creative reflections

In storage our group had an unfinished loaner garb skirt that needed the roughly cut bottom finished.  Having success with the pants and buttonholes I thought I'd give it a try.  Trimmed it to make the curve the same all around, pinned it up (multiple times because it wasn't quite right at times and the curves led to weird sewing), and then to the work of sewing it.  It's a wide skirt that just seemed to keep going and going.  My sewing machine and I don't always agree, and we had some frustrating moments, but I kept at it.  Doing a thing, making mistakes, undoing them when needed and trying again seems natural to some, but it's a bit of an uphill slog for me.  Every little victory helps me learn to do it better next time.    

Was trying to finish sewing some loaner garb someone else had started that needed to flexible enough to fit a variety of people.  Not a lot of experience so figured a string though them should work to hold them up.  Sewed the waist so it had an area for a long shoelace, then with a nalbinding needle pushed threads aside to create 2 circular openings in the fabric and sewed these into a couple buttonholes.  Pleasanstly surprised myself.  :)

Public Service Announcement: Multitasking is NOT A THING.  Evidence below.  That is all. Trying to fingerloop braid + spin + watch TV + talk to someone = oh NO!

Bought a small snowflake fabric remnant a while ago.  Figured I'd make some largesse bags with it for our local barony (Concordia of the Snows) last year.  Made some finger loop braided matching cords.  Had another remnant and figured I could do the same, so voila!  Look ma, just thought it and did it, no pattern!  It's like magic....                       

Started some nalbinding things, a few hats.  Finished these.  

Last year I found an interesting ball of yarn with lots of pretty color changes I had to buy.  Wasn't sure what for.  At Christmas I figured I'd nalbind a hat in Dalarna stitch, a new stitch for me.  It had a more open weave, not too hot and good for a dad who's been cold in the house.  Started working on it riding in the car one day, but had a skein that needed to become a ball.  No good place in a car to do that and only my hands to use so I had to use the gear shift lever (fortunately, an automatic car so not overly intrusive to the awesome husband driver).  Worked pretty well.  Use what you have!  The result was a nice fade from one color to another.                   

There was a call for largess & needle books last fall.  Time to try something new.  Not much prior experience with embroidery (& unsatisfying experience at that), but friends say to do it well requires practice.  I'm fairly happy with what happened.            

Decided to try nalbinding a sock.  Found a pattern I liked where the sock is a long tube with a space left for a heel to be added in (which I did in brown so it was easy to see), which actually makes sense to me.  I always wear the heel out & if you try to repair it the bumps from the repair are irritating.  This way when it wears out, you simply remove the section and nalbind a new heel in.  Brilliant!  This makes so much more sense to me than knitting sock patterns. I started, keeping in mind people say to work the second sock of a pair, concurrently, that it’s too easy to forget what you did with the first sock and you may never get around to finishing the second.  So toe first, then second toe, the stretch along the length of the foot 1 and 2, heel hole and up 1 and 2, heel 1 and 2.  Done.  That was great!  But following instructions from online, these came out somewhat larger than I’d expected.  Well, there’s always washing and shrinkage… Round start at toe (above, brown), ros

This is what happens when your laurel and pelican gang up on you.  “Oh, so you wanna do that?  Then do this.”  And that’s kind of where this story picks up.  “Picks up” because some time ago I’d won a Peter the Red handmade inkel loom which he then put my arms on (so it was clearly mine, for all to see).  Stunned, proud owner of a beautiful handmade wood thing (I love wood & he’s a skilled wood worker!), I knew nothing about inkel-ing.  Fast forward to being told instead of wearing two belts, a green and a yellow, I needed to make a belt incorporating both—any way I wanted.  Of course that left a whole universe of possibilities and me suspended in limbo betwixt them all. Finally my sensibilities were drawn to the beautiful wood and I hit the internet for what to do next.  I searched, considered, reconsidered, came up with a pattern, got supplies, and took a deep breath.  My loom isn’t exactly like other looms I saw so had to make some guesses, warped the loom, added popsicle sticks

(Actually finished sometime early 2022-just getting to adding here)  Have wanted to make a towel for my SCA medieval husband to have when he's out doing and teaching archery in the hot sun to wipe his brow, something to compliment his outfit.  Bought yarn for this in the long-ago before-time.  Visions.  Life is about having a vision and moving forward to make it happen, right?  With everything else going on, though, I was at a point where I was thinking buying one would be faster and better.     One thing that's struck me repeatedly is how a woven fabric is a metaphor for people or groups--bringing different strands of different colors and textures together to make something else entirely from the constituent parts, an interesting, beautiful whole piece the individual parts didn't even imagine.  C ombining these multiple different lengths and colors of individual strings to make something useful of them, something completely different from the original pieces struck me as q