Cozy cottage

I made progress on the mending pile.  It is not the easiest or most fun kind of sewing, but it is gratifying to see an entire garment ready to wear again, after putting in much less work than making a new item would take--or than shopping for a new one would take, either.

I also was able to fix a zipper.

I'm been putting off most of my Christmas crafting, aside from a knitted towel experiment, and I'm giving some already-completed projects as gifts instead.

Today is Yooper Scooper weather:  shovel early, shovel often.

I have a pile of used materials to make into a coat.  The most challenging part will be fitting the arms so that the recipient has enough freedom of movement for sparring with siblings. 

Our second mannequin torso was released from dress form duty, so I found an outfit for it and put it back with the other one.

I couldn't find a good place to display Christmas cards, so I've been putting them on the Christmas tree.

A child found a doughnut maker at the thrift store--it's like a waffle iron, but with two doughnut-shaped cavities.  This one was brand-new and unused, and at least forty years old.  An elder sibling bought one at a yard sale a decade ago, and has used it occasionally.

Where's the beans??

I don't know when the cheaper brands of baked beans started being canned as a big lump of beans swimming in a sea of liquid, but now I have encountered it twice, once in a store brand, and once in a brand from one of the largest ag companies.

In the latter case, I pulled out a strainer and measured:  just about exactly half of the can's contents by volume were pourable liquid.

I hate washing strainers.

This reminds me of early in the pandemic, when dried pasta suddenly started taking much longer to cook for some reason.

In other activities, I was able to repair watchbands for two children.  I took a toy apart and pulled some dust out of it that was getting in the way of the mechanism.  I altered a swimsuit so that it would fit for another season.

I knit a dishcloth from acrylic yarn rejected by a child, who also went through a substantial fabric stash and burn-tested samples to separate out the ones with synthetic fibers.

I finished one section of crochet for my curtain project.

Several pairs of pants were retired for being too far gone in the seat, and there is at least one more that needs to be retired, now that I think of it.

My husband dehydrated some cabbage.  I learned that you can freeze tomatoes whole.  Children have been growing mint.

My husband also brought home a vintage metal-frame chair similar to three that we already own.  They are very child-resistant, except for the vinyl seats.  My longer-term plan is to redo them in sturdy leather.

A family from church is making big changes to their diet, and they gave us several boxes of food from their pantry that they could no longer eat.  It was good to get a change from our usual and somewhat tedious simple foods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making do

I've been doing lots of sewing, organizing, cleaning, and optimizing.  Mending towels. Cutting up worn-out fabric for kitchen wipes. I found that scrap paper is also not so bad for wiping out greasy pans.

I unearthed some items that have been wanted for many months.  Still looking for the extra sheet for my bed, which at one point I stored so cleverly that I haven't seen it since. I've been borrowing a sheet from my fabric inventory.

The big universal pot lid of my husband's fits my mixing bowl very nicely, which is handy for when there's bread dough rising.

I have finally more or less pulled together enough seating for the whole family to have a sit-down meal in the kitchen, all at the same time.  (The second refrigerator is needed, but is very much in the way.)

I made a list of low-cost family activity ideas, which we have not drawn on much yet, but it is there.

Thanks to the cold weather, I've not had to do much with the yard yet.  Many of the black raspberry canes were mowed down over the winter, so I'm expecting fewer berries this summer.  Waiting to see if the bulbs we planted last fall are going to come up.

A big load of Easter breakfast leftovers were sent home with us on Sunday.  We have a secondhand vacuum sealer that no longer vacuums but still seals, and I bagged up most of the leftovers for the freezer.

I messed around a bit with painting paper coffee filters and making flowers out of them.  They turned out well.

Eggs cost $7.99 for a flat of 30 now, roughly double what they cost before, but a flat weighs nearly four pounds, so they are still relatively economical.

I've been thinking a lot about a window covering for the library, to replace the temporary paper one I put up.  I've made a number of experimental samples, but haven't found anything that I like enough to invest the time into making in a full-size version.

I knit a dishcloth from the crochet cotton left over from one of the experiments.

Putting things together again

No curfew in Minneapolis or St. Paul last night, only continuing violent crimes.

