The Aviary

Two occurrences from yesterday:

1) So I have this brown skirt that I sewed that I didn't like the color of - I had dyed it myself and the brown came out too light and too orange for my taste. I had decided to overdye it a darker brown and began the process yesterday after dinner. Dyeing takes a while - I was using Rit, and the process is "Make a dye bath, put the item in stirring frequently for up to an hour, rinse out the excess dye, make another bath if you're using color fixitive, put the item in and stir frequently for 20 minutes, rinse again, wash the item in the washing machine, then dry."

I had gotten to the "then dry" part last night before I went to bed. Just before I threw the skirt in the dryer, I looked over it to see how the color looked and was a little dismayed to find several places where it didn't look even and the dye hadn't taken properly. There wasn't anything I could do about it at that point, so I threw it in the dryer and went to bed.

Where I proceeded to alternately worry all night about how I had ruined my skirt, and then try to figure out ways that I hadn't ruined it, or at least not irreparably, and this is how I could fix things. It was not a pleasant night.

And this morning, I pulled the skirt out of the dryer and, lo and behold, the color looks much more even than I remembered, and the few places where the dye didn't take are on inside of the skirt. It looks much better than my catastrophizing brain thought it did.

I don't recommend this worrying-all-night-to-discover-things-are-fine process to anyone, but the relief I'm feeling right now I really pretty great.



2) As I walked to my mailbox yesterday, I passed a dude on the sidewalk carrying a large reusable grocery bag that I couldn't see inside of. I didn't recognize him, but that doesn't mean anything - I am a hermit and am not terribly familiar with many of the people in my neighborhood.

As I passed him, he stopped, looked and me, and said, "Excuse me, I believe these are yours." Whereupon he reached into the grocery bag, pulled out a small but perfect bunch of tiny jewel-like grapes, and handed them to me. Then he walked away.

I have two theories:
a) He has grown the grapes in his garden, now has more grapes than he knows what to do with, and is giving them away to random people.
b) Grape fairy.

If theory b is correct, I'm probably in trouble, because I ate some of the grapes before I thought better of it. They are very tart but very tasty.

I got out a spinning project last night for the first time in...oof, over a year, and started spinning on it again. (It's hot right now and spinning is a good craft for hot weather, because it doesn't involve a pile of wool or other fabric sitting in my lap.)

I had been a little worried that, with such a long gap, I'd have trouble picking it up again. But it turns out that spinning is like riding a bicycle - my hands know how to do this, even without thinking about it. I'd forgotten just how sensually pleasant spinning is: the feel of the fiber moving through my fingers, the sound of my spindle as it spins. It's very good.

This project is a very large one for me - 24 oz of fiber in total - and I've been working at it on and off for a couple years now. I've got about 6 oz left, which is three full spindles. Maybe this will actually be the year I finish it, and then I can start knitting the sweater I'm making the yarn for.

So, a little while ago Joanns was having a really good sale on flannel fabric, and I've been wanting to make myself a flannel dress. I went to the store, but they didn't have a color I wanted, but the sale was also for fabric online, so I just found the color I wanted there and ordered 4 yards of fabric.

I've had variable luck in the past ordering from Joanns online - about 50% of the time, I get an email a few days later telling me that they can't fill my order, are cancelling it, and issuing me a refund. That didn't happen this time, and I got the fabric a few days ago. I left it folded in the package until laundry day (today) so that nothing would happen to it before I could wash it.

This morning, I finally took it out of the package. And discovered that they had, indeed, sent me 4 yards of fabric, but it is in two separate 2-yard pieces. I genuinely do not understand why they would do this - they are a fabric store. Surely they know that this is not what their customers want, right?

I'm going to see if I can still make this work with my pattern but I am making a mental note that it is just not worth ordering from Joanns online.

So, at the beginning of this year, I decided to knit my sister a sweater as her Christmas present. I bought yarn (that she selected), and found a pattern, and started working on it.

And I hated every minute of it. Getting measurements from her was like pulling teeth, getting her to try things on was even harder, and the actual knitting was either boring or irritating. It was a hateful, hateful sweater, even before the fitting where it turned out I need to rip out several inches and do them again.

So I gave up - I don't want to give someone a sweater I hate because a) knitted gifts should be made with love and b) that sort of thing feels like it would carry a curse to the wearer. She gets on my nerves sometimes, but I don't want to curse her. I talked to her about it, she agreed that she didn't want a cursed sweater, and I promised to make her something else with the yarn (not for Christmas).

I settled on making her a complex lacy wrap/infinity scarf thing - she likes wearing those and I love knitting complicated lace. I rewound the yarn earlier this week and, since today is a holiday and I have the day off, I decided to cast on.

