Cleaning My Woollens

I have been slowly eliminating synthetics from my wardrobe for the past few years, while at the same time developing an even keener appreciation for wool, magical fibre of wondrousness.

A lot of people think of wool clothing as difficult to launder, but this isn't true. Wool, being originally created to cover an animal, is also constructed to naturally shed dirt. So, a lot can be done just with a natural-bristle brush and maybe the odd mist of water from a spray bottle. If you've been sweating in it, a little cool water and an hour or so hung in a breezy spot will take any unpleasantness right out.

My favourite way to clean my woollens is to hang them outside - dry - on a windy day. This time of year is perfect - damp air and constant breeze make every day a laundry day. And if it should come on to rain while your stuff is hanging outside, all the better. Just make sure it's dry before you fold it and put it away, and you'll be golden.

The camera did some weird things on this shot.

Another great thing about this method is that it really discourages moth activity in your house. Moths like to be left alone in a dark, undisturbed corner to sleep in their little flossy cocoons, and then to emerge hungry and munch on your wool. The more you can get your wool outside and moving around - and here I'm referring to yardage, too, if you're a knitter or a sewist - the less appealing it will be to moths.

I left my four sweaters, three skirts, and my husband's suit jacket out for around three hours in a cracking wind. By the time I brought them back in, my arms were full of clean, cold, and almost unbearably fresh-smelling wool. No chemicals, no washing machines, no detergents, no dry-cleaning bill. The next time I see a good windstorm brewing, I'm going to run four wool blankets and two duvets out on the line.

SNIIIIIIFFFFFFFF ----- ahhhhh!

Thanks, sheep!

Half Soled Boots' "Wet Woollies" Advent Calendar

Do you remember me making a hat and mitten advent calendar back in 2008? I loved it, made a second one for my sister, and wrote up a pattern.

In 2009.

Here you are then - enjoy!
Ravelry page

EDIT:
Some people have had a problem downloading from Scribd.com. Here is an alternate host - please PM me on Ravelry if you still can't download it.

And here is YET ANOTHER alternate host. Google docs. Argh!

HSB Hats Mitts Advent

Arresting the Decay of Language, Cont'd

All right, listen.

There are two ways to say the word "the". You can say "thUH" (short E: phonetically spelled thĕ [the underlining of th indicates it's the "voiced" th, as in "they" - as opposed to the "voiceless" th, as in "throw"]), or you can say "th-EE" (long E: phonetically spelled thē).

Generally speaking, when "the" precedes a word beginning with a consonant (or hard) sound, you would use the short "the", as in this phrase:

The dog ran past the car.


"Thĕ dog ran past thĕ car".

But if "the" precedes a word beginning with a vowel (or soft) sound, you would use the long "the", as in this phrase:

The owl hunted the otter. 


"Thē owl hunted thē otter."

What you'll find, in these troublous times, is that people use only one version of "the" - the one with the short vowel sound "thUH". But if you use a short "the" right before a word that begins with a vowel (osprey, end, abstract), the sounds run together and you end up with a phrase like "the udder" sounding more like "thuhuhdder". Well, obviously that doesn't work: there has to be some kind of delineation between the two vowel sounds.

Enter the glottal stop: Ɂ .

Do you know what a glottal stop is? It's a tiny halt you make in your throat, during speaking, to cut off the flow of air for a split second. It sounds weird, but try saying "thEE udder", and then try saying "thUH udder" and you'll see what I mean...you have to do a glottal stop whether you've heard of it or not. You'd write it "thĕ Ɂ ŭdder".

Well, glottal stops are all very well - nice and technical, and all, but why use them if you don't have to? Why not just use the correct pronunciation of "the"?

Good question.


Thē ĕnd.

I Gotta Wear Shades.

I think I've found my next career. I'm going to make millions doing knock-offs of Girl Guides of Canada merchandise.

