probably unsurprising moping, with accompanied whining (and cookies. Disappointing news around holiday goodies is not ideal for one’s eating habits.), but finally I’ve accepted that we’re not at ‘omg, I can’t do ANYTHING!’, but at ‘Plot twist!’

Things I CAN still do. Brewing. Bread making (with the kitchen aid taking on the kneading for me), big loom weaving, soap making, dye work. Jury is still out on wheel spinning (it’s hard on the leg joints), or tablet weaving (not optimistic).

Sourdough starters

Red ale with two yeasts

Which basically reads like 2019 is going to be full of alchemy!

Tool for the job

February 23, 2018February 23, 2018 / Jazmin / 2 Comments

I have a lovely hunk of russet rusty wool fabric. It’s a bit tweedy, there’s not a whole heck of a lot of it, and it’s been living in my stash for a very long time. (Like.. a good 20 yrs sort of long time.) Recently (for some values of recently), I finally realized that its a rather lovely size for a wrap at camping events, and it’s wool and warm and when one just wraps the whole length around themself one doesn’t have to end up with any bits of this lovely wool gone to waste. Perfect.

It’s also been at least a couple of years and I haven’t bothered to hem the two raw edges. <cough> It’s wool, so it’s hardly going to fray terribly, but seriously. A quick consideration of stitches, and single fold with herringbone came out as the winner. Wool thread, doubled for strength (it’s still terrribly fragile stuff), and off I go.

Except the damnned thread loves to break. I was using a good thick embroidery needle to give some space for the thread, but the wool abraded it something fierce. But wool singles are perfectly period for sewing? What gives?

2018-02-21 07.06.24

Bone needle. A friend suggested I try the bone needle I have, just to see. It’s comparatively huge, but the woollen fabric doesn’t even blink at nudging aside and nudging back… and not a single break in the rest of the hem.

Tools for the job. They work! And now, my woollen wrap has its raw edges all finished, one less thing on the to do list!

Happy New Year!

January 5, 2018 / Jazmin / Leave a comment

Good morning Sunshines!

(It’s always morning somewhere, just run with it.) Welcome to 2018! This is one of those times when the big picture was fairly miserable, but the little picture was pretty good, so I’m going to focus on the little picture. It really felt like I got nothing accomplished (handwork wise) in 2017, but when I look back at my projects, I think it is more that I got nothing big and flashy accomplished. So because I’m all retrospective, I’ll drag the 3 people who still read my not regularly updated blog along with me.

One of these years, I will make an effort to write down what I finished over the year. There was a time when I did, and those are awesome to refind years later (with projects I completely had forgotten about listed!), so perhaps 2018 will be the year I do that again. This year, however, is memory and photos and ravelry notes.

Knitting: 8 snowflake ornaments, 2 lace bookmarks

Crochet: 6 snowflake ornaments, giant lace art panel for flying mosque

Dyeing: Scattered silk skeins of weld and indigo, a swack of cochineal playing

Weaving: tablet: turquoise trim, blue and gold silk, sheepy trim, double weave samples, brown trim

4 shaft loom: leg wraps

Bobbin lace: 9 pin edging for camica

Sewing: cotton/silk camica, 3 apron dresses, 2 linen shirts, bodice muslins (lost count), linen underdress.

Misc: Naalbinding samples, dozens and dozens of jars of canning.

Hunh, not bad for what was, to my mind ‘not much of a productive year’. There has been a lot of other stuff that was worked on, but not finished, so doesn’t make the 2017 list, but should be on the 2018 list! (Like how I somehow finished no embroidery in 2017? That feels wrong, but plenty of work got done, certainly.)

2018 has more knitting, more crochet, more embroidery (lots and lots!) and zomg more sewing. I’d love to tuck more dyeing and weaving and spinning in there as well, but we shall see!

What does your list look like? Any surprises?

Preparation

October 6, 2017October 5, 2017 / Jazmin / Leave a comment

There are a lot of steps to a project that many (myself included) don’t actually recognize as being part of the process. They’re the boring stuff before you get to the good stuff. The REAL stuff. In my brain, I always seem to assume those will take just a blink and then I’ll get to the chunk of the project that I love.

Ahh ha ha ha ha. Yeah. Laugh. You probably should point as well. Really, that’s bloody delusional. Even I think that it’s ridiculous when I stop and think about it. Yet, I find myself resenting the time it takes to wind a warp, sley a reed, thread heddles. I find myself grumpy at waiting for fabric to be pre-washed, at the tests and trials and muslins. That’s just preamble, I can’t wait to get to The Actual Craft ™.

