Kitchen Garden, October 1819

This month, we're preparing to overwinter a variety of vegetables:

Plant out the cauliflower plants where they to be sheltered; two under each glass, for fear should fail; sow another crop of peas and beans in a sheltered situation, to stand the winter. Transplant lettuces under a reed hedge or wall; also cabbage plants and coleworts, where they are to remain. The cauliflowers, which now begin to shew their heads, must have a leaf broken in upon them to keep off the sun and rain. 

-Modern Domestic Cookery, and Useful Receipt Book (London, 1819)

Original: Late 1850s Dinner Dress

In honor of Candlelight Tours, an evening dress of the later 1850s:

Dinner Dress, 1855-1859, in The Met.

I picked this dress both for the fabulous fabric and the cut. I find long-sleeved gowns with open necklines very elegant.

Yet More Masks

 It's the never-ending project, but the fabrics provide some novelty. I've started using longer wires along the upper end of these seamed masks (~8" instead of ~3"), as it gives a closer and more comfortable fit along the nose.

Featuring Red's favorite villains.

Carrot Harvest

A successful carrot harvest. Relatively speaking.

My container garden definitely isn't cut out for vegetables, but this summer has been my most successful for carrots to date. The orange ones are oxhearts (which, per the name, usually get much larger), a heirloom variety from the late 19th century; the purple ones are black Spanish carrots, a 16th century heirloom.

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...

Lovely Fans c.1860

I'm not sure what project I was originally compiling these for, but they are fun:

American Fan, 1858, in The Met.

French Fan, 1859, in The Met.

Spanish (?) fan, c.1855-1865, in The Met.

American (?) fan, c.1850-1860, in The Met.

Fan, c.1830-1870, UK National Trust Collections.

French or Spanish Fan, c.1860, LACMA.

Fan by Edouard Moreau (French), c.1860, in The Met.

Fan, c.1830-1870, UK National Trust Collections

Fan, c. 1860, from The Met.

Spanish (?) fan, 1858, in The Met.