Category Archives: General

Change

Nothing stays the same – or so I’m told…

We are no longer on schedule to move in the next couple of months. Things are kind of up in the air for the moment and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I really want to move but at the same time – there is so much I want to get accomplished before I have to think about having to pack or weed stuff out.

I accepted a position doing payroll installations which is what I’m professionally very good at doing. I’ve been burdened with overtime which was to be expected but I didn’t really think it would eat into my freetime like it has. I’m thinking I wasn’t being realistic when I decided to enter A&S again this year – but we will see.

I’ve been waiting for the inevitable cold snap so I could test drive some cashmere underthings and I made several pairs for other people to test drive and report back on the fit and comfort. I have converts! So comfortable and soft and warm without trapping in the heat. I have to make many more pairs because I now have a preferred style and I think I have the fit down so I now need a half dozen so I don’t have to do laundry during the week. It’s a weird bit of luxury.

Happy New Year. I resolve to take better care of everything. That about covers it.

 


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Cashmere Underwear

So far I have completed three pair of underwear and have several more cut out and ready to sew up. I have one pair of long pants cut out and ready to sew and many more sweaters prepped and ready to cut.

But the serger wasn’t working properly and I spent several hours getting that fixed. It works great now. But in the meantime I decided I needed more thread so I got more thread. And while I was at the store I also got stretch cotton for the crotch liners. And I bought more stretch lace so I’m really all set to sew now.

We are finding that the price of cashmere is going up. It’s difficult at this point to say how far spread the problem is but in some areas all of the cashmere sweaters have been priced much higher than every other piece of clothing. So while the rest of the sweaters are four to six dollars each, the cashmere sweaters in the same store are twenty dollars each. This isn’t reasonable in my opinion. I can’t pay twenty dollars for the sweater and still make a profit when I turn that sweater into something else. And frankly if the sweater is in really good condition then I’m not going to cut it up anyway. I will pay ten dollars for really large ones or ones I can wear that are nice or even really desirable colors like white and yellow that are larger. I’m fortunate in that I already have a large stockpile of sweaters to work with so I’m not constrained in having to pay large sums for base materials.

I also have a good number of alpaca sweaters. I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with those yet but for the most part they are much larger sweaters.

Now I have to get back to the sewing room….


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Sewing Again

So I had spent about month working at regular work – helping out with a change over. And now I’m left to my own devises again and I really need to find something useful to do with my time, or at least the bulk of my time. Something productive.

So I went and purchased some lovely hunks of linen. I was thinking of making some quilts and getting rid of some of this cashmere. And hubby needs some garb so he can attend events. Basic stuff really. And the linen was on sale so I got some.

I also needed to get some elastic so I could make some cashmere underpants. I’ve been wanting some cashmere underwear and I’ve been wanting to make some cashmere leggings or stretch pants. Comfort wear. So I found a nice place online where I could get some elastic lace and then I went overboard and ordered 170 yards of elastic in various types, materials, widths, colors, and designs. Lots of elastic so I can make lots of underwear. But it wasn’t until that point that I decided I wanted to make lots of underwear. So now I’ve basically committed to making lots of underwear.

The elastic should arrive tomorrow and I already have lots of cashmere to make underwear out of – a whole lot of cashmere. Just in case, I went out and found even more cashmere which needs to be washed and added to the collection. We’ll see how it goes but I’ve already compiled some pictures on pintrest of things to make out of all the lovely cashmere. Several different quilt designs, socks, slippers, and of course the underwear.

This way I can stay busy and productive and maybe even make a little money. We’ll see.


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All the Things

I’ve had a fairly busy three weeks!

First – I finished the mushroom cap which turned out really well and looks great. It feels even better! So soft and not too tight on the head. If I had planned on making a mushroom cap it would not have turned out as well as this one did. Basically I took the rather large size and did another couple of rows the same size and then took the size down in about three rows and took another five rows in the correct hat size.

Then I canned some applesauce. I only did one batch which was about nine or ten pounds and it yielded 11 half pint jars of applesauce. While I was doing that, Merit made a pie out of the rest of the lovely apples. And then she went home and made apple butter. I think I’d like to get more apples and do more apple things. I’m just not sure yet how many apple things I want to make so I don’t yet know how many apples to get.