The Brownies aren't what they used to be. I'm sure you all remember the little brown dress with its tie, badges and pins - well, now it's navy sweat pants ("track suit bottoms" for all you Brits out there who cringe at the words "sweat pants") and orange t-shirts. The badges go right on a sash and there's still a tie, although there isn't any kind of penalty for forgetting uniform items at a meeting. (I'll do a rant on the shoddiness of the modern Girl Guides another day.)

There are a few optional pieces, such as a handy little fleece vest, which I love. However, I couldn't afford the extra $35 or whatever, last time I was near a Guide Store, so I borrowed one from a friend and copied it.

Copied it, you say?

Yes and you, too, can copy a finished garment without disassembling it. I know you're all scrambling to find a notebook and a pen, and worry not - I'll share all my secrets. It's pretty simple. (Puts Sewing Geek hat on)

First, you establish the grainline of each separate piece of the garment. You hand baste the grainline with a contrasting thread, at least 2/3 of the length of the piece from top to bottom. On a fleece vest you can't see the weave of the fabric to thread-trace it, but there are a few clues for checking the grain. The back, if symmetrical and not bias, is almost always cut on the centre fold, which will be on the straight grain. The front zip will most likely be on the straight grain as well, or close to it, if there is any stretch at all in the fabric.

Second, lay out the pieces. Start with the largest piece laid on top of a sheet of paper large enough to accommodate the garment piece plus seam and hem allowances. It's helpful to do this on a cardboard surface, for better pinning. Align the garment grainline with the straight edge of the paper, measuring with a straight ruler to make sure both the top and the bottom of the grainline marking are the same distance from the straight edge. If the piece is cut doubled - for example on a symmetrical back - you fold the garment in half and either hand baste or pin it along the seams, to make sure the seamlines will be aligned.

Third, mark the seamlines. Jab pins through the garment and into the paper, at half-inch intervals along every seamline or foldline. Start with the longest and move to the shortest. Smooth the fabric out carefully as you go, being careful not to stretch. The other pieces of the garment (because it is still seamed together) will sometimes move the piece you're working on if you push them out of the way carelessly.

What you're trying to do here is to end up with a sequence of pinholes in the paper beneath, marking the exact shape of the garment piece and (eventually) providing you with a flat pattern.

Fourth, true up the lines and curves. Lift the garment off the paper. Using a French curve and a sharp pencil, connect all the pinholes, evening out any inconsistencies as you go. You are now drawing the seamlines of the pattern piece, so you want it to be as smooth as possible.

Fifth, add seam and hem allowances. Measure your preferred seam allowance, 5/8" or 1/2", outside of all the seamlines and draw a broken line. Make it as smooth as possible, again, as this will be your cutting line. Measure the depth of the hem on the finished garment, and add that measurement to the hem edge of your pattern piece.

Sixth, add pattern markings. It might seem like overstating the obvious, but here you want to write things like "Brownie Vest - Back - size 7-8 yrs" as well as adding marks to show the placement of any zippers or pockets. Dates are optional but I find them enormously helpful when I am referring to the pattern two years from now.

Repeat for all garment pieces.

See? Easy.

I should note that occasionally a pattern piece, when still assembled, can't lie flat due to the seams. In this case, you would pin out one section of it at a time, then remove some of the pins and let the piece curl up in order to give you slack to pin out the remaining section. I have had to do this for the back piece:
a)

Couldn't get the whole thing to lie flat at once. Note the top edge is not pinned. I pinned the fold/grainline first, and from the middle of the armscye to the hem.

b)

Here I've removed the pins from the lower half, leaving as many as possible in place, and pinned out the upper half. You can see that the garment won't lie flat - it wants to pull upwards when the top half is pinned.