I am going to enjoy this project much more than the last, but it does begin with 368 stitchs of provisional caston, and I am currently regretting many of my choices.

Sewing updates: I am, perhaps, 3/4 of the way done sewing my dress. It's been the majority of what I did this past weekend - I'm pretty fixated on it at the moment and willing to work on it until forced to stop by the need to eat or developing a bad headache from prolonged closeup work. I can't work on it that much during the work week, but I'm hoping to finish it by next weekend.

Since I've been relistening to the BBC radio Sherlock Holmes series the entire time I've been sewing, I have a handy (if idiosyncratic) tracking device for how long the dress is taking me. So far, discounting the cutting and prep work, sewing this project has taken from the beginning of STUD to the end of ENGR - about 13 hours. I imagine I'll be somewhere in the middle of Memoirs by the time I finish.

I spent most of yesterday handsewing - I want to make a dress but it has a lot of technique things I haven't done before since I am very much a novice (and also there are things I wanted to change about the pattern), so I'm making a muslin first to make sure everything works properly. It was very successful and now I know how to sew pleats and darts. I should be able to finish it completely this evening and then I can try the whole thing on.

However. I am now all over pinpricks and tiny cuts. It is very unpleasant, but I suppose this is what happens when you let a clumsy person do crafts that involve many many sharp objects.

I almost never injure myself while knitting. This is an advantage to yarn crafts that very few people bring up.

A lot of things about being an autodidact are cool and fun but sometimes, you get to be 40 years old and realize that you have been doing something the hardest way possible for years because you taught yourself and it never had to be that difficult.

This post brought to you by the realization that I have been doing whipstitch wrong for my whole life. Now I know how to do it the right way and will finally be able to sew all those cool patches I've bought over the years onto things without suffering.

A few weeks ago, my mom pointed me towards an little online class she'd found about handsewing a simple shirt. She was interested in doing it and thought I might be too, since I've been doing a good bit of handsewing recently. So I've been working on that some this week. The class is meant to produce a garment that's also a sampler - you learn four different seams and four different finishing techniques for the various hems and neckline. And then you can pick which one you like best on your next project and go from there.

I don't expect a lot from the actual garment, as it's my first time doing anything like this. It will likely be wearable, but not ideal, so I bought cheap fabric - I can make better things later, when I've had more practice. But I'm really enjoying the process of it, which is great. I love the idea of making my own clothing, but I dislike using a sewing machine and I've found it difficult* to find resources for learning to sew by hand that aren't focused on embroidery**. This class has been great for learning very basic fundamentals of good ways to sew fabric together, which has been really helpful

Sewing by hand is lovely and quiet and I get a garment at the end without terrible sewing machine noise. I'm likely never going to be a really great seamstress or be able to make anything really complex, but between this and my knitting, I'm getting pretty close to never having to buy basic ready-made clothes ever again.






*And also confusing. Discovering that quilter use the term "hand binding" to mean "you only use a sewing machine for half of this process" is not helpful when you want to find instructions for doing everything actually by hand.

**Embroidery is great! It isn't what I want to do, or at least not the primary thing. I like the idea of embroidery on a garment I'm making, but embroidery for its own sake doesn't appeal to me.

Things:

- The other day, I was doing some mending and came to a realization - I actually quite like sewing. I just dislike using a sewing machine*, and I don't care to do embroidery. Which is why I've spent the last few days reading about English paper piecing. It sounds like it has a lot of aspects I would enjoy (quiet and slow, modular, portable, can be used to make useful things and more particularly blankets), so I'm going to start a small project to see if I actually like it. I'm very excited about it.

- My concerts last weekend went very well - well attended, enthusiastic audiences, we finally sort of managed to make our most troublesome piece sound good. A few of my coworkers came, which was lovely if unexpected. It was very nice to sing for an audience again.

- I'm planning a casual** reading project for next year where I read a lot of classic scifi that, for one reason or another, I've never gotten around to before. I've made a big idiosyncratic list (including which of my various libraries have ebook copies) and I think I'm going to just roll dice or something to pick titles as I go.

- We've reached the point in December when time stops feeling like a real thing. I feel unmoored from the calendar, but in a peaceful sort of way. It might snow early this week and a snow day or two would be a really pleasant addition to this feeling - fingers crossed.





*They are loud, fiddly, stuck in one place, and the motor smells unpleasant when it's working.

**Previous attempts at reading projects have taught me that if I actually assign titles and deadlines, I will never read the assigned books, even if I really want to. My brain rebels. Thus the big list that I don't have to read in any sort of order.