Coronavirus numbers in tests, hospitalizations, and deaths in Minnesota have held quite steady since mid-June. I suppose an uptick should be expected in early fall, once school and other fall activities get going a bit. Summer is very much the off season for most organized social activities around here, because the people who do the organizing go out of town to their families' cabins.

I made progress on many things last week.  I mended more clothing, and some knitted dishcloths, and a mitten. I aligned the reel mower. I moved two bags of toys out of the living room, back down to the basement where they belong. I established a better workflow for a refinishing project that I am working on, and am finally making progress on it. I found my what-to-do-next cards, which I had completely forgotten about, and am getting back into a routine. I am also easing into exercising with hand weights again.

I've been gradually moving some pieces of decor around, trying things in different places.

Mending, and screwdriver work

I patched the fabric arm of one of our camp chairs, and the seat of a director's chair.  I ripped out a seam in a pair of boys' pants, where an extra fold of fabric had been drawn in when I was trying to mend them last year. Then I finished mending the original tear.

I also tightened the director chair's screws, and the screws on some of the cabinet hinges in the kitchen.

I did some "re-knitting" to fix an unravelled hole in one of my homemade dish cloths.

I dug through our screw bin and found longer screws for a fixture where the screws had pulled out.

None of these took very much time, and I felt very productive, getting so many things fixed and back into use.

The usual

My life lately has mostly consisted of maintenance:  the usual cleaning, tightening loose screws, and troubleshooting appliances.

I also finished knitting the hat I am giving for a Christmas present, and I looked up how to make the pompom for it. I have an additional little knitting project going on with the leftover yarn.

I cut another jar's worth of kitchen wipes, from fabric that I have no other use for, with the assistance of a tiny human who was happy to have the job of putting them into the jar.

The older children have been taking on some of the snackmaking work; wacky cake and popcorn, so far this week.

Wacky cake is very easy to make, and doesn't require milk or eggs, although we do use milk in ours, instead of water.  The recipe I use is in this post.

My husband's work had some kind of a catered lunch, and he brought home quite a bit of leftover pasta and salad and bread from it, easily enough for two meals.

One of his co-workers has the interest, time, ability, tools, and space to work on cars, and has been helping him do some of the work that needs to be done on our aging vehicle.

A pot scrubber and a new knitting project

My homemade pot scrubber was wearing out, and it was time to make a new one. I have some plastic mesh produce bags tucked away in my craft drawer, but I also had a few narrow lengths of tulle, salvaged from gift wrapping. I chose to use the tulle this time.

I didn't follow my pattern from before, but instead did a chain ring, followed by a round of half double stitches, followed by a round of slip stitches, increasing as necessary to keep it flat. The result is denser than what I usually do. I probably would have been better off doing a single round of double stitches; I don't think there was enough tulle to do triples.

For the knitting project, I've started knitting a hat to give as a Christmas present. I bought the yarn a while back, and did a gauge swatch, and figured out how many stitches around it would need to be. I also decided to make it double-layered, as I did for my own hat.  Today I actually cast on and knitted the first inch or so. With my recently improved knitting speed, I should easily be able to finish it before Christmas.

I've also been selectively cutting down the dead plants in the flower beds. Some I am leaving there until spring, because I like to look at them. Since I learned this year that you can get usable fiber from nettle plants, I've been looking forward to harvesting the patch of nettles that is well-established in one of our flower beds, but by the time I got to them, there were only a few of them still standing, and the rest were down and mixed in with some other tall plants.

A poncho and a headband

I did a very quick and very simple sewing project:  a child-sized poncho out of remnant fabric. I knew that you can make a poncho by joining two rectangles of fabric; the geometry is a little awkward, but I figured out how to do it.

There's a diagram here, third image in the post.

The recipient of the poncho looks very cute in it.

I also did a relatively quick knitting project:  a headband in garter stitch, to go under the hat I made. Sometimes I want a bit more over my ears than I am getting from the hat. I had enough yarn left from the hat for two-thirds of the headband, and then I found a similar color in my stash to finish it off. Once again, I'm glad that I taught myself how to knit in the continental style, which is much faster; I was able to start and finish the headband on the same day.

Direction

I've been thinking about the runner some more, and looking at the materials that we have.

