Yoga Pants

They're not much to look at, but I always feel a sense of accomplishment at making something for daily wear. And also just pants in general. I don't sew pants often.

I wore out all my other pairs in 2020.

The material is a French terry knit from Fashion Fabrics Club. For a pattern, I just traced the pieces of my favorite pair of badly-worn-through-because-2020 yoga pants. I like how those fit, so my only real concern was whether I'd adjusted the ease properly while patterning one stretchy material off an another. The original pants have a flat elastic waistband, which sits more gracefully than the casing on the new pants, but the change allowed me to use elastic I already had.

Kransekake

 An Easter treat:  Norwegian almond cake. The kransekake is baked in specially-shaped ring pans, and then the 18 layers are stacked into a tall, hollow cone. 

Kransekake

Virtual Sheep to Shawl

First time trying one of these; with distancing, it ended up being a sort of relay with the different participants. As the team weaver, I was measuring and dying the (purchased yarn) warp while the other three members were preparing the fleece and spinning it up. 

Measuring out 275 ends of 100" each. .

Need to remember to allow for shrinkage on dyeing.

The spinners dropped off four full bobbins of a yarn.
I used 3+.

The warp is Harrisville Shetland yarn; I dyed it with Dharma's "forest green" fiber reactive dye. The weft is grey/"natural-colored" Romney ewe fleece, spun in the grease. Most of it was done as a 2-ply "thick & thin", to maximize consistency among the 3 spinners' singles, with one bobbin of Navajo (3) ply that worked out to the same diameter.

Finnish Birdseye Twill is fun.

I used a Finnish Birdseye threading (4-3-2-1-4-3-4-1-2-3) on my 4-harness table loom, because it's a pattern I enjoy in two-colors. Within that, I opted for the zig-zag, since it's fun and the treadling is easy to remember when working at speed (treadle 12, 14, 43, 32--just a 2-2 twill). The warp had 275 ends; I used a 12 sett with 2 threads floating for selvedges on each side.

A (1) shawl, woven in a single 4-hour stretch.

To finish, I made a simple two-level fringe using square knots, then steam-pressed the whole shawl with an iron. The steam-pressing is fairly fast, and I like that it doesn't shrink the final piece as much as more vigorous fulling/finishing processes.

The handspun has some lovely subtle color gradations.

Zig-zags are fun.

The completed shawl is 20" wide and 72" long, with 2" of fringe along the short sides. It involved three spinners (who did all the fiber prep, spinning, and plying), and one weaver (warping, weaving, finishing). Prep (dying/warping) was not counted for the final time; my timed part was 4 hours of weaving plus 40 minutes of tying fringe, trimming threads, and steam-pressing the final product. 

Autumn Masks

 

Eight more masks. now with Halloween prints.

I'm well past 100 masks at this point, though I lost track of the total tally some months ago. I definitely didn't image in March that I'd be making Halloween-themed ones. Now I think I should be looking ahead to Christmas prints...

Costumes on Hiatus

There's a few reasons I haven't posted any new costumes in a while, the most topical being this week's higher priority project:

Honestly, I'm surprised I had even that much elastic...

These are bound for one of our Ft. Nisqually volunteers, whose modern-day job is in a medical office. The masks are double layers of cotton, made to spec, with the elastic-loop ones meant to cover and keep clean the doctors' and nurses' actual N95 masks, and the all-cloth ones for patients.

Vampire Dinner Party Bill of Fare (~1850s)

Notes from a project from November: a period-inspired dinner party for 7, in a "vampire" setting. I chose to interpret this as "Romantic Era", vaguely leaning more into the 1850s because that's where I have more recipes to work from. A few dishes are from Beeton's, which is technically 1861, but there's fairly good evidence that the recipes themselves are older.

 When I did my first independent dinner party (Candlelight, all those years ago), I got a little crazy analyzing menu patterns. Beeton, for instance, in the various dinner party suggestions, tends to break down into "1 dish per 2 guests per course". This is always way too much food for modern diners in my experience, so I ended up following "Lady Maria Clutterbuck's" plans in What shall we have for dinner? (1852). Looking over menus throughout the year, this book give a total of 7-10 dishes for a party of six or seven people. This amounts to: 1 soup or fish dish, occassionally both; 2 meat dishes and 2 vegetable dishes (sometimes with a third of one or the other); and finally 1-2 sweet dishes with 1-2 savory.

