I have been thinking about how my middle school home ec. teacher was also a math teacher. I didn't see the connections then, but really it is a perfect combination...
Dried vegetables (carrots for example) = easy cooking.
Rice + water + onions + dried peppers + dried carrots + dried zucchini + parmesan + pepper = risotto
Risotto + egg + shrimp = yummy fritters
While sorting cloth I found the white fleece I was looking for. It had been made in to a pair of sweat pants that were too big.
Added to a little leftover pink fleece I have a whole new sweatshirt...probably for a P.J. top.
I suppose there is a little Alabama Chanin influence along with the usual suspects.
And the house is a little cleaner....
Home today working on projects, mostly sewing.
I've been using the facing patterns that I made for my favorite tank top as guidelines for necklines and armholes for more free-form cutting like the top below that is based on a square.
First time round this was too wide for the weight of the fabric. Much better now.
This is the favorite tank top pattern made to dress length. I'm trying to make my wardrobe more cohesive and this shade of red matches a skirt perfectly...so it's a tunic length now.
This jacket was started during Jude's Boro class. I finally made a decision regarding fabric for sleeves. Just a little more lining to go and then I will sew up the side seams.
I think it might be time to make jeans....
Survival...it's a question.
Meyer lemons from the January farmer's market, locally grown in a greenhouse. They need the greenhouse to survive here. I'm making salted lemons with them.
In Australia there is the last grove of Wollemi pines; a species that is prehistoric, that was abundant 34-65 million years ago. It was loved enough that the effort was made to save it from the wildfires.
Small sewing project #1
I am very close to finishing Terry Tempest Williams book Erosion. This caught me last night:
"How to love this world? And share it? We must make time, take the time to allow for natural diversions in our day. We have made a cult of busyness and in so doing we have forgotten the simple truth of paying attention to the view before us, between us, in a word, a cultivation of intimacy."
We have to support the things we love if we want them to survive.
Look and See, it's the title of a movie. Simply, a movie about Wendell Berry, but really more about what he believes and values.
One of Berry's essays I read recently from The Future of Nature, Writing on a Human Ecology from Orion Magazine included:
"The principles of neighborhood and subsistence will be disparaged by the globalists as "protectionism"--and that is exactly what it is. It is a protectionism that is just and sound, because it protects local producers and is the best assurance of adequate supplies to local consumers. And the idea that local needs should be met first and only surpluses exported does not imply any prejudice against charity toward people in other places or trade with them. The principal of neighborhood at home always implies the principle of charity abroad. And the principle of subsistence is in fact the best guarantee of giveable or marketable surpluses."
Local can be defined as where you are standing but is also dependent on what you are referring to. If we are talking about the universe, Earth is local. A community can be global.
"Think global, act local." It's become a little overused but is useful as a lens.
....
I so overestimated my ability to finish my sweater; still working on the yoke.
It will be finished when it is finished but it will be soon. I was remembering recently that this was reclaimed yarn. The first time I used this yarn for a sweater, the sweater didn't fit so I pulled it all apart.
I did finish a tunic I put together using scraps left over from another project. It is made up of six different pieces of fabric.
Very much designed using ideas from India Flint's class, "conscious clothing."
Choosing local can be as simple as choosing to do the labor or reusing materials...
The "Fieldnote Blanket" is about making local visible and documenting environment; the location that I am.
It is even a way I might describe myself.
It started as a scarf. The guideline set was to make one row each day for a year matching the color of the sky sometime in the first hour after sunrise. (Inspired by a project at Leafcutter Designs)
My definition of make for this project: choose a color, card the wool, spin yarn and knit.
It was a big scarf and I thought it might be better as a blanket. In 2018 I decided to make one row each day matching something in my environment and make more strips.
For 2019 I decided to not set any parameters, just to keep going. There is a row for autumn, a row for June which is all about pink roses for me, and a row for winter. And then, specifically for 2019, a row matching photos that I took last year. The colors that were documented.
A lot of pink, for flowers.
Red, for an assortment of berries.
Blues for the sky and the ocean.
Green for leaves and trees.
Gray for clouds, white for snow.
The roving is local; either from a local farm or at the very least, spun and dyed locally. A lot of the roving was collected before I learned about natural dyeing.
The yarn is spun with a locally made drop spindle, bumpy and lumpy and full of texture.
Today I realized it is full of emotion and moods, set in the tension and the twist.
Another kind of documentation.
I knit primarily with my favorite locally made needles. The wood is from a lilac tree harvested at the university I attended.
The yarn is "energized." This means that the twist hasn't been set by washing and it folds back on itself if the yarn isn't under tension.
For 2020 I want to add local color. I will spin white yarn and then dye it with plants from my garden or community and then knit a strip to add to the blanket.
Once all the strips are finished the plan is to full/felt the blanket.
The reality of my local life is that blankets need to be wash and wear.
This rocking chair belonged to one of my great grandmothers. I've had it somewhere between 25-30 years. I'm not sure how long she had it for. I like to think of her sitting in it, maybe other relatives too as they visited with her. It is a favorite place for the cat.
Today I made a new cushion for the seat with chenille that was found at a garage sale. It's stuffed with layers of wool blanket. I need to make a new pad for underneath or maybe just shorten the pieced wool that's been there. A project for another day...
I am listening to Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli (checked out from the library) while I knit. This is from an interview he did for On Being:
"The fascination of science is not what we have learned. It is the process of learning. It’s the discovery. It’s the wonder of what we learn: “Wow.” Then, the wonder creates more curiosity, and then we realize that there is so much we have not learned yet....There is so much to be discovered. And the beauty of the scientific enterprise is that we are in touch with the unknown, what we don’t know, and we try to make steps into it. So, that’s a strength of science, that it works out of beauty, out of intuition, out of imagination, but it has a very solid way, then, of checking. And which also means that some — many beautiful ideas turn out to be wrong."
This years wreath of windfall, gleaning and pruning...pine (from the neighbor's tree), ivy, rose hips, hops, and hazelnut.
I will be choosing a word each day for awhile, randomly, just because...
I think this is rock shield lichen.
Something new I've learned from Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, is that lichens are a fungal/algal symbiotic relationship. I'm going to be sad when I finish this book but luckily have Gathering Moss to read too.
"When times are easy and there's plenty to go around, individual species can go it alone. But when conditions are harsh and life is tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going forward. In a world of scarcity, interconnection and mutual aid become critical for survival. So say the lichens."
From Braiding Sweetgrass
I'm cleaning up my stash of "fabric for work projects" and am making dinosaur pillows.
More details coming soon.
Or let sleeping dogs lay?
Experimenting more with taking pictures when lighting isn't great. Filters are not quite true, but not wrong either.
The bottom image is of two of my current projects.
The netting (from Mo Crow) is being stitched to pre-felt.
The knitting project is a hat and is my current bus project.