Once you've made all your pattern pieces, take a good look at the garment and make notes on how it must have been put together. In this case, my assembly notes were something like this.

a) sew blue side gores to fronts. Serge.

b) sew fronts and back together at shoulders. Serge.

c) sew collar together at top edge. Serge. Serge lower edge of inner collar.

d) sew outer collar to garment neck edge. Serge.

e) insert separable zipper from hem to collar top edge.

f) turn sides and lower edge of inner collar down along zipper and neck edge. Topstitch along zipper from hem to top edge, around top edge, and around garment neck edge.

g) serge armhole edges. Apply stretch binding at 1/2". Turn and topstitch.

h) sew side seams. Serge.

i) turn up hem. Topstitch at 1/4" and 1".

And, le voila......which is mine and which is theirs?

(Mine is the one with the better-inserted zipper. Obviously.)

Pin-ups

It's interesting how we humans are so very much creatures of habit. This is true not only in daily things, such as tapping my toothbrush twice against the side of the sink after brushing, or Mr. HalfSoled always having Mini Wheats for breakfast, but also on a larger scale: a seasonal scale. It's like clockwork. Summer winds down into fall, and I start itching to clean out my house. Destash. Donate.

I have a theory, actually, that people in modern Western civilisation suffer from depression, boredom, apathy, and stress partly because they are suffering a conscious disconnect from the natural world, while still being unconsciously affected by it. If we weren't affected by its cycles, or if we were aware of them and embraced them, I think things would go a lot more smoothly for us.

Anyway, this is all to say that I've been mucking out the old HalfSoled stables, and thoroughly enjoying it. (The only problem is that spiders keep creeping in to the piles of stuff I have carefully organised and sorted, and freaking me out.)

The other day I found several cards that I had stashed on top of my bookcase. They had been sent to my children by a lovely kind blogger and I had put them up to avoid damage. I searched for an album to put them in, but to my dismay there was no room for them. What to do?

I don't know what you'd do in this case (I suspect you'd probably go buy another photo album, which would take less than an hour and cost less than ten dollars) but what I did was make my children a bulletin board for their mementos from afar. Here it is:



It's a fairly simple project, and you, too, can have one just like it (possibly not featuring Strawberry Shortcake, but to each his own). All you need is:

- a foam core board about 20" by 30"

- lightweight cotton fabric, 45" wide, approximately 1 meter

- batting cut to the same size as your foam board (I used Thinsulate because that's all I had)

- about 6 meters of 5/8" grosgrain ribbon

- hot glue

- $2,500 sewing machine to make pretty hearts. Totally worth it!


This project gives me major destashing points. I had all these things lying around, with the sole exception of the grosgrain ribbon which I bought for $0.75 per meter at a poorly lit Fabricland while REO Speedwagon serenaded me tinnily from a small radio sporting a huge, cornea-threatening antenna. (After all these years they still can't fight that feeling, in case you were wondering.)

Lay the foam board face down on the wrong side of the fabric, and trace around it. Add 2-3" on each side for wrapping and glueing, and cut out.

Baste the batting to the base fabric, keeping in the lines you marked in step 1.

Cut a pocket piece 2" longer than the base fabric, and about 8" wide. Mark the centres (by folding fabric in half) of both pieces, and then the quarters (by folding in half again).

Hem the top edge of the pocket, and lay the grosgrain ribbon along it. Stitch along both long edges of ribbon. Embellish with your very expensive sewing machine.



Lay ribbon across base fabric in a cross-hatch pattern, pinning at junctions.



Use costly sewing machine to make little embroidered hearts at junctions, to tack them down and look oh, so pretty.



Pin pocket to bottom of base fabric, matching centres, quarters, and edges, and pleating extra fullness into pocket edges as needed. Baste. Tie off all threads. Press whole shebang.

Lay fabric face down on table, place foam core board atop it. Hot glue around the back edge, wrapping the fabric tightly around the foam board as you go, to stretch the ribbons on the front. Trim and miter corners.

Turn over to admire your work and realise you've forgotten hangers. Crochet some chains and with difficulty hand-sew them to the back of the fabric, cursing yourself for doing such a very thorough job of hot-glueing.