Eventually, it occurred to me that I could pray and ask for one.

The answer that came back immediately was that I already had everything I needed to make it.

I take that as meaning that I should go with the best option that I have on hand, the repurposed jute, and for coloring it use acrylic paints that I have.

As I mentioned previously, knitting it will use the quantity of jute that I have most economically.  This knit rug will be going over the existing bits of carpet.

Earlier I researched possible knitting patterns, and did a test swatch. I think I can get away with using multiple knitting needles across the width, so I won't have to make longer needles.

The reason I was hesitating to use the jute is that it is not really a very strong or durable fiber.  But if I color it with diluted acrylic paint, that will help it a bit.

In a previous attempt to use paint as dye, I had problems with it not dissolving evenly, so this time I am going to thin it down more gradually, and it will probably help that I have better-quality paint than I did then.

Felted winter hat

I found two books on felting in the library to use as references for this project.
The books said that it was absolutely essential to do some test swatches with your yarn, in your washer.

Front-loading washers aren't nearly as good as top-loaders for felting, because you can't just stop them in the middle of a cycle, but that is what I have.

From felting my test swatches, I learned that it would take two full wash cycles to get the yarn to felt enough, that its Kool-Aid overdyeing would not be affected by this, and that I was going to have to knit two layers to get the thickness of hat that I wanted.

I measured my swatches before and after to see how much they shrunk; the result was very near what I was told to expect in the books:  forty percent loss in the length, and about twenty percent in the width.

I combined two different hat patterns from the books to come up with a simple hat shape to knit:  knit a straight tube starting at the bottom edge, and then at the top, do ten evenly spaced decreases around, but only do the decreases on every other row. When done, part of the bottom edge is turned up, and part is left down.

At this point, I had a bunch of math to do to see how many stitches I actually needed to knit, and how many inches long, allowing for both my normal knitting gauge as well as how it would shrink.

To get the second layer, I elected to pick up stitches along the brim, and knit essentially a second hat attached to the first, in sort of a long football shape, pushing one end inside the other when I was done.

I decided to loosely tie these two ends together for felting, because I thought that my washer was likely to find some ugly way to distort the hat's shape if I didn't. The hat still came out looking like a squashed pancake, and has some puckers on the top that maybe wouldn't have been there if I hadn't tied it.

After blocking and drying, the hat is serviceable, although not photogenic. It's a bit heavy on my head, as there are almost eight whole ounces of yarn in it.

What midlife is for

Five or six years ago, I started learning continental-style knitting, where the yarn is held in the hand that holds the needle that is being knitted from. It only works for the knit stitch, not for purl (don't ask me what they do on the Continent for purling), but it is much more efficient than the way that is usually taught (which I also taught myself at that time, having had up until then a let-go-of-the-needle-and-move-the-whole-hand-around technique; effective but very slow).

I am now working on a lap blanket, all in garter stitch (knit stitch only), and it is a good project for practicing my continental knitting. Now I have acquired some muscle memory in making the stitch. I've also been working on moving more efficiently from one stitch and the next, and from one row to the next.

With those skills, I can now knit more than twice as fast as I could just a few years ago, and probably more like three times the speed that I was knitting at ten years ago. It is very exciting to see my blanket being completed so quickly. And when I estimate the dwindling number of years that I have left to knit in, I think I'm going to need that ability.

Perspective gained

With the national debt at over $62,000 per capita (not including interest), it seems obvious to me that we are in for one flavor of austerity or another in the future. Well, then...let's get back to the basics:

Water.

Food.

Clothing.

Shelter.

I've noticed something interesting in Proverbs 31:  the idealized "Proverbs 31 woman" does a lot of work with textiles, and clearly has built up a lot of skill in the fiber arts.

I think there are a couple of reasons for that.  The first is that the basics of sewing, weaving, knitting, crochet, embroidery, and so on can be done with very little investment in tools, and a moderate investment in materials. It just takes a lot of time to learn the skills, and to practice and use them.  Whereas growing food requires land and seeds, and possibly animals.  Knowledge and skill are also required, but living things do want to live and grow, which is a big help.

Water and shelter are more stable things--either you have a source of water, or you don't, and if you've built your house well, it will probably stand for years.

