After several warm days that made the lilac and rose bushes pop new leaves, winter weather returned.
This is the same snowstorm that caught Sherry on her way home from West Virginia. Bourbon County had a sunny, snow-melting day today, but here on Droop, the snow persists.
Another holiday postcard from Grandma's album--this one was never addressed or mailed. It says "Erin Go Bragh--Upper Lake Kilarney." Happy St. Patrick's Day!
I confess I never quite outgrew my girlish fascination with doll clothes, doll houses, and miniatures. I quit making doll clothes because I needed clothes more than dollies did, and there were so many other things to do. However, browsing the Internet shows me that there are a lot of grown-up ladies (and gentlemen) who never put aside their interest in miniatures, scale models, dolls, and doll clothes.
Although I feel I could easily be sucked into the world of dressing vintage dolls or even creating fanciful cloth dolls, I'm going to confine myself to making clothes for this one doll. To that end, I've put together a collection of links that I found helpful, informative, or just interesting.
It's snowing again today, and the sumac buds are tight shut still.
Like other smooth-barked tree species here, the sumacs have lots of lovely lichens.
Yesterday's sky did not promise spring, and this morning we had snow and sleet. Robins have been visiting the sumac fruits, but the main customers there are our red-bellied woodpeckers.
Lately, they have been rather rough in their foraging, and pieces of the fruiting bodies are scattered on the ground under the trees.
I wonder whether they enjoy these dry, furry fruits, or if they're the last choice here at the end of winter.
I've finished another pair of socks from my vintage yarn collection. This yarn is what they used to call "baby weight," and judging by the label and the pastel color palette, "Peter Pan" by Wendy was intended for baby clothes. The fiber content is 55% nylon, which made me think it would make long-wearing socks. If the nylon/acrylic fibers are uncomfortable in shoes (as is sometimes the case) I'll have a nifty pair of bed socks for cold nights.
I used Barbara Walker's Heraldic Pattern from A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, pp. 150-151. It's a pattern I've wanted to try for many years, but I had great difficulty converting the back-and-forth, flat knitting direction to in-the-round directions, mostly because every stitch is, at some point, twisted with another stitch. The odd directions in rows 23, 25, 31, and 32 reflect the way I worked around this.
The end result of a seamless tube of diagonals is very pleasing. I'm going to have to use this pattern on another pair of socks if only to justify the time I spent working out the "round and round" directions.
Barbara Walker's Heraldic Pattern Multiple of 12 stitches, knitted in the round Row 1: *K2, P4* Row 2: *RT, K4, LT, K4* Row 3: *K2, P4* Row 4: Knit Row 5: *K2, P4* Row 6: *RT, K4, LT, K4* Row 7: *K2, P4* Row 8: *K1, LT, K2, RT, K5* Row 9: *K3, P2, K3, P4* Row 10: *K2, LT, RT, K6* Row 11: *K8, P4* Row 12: *K3, RT, K7* Row 13: *K8, P4* Row 14: *K2, RT, LT, K6* Row 15: *K3, P2, K3, P4* Row 16: *K1, RT, K2, LT, K5* Row 17: *K2, P4* Row 18: *LT, K4, RT, K4* Row 19: *K2, P4* Row 20: Knit Row 21: *K2, P4* Row 22: *LT, K4, RT, K4* Row 23: *K2, P4* Last repeat, K2, P3. Slip last stitch onto next needle, making it first stitch of next row. Row 24: *RT, K6, LT, K2* Row 25: *K3, P4, K3, P2* At end of last repeat, slip first stitch from next row onto working needle, knit. Row 26: *K8, LT, RT* Row 27: *K2, P4, K6* Row 28: *K9, LT, K1* Row 29: *K2, P4, K6* Row 30: *K8, RT, LT* Row 31: *K2, P4, K3, P2, K1* Last repeat K2, P4, K3, P2 Slip last stitch onto next needle, making it first stitch of next row. Row 32: *LT, K6, RT, K2* At end of last repeat, slip first stitch from next row onto working needle, knit.