In December of last year, I decided that I would knit all of my Christmas gifts for 2022. I knit all my gifts in 2021 as well, but they were all hats. For this year, I sent out surveys of what kinds of knitted items everyone wanted and picked some more elaborate things for most folks, and then started knitting in January. And now I'm nearly done - I've got about 30 more rows on a shawl for my sibling-in-law and then a pair of socks for Dad. (Dad doesn't want elaborate knitting but he always wants socks.)

Doing a whole year of gift knitting this far in advance has been a fun experience. It's meant that I had to make schedules and elaborate timetables, which I always enjoy, and I've learned some things about what kinds of stuff I'm willing/happy to knit. Delicate and elaborate table runner for my sister, with beads and multiple lace charts? I love it, I enjoyed the entire three-month+ process of making it. A tea cozy shaped like a snail for my other sister, which was simple and made from bulky-weight yarn and should have taken maybe a week to complete? That took nearly two months and I hated every moment of it. It also looks...not great, which is why she's the only person who's getting a second, consolation gift.

But now I'm nearly done! And, okay, I know that it's only September but now I'm in the habit of having a knitting schedule, rather than working on things willy-nilly when I'm moved to, so I've started planning my knitting for next year. The plan for next year is to Actually Knit All My Sock Yarn.

I am not, in general, the kind of knitter who has a stash. I am a project-motivated knitter and thus only buy yarn when I have a particular project in mind. (I...don't really understand stash knitters, honestly. How do they know how much to buy if you aren't buying for a particular project? Do they just...buy enough yarn to make a sweater or whatever whenever they buy yarn?) The one exception is sock yarn, because that comes with a project plan built in, and I always know how much to buy to make a pair of socks. Sock yarn is also the yarn that people buy me as gifts, because there's an easy amount to buy. So I have something between a dozen and twenty skeins of sock yarn sitting around, waiting.

So today, I have been listing all my sock yarn, putting it in order of what I'm most excited to knit, and assigning patterns to each skein (because there are so many sock patterns in the world and choosing one is much harder than pulling a ball of wool out of my yarn basket and casting on). Am I going to get all of it knit next year? Almost certainly not, but I'm hoping to make a good dent.

And then I'll have room for more yarn.

Things:

- We had a craft swap at the library last weekend - people could bring supplies and tools they didn't want anymore and other people could then take them away. Someone brought in an inkle loom and it was still there after the swap was over, so I have snagged it. And now I have to figure out how to use it! And then I will weave some shoelaces or something.

- This has sent me down a weaving rabbit hole and I currently trying to convince myself that I don't need a rigid heddle loom. And I don't. But I want one. (This is how the yarn craft progression goes, of course. You start with crochet or knitting and then you learn to spin. And then you start dyeing your own yarn. And then you get into weaving. And then you start raising sheep, or so I've heard. I do not want sheep and our yard is the size of a postage stamp, so hopefully weaving is where I stop.)

- Yesterday, I was listening to an actualplay podcast and someone made a throwaway joke about their character in a Weird West rpg worshipping trains. And my brain, which loves both trains and Weird West fiction (and, let's be real, imprinted really hard on the Dark Tower series), went, "I now desperately want a Weird West story with a train cult, that's amazing, who is going to write me that novel?" The answer is, of course, nobody is going to write that for me. But! I have a long running Weird West solo rpg that already has mysterious and inexplicable ancient sentient automata - no one (least of all me) knows who built them or where they came from. There is no reason that one of them couldn't be a train (which otherwise don't exist in the setting) and likewise no reason that there couldn't be a train cult. Who knows when it will come up in play, but at least I know it's a possibility.

- Years after everyone else, I have started playing Breath of the Wild. I bought it when I bought my Switch, played it for about an hour, and then got distracted by Pokemon and Hades. But I picked it up again this weekend and you guys, it is pretty great.

I finished my moon shawl the other day and then forgot to post about it, but I'm wearing it to work today, so I remembered.

( Here it is! )

I'm very pleased with it.

So far, this week is better. Here are some good things:

- I put the Votoms theme on my going-to-work playlist and it is an excellent driving song.

- This week, I made miso butter salmon with mushrooms and garlicky roasted broccoli over buttered pasta for my lunches and it's so delicious, oh my god.

- Also I made caramelized pineapple for the first time in ages and it's also delicious.

- Yesterday, all the patrons I interacted with were really nice and friendly and I was able to help them and it was fucking great.

- Pokemon continues to be a complete delight.

- I am ahead of schedule on my gift crafting, which means extra time for my own projects. I am nearly done with a big fancy shawl that I started a while ago and I'm hoping to finish it before it gets to warm to wear it.