In recent years, the price of basic clothing has come very far down.  All you have to do is ignore the fact that much of it is made of plastic, and assembled by basically slave labor.  And then it's hauled across the world in big ships running on fossil fuels.

When the debt party ends, that's the end of it...one way or another. So I see some wisdom in learning how to create my own textiles, even though economically it doesn't make any sense at the moment.

Homemade socks

I retired a few pairs of my socks recently, and for some reason I don't feel that buying new socks at this time is the right answer. So this is what I have been doing instead:

1.  Repairing holes in socks by darning. Way back when, I tried darning cotton socks with wool yarn, and didn't like how the results felt on my feet. This time around, I have been using wool yarn on wool socks, and crochet cotton on cotton socks. The basic idea of darning is simple:  replace the missing material with a woven-in-place mesh that is anchored all around to non-deteriorated material.

I don't much like weaving, but weaving on a scale as small as this is tolerable.

2.  Knitting new socks. We had almost a pound of fine, matching wool yarn in our stash, which apparently cost my husband 50 cents altogether at a garage sale or something. I have started knitting a pair of socks from this yarn, but it will take a while, probably until fall (at least).

3.  Sewing socklike leggings or tights. It occurred to me, out of the blue, that perhaps some of the excess kids' clothes that are sitting in our garage waiting to be donated would work for making longer stockings. I looked and found a sweatshirt that had enough fabric. From past experience I knew how to cut and sew stockings quickly:  I don't bother doing anything fancy at the heel, I just make a long, tapered tube that has the right circumference at the right points (and that is closed at the small end. the toe), and finish it with some elastic at the top.

The heels do wear out first, but that would have happened anyway. With my feet, the circumferences at the ankle, heel, and widest part of the foot are all about the same, so I just get the width right and let it sort itself out in the wearing. (It does leave a wrinkle at the front ankle, which I am not fussy about.)

I have also used T-shirt fabrics, including some with spandex, for these before. Their lifespan, I would say, is "slightly better than pantyhose."

4.  Learning from experience. The socks I knitted from the nice wool yarn, last time around, ended up accidentally being shrunk into kid-size socks (very thick and warm ones). The socks I made out of recycled wool blanket yarn did not felt at all, and also stretched out a fair amount, and they have needed darning at various times.  The latest yarn I am using now will felt, I know, so I am knitting them slightly large.

Size 3 knitting needles from bamboo skewers

I needed some knitting needles small enough (in diameter) to handle fine yarn.

At first I worked on making some from a piece of heavy steel wire that we had; cut to length with a hacksaw, shape the ends with a metalworking file, and sand smooth. But they are weightier than I want to deal with while knitting thinner yarn.

Then I went looking through our bucket-of-dowels-and-such, to see if we had any very thin dowels left; no luck.

So I ended up in the kitchen, raiding my husband's supply of bamboo skewers. They just needed a little sanding (220 grit) to smooth them and blunt the tips a little. They appear to be about a size three.

Cheap round chopsticks are around a size 8 knitting needle, and 1/4 inch dowels are size 10.

Knitting weather

About all I want to do right now is knit my way through all my yarn stash. I finished the pair of socks, and used the leftover yarn to knit a little bag in a fancy stitch.

I inventoried the children's winter clothing, so I know what we need to get for them.

We received a couple of things by inheritance:  a scroll saw and a box of spices. My husband built a workbench for the saw out of scrap lumber on hand, but we still need to bolt it down.

I made a batch of castile soap. Like my two previous attempts at soapmaking, it did not saponify well on the first try, but only after I melted it down again and did another round of stirring. I don't think it is worthwhile trying to recreate cheap soap at home, but this five-pound batch cost me less than half the price of the store-bought version; I was able to buy the olive oil on sale. I was smart and wore boots for the soapmaking; a drop of lye fell on the toe of one boot and burned it. I also had the advantage of using my husband's digital postal scale, for accurate measurements.

I bought the remaining upholstery supplies for my chair, but I am enjoying being in the phase of the project that is right before the hard part, so I am stalling on moving on to the next step.

A neighbor was thinning out their hostas, and gave us a bin full. They nicely filled in one of our empty places, with room to grow. Another neighbor gave us a bicycle that their child had outgrown.