Now that I've updated my Drupal website, I need to think of something useful to do with it. I've used it for sharing information with my students, and as a trial ground to learn to use content management systems, but I don't currently have a need for either of those purposes. I've also thought about using it as an adjunct to selling my fiber arts projects, but I've made no move in that direction.
I made that site to learn how to use Drupal, but I'm also thinking about switching to Wordpress. Ironically, I started this Blogger blog to get my website indexed, but these days, this blog covers most of my web presence needs. Maybe I should drop the spiceridge.com site all together?
Here are some tips I've collected for using Drupal for a personal site. (See, I'm using this blog to keep track of links I don't want to lose.)
For now, Grandma's dolly is going to sit around in her underwear. Once that would have been indecent, but nowadays, it just means she telecommutes. The silk dress dress didn't dissolve or shrink from washing, as I had feared, but it was so badly stained that I won't be putting it back on her.
I wonder what my mom would have made of e-commerce. It only took me half an hour to learn that this is what collectors call a "flathead" china doll, most likely made in the waning days of "lady dolls" (as opposed to "baby dolls") as the little girl's gift of choice. Although this doll is in relatively good condition and has most of her original clothes, she is just one of the common dollies. Collectors pay the big bucks for rare dolls that were never played with.
Meanwhile, after washing and ironing her complicated lingerie, I'm feeling fond of her and thinking about making her some new outfits. I believe I can make an acceptable period dress--perhaps a wrapper with an apron, or a shirtwaist and skirt. I do have those seven plastic tubs of fabric scraps, and fitting doll clothes is much simpler than fitting human clothes. Dolls don't need wearing ease and don't ever complain.
Recently I pulled my grandmother's china doll out of the box I've kept it in since clearing out my mother's house in 1996. Mom, in her turn had kept it in a box after clearing out her own mother's house in 1963. Mom used to show me the doll occasionally, telling me it was a valuable antique which we would restore "someday." She kept some vintage fabric scraps and 1960's magazine clippings with the doll.
I've decided to end the family tradition of not knowing what to do with this doll. I could clean it up and display it, sell it, or perhaps find some way to preserve it in storage, but I no longer keep stuff just because I'm afraid to get rid of it.
As a little girl I was frightened of the doll--it made me think of graves and corpses. Opening the box, I found it was just as creepy as I remembered. It was dressed in a silk gown my mom had told me was made from "Aunt Ella's wedding dress," meaning her dad's sister. The dress had a number of brown stains, was grey with dust, and smelled musty.
I undressed the doll (imagining how horrified my mom would have been to catch me playing with it) and suddenly, it looked more pleasant and friendly. (I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of doll, dress and all. It was too disturbing.)
In the first picture, it's just wearing a chemise and some lace scraps that were sewn on, not fashioned into a blouse. I clipped the threads holding it on and removed the chemise.
The stockings and shoes are sewn and pinned in place, and I didn't have confidence that I could replace them. The doll body is made of muslin stuffed with sawdust, not kidskin, as Mom had thought. It has kidskin forearms and hands with individually-sewn fingers. The painted hair shows some wear on the back, suggesting that my grandma played with her, but Grandma must have been big enough to avoid dropping a 22-inch doll on its china head too often. I'm guessing she might have been six or seven, which means she got the doll about 1890.
I've been putting off updating my Drupal Web page for most of the winter, but I thought I'd better get it taken care of before spring or I wouldn't do it at all.
The first thing I had to do was get my desktop computer set up as LAMP, Linux Apache Mysql PHP, so I could have a test site.
# apt-get install php5-gd
# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
# aptitude install mysql-server mysql-client
# aptitude install phpmyadmin
In the process of relocating a Drupal site to a local machine for testing, one has to clone the database. PHPmyAdmin has a push-button function for exporting a database; however, my database has grown too large for the push-button "import" to work. There are lots of bad hacks with high Google ratings, but they're much harder than using command line MYSQL with the commands given at Import/Export Large MYSQL Databases. "Source" is a dandy sql command I'd totally forgotten--it tells mysql to read a file and do the commands given there.
