September 9, 2013 · 4:41 pm

Waste not, want not, with a side serving of the election

I live in a society so wealthy and so wasteful, in global context, that any selection of actions I make about waste reduction can feel a bit arbitrary.  I see so many missed opportunities every day!  But still the principle that waste should be avoided is beyond criticism, and the principle that I should do what I can, is likewise sound.  So this election night, I took the eucalyptus-printed silk/hemp scraps from my previous foray into shirtmaking (I was piecing them together back in this post) and the scraps of my skirt adventure, and created bags from them. I love bags.  I love making them, giving them and carrying them around.  I seldom leave home with less than three, a curious fact I’ve decided to relax about.

Skirt bag 1: has already gone to an enthusiastic new owner who cooked a fabulous dinner for us last night:

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Skirt bag 2 is with me now and soon to be introduced to someone I am confident will like it:

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I decided to line the hemp/silk bags on account of the method of piecing I had chosen and being unsure of the fabric’s propensity to wear.  I had leftover silk noil from various workshops and from making pillowcases.  Apologies for the dodgy pictures taken after dark, indoors, with a flash.  Some bloggers are so impatient!

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There were some small sample pieces that had indigo australis and local eucalyptus leaves printed onto them and then an iron afterbath in the Blue Mountains.  I took these pictures just before they vanished into the interior of the bags to be seen only by the new owners, whom I hope will enjoy having this treat inside their bags!  I personally am the kind of person who revels in pocket linings made of treasured fabrics, whether they are organic flour bags or were formerly part of my late Grandmother’s extensive scarf collection.  Needless to say, I love a bag lining with a story.

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I like these bags a lot. The weight of the fabric with the lining works well, to my way of thinking.  I could feel the urge to give these away before they were off the sewing machine, so here are pictures on an overcast morning!

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This next one has been rated suitable as a gift for my mother-out-law, who is apparently generous enough in her assessment of my skills to talk to her friends about my crafting sometimes.  She has friends who have been weavers and dyers for years.  She herself has been a wonderful garment creator for decades and keeps thinking she has given it up and then changing her mind, so her judgment may not be unbiased but I am flattered by it nonetheless.  Her bag has been finished with a strip from a heavy weight ramie shirt found at an op shop (thrift store)–beautiful fabric and sewing skill but an appalling garment I felt no compunction about cutting up and redeploying.  Most of it became another bag complete with interior welt/flap pockets which had been a beautifully crafted feature of the front of the shirt.  Sadly they were an offence against fashion even to me, and I don’t hold with fashion much!

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And for gratuitous images, I have these of our hens.  They don’t stand around waiting for their photos to be taken when there are earwigs to be found.

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However, they are glorious, and they are also blissfully ignorant of the election that was taking place the day I snapped their pictures.  We were planting and pruning and mowing and they were seeking insects and seeds.

I feel deeply sad that the people of my country have elected a government that thinks we need to pay less international aid to fund infrastructure here; that expresses routine contempt rather than compassion for refugees taking desperate measures to escape their mostly war torn homelands and get to our shores; that thinks roads are a higher priority than public transport; that cares little for renewable energy and plans to fund it less; and that has expressed little interest in participating in global efforts to halt or turn back environmental devastation or climate change.  Here’s India Flint on the subject, should you wish for more.  I haven’t made a habit of commenting on the state of our nation here, but I felt the need to mark the day.  There will be some serious further consideration given to the forms of action that might be needed in the coming period at our house and in our community of friends.  Thinking about the state of the world and our impact upon it, in all their complexity, will continue to be crucial.

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September 6, 2013 · 2:19 pm

Show time!

It is Adelaide Royal Show time again.  Spring began here only a few days ago, by the calendar.  There was a brief hot spell–33C is too much too soon for me–and then for the first day of the show, overcast and threatening rain as these dim pictures may suggest.  This week I have been tuning up the bunting I made to protect our little community revegetation project–around one of my favourite E Scoparia trees.  I sewed all the pieces back together, made some more, joined it all with some recycled cotton yarn, and… this morning we went out and applied it.

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The saltbush and other natives we have planted here have come on wonderfully–and there has been a spectacular fail with transplanting dianellas which I’ll pull out once the show is over. The yellow flowering tree on the right is a wattle that is doing really well (and not because we planted it).  The modest goal of this bunting is to gently suggest to people walking from the show (who will likely come down the path on the right of the image below) heading for the car parking on the left of the image below… that they should walk around this patch rather than trampling it in the dark after the fireworks are over, tipsy/sleepy/not paying attention as they may well be after an exciting day and too much fairy floss.  I think I replaced it three times last year, so I have some backup bunting already in hand, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed.  Happy show!  Happy springtime!