Pajama pants and halfway through the second sock

I received a few pieces of fabric from a big fabric stash clean-out. I used some flannel to make pajama pants. Another piece I will use to make another blouse. The other piece I will probably make into clothing too, but I'm not sure what. There was also a vest with some suede that I will reuse somehow.

I also turned the heel on the second sock of the most recent pair.

A while back, I gave my armchair frame a light coat of spray-on clear finish. I have decided that as a general policy I am not going to paint carved wood. The clear finish gives it some shine so it looks somewhat updated. (In my trend-spotting I am seeing more shiny and geometric finishes and forms.)

I've been playing the Everything in its Place game recently in my home, and also the Give it a Good Scrub game. I will say (again) that just wiping things down can make a remarkable difference in how my home feels.

Easy go

A hailstorm came through and really clobbered the vegetable garden, so we are not going to get much more out of it. We had one-inch hail at the house, bouncing all over the place, but the garden got it even worse than that.

I have been sewing, and made two more pairs of kid pants from old clothing. I am also sewing a blouse from an old skirt, which I originally made from an old sheet. Instead of a pattern, I have notes and measurements that I took when I deconstructed a worn-out shirt. I also have the first copy that I made of the shirt to look at.

I put in some time on sock knitting, and am about to turn a heel. But I am very low on sleep, so I am thinking that I may wait another day for that. It's probably not the best day to sew buttonholes, either.

Current projects

I have two more pairs of socks to knit; one more pair from the wool blanket, and another from some turquoise cotton yarn that I bought. (There are some very nice turquoise and aqua colors in style now.) The weather was too hot for knitting, but now it is cooling off a bit.

Reupholstering the armchair:  I have the chair stripped down, and I have started gathering materials to reupholster it. After considering some repurposing options, I bought some new upholstery fabric, and now I have to decide whether to refinish or paint the exposed wood.

Dining room chairs:  These are mostly stripped down, and I am waiting for a week or so until vinyl goes on sale at the fabric store. I have decided not to repaint the metal frames.

Footwear:  I took a pair of cheap sandals that had been handed down to me, and replaced the upper parts (with upholstery fabric scraps from the footstool) to make scuffy slippers, for indoors. I am also plotting how to replace my dress shoes, which are nearly worn out.

Produce:  We are getting plenty of tomatoes, cucumbers, and summer squash from the garden now. The challenge is to actually prepare and eat them.

Chugging along with the sewing machine

I got my mostly-metal sewing machine back, and have been working on cranking out another set of cloth menstrual pads. It takes me about three or four hours to cut and sew a set, which should last for several years. The fabric is flannel from a handed-down sheet, along with a couple of old dish towels (for inside layers).

I also have several mending projects that have piled up.

After that, I am going to unravel more blanket yarn, for another pair of socks.

Knitted socks from a wool blanket

I found some more yarn for sock knitting...in an old wool blanket. This blanket came from a rummage sale about ten years ago, cost $2, and actually was only the top half of a blanket.

Before I deconstruct anything vintage, I do a gut check and ask myself if I am doing the right thing. In this case, the answer was yes; I had owned the blanket for about ten years, but I never really used it, although I liked it a lot.

Not every wool blanket can be unraveled; almost all are too fuzzy or too felted. But it worked very well with this particular blanket. The only obstacle was that I had to trim back the warp threads (the ones that run lengthwise) every quarter-inch, otherwise the weft thread was too difficult to pull out. So I could glean at most half of the wool in the blanket. (The rest could have been saved for stuffing something, but I didn't.) The fringe in the photo is the warp threads ready to be trimmed.

For this blanket, I found that there were two weft (crosswise) strands; the weaver must have used two shuttles, throwing one across and back, and then the other one, crossing strands at the edge. Understanding this helped me to unravel longer strands of wool from the blanket. I unraveled as much as I could of each strand, and when it broke (where the edges of the blanket were worn) I wound the strand up into a little ball.

The unraveled strands were kinked, but I used them as they were. The "hand" (yarn texture) felt a bit crisp, but not scratchy. I found that three strands used together knitted up well with the size of needles that I have.

I unraveled just enough to knit up another pair of socks, of the same pattern as before. I still have more than half of the half-blanket left.