After all this, adding the updates to the Drupal installation took a few minutes. I haven't finished with the Spice Ridge site yet--I'd like to do it after a good night's sleep, in case something goes wrong; however, it's been my experience that the live site is easier to manage than the localhost one.
Every time I update Drupal, things go a little differently; however this time, I found most of the things I needed to do in my own Drupal posts here on my blog. I may bore my readers, but these Linux and Open Source posts are the things I revisit most often.
Other than these skeins of Rambouillet yarn, I have little to show for the past few days. I thought I might get through a winter without a head cold, but a virus got a hold of me, and my mental acuity has not been too sharp. Fortunately, spinning is something that doesn't require much concentration, and I have compressed a big plastic bin chock-full of fleece bats into a dozen skeins of yarn, freeing up about four cubic feet of closet space.
You may recognize my ancestral pincushion posing next to the yarn, sporting its collection of hatpins. My grandma and her mother must have been brave women to use these fierce implements to fasten down their hats.
I've never sprouted onion seeds before, and I didn't expect them to be so curly and cute. I hope these will give us better success than we've had with onion sets here. The garden catalog called this variety "Walla Walla," and promised they'd do great things.
In my continuing efforts to clear some closet space, I've been spinning a plastic tub full of dyed and carded fleece. Yarn takes up so much less space than wool batts! These four colors of Rambouillet wool represent four different crockpot dye baths.
These two batches of yarn represent the last of a very dirty fleece that was given to me. Even as yarn it's got burdock bits in it, but I really like the complex way it takes the dye. Once dyed, it was just too pretty to throw out.
Back in October, I read about The Never Too Many White Shirts Project, started by Barbara at Sewing on the Edge. Quite a few stitchers have signed up to sew ten white shirts, the idea being that white shirts focus our attention on fit, line, and details, and sewing a bunch of them is useful because they are such versatile wardrobe components.
I think it's a cool idea, but I didn't sign up because I don't need ten new shirts. Since I was a teenager, most of the clothes I've made myself have been shirts, or else blouses styled like shirts, with collars on collar stands, shirt cuffs, front buttons, etc. In college, my incredulous roommate counted 24 shirts in my closet. They were all made from the same pattern.
When I was a grad student in Washington D.C., I discovered that the Georgetown Junior League's Thrift shop had gorgeously-detailed, seldom-worn men's dress shirts for under five dollars. The colors and patterns were sometimes eccentric, but I was a regular shopper there.
A few years ago I bought Shirtmaking by David Page Coffin. It's the most interesting sewing book I've ever read, and I've incorporated his design details into my shirt-making for several years now.
While Barbara works on sewing slowly and attending to professional shirtmaker's details, I've been looking for ways to sew quick and easy projects with my new serger. Of course I've tried it on shirt patterns.
I used my favorite men's shirt pattern, Kwik-Sew 2777 to make myself this nightshirt and flannel shirt. This time, I altered the pattern with a full bust adjustment, rotating the side dart to pleats at the shoulder seams. I was pleased to find that the shirts fit me much better this way.
For the nightshirt, I used a pattern size larger than I normally wear, and I made it night-gown length. I used the collar stand but no collar for a nineteenth century look, and I made the front one piece with a placket, for the same reason. I tried some cuff and cuff placket shortcuts using the serger, but they didn't turn out particularly well, so I made menswear cuff plackets using the pattern in Coffin's "Shirtmaking" on the flannel shirt.
The serger gave very nice seam finishes and shirt tail hems, but I couldn't bring myself to dispense with the menswear shirt details in these garments. I guess I'm just too shirt-obsessed--a "shirty dame."
Was Valentine's Day disappointing? Could Kitty be responsible? "Single White Feline."