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September 5, 2013 · 10:58 am

Retting the nettle crop

The last time I wrote about nettle processing, Andrea wrote in with some really helpful suggestions from her experience.  She also provided a link to a useful article by Vogl and Hartl on the subject.

This time, I am taking Andrea’s advice to the extent I can.  I have the common stinging nettle, urtica dioica, and no other nettles to choose from, so that is what I am using.  There is no chance of my accessing large amounts of nettles as tall as 1.2 m, but a few of my sample are that tall. I am harvesting at the end of winter, the plants have flowered and had a lot of green seed on them–I thought I had left them too long but perhaps not.  It is hard to fully understand how the seasons here affect plants native to Europe, but nettles don’t grow here when it is warm.  They are more likely to lose leaves as the warm weather sets in, than to lose them in autumn.  This means that I am harvesting nettles at pretty much the opposite point in the seasons that a person in Europe might.

So.  The nettles were harvested on 24 August, and set to rett that morning.  I changed the water twice on 25 August to prevent fermentation (and the chilly weather will have helped that too) and had an interesting conversation with a seller at the farmers’ market who had harvested his nettles and had them for sale.  5 days later, I decided they were about right. They had begun to smell somewhat, and the evidence that the outer layer had begun to rot away was clear (as opposed to the murky water).

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The surface green layer of the stem rubbed away readily.

 

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Once I had thoroughly rinsed them, most of the green covering of the stem was gone.  I am offering these photos in hopes that others more knowledgeable might offer me their advice.  The works I have consulted make it seem to me that identifying when retting has gone far enough but not too far is difficult to describe.  No doubt it is an expert skill (which needless to say, I don’t possess), and perhaps one of those not readily converted into words–like how to tell the level of kneading is perfect for bread dough by feel, or how to tell a fermentation indigo vat is ready to use from the way it smells.

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I set them to dry thoroughly.  At this stage I belatedly had the thought that perhaps next time I should stage the removal of stems from the retting process, and see if I can identify which stage gives me a better outcome.  Too late to do such a logical experiment with this batch!  To be continued….

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September 2, 2013 · 1:51 pm

Nettle harvest

I decided to grow my nettles high and try processing them for fibre again this year. I have left this a little later than ideal, but so much about my knowledge of processing nettle fibre is imperfect I decided to just give it a try and worry about fine detail at some future point when I have more understanding and more experience!  Here we have my harvest, with leaves:

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And after the leaves have been stripped.  The leaves went to friends who were enthusiastic about nettle soup.  I am sorry to say I don’t like the flavour of nettles.  I wish I did, they are full of minerals and I have plenty of them!  I love the idea of eating them but not the reality.  I will just have to stick to eating dandelion, prickly lettuce and milk thistle to keep my weeds down.

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While I was pulling the nettles and weeding out the soursobs and burr medic and grass, the chickens kept me company and enjoyed the fruits (and earwigs) of my labours.  If this was a podcast, I would have been only too delighted to record their excited voices.  And when I found these, I had some excitement of my own!  In fact, I went in and made a potato and silverbeet (and endive, milk thistle, chicory, parsley) soup to share with my friends the nettle lovers.

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The nettles are much bigger than the previous harvest.  So much so there was no chance I could rett them in a bucket, even my biggest one.  In the end, they went into the wheelbarrow, the biggest receptacle I could find other than my bathtub!  To be continued…

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August 30, 2013 · 4:52 pm

A pair of backyard Eucalypts…

Recently I discovered that a friend who has one of the biggest E Cinerea trees I have ever seen in her back yard would like some of it removed.  I offered to cut and take away the dead and insect affected parts, to her surprise, and have now made three visits to do just that. I’ve begun some dye pots with alpaca another friend has asked me to dye.

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On the second visit to trim the E Cinerea, my friend’s partner spoke about the loss of a bough on their other eucalypt.  I looked closely at this second very large tree with rough, fibrous bark on the trunk and very narrow leaves and ‘Eucalyptus Nicholii’ went through my head.  Could I at last have found a fully grown specimen?  It branched so high and the ground had been so thoroughly cleared in the effort to remove all the fallen material that I couldn’t find fruit.  I did manage enough leaves for a dye pot however… and it is very promising! I heated the leaves for an hour, dropped the sample card in and went for a bike ride leaving the heat off.  When I got back:

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As I write I have added some alpaca fleece.  I will have to wait to make a more definitive identification… I have sometimes found that all the hours I’ve spent with books on Eucalypts have created the context for me to have a correct intuition about a particular tree.  Equally often, though–I have completely the wrong end of the stick!  But the alpaca is looking good as it sits draining…

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August 26, 2013 · 4:03 pm

A new skirt

I am not much of a skirt wearer, so I have not made myself a skirt for well over a decade.  I do remember making one for my daughter that she wanted to be very long and very swishy… I remember that hem going on forever!  Well.  Last summer I acquired a lovely skirt that I enjoyed wearing, so I have decided to branch out.  I found this beautiful fabric at The Drapery, a newly opened and lovely little shop I was keen to see and keen to support.  I am so glad I went.  It has a lovely selection of fabrics in fibres and designs I loved.  There are far fewer choices than in Spotlight… but far more I would like to actually sew with or wear.  And the women who are running it are delightful.