Hang on a wall, preferably with a level.

Adorn with lovely postcards from Denmark, if you're lucky enough to have some, and if not then make do with a few woebegone photos of your family standing in front of the Grist Mill, or sitting under an orange tarp as rain hammers the campsite.


And when the craze sweeps the continent, you can say you saw it here first.

Third, Taurus.

I did some transplanting last month. My best girl was here from Victoria and I took advantage of her amazing arms (she paddles an ocean kayak for a living) to help me acquire two thirty-year-old rhododendrons. These rhodos belonged to my friend Cameron, whose walkway they have encroached on for the last ten years. She and her husband cut them back ruthlessly a couple of times a year, but these monsters will not be put down. Access to their front door was being seriously impeded by these titanic shrubs, so Cameron offered them to me.

Thing I Learned While Transplanting Magnitudinous Rhododendrons #1:

Be Ruthless.

First you prune. And this is going to take you about 15 minutes. No time at all. Bring a set of 1" branch loppers and a saw. But don't get cocky: you will spend the next 2.5 hours getting to the next stage:

Thing I Learned While Transplanting Magnitudinous Rhododendrons #2:

Just Keep Digging. You're Not Done Yet. Keep Going. No, Not Yet Either. Dig More. Bit More. Little Bit More. Dig More. More. Not Done Yet.

At this point, we could not even rock the plant yet. That's how much this rootball did NOT want to let go of its life-giving Mother Earth. This is also the point at which my friend straightened up, wiped her brow, leaned on her spade, and said "I hate to say it Shan, but...."

"DON'T SAY IT," I warned her sternly.

She said it anyway. "I think we need a man."

"We do NOT need a man," I snapped, not looking up. I redoubled my efforts.

And, I was triumphant and smug when, twenty minutes later, we were here:

Thing I Learned While Transplanting Magnitudinous Rhododendrons #3:

It Is Not Easy To Get A 175-or-so-pound Rootball Into A .8 Meter-high Wheelbarrow.

But, manless, we managed it.

See how teeny my friend Cameron's wheelbarrow looks? It's not teeny, my friends. Neither is Paddlegirl's truck:

Thing I Learned While Transplanting Magnitudinous Rhododendrons #4-5:

Check The Tire Pressure Ahead Of Time and Bring Rope

That sucker was heavy.

When planning this wee bit of gardening, we had the happy delusion that we'd move both plants at once. As it happened, we barely got even ONE of them fit into the back of her truck at a time, and that only because her tailgate was pretty strong and the canopy window goes WAY up. And we had the devil of a time wrassling them onto the truck from the wheelbarrow - if I had had the forethought to take pictures of our arms you would see how much bloodletting this whole exercise involved.

Thing I Learned While Transplanting Magnitudinous Rhododendrons #6:

Have The Hole Dug Way In Advance

Here the lovely rhododendrons, in three years' time, will provide a screen for the less attractive area of our back garden, and will visually anchor that whole area. They are now in dappled shade, with lots of bone meal and peat under their poor traumatised roots, and with a soaker hose running cool soothing water over them.

One last note: it just happened that my friend came over just when the moon was almost perfectly situated for transplanting. It could have been very slightly better: fourth is better than third, and Cancer is better than Taurus, but we only had 24 hours' notice so I'm not complaining. The roots of this plant should do well (that is, if they prove resistant to the juglone from the nearby walnut tree).

It's the first day of the week.

Last year I blew the contents out of 24 eggs and almost had an aneurysm. This year I prudently settled for twelve.


You can use a glue gun to make pretty designs on your eggs.





Just don't heat the water when dyeing them, or the glue will melt. Cold water, food colouring, and a splash of vinegar work just as well. It takes about an hour for pale colours, longer for darker (depending on how much dye you use in the pot).

Hollow eggs float, so you'll have to use a strainer or something to weigh them down and keep them under the water.