 

More Nalbinding

Yes. The first nalbinding project went well and the second one was fabulous as well. It was probably too much to ask for the third one to progress along the same path. It is not going so well. I am going to end up with a mushroom hat which is fine with me but not exactly what I intended.

The problem, as I see it, is that the Alpaca yarn has a bit more stretch to it than the wool I had used on the first two projects. I also increased at either a much higher rate or for a few rows longer because an ogre could wear this hat. So the only real answer in my opinion is to make it a mushroom hat and not look back. Which is fine by me because I like mushroom hats – they keep my ears warm and don’t give me helmet head.

This one is a variegated green color and very soft. I looked for mushroom cap patterns and could only find one. I think I can make it work for me though. At least I’ll try.


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Peaches

So after the rousing success of the Cherry Weekend, I decided to do it all over again, this time using Peaches. A nice company called Tree-ripe Citrus (tree-ripe.com) has deliveries all over the WI state area, one of which was just 3 miles from the house. I asked my husband to meet me there so he could get them home while I went back to work. Good thing too because I got turned around, couldn’t find the truck and never did see my husband. But he picked up a box of peaches and a box of blueberries. When I got home they were all laid out on the table per the instructions. Two days later I canned them.

I had over 70 peaches in the box and by canning time the majority of them were at an optimal ripeness. We kept out a handful for fresh eatting and blanched the rest. It went well and most of the skins peeled off super fast. We did several pint-and-a-half jars of peach halves, several pint and large jelly jars of peach slices, seven quarts of peach-blueberry pie filling, and about a dozen peach jam, and a dozen peach-blueberry jam. And we froze some blueberries in small packets for winter use. The final total was 39 jars of stuff, four loads in the waterbath canner.

Having never canned anything except cherries, and only recently doing it all by myself, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Admittably my mother raised me right so I have basic information in my brain from childhood – enough that I will never do my own tomato canning, and enough that, if given a recipe, I can get through it without issue. But I loved these peaches! Freestone Georgia Peaches. First – I didn’t realize there was a difference in stones so I wouldn’t have know to look for that. I do not know enough about all the different brands and growing locations and such – my information is vast when it comes to apples, when it comes to peaches – I can tell them apart from necterines. That’s about it.

I also didn’t get any fruit fresh. I have kosher sour salt which is citric acid, and therefore basically the same thing. Also much cheaper. And I found a recipe for pie filling at http://cookingmadly.com/peach-blueberry-pie-filling/ but put the lemonjuice in too early so had issues with the clear jel. I’m sure it will taste just fine though. The amounts given are huge, need a huge pot, and produce 7 quarts. After the pie filling though, when I ran out of peaches for jam, I filled in with blueberries to get a full batch which yeilded me two rather distinct batches.

After it was all done I just wanted to sit and stare at my jars of peaches! The red fruit from around the stone turned everything a lovely peachy color and it’s pretty entrancing. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. And I’ve already put the peaches on my calander for next year. I’ll have to get more of them though, a lot more of them. Maybe not as much as I get of cherries but more than I got this year. I also think with more (two days of canning worth) I can even better optimize the ripeness level and I’ll have more opportunities to learn how to pack the jars so they look “fair-worthy” on my shelves.

And I have convinced my husband that we need to do apples this year as well since I have all the equiptment to do apples (a corer/peeler and a masher) and plenty of jars left.


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Nalbinding

I attended a class on nalbinding two weeks ago when I was at an event. I sat through a two hour introduction where I was given pretty thorough instructions and then the next day I sat through another class where there were entirely too many students and three lefties (like me) who got their own TA. I walked away from the class with the knowledge of how to do a basic stitch, a pattern for a tote, and a skein of yarn. Four days later I completed my tote.

I set out to learn nalbinding because it is very old and someone suggested to me that the Herental flowers may have been done with a nalbinding stitch. I do not believe that to be the case – I am sure now that they are needle lace – most likely detached buttonhole stitch in some twist or another. But I actually had to do nalbinding in order to figure that out.

