Hello again

Thank you for your patience while I finished revising my latest project, which I finally wrapped up a few days ago. As anticipated, the excerpts from it did not make the shortlist for this year's Emerging Authors Dagger, but I am in very good company there and those who did proceed are a very impressive group! 

Meanwhile, check out what's been happening outside, while I hunched over my keyboard:

Admittedly as I type this we're having another very chilly grey day, which I appreciate and am using to cool down the house because our a/c is broken again and I somehow doubt we will be able to book and complete a repair before next week's hot weather. But - and there is always a but - there is no mistaking we are in blossom season. 

Also, rainy season! We've had so much rain the last few weeks, and the puddles have been spectacular. I keep trying to capture the mirror effect when they reflect the trees above them.

Probably I should keep my day job... or at least, focus on enjoying all the perks of our super pretty walking route.

On the wildlife front, the bees slurping around our lilacs this year are as big and bumbly as ever, and we have a new bird in the neighbourhood. A huge black one that's probably a crow but might be a raven? The signs are mixed. Maybe I just missed it every other year we've lived here, but I don't remember that deep solitary call being part of the usual chirpy dawn chorus. I would like to befriend it. Sadly, I don't see myself putting in the work with sitting quietly and dishing up mealworms, so don't expect interesting video encounters anytime soon. 

I got my sewing machine out the other night to put a couple of darts into a pair of men's jeans for a friend who isn't a man, and kept it out to put darts into a few other things myself. 

Darts in menswear are such a great solution to women's clothes not straying into dangerous territory. Like, it's such a trauma apparently for a woman to have shorts that hit the top of her knee! Or have pockets big enough for a phone and maybe a sunscreen stick. Whereas it's so easy to buy long men's cargo shorts, throw in some darts at the back of the waist so they stay up, and get on with our lives. 

 

Speaking of which, I'm extra excited to have my current writing project on to the final polishing stages because it leaves me free to pick back up again with another I was really loving. I know, I know - it's like I'll never get back to crafty work, right? But I do love writing best of all. And I'm so much better at it than mirrory puddles, ha! 

Hope your weekend is a delight - see you next week and thanks as always for stopping by.

New To Me and Hand Painted China

Hello all and thank you for checking back in with me! I am still hard at work writing but I took a break for some thrifting at my favourite local jumble sale this weekend. So many treasures again this year, but I'll spare you (most of) the book haul in favour of two platters.

They're both from Grindley and... well, I just really liked them. And I didn't want to see them get broken up and used for a garden table mosaic if nobody else bought them, when they're in great shape with no crazing to keep me from using them to hold rolls or neatly folded meats at a lunch buffet. Assuming I ever host a lunch buffet. Stranger things have happened!

As an aside, I also acquired these beautiful cotton/linen tea towels recently, via eBay. They are I think about two feet long! which is welcome when you are doing a lot of hand-drying, let me tell you.

Back to china. I scored this fantastically huge bowl which is impossible to photograph so I hope you can make do with this pic:

It's about 14.5" wide across the top and has deep embossed circles in it. Only pressed glass, and it's got many bubbles and imperfections, but I absolutely love it. Mind you it's a commitment. I don't own a cupboard big enough to stash it in, so it's going to have to be out all the time, and I'll have to think of different uses for it to get through all the seasons. 

I am up for that challenge.  

Books were of course a primary focus for me at the sale and I was thrilled to pick up a bunch of 1950s Bobbsey Twins stories for a friend who collects them (not pictured.) My own obsession was vintage Agatha Christies and I did get quite a number of editions I don't already have, plus a collection of her plays (pictured!)

The spritz cookie press is so amazing, isn't it? This is a less recent acquisition - a friend picked it up as a present for me at a different jumble-y sale, and I was blown away when I opened it. It has never been used, for one thing. And who could resist that box cover art? Plus, I did actually use a spritzer just like this with my mum when I was little, so that was very moving. I will have to reanimate my passion for spritz cookies and put this lil guy through its paces.

 

Okay there is one more thing I want to show you, and it is the item I bought home at the last minute when the extraordinarily nice lady at the china table said, "I think this would be really fun at Christmas, don't you? You should get it!" and I could not disagree.