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This is a first instalment in my plans to make anything new I need for my summer wardrobe.  So far, so good, I think!  It is cut on the bias and lined.  I drafted the pattern from the skirt I like to wear. I bought enough fabric and then some for a simple A-line skirt but not quite enough to cut it on the bias.  I’ve pieced in a small section near the waist and I think it will work just fine.

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August 23, 2013 · 4:27 pm

Intriguing trees…

I returned today to two trees I have sampled a little that are growing on my favourite running track.  We rode our bikes down it, so I took pictures (and some more leaves, needless to say!)

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Into the dye pot they went, with a sample card.

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Since I have two burners, I also ran a pot from leaves I collected when we went planting native trees on a friend’s farm.  It looked like E Cinerea to me… but an enormous tree, growing where there is so much more water than in the city where we live.

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The dye pot confirms that the E Cinerea gives great colour.  And the mystery trees gave  rusty orange with some tan undertones on handspun wool with no mordant, and brown on alum mordanted superwash.  Even more intriguing, really!

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August 20, 2013 · 6:21 pm

Revelations at the drum carder

Recently I made good on my intention to properly clean and oil the drum carder.  It meant I had to find the instruction sheets.  And that was when I had the revelation that my drum carder has two speeds.

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Conceivably, this was a selling point when I decided to buy it–that does sound curiously familiar–and I had managed to completely forget.  I have had it on the setting which would be ideal for blending roving for some years.  That’s been good sometimes, because it really does make a great batt for artyarn spinning, and there has been quite a bit of that at my place.  However, I have struggled to make great batts from fleece, sometimes with a lack of patience, I admit.  But there has been plenty of trying and some of it has been patient.  So, I have been applying my newly oiled and cleaned carder to some Polwarth fleece on the correct setting, and wonder of wonders, it actually is better!

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I have also been carding some of the lower quality end of my enormous stash of Polwarth and spinning it fat, soft and three ply with YET MORE Fibertrends Clogs in mind.  The short cuts and brittle ends will never be seen again once they’ve been felted.  And I have to say the spinning is a lot of fun.

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Every time I use the drum carder and pick up the doffer–a long pointed metal tool for removing the batt from the carder–I find myself earwormed with a folk song called The Doffing Mistress.  The link is to the singing of Maddy Prior and June Tabor, two of the shining stars of English folk music over some decades.  The quality of sound is no doubt better on iTunes, but this version comes with a description of the job of a doffer in the period after the industrial revolution.  I am very glad not to be a small child pulling bobbins on and off an industrial spinning machine to earn sufficient to eat…  Instead, I have been hand winding big fat balls of this yarn, since it is a bit thick for my ball winder.  Let the knitting begin!

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August 17, 2013 · 1:10 pm

New socks!

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My beloved brought two skeins of sock yarn home from a trip to Ireland and Turkey some time back. What sumptuous colours!  This is Hedgehog Fibres Sock Yarn (85% superwash merino, 15% nylon) in ‘Pod’.  It feels glorious, but the dye work is especially lovely.  Happily, I still have the second skein to convert into socks… or perhaps gloves.  I’ve decided to reward such excellent choice in sock yarn by giving these back to my partner.

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Here they are in the dyers’ camomile patch, which has started to look leafier since the weather began to turn toward spring.  I love the way that a beautiful yarn can render even a plain ribbed sock lovely.  At present my sock knitting is being done in meetings, on public transport and in the car, so this is the height of sock knitting complexity I’m scaling at present.  These have been a delight for my fingers even when knitting without looking in lengthy meetings, just what I love about socks.

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August 12, 2013 · 1:03 pm

Sharing

Do you remember these red slippers?  I knit them with a friend in mind, but it has been a long while since she let me know she’d worn through the last pair.  I have knit dozens and dozens of these Fibertrends clogs and sometimes I can’t face knocking out another pair!

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Today I took them to the farmers’ market where my friends run a stall selling their locally grown fruit, vegetables, nuts, herbs, wine and vinegar.  They are an extraordinary couple whose Food Forest is a wonder and a delight as well as a place of education and inspiration in our local area.  When she saw the slippers, her face lit up!  And an exchange of gifts immediately began.  I love this part of crafting–being part of a gift- and joy-economy instead of one that’s all about dollars.  All this, after a delivery of locally grown greens and delicious tempeh had already been left on our doorstep by our nearest and dearest!

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