And immediately after completing my tote I found myself at the Lama farm where I could purchase a ton of fibers for making even more stuff. I bought several balls of chunky wool yarn and two really super soft skeins of Alpaca yarn. And the next day I started project number two which will be a hat when it is complete. Without a pattern, after having read someone else’s notes on how they created a hat, I set off to make a hat. I do believe I’m moving in the correct direction (I’m about half finished) as it fits very nicely on my head but is not quite long enough to cover my ears yet.

I have to contrast this hat with a linen hood that I am also constructing. I purchased a custom-made linen hood last year and had her make me a pattern as well so that I might make some additional hoods in other colors. But right from the start I have felt that the initial hood was just a wee bit too small for my head as I had difficulties keeping it in place. I set out to fix that problem by making a hood out of a much softer fabric – namely a silk and linen blend that I had some suitable scraps of. I like this fabric because of its light weight and course softness. Yes – I do mean course softness – it is very lush and soft but has enough texture that it should not just slip out of my hair. I’ve had this fabric for years and I never could figure out what to do with it until I cut it into a nightie that I have yet to finish constructing. There was, sadly, very little of the fabric to start with.tote

So – comparing and contrasting the hat with the hood: I prefer having no pattern and just more of a general idea of the direction to go so I don’t get lost or get bogged down in details. Either is an equally nice project for working on in the car. The hat is going to be completed long before the hood!


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Cherries

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Quite some time ago I proved (to my satisfaction and for my own personal edification) that the grapes in the shrines were created by covering individual cherry pits with silk fabric and stitching them together to form bunches of grapes for the shrine. These grapes then are used to represent the blood of Christ.

I was thinking about this most of last week because we went to beautiful Door County and picked 22 buckets of cherries. We brought most of them home, and actually pitted and processed 15 buckets of cherries ourselves. There are 5 to 6 quarts in each bucket and in the end I had 104 assorted size jars of canned stuff and a full assortment of frozen pies, breads and other goodies. I also had a two quart jar full of cherry pits.

I made 5 lovely jars of juice. Juice is hard to do because you have to send it through several strainers and eventually through cloth to get all of the sediment out of it. Then I put it on the stove tcherrieso get it to a  nice warm temperature, strain it through cloth one last time and then give it a hot water bath to seal it up nice and proper. And when the juice is bottled it is the most lovely clear ruby color! Pure cherry juice is, well, almost the exact same color of fresh blood. And as far as the shrines go I think the size of a cherry pit, as it correlates to a grape in relation to the flowers and other items around it, is just about perfect.

Well done medieval ladies, well done!


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Doing Other Things

I have a great number of hobbies. Some of them require a great deal of dexterity and concentration and so I can really only work on them in short bursts or suffer from exhaustion. Others require a sewing machine or a large amount of space, or are seasonal.

Once my kitchen gets put back together I will have my sewing room back. I have some sewing projects that I’m looking forward to getting going on. One involves the great stores of cashmere I have amassed. I have some quilts cut out and ready to sew up. I’m thinking I would like to take the quilt frame to a camping event and set up a quilting bee so others, especially those who have never done it before, can have a chance to experience the joy of hand quilting. I expect that it would get done rather quickly if I could set it up in a high traffic area.

The other thing I would like to do is turn some of my very large cashmere sweaters into sweatpants. The sleeves on some of them fit very nicely on my legs and if I turned them into long johns or exercise pants I could get a lot of use out of them. I just have to devise the “underwear” portion of pants to attach the sleeves to and I’ll have pants. And as long as I have to devise the underwear part I might as well make some cashmere underwear. Wouldn’t that be smashing!

I also need to make some garb for my husband. I could use a new cloak and he could use a cloak as well. I think I would like to line the cloaks with cashmere and trim them with fur because I have some fur and a lot of cashmere and both would be warm enough (and I don’t have enough fur to line the whole cloak) and who keep me comfortable long term. I have some beautiful fabrics that would work well for this project.

I think that should be enough to keep me busy for awhile.