Peeling the glue off is easy and quick, just don't press hard enough to crush the eggshells.

Make sure you empty all the water out of the eggs after they are coloured, either by re-blowing them, or setting them onto dry paper towels to wick the moisture out.


Mound them in a pretty bowl or hang them on a tree with ribbon like I did last year, and celebrate resurrection.


Peace be unto you.

Thrift is Better than an Annuity

I found out about Wardrobe Refashion 2008 from Mel at Pipe Dreams and Purling Plans. It's a simple idea for reducing my consumerism and environmental impact: recycle, renovate, repair and create my wardrobe this year, without buying new clothes.

I will be spending today on the mending/finishing basket. One day won't cut it.......uh, especially if I stop to blog about it......but at least it's a start. And, if you've ever wondered how exactly you're supposed to patch a pair of jeans, wonder no longer.

You'll need medium or heavyweight fusible interfacing, scrap fabric (preferably the same fibre content as your garment, and pre-shrunk), an iron, pins or Stitch Witchery (fusible adhesive webbing), a sharp needle and thread. Once you have these things around, by the way, you won't need to buy them for a long time. Just get a half meter of both interfacing and quilting cotton - it'll last you quite a while and only cost a few dollars. If you prefer a heavier fabric, such as denim, you can skip the interfacing stage altogether. You can also cut patches out of worn out clothing - choose the less-worn bits, of course.

Fusible interfacing and quilting cotton.

Step One - Create a Patch.

Fuse a section of interfacing onto the back of the fabric, making sure it's on-grain, if you're using a woven interfacing.

Cut out your desired shape from the now-interfaced fabric (I used a sheep cookie cutter and an extra-fine Sharpie).

You can use any shape, keeping in mind that one with lots of points, such as a star, will start to show wear around the edges very quickly.

Now you have a patch - or, I suppose, you could always buy one from a fabric store. But it won't be nearly as interesting or satisfying, I'd wager.

Step Two - Baste the Patch.

You need to hold your patch in place while you sew it on. There are two ways to do this: you can use pins (and caution while sewing) or you can use fusible webbing. My mum calls this stuff "Stitch Witchery", which I think was a brand name back in the day. It comes in a roll from which you can snip off bits of the length you need.

Position the patch where you'd like it, with the Stitch Witchery underneath, completely covered by the patch - you don't want this stuff stuck to the soleplate of your iron.

Fusible web on the bottom - patch on the top.

Press, without steam and for a fairly long time. Use the appropriate setting for the fabric you're patching. The heat has to get right through the double-thickness of the patch, so test it by lifting up on the patch a little bit to see whether it's fused. It doesn't have to be solid as a rock - you're just trying to keep the thing in place while you hand-stitch it.

Fusing the patch to the jeans.

Or you could do it the old-fashioned way.

Step Three - Sew the Patch.

Hand-sewing is getting to be a lost art, as everyone knows. If you're not in the habit of mending, darning, reattaching buttons, and so on, you might have to practice a bit before you really get the hang of it.

For today's patches I used blanket stitch. I like the look of it on this patch fabric.

Here's a good photo tutorial for blanket stitch.

Working from LEFT to RIGHT, (though I hold my fabric so as to make it TOP to BOTTOM) bring needle out at point A (outer edge). Insert at point B (adjusting spacing as desired - I spaced mine about a millimeter apart), then with thread below the needle, come out at point C directly below. Repeat, noting that point C now becomes point A for the following stitch. Make sure your spaces are even - unless you want them uneven.

Taking the stitch - note thread is below needle tip (also note I did this one right to left - don't let it bring you down).


Drawing the loop smaller.

Pulling the thread tight, ready to take another stitch.

Here are a pair of finished patches on Charlotte's favourite jeans. These hearts had to be a bit on the big side, which brings me to my final note: Patch 'em as soon as they need it. Apparently it's true that a stitch in time saves nine.