It took me three days (around work and social and sore and life) to measure out thread, wind it onto a niddy noddy (which irritatingly went missing and required a hardware store trip), tie all my figure 8 ties and get to where I could consider getting this thread wet. Make notes, do plenty of math. No colour yet, just ready to get wet.

2017-10-05 07.22.22

Weigh out thread. Weigh out mordant. More notes, more math. Simmer and soak and rinse. No colour yet, just ready for colour.

Weigh out dyestuff, crush it, weigh it again, soak it. Simmer and filter and simmer again. Colour, but not on your thread yet.

Dunk in thread, simmer and wait and squeeze and dry and eventually wash and dry and admire. Colour! On thread!

Dear brain, those are a lot of steps that aren’t part of The Actual Craft ™, you are on crack. Enjoy the process!

Weaving

September 22, 2017 / Jazmin / 3 Comments

I have been bitten by the weaving bug something fierce, which considering quite how many non-weaving things are on the project to-do list is a little distressing. (Some of this might be productive procrastination from the to-do list.)

I had help from a friend getting the warp on, it was a mess (note to self.. learn how to not make a mess of the warp getting it from warping mill to loom.), but we got there.

I snapped threads all over the place (vintage wool singles. It happens), and the first snapped warp thread I thought I was going to cry. I clung to my beginner book instructions and followed each step as if I was doing CPR and a life depended on my skills. (Fortunately, this was not actually the case.)

By the end of the warp, a snapped thread was a brief grumble, and a quick repair and back in business. My tension is a little wonky, and sometimes my beat isn’t even. Some of that will come out in wet finishing, and some of that will live forever as a ‘this is a beginner piece’ memento.

2017-09-20 17.46.46

Now, I have the weaving all done, and the ends woven in. It needs a bath, and hemming, and to be made into leg wraps for my best beloved. It feels good to finish a big challenging project again. Now I need to hurry though the to do list, so I can do more weaving!

QPT

September 15, 2017 / Jazmin / 1 Comment

Queen’s Prize Tourney, for those who don’t obsessively follow A&S events in every kingdom. A novice tourney in that only those with an Orion or no A&S award may enter and they require a sponsor to do so. The sponsor must have a Crucible (Grant level A&S award) or a Laurel and provides a token prize, as well as mentorship on the project.. however that looks. The prize (almost always) goes to someone who is not their sponsoree, which basically means this is a glorious Oprah Winfrey style of prize giving. (You get a prize! And You get a prize! And YOU get a prize!) The prizes are not supposed to be epic, they are a ‘hey, thanks for coming out’ little something.

Failures are welcome. Unfinished pieces are welcome. Pieces that you have gotten stuck on and need advice on are welcome. Masterpieces that you are super stoked and proud of are welcome.

The ‘judging’ is face to face and is specifically less about critique and more about discussion and coaching and generally becomes a glorious geekfest between the artisan and the three or so people who are knowledgable in that field. (or at least interested.. anyone can judge and many entrants are also judges.. myself included.) There are no scores. There’s no judge form where you have to come up with something to say about the details of the piece. You get to spend half an hour or so discussing what they loved, what went wrong (in some cases, what went horribly horribly wrong), and next steps. Sometimes folks want and need a lot of direction on next steps, sometimes we all just get to be super stoked on where the project is going next.

And yet, so many of us stress about it. Is our work good enough? Are people going to politely smile and privately think ‘goodness, I really thought his skills were better than that’? Are the judges going to be mean? What am I going to say for a whole /half hour/!? Is it perfect? It’s awful and no one is going to tell us that it’s awful.

Reminder literally taped to my work monitor.

It is brutally hard to tell the brain weasels that whatever you’ve got, at whatever stage its at, is alright to peek out. It’s your creation, it’s part of you and letting others into the process, which is often more failure than success, is HARD. It’s making yourself vulnerable. It’s admitting that you’re not good at something (or for some people, it’s admitting that you ARE good at something).

Samples pack small.

My naalbinding samples and I will be at QPT tomorrow. Little bits of things, with wonky parts and tension that can’t figure out if its coming or going, and a whole section that is starting to look pretty good, dammit! Like most people there, it’ll have a hidden side order of vulnerability and humility tucked under the documentation, peeking out warily. It’ll get showered with advice and love and creative energy from all sides, and it will be glorious. And I’ll even get a prize.

Adventures in Arts & Sciences

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