A heart made of roses and an arrow made of something I don't recognize--the only floral message I understand here is "To my valentine" entwined with forget-me-nots. I can't read the post office in the postmark, either. All I know is that it was addressed to Florence Williamson and mailed February 13, 1909 somewhere in Iowa.
Last summer, I had no time for fiber fun, but with too many jobs came enough cash to hit a half-price book sale at Interweave, which I think of as "Eye-Candy Central" for fiber arts. One of the gems I'd been wishing for was Domino Knitting by Vivian Hoxbro. The patchwork appearance of her knitted fabric really appealed to me, but I was mystified by the technique. I assumed it would be something simple, that the rest of the book would be pretty pictures of knitted things, and I would regret spending money on a whole book of eye-candy. (It's happened before.) Finding it on sale after eight or nine years of wishing for it, I finally bought it.
I was delighted to find that it was more than a pretty book and a simple technique. I was inspired by the different ways projects can develop, and I had to try her "Learn While You Knit" projects. My cotton yarn odds and ends didn't knit up nicely, so I used acrylic yarn scraps to make this "pot-holder." Because acrylic yarn can melt, I decided to transform the 16-square fabric into a vest for my teddy bear. With a few extra squares knitted on for the front, it seems to fit him perfectly.
Here are some Web-based inspirations for modular or "domino" knitting.
After making the denim patchwork coverlet, I decided I liked working with these denim strips so much that I cut up my entire collection of recycled denim. Of course, I ended up with a small grocery bag of leftovers that were too good to throw away, but the final result was a more compact pile of scraps, some of which were ready to sew.
A few months ago, when I got a request for a mandolin case, I turned to this scrap collection (which had expanded, as scrap collections always do). It didn't take long to overlock the seams on this project once I'd located a zipper and figured out how to construct the bag. I've lined it with a sweatshirt fleece scrap. The pocket on the side of the case was once the bib from a pair of overalls. It's big enough to hold a tuner and some extra stings and picks.
Soon, another mandolin case was requested, and, once I'd found a zipper (from a discarded notebook), I sewed this one up the same way. Unfortunately, I didn't have any more denim overall bibs, so I made a small zippered pocket out of short denim strips.
The serger makes this sort of patchwork go really fast, and the overlock seam finish looks interesting all on its own. I'm thinking about making the seamy side the right side on some project.
Last fall, I discovered I had more fabric scraps by volume than I had uncut, garment ready fabric yardage. (Seven large plastic bins of scraps, but only six tubs of yardage.) After my frenzy of garment construction as I got to know my new serger, I realized that if I was going to keep sewing at that rate, I needed to either use my scraps or win the lottery.
Sewing with a serger can go pretty quickly, and the tidy seam finish gives a wrong side that looks much neater than this.
I've been experimenting with sewing small bits of fabric together to "create new yardage." With my collection of tee-shirt knits, I've cut odd-shaped scraps into wide strips straight on the fabric grain and then overlocked the strips together to produce bigger pieces. Then I cut garments from them. So far, I've just pieced together bits of the same fabric, and cut out my favorite underbritches patterns from them. However, I'm toying with the idea of a harlequin-patterned tee-shirt or cardigan.
I've also dipped into my collection of odd-shaped denim scraps that are too big to throw away and too small for anything useful, to see if I could make "new fabric" without following the grain line. The smaller the scraps, the more tedious the piecing process, and when your new seams have to cross the seams you've sewn previously, a trip to the ironing board is necessary. Still, it's much faster than the foundation piecing technique I used for my crazy-patchwork window quilts.
Here are a couple of old potholders I've re-upholstered with denim scraps. They're a little rough around the edges, but I won't burn my hands or the counter top with these.
There are so many ideas for fabric scraps floating around the Web--here are some I've looked at recently.
Just about the time we got the game camera aimed well, the flash developed problems. This is probably the last night-time bobcat picture we'll get. Oh well--it was fun while it lasted.