When I got it unpacked and washed, it puzzled me. The trademark on the back references Limoges, but the front does not look like Limoges. More like... 2012 dollar store reproduction? I looked it up, and apparently there are made-in-China reproduction Limoges, and also fake Limoges masquerading as the real thing. This could be either of those less than ideal options. Still, something about it still didn't fit. Yes, there are paint splodges on the back of the plate around the rim where somebody got careless, but there are also some age marks on it that I've seen on some of my older dishes. So I did some more digging and you know what?

Given the trademark on the back, the plate is probably circa 1905. 

And the lines look a bit uneven because it was hand painted, possibly by an amateur. Because, and this is the ultimate New To Me for today: around that time, a hobby sprang up around buying blank china pieces (as from Limoges) and painting them, either alone at home or in groups at a party. Some people even set up as a commercial enterprise. I gather there were standard sorts of designs you could buy to work from. Perhaps this is one, but I couldn't find any other examples of it online so maybe it was done freehand. 

 

Apparently I am slow off the mark on this one because my friend Jan already knew all about it when I told her. It's kinda cool though, right? While we use up our spare time knitting stuff, we could be hand-painting china tea services. All that gold paint, though... musta been messy.

Either way: I am so glad I brought this home to give it another twenty or thirty years of admiration. If I'm right about somebody painting it in 1905, it's survived a few generations of owners before landing at the rummage sale. It would've been a real shame if it went into the bin after all that.

 

And now it's time for me to get back to the rest of my writing retreat. Another three weeks - see you here again on May 31! Have fun in the meantime and thanks again for dropping by.

 

Hoppy Easter

Turns out hand stitching is not my friend - at least until my sewing arm recovers from whatever weird nerve thing is going on in there - so I have gone out and bought another bunny:

It's the blue one I considered at first, and left behind.

I even had to rip out the stitches I did last week on the poor Mr. Fawn's permanent-marker-ridden ear lining, because they were not perfectly spaced and were cramming up the ear underneath, SIGH

However, I did have a big win since the last time we met - much, much bigger than if I'd successfully sewn on the bunny ear flops. Hard to imagine that, isn't it? but It Is So.

After working for ages on this one suspensey / crimey manuscript with a funny / scary heroine, I learned this week that it's been longlisted for this year's Emerging Author Dagger from the Crime Writers' Association! 

This one is a mother-daughter story with a criminal bent and a sense of humour. The blurb: 

After a violent burglary drives her away from Oriole, Massachusetts, Lee Amato returns to exonerate herself by unmasking the criminal behind it, but when one of the burglars is murdered Lee suspects both crimes implicate her mother.

It's super exciting to get this vote of confidence, because it's been a complicated story to write. I mean, look at that mood board photo - what was I thinking, stirring up a mix of my takeaways from Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and Lee Child? Yet there it is, along with what's stayed with me from Wilkie Collins, Jane Austen, and the Brontë sisters. (Terrible of me to lump them together, but they do such a great job with Fraught.) Plus, you know, a bit of the flipside of Nancy Drew.

It's also daunting, because I haven't finished the revisions on this manuscript. AND I have given up sugar for the foreseeable, so I won't have any cake to help me along.

So I hope you'll forgive me for excusing myself from Hugs for a few weeks to wrangle with words. My goal is to be back for a check-in on May 10, and for good on May 31, hopefully with something textile-y to show you.

Meanwhile, I hope you have a lovely weekend. An Easter-y one if you celebrate and, by early in the week, a half-price chocolate fest if you don't.

See you soon and thanks as always for dropping by! 

Bunny Emergency

If it's almost Easter, I must be contemplating more bunny purchases. But something went horribly wrong when I was selecting two extra fluffy ones:

I was so distracted choosing between a soft brown bunny or a blue, I did not notice the soft brown I eventually bought had been playing with permanent marker:

 Disastre! Or... maybe Opportunity?

For various reasons that include not having taking the offered receipt following this purchase, and a lack of other soft brown bunnies in the store, we decided I would instead try to fix the marks. And I will tell you straight out, stain removal was not an option - it'd been there too long. I did consider embroidery, because with green for a stem and something else for the centre of a flower, the circular stain could have passed as diffuse petals, but I'm not good enough to pull that off. 

Instead, I hunted through my fabric stash again and was pleased to discover that this old love is as good a match as I'd hoped. Yay!

 

I also found this other old favourite I'd totally forgotten, which would look pretty awesome appliqued onto my felted sweater with the holes in it, so I'm going to give that a think for some later date.

 

I got to work cutting out some ears and liner fabric, and adapted them for the shape of each of bunny's flops...

and this morning, got out the ironing board to press and top stitch them...

