all put together

As I was putting other things together last week, I got this quilt top stitched.  I am ready to make the back but I am having a bit of problem concentrating on it.  So instead, I keep making bags for my shop.  Or taking silk out of its dye bath.  

I am actually doing a lot but not a lot new.  Or new in old patterns.  But part of that is summer for me.  It gets so warm that I do not wish to cook anything new or anything that needs heat even.  That does not mean I do not bake bread four times a week.  It means it is my go to recipes.  Currently it is oatmeal, walnut cranberry, and cinnamon rolls.  I have been baking cinnamon rolls about once a week this summer.

I could spend all my time making quilts.  Make piles of them and force myself out of my parlor.  But they do not currently sell.  But that is where my head is.  Making things that use little pieces and many of them.  

Or I could be working on that sweater I talked about last time.  I got to where it was ready for sleeves and tried it on.  That was funny!  It was much too long.  So I ripped out half of it and made it smaller.  But I am close to putting sleeves back on it.  I will need buttons and I have ideas but am not sure.  I wish there was a thrift shop or fabric shop around with a bowl of buttons to go through.  That would be the perfect solution currently.  A hodge podge of buttons on my sweater.  Maybe.  Just maybe.  If I want to leave the house, I may go look at buttons.

it takes as long as it takes

I think I have four sweaters in the works currently.  Five if you count the one that I have decided to take out the neck and do something different with the yarn.  I can already tell I will not wear it!  I have a red sweater, a yellow sweater, a lacy sweater, and this creamish sweater all being worked on.  Two of them I am making the yarn as I go.

This cream sweater makes me laugh.  I did pick up the yarn on my last gallivant.  I even picked up a pattern.  Yes, it was a knit pattern so I was going to have to change it to crochet but I do this.  

I have completely changed this sweater.  Instead of being crocheted from the top down like it would be knitted, I am crocheting from the bottom up.  There are still not going to be any true seams in it.  The fabric was of the sweater was supposed to be plainer with only a bit of lacy but I decided that I liked this stitch pattern so much that it was going to be over the whole sweater.  It reminds me of a thrifted sweater I bought in college that I completely wore out.  And the last change is the edge yarn.  Instead of going with the same yarn as the body but in a different color, I am going to use I yarn I am spinning.  

I am so not surprised by any of this.  But because of all these changes, I crochet, I rip out.  I crochet some more.  It was commented that I would not finish this sweater until I was 80.  I am thinking I may actually start the sleeves this coming week.  Maybe I will need to leave the house to look for buttons.  Or maybe I can just do that online.

Everything I am working on currently seems to be taking more time.  Or maybe I am just moving slower.  I could believe that.  But then I ponder things like, my pizza dough recipe is a baguette recipe which becomes a croissant recipe if you add layers of butter and flour which then becomes kouign amman when you add sugar.  Which is kind of like a palmier.  Yes.  My brain.  No drugs except copious amounts of caffeine due to tea.  It wanders all over the place.  But everything takes time.

A bit of woods

This week has been tough.  Tough just to get through.  I did take myself to a state park and go for a walk in the woods.  It might not been my favorite woods.  It may have been hot.  But it was the woods.  It was cooler there then it would have been in the city.  The gallivanting included lunch watching a lake.  The breeze was nice.

I have been spending a bit of time each day spinning which seems to help with the air for me.  

I keep wanting to sit at my sewing machine.  Even though I do, I seem not to spend enough time there.  Maybe soon.  Part of me just wishes to make quilts all the time.  

doing something that makes me happy

I sat in my parlor and laid out a quilt.

So far the quilts have not sold but I need to make them.  The making makes me happy.  It is a good thing.  Especially when events in the United States were what they were this weekend.  I was horrified.  Distressed.  Appalled.  

I listen to a lot of audiobooks when I am working and I have been currently listening to two books about resistance in World War II.  I needed to put them away and listen to something else.  It is much to close to home.  One of the books I was listening to is The Zookeeper's Wife.  It is a biography the Warsaw zookeepers and the choices they made.  Choices that saved lives and resisted.  

I told my Beloved that every time I like something on social media, comment, or post, I wonder now if it will mean someone knocking on my door.  Gestapo like.  I can see it coming.  But I know where I sit.  

Dyeing with Western hemlock

When we were at the mountain last, I brought back branches of Western hemlock for dyeing.  It was easy because if any branch hit me in the head or caught me down one of our roads, I cut it back.  I am very deadly with a pair of lopers.  But then, I keep meaning to do it down the path I walk most often in the city and have not yet.  Soon.  Maybe when it cools down a bit.

I put these needles on the stove and let them bubble away.  It smelled like Christmas or home.  I really did not wish to take the pot off the stove!

But I did.  I added silk and let it sit for a week.  The fabric came out a golden tan.  Not very exciting.  I took half of it and put it in an iron bath.

The fabric became this chocolate brown with a lot of variation in it.  There are even portions that look copper.  I did not get a picture of it blowing in the breeze because the sun was too bright every time I tried.  It is another colour where I may have to make some just for myself for slips.  Or dye silk for a carpenter dress.  I just had that thought!  That would be amazing.  It would be very interesting to see what the cotton silk fabric dyes like with hemlock and iron.  I feel myself plotting and mulling!

I put the ribbons up on my Etsy shop.  It is where I usually put my ribbon experiments.  

I have another piece of silk with the same combination sitting.  I will take it out of the iron bath on Monday.  The iron water was not as dark for that piece of fabric so it will be very interesting what will happen.  Part of me wishes to head back to the mountain and do more gathering.  I had a field of daisies.  Maybe soon.