Author: N

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Failed sweater

I made a raglan shawl-collar cardigan out of Manos del Uruguay Maxima yarn, in the color “Reindeer”. The yarn is very pleasant to work with, but being made out of single-ply merino wool it wears very poorly and gets very pilly.

I was gifted a whole bunch of skeins of the yarn a few years ago for Christmas with the express purpose of making a sweater. But sweaters need to be durable. Also…

… it came out wonky. The front hangs open when you wear it and it’s not secure on your shoulders. I’m wearing my very nice Usaato shirt in this photo 😀
The pockets also gape open. The collar is too floppy and doesn’t sit close enough to the neck.
The body uses star stitch. The sleeves use raglan shaping. The front placket and collar use 2×2 ribbing and short-row shaping.
The buttons are (real!) leather with a metal shank. They were purchased from Austin Creative Reuse for a dollar. The yarn cost about $100 altogether.
Underarm panel of seed stitch.
The pockets are knit from ugly green alpaca yarn that I got for free from someone who thought it was too ugly to use. The darker green and gold stripes in the photo were my attempts to overdye the yarn with indigo and turmeric.
The sweater was knit back and forth, starting at the bottom. The sleeves were knit in the round down from the yolk. The front placket and collar were knit back and forth from stitches picked up along the edge of the body. The sweater has false seams between what would normally be separate pieces (front panels, back, and sleeves). I knit kpk, then sewed the two knit stitches together to help stabilize the sweater’s shape.

Since fit and material were major problems with the sweater, I decided to take it apart and make new items that would better suit the merino wool.

The first item will be a cowl (or a dickie, since it will include some shoulder/chest cover)! My current scarf is kinda itchy and the ends are always in the way or coming unwound.
The cowl so far. I’m using bubble stitch, which is currently in vogue. My goal is to create a textured fabric that better traps warm air, similar to how waffle-knit fabric works.

Future projects will include a night cap for sibling C and felted slippers for myself (:

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Happy holidays!

I’m in Austin for the holidays. Most of my time has been spent going to yearly doctor checkups and doing various crafts.

Made more chapstick! I found two chapsticks on campus this year. People seem to shed them all over the place.
The vinyl lining of my pencil pouch fell apart, so I sewed a new one from cotton twill I bought from FabMo in Mountain View.

I’ll talk about bigger projects in other posts.

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Dyeing more socks

At sibling C’s request, I dyed more socks. The dyes have been sitting outside for a year and the labels have all worn off, so I’m not quite sure what I used.

Yellow onion skins?
Either avocado skins and pits, or prickly pear fruits (tunas). The dye is a dark maroon-brown color.
And we pulled these oddly organ-esque growths out of it. One looks like liver and the other looks like brain. I’m pretty sure both growths are scobies or mothers, symbiotic growths of fungi and bacteria. Specific species appear in the scobies used to make kombucha.
The resulting socks (the colors are slightly brighter in real life…). I boiled a pair in each dye for several hours, then left them to sit for a couple days at room temperature. These socks are made of nylon and cotton, neither of which is particularly easy to dye.
It looks like onion dye sticks better to nylon than to cotton.

I’d love sibling C to grow some native indigo for me. The only problem is finding plants or seeds. If anyone has a source, let me know!

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Fall foraging

There are some good foraging opportunities near my apartment. The best is a pear tree – I believe it is ornamental since the pears are small. It wasn’t clear to me if the owners were interested in the pears, so I just collected ones that had fallen onto the sidewalk, and made pear-sauce! I strained the cooked pears through a mesh strainer, and used the remaining fibrous matter to make alcohol.

There are also a ton of sugar maples. If I had tapping equipment, I could make maple syrup.

And lastly, there are a ton of chestnut trees. Unfortunately, they are horse chestnuts, not true or sweet chestnuts, which were largely killed off in the early 1900s by chestnut blight. The only trees that survived were those far enough (about 10 km) away from other chestnut trees.

Horse chestnuts contain high levels of naturally-occurring saponins, which make them taste really bitter. Apparently, they are also poisonous. Before realizing this, I collected a bunch. I was super excited to find chestnuts since they’re pretty expensive to buy.

Horse chestnuts really look quite similar to true chestnuts. The main difference, besides taste, is the lack of a tassel on the tip of the shell. True chestnut husks also have more closely-set spines.

As far as I’m aware, horse chestnuts only have one use: making liquid soap! You can soak the nutmeats in water to dissolve the saponins, and use the soaking liquid as liquid soap or detergent.

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Advancements in hair-cutting

I’ve been cutting my hair for a while now, since it’s so hard to get a good and not-expensive professional haircut. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to do with just scissors and no helpers! I’ve tried to train J to cut my hair, but he has no experience and isn’t confident enough to learn. I would be willing to have a few months of bad haircuts in return for years of free grooming services (:

Soooooo, I decided to invest in an electric hair trimmer, the type with guards. Only $25 used on eBay, about the same cost as a single mid-tier professional haircut!

Unfortunately, in the first attempt, I received an alarm clock.

At least it’s a fancy alarm clock?

It took some finagling, but I eventually got the hair trimmer, and the alarm clock buyer got the alarm clock. (The boxes were almost exactly the same size and shape; I can see how they got mixed up.)

The trimmer works well! I’m not sure if my haircut is good, but at least it’s even.

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Infestation?!!

Back when sibling C was visiting J and me in the Bay Area, C started off one day with CPR training (and took the light rail there!), and we were supposed to work on food or crafts afterwards, but… all other plans were overshadowed by fear of bed bugs!

Right before visiting J and me, C stayed at a hostel in Boston, where she got some bug bites. The bites weren’t particularly bad, and it isn’t that common for pests to be carried on people or luggage, so we weren’t worried (at first!).

Unfortunately, a couple days after arriving at our place, C got another bug bite! (While our first worry is always bed bugs, fleas and spiders are also possibilities. In any case, bed bugs are particularly safe – they don’t carry human diseases.) So we went on an emergency search for boric acid (couldn’t find it) or diatomaceous earth, which we proceeded to liberally sprinkle around the apartment.

It also became a major laundry and cleaning day. C and I ran her sheets and the mattress cover for her mattress through the dryer (high heat kills bed bugs), and we froze all the pillows for a few days. All of our efforts seem to have worked, ’cause no one got bites after that. I hear you have to go a year without any bites to be completely sure the pests are gone… Wish us luck…

And C is now using the rest of the diatomaceous earth for gardening!

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Unsubscribe from Xfinity marketing emails?

I have Xfinity (Comcast) internet and, unfortunately, part of signing up is getting sales emails that are impossible to unsubscribe from. The emails include an “unsubscribe” link, but it sends you to a webpage with an “unsubscribe” button that doesn’t actually do anything. Maybe if you click the button a bunch you’ll forget that you’re getting unwanted spam…

I contacted Customer Service to try to get unsubscribed (and told multiple representatives that the Xfinity unsubscribe tool doesn’t work) – we’ll see how that turns out. I figure I can just keep bothering them until they finally get it fixed.

Let me know if you’ve managed to fix this particular problem! I’d be glad for tips!

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Usaato exhibition

Usaato is having an exhibition at the San Francisco Japan Town mall. It is going to be from 11am to 6pm on Saturday-Sunday October 6-7.

Natural fiber, plant dyed, and hand-woven clothing from the Usaburo Sato collection will be displayed and sold. Usaato clothing is made from cotton, hemp, and silk fabrics woven and sewn in farming villages in Laos and Chiang Mai, Thailand. It is Usaato’s mission to support sustainable agriculture, respect village traditions, and bring a healthy economy and quality life to these villages.

 

Have fun!