(allowing a smaller bunny to try them on for size first, because I am so generous.)

This is how I expect the patches to look, once they're sewn on. You can see they won't go all the way to the top of the ear - the fabric is folded there, and I don't know how I'd get in with my needle anyway, so I am stopping them just above the level of the stain and will leave the tops open so somebody could stuff little treasures in there, or just earrings:

Naturally when I planned all this I assumed I would have it all done to show you before I go off to play for the afternoon. And just as naturally, I was wrong. So I will leave you with the first ear partly done, and best wishes for a lovely weekend of your own. You can certainly guess what I'll be doing, once bunny wakes up from his nap.

See you next Saturday, and thanks for stopping by!

I have an invisible mending opportunity

 ... or do I? Let's decide!

I bought this gorgeous felted wool sweater new, and massively discounted owing to some fabric flaws. Holes, to be specific. 

They're right down the front, starting from the neck. 

I knew this going in and thought the holes would be much worse, but I didn't care. I have the same sweater with no flaws in a brown-green-gold colour and absolutely love this fabric, flaws or not.

Check out that texture! yet, when you wear it, this wool is soft like silk. And quite thin, while maintaining structural integrity. Warm enough but very breathable. I wasn't going to turn down fabric like that over a few holes. Anyway, I'm so interested now in visible mending and looking for opportunities to try it. 

(Bet you're wondering, as I say that, whether I have taken advantage yet of my blue denim opportunities and the answer is No, because apparently I am always more excited about potential than actual work, and also, I still haven't decided whether to patch or weave that fabric, sigh. Decision-making: never my strong point.)

So I bought the sweater and the holes are quite small but there are a lot of them and they are weirdly positioned. Another view of the size:

And again, with light behind the biggest one, which is at the neck:

As soon as it arrived I started rubbing my hands together with glee because I couldn't help noticing that the scarf I'm STILL WEAVING (sorry, lil frustrated with myself there) is a very good match for this fabric...

... and I also have this thread that's pretty close.

 

Or I could make the holes bigger, then patch some fabric in behind them. The pink floral fabrics at the top of this post turn out not to be quite on the nose, so maybe high contrast patches, using raccoon faces, would be fun.

Too much?

Here's the thing though - give that this is felted wool, the holes aren't going to get bigger unless they snag on something. Which, given that the worst one is at my neck, would lead to bigger problems than torn fabric.

And the fabric is so very textured, casting shadows all over. I'm not sure the holes even show. Like, check out this other one I found on the back. Can you even see it?

Here's where it is. I could barely make it out, myself, until I knew to look for it. 

Plus, the really big hole at the front of the neck falls into this area that folds in naturally while in use (as I mentioned, I have another of these sweaters already and am cosily wearing it as I type this), such that it will be out of sight when I wear it.

The only hole I really need to worry about is the one that's sort of smack in the middle of the front.

It does show. But it's pretty small.

Maybe I should just wear this sweater and ignore the holes. If I mend them, I might just make them stand out more, right?

Ugh, now I don't know what to do, apart from wearing the sweater and enjoying the bright colour and knowing I can always mend it if the holes get worse. Or maybe, wearing the sweater to a sewing supply store so I can buy embroidery floss or similar that is a perfect match! 

Either way, I have had a very productive time hunting up my sewing scraps and thread collection so I could write today's Hug. I found some vintage tea towel fabric I'd been looking for, to fill out a curtain panel I've decided is just too skimpy. I am really piling up the sewing projects! Which makes it more urgent to finish my weaving, because I need the loom space for my sewing machine, aiiieee.

Hope you've got a lively or lazy but in all ways good weekend lined up, and thank you for dropping in again today after I took last week to nurse my sore arm. It is still sore, by the way, but less persistently so, and my doctor is certain it's not carpal tunnel, so I am just muddling along with loads of massage.

See you next Saturday! 

Looming looming

Hello again from your friendly carpal tunnel sufferer (who's checking it out with a doctor this week because Ow.) For days now I have been steering clear of typing and scrolling and knitting and unscrewing any lids from pickle jars, which leaves me with... the loom.