Bill of Fare

Soup a la Julienne [Beeton]
Very Good Rolls [Beeton]
Beef ala Mode [Beeton]
Boiled Celery with White Sauce [sauce from Mrs. Rundel's]
Pork Cutlets
Potatoes in the German Fashion
Quince Jelly  [Mrs. Putnam's]
Chicken Croquettes
Egg Salad
Meringues
Jelly in Oranges (blackberry jelly)

By using gluten-free breadcrumbs on the croquettes, some flour substitute, and omitting the beer in the gravy, I was able to make everything except the rolls gluten-free. The dishes which aren't explicitly meat-containing were made vegetarian (but still with eggs and dairy) through meatless gravy and stocks, and substituting agar for gelatin/isinglass (and omitting the chicken on one salad).

Seattle Style: Fashion/Function

If you haven't been yet, the fashion exhibit at MOHAI is well worth a visit.

Says I, a highly-biased party.

You want to see the only REI Zip-All in its full glory, do you not? What about Lindy West's wedding dress? Kurt Cobain's sweater? Evening dresses by Madame Thierry and Helen Igoe? John Doyle Bishop's multi-patterned green suits?

The exhibit runs through October 14, and there are special programs throughout September.

Phase Wrappers

Preventative conservation project time: making phase wrappers for my antique books and magazines. Archival folder board from Gaylord, acid-free bookbinding glue from Blick, and the world's largest roll of velcro dots from Amazon.

Wrapper unfolds flat, without disturbing the book within.

Overlapping leaves protect the book or magazine on all sides.

Et voila!

Honestly, the measuring took longest.

Now to finish cutting acid-free tissue paper for the inserts--the inks on some of the magazines' colored plates are damaging the adjacent pages, so adding thin barrier will help protect them.

Snow Day

What better time to install the jumbo flyer and ply some yarn?

Fulla enjoys her new accessory.

Knit Cloths

Warming up on knitting, with some cotton washcloths. Knit in stockinette, on size 8 needles.

Zombie Make Up

Because history is relevant to the modern day, I used the pre-Victorian burnt cork mascara to improvise a zombie costume.

Or because I don't keep modern costume supplies on hand.

I started with a base coat of talc, for pallor, but don't think it had much of an effect. The burned cork was for shading, particularly around the eyes.  I finished it off with some fake blood (~2Tbsp corn syrup, with ~5 drops red food coloring and 1 drop of blue). 

Happy Easter

Revisiting Hot Cross Buns (and only two days out of season!).  I used the August* 1857 instructions from Peterson's.

Hot Cross Buns, page 150, August 1857 issue of Peterson's.

For this version, I used about 6 tsp of active dry yeast in warm water, with skim milk for the dairy.  It had a very nice texture--it baked up like a normal bread, much less dense than my last attempt.  The flavor was distinctly less satisfying, however--an aroma of spice rather than a flavor of it.  After applying math to the situation, I determined that I probably used about half as much spice as I should have, and my scale isn't great at such small amounts. I'll use volume measures for the spice next time (7 Tbsp + 1 tsp total spice should be about 1.5 oz; I'll try 4 Tbsp cinammon, 2 1/3 Tbsp allspice, and 1 Tbsp mace).

Hot Cross Buns, take 2.

They were tasty enough, just a bit boring. Fortunately, I some other baked goods on the agenda, and had some playing around with the decorating tips:

An Easter basket. And a cake. It has many talents.

*This publication date is confusing me. Cross buns are a Good Friday tradition everywhere else I've read.

Crochet Shawl

Still here, just busy with school and on-going projects. Also, re-attaching the hem tape on my brown print. Again.

I did complete one project recently: a crochet shawl for a friend.  The yarn is Lion Brand "homespun", worked with a Q hook. It's done in "shell pattern--lacy alternating", from Ryan's The Complete Encyclopedia of Stitchery.

Matt is pressed into service as a model.

Throw Pillows

Fun fact: no actual sheep were employed in the
production of this item--not even in trade for wood.

A modern, if somewhat nerdy, version of the hexagonal patchwork I've taken up.  Hexes are 2/3 standard playing size, all the decoration is (necessarily) hand-sewn.  This pillow is one of a pair made for some awesome newly-married friends of mine.