Food, sustainablity, and some other stuff
Since I’m trying to use up the merino wool from the failed sweater, I’ve been asking if anyone has knitting requests! Sibling C is perpetually cold and tries to avoid using a lot of energy on heating in the winter, so she requested a sleep hat.
I modified this baby pattern (pictures of the finished product here) by casting on 107 stitches and using short rows to make the top curlier and pointier and more elven (:
If any outbound links used on the blog are broken, please let me know! I’ll try to replace them with an archived version of the same page.
Many shoe-making methods require a last, a hard, foot-shaped form around which a shoe is molded to give it 3D shape. Since I am a fan of “minimalist” or “barefoot” shoes, I wanted to use a last that is actually shaped like my feet. The Munson Army last, developed for minimalist walking shoes by a military doctor shortly before World War I as detailed in his book, was an option but I was not able to find any for sale online.
So instead, I cast my feet!
There are several ways to do this. The standard alginate mold approach involves casting your feet (or other body part) in alginate jelly, then filling the negative with some other material (plaster is popular, but can only be used once). This method exactly replicates your feet in shape and size.
Since I wanted to have extra room for socks and wiggling my toes, I did not use the alginate approach. Instead, I wrapped my feet in fabric strips dipped in silicone, similar to how one would use plaster bandages.
I continue to be interested in making shoes. It’d be nice to make welted leather shoes (and I hope to eventually, since my everyday shoes are close to being completely worn out), but they require a lot of specialized tools (see the shoe-making Reddit community for more info). So I thought I’d start with an easier task: making felt slippers! If they turn out well, I may want to make felt shoes also (like Russian valenki, traditional felt boots).
I followed the directions in this tutorial, in addition to watching lots of Youtube videos (Christi Dea makes felt slippers and shoes, and does other weird fiber art).
To get the slippers to fit my feet well, I’m going to shrink them around a set of lasts I made (with much difficulty!) of my feet:
So this project is very much in progress. I’ll update y’all once I get more done!
I’ve had my umbrella for a long time. I think I got it in middle school. So the canopy is getting a little worn, especially where the skeleton folds. My first thought was to patch it, but the fabric is unusual. Fortunately, those nylon umbrella sleeves are perfect for cannibalizing. I often find them abandoned on the ground. We also have a ton at home that are never going to be used.
I intend to keep this umbrella forever, and I have many more, variously colored umbrella sleeves to use (: Hopefully my umbrella looks more purposeful in a few years, once I get a few more patches on.
I made four different kinds of soap:
To create the shaving soap, I mixed the NaOH and KOH batches together to get a good texture. Stearic acid is too hard to use NaOH only, but not hard enough to use only KOH, which is meant for creating liquid soap. This is called a dual-lye soap.
One batch of attempted soap boiled over and was lost ): I pre-melted the oils and they got too hot, so that when I added the lye-water, it boiled immediately, forming a lye volcano. Fortunately, no one was injured (except the crock pot, whose paint is a little corroded…).
Hot-process soap is a little gloopy when it’s done, so it can be hard to put into molds. You can mix in additional water to improve pourability, but the soap will have to cure longer to reach the desired hardness.
Until next year!
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…
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.
Future projects will include a night cap for sibling C and felted slippers for myself (:
I’m in Austin for the holidays. Most of my time has been spent going to yearly doctor checkups and doing various crafts.
I’ll talk about bigger projects in other posts.
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.
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!