I know it looks like there's zero progress from last week but that's because weaving is a lot of repetition and same old same old until suddenly there's nothing left to weave into. And when I say repetition etc., I mean the following activities:

Wooden frame thing into upper notch

Push yarn thing from right to left

Adjust new yarn strand to track a 45 degree angle from right to left

Use wooden frame thing to pat the 45 degree yarn into place

Tug the end of the yarn to make sure the sides are even with the inches that came before

Wooden frame thing into lower notch

Push yarn thing from left to right

Adjust new yearn stand to track a 45 degree angle from left to right

Use wooden frame thing to...

You get the idea. And then periodically you have the thrill of unclipping the gears so you can roll your work onto the frontmost tube, to make room for more from the backmost tube. I know it's hard to see just looking at the back end, but I have actually done that quite a few times over the course of the week. All the buffer cardboard so close together tells me I'm getting close.

You know what would be smart when setting up a new project? Colour-coding the ends of the cardboard strips so you start with some red, then move to orange, then yellow, then green. Then, when you're rolling to the other end and start seeing yellow or orange, you'll feel like you're getting somewhere.

Knitting's much the same on the repetition front, but you can multitask with it if you get bored, even without adding in cables or lace or shaping. With weaving, all you can do is make the fabric more interesting by switching up the size of yarns you're pairing up, or doing a plaid, or both, or even doing a double width which is a magic trick I really do want to learn some time.

Since I can't do any of these things till I have this baby off the rails, I am gonna get back to it. It's cold and windy out, but I am about due to see a sun patch landing on this table, and I'm not sure there's much nicer than sitting in one of those to finish a simple project.

Hope you have a great weekend, and a great weekend next time too! I am begging off Hugs till April 5, in the hopes that resting this arm will get me back to normal faster. Meanwhile, take care of yourself via nice times and treats.

 

 

Revisiting my Knitters Loom

I've been struggling at the edge of the news whirlpool lately, have you? And my carpal tunnel issues are still a bother, so I decided to block out the noise with my Ashford Knitters Loom, still bearing signs of a previous project.

I looked it up here on Hugs and it seems the last time I played with the loom was in September of 2014. 2014!!! How is it possible I went ten years without weaving? It scares me to think how much longer it's been since I sat down at my spinning wheel. 

I see from my previous notes that this tiny scarf/belt/strip of fabric was sitting at about six inches wide. Well, it's less than that now.

Also it looks like I let the finished work get up too close to the heddle. Or do I mean the reed? 

 

I seem to recall I never did figure out the names of all the parts. Just how to make them work. (which I have also forgotten.)

Either way: time to roll things down into the finished bit. At least I remember how to do that.

And how to use YouTube to look up an instructional video from Ashford for the rest. It's rainy today and I don't have anything else pressing, so with luck I'll be semi-expert again by suppertime. I certainly have enough yarn wound and ready, to get on with!

I probably need a good audiobook for this project, don't you think? I am leaning toward Hidden Figures, by Margot Lee Shetterly. I've certainly had it in my queue long enough, and it's everything I like in a book.

 

Hope you're having a good weekend so far! I am, but I think I need a nap before I tackle any more of this weaving business. Looking forward to seeing you next Saturday too. Who knows, if I pick something lengthy like Dickens on audio, I might even have set up the wheel again. H'mmmmmm.

 

 

 

 

Snow Clothes

This week I trekked to the Art Gallery of Ontario and saw some recently gifted paintings by William Kurelek, a painter of Ukrainian-Canadian descent who passed away in 1977 too young - only 50. I shared some other images over at Instagram but I thought you guys might be most interested in the textile details!

This closeup, from The Batchelor, shows the strangest sock hole I have ever seen. It's like a brand new pair was attacked by a dog. maybe he knit them himself since he still has the yarn for repair!

I love this tiny glimpse of two children and an out-of-control snowball from Souvenirs d’enfance:

I don't care how much those kids are bundled, they gotta be cold.

I remember playing in the snow at night from my own childhood, so the moonlight and shadows in Home on the Range really caught my attention. Check out the closeup shenanigans!

 

I also loved this half of the painting, Life, focused on a little girl watching the people who are diligently cutting up logs, which are being gathered up for winter fuel to heat their house.

Lotta baking going on inside, to warm up those workers! And this poor kid's darted outside without a hat or stockings.

 

It was great to get out and see some art in person, especially when I'm having a hard time making any of my own... ugh, that heavy sweater I knit is still weighing on my right arm. The carpal tunnel issues are improving but: no knitting for this girl yet, le sigh.

Hope you're getting in some good crafty time as the winter drags on (or the summer, depending on where you are). Thanks for dropping in and I'll see you next week!