Last minute Valentine’s hack! To tie up some goodies in a bag, when you don’t have a pre-made bag, but you do have some fabric and some ribbon. This is like a hobo bag, but fancy, as the resulting tied fabric looks like a flower. I used a square of chiffon fabric and sealed the edges by passing them by the flame of a candle to melt them. If your sewing machine is up and running you could also hem the fabric, but the slightly melted edge works for this flower form. You could also use a pre-hemmed square of fabric. To tie the bag shut, I used about two feet of ribbon. I put the chocolates in the middle, gathered the ends together, then tucked the corners back under. I have made a short video on how to here.
Chiffon fabric tied into a flower shaped goodie bag
I set out to clean my house and the first thing I decided to do was re-stain and refinish the love seats. ‘Cause that makes sense, right? Then I ran out of stain half-way through one cushion and had to run to the leather store. (I am only allowed to go in if I am on a tight deadline and have a specific list, otherwise I order online. That is a very expensive rabbit hole.)
Partially stained leather couch cushion
I did get back in time to finish staining, put on a protective finish coat, and have enough time for it to dry before the family came home. (Poor dogs had to be locked up for awhile, but it was nap time anyway.)
Refinished love seat
The seat looks so much better. Maybe everyone will be in awe of the loveliness and not see the dust bunnies frolicking on the floor? Or the cob webs gracing the ceilings? I really did miss the “how to clean” memo, but I should have “I can fix that” emblazoned on a t-shirt.
My grandma wrote down on her pattern how long it took her to knit a row on the blanket. She recorded one time for a back row, which is just knit and purl stitches, and a second time for the front row, which takes longer because of the cables.
Grandma’s writing on a 48 year-old pattern
So I timed myself doing a back row, and was pleasantly surprised that I did it in 10 minutes. Perhaps my knitting is not as abysmally slow as I feared. Or Grandma did her times on a larger blanket. Hm.
When I was learning to knit and crochet, I was taught to roll up extra yarn into a ball. Generally, you started with a small nest of yarn and wrapped more yarn around, changing directions every so often so it came out more or less round. Inevitably, I would drop the ball, it would roll across the floor, the cat might help its progress, and I would have to wind it up again. When I was older, I obtained a “new wool winder” which winds yarn from a hank into a cake-like structure, but was wonderful because the cake sat still and yarn could be pulled from the center. It did not work so well with small amounts of yarn, and I had to go and find the machine and a place to secure it to use it. Fast forward many years (better just skip, because there is quite a lot of time from then to now), and I was learning about spinning on a dealgan (a Scottish type of drop spindle), and the presenter in the video said the newly made yarn was wrapped around the spindle in the same way as for a nostepinne. What? The resulting cop of yarn could come directly off the spindle and the yarn could be pulled from the center. Hm. New rabbit hole. Nostepinne is a word for a fancy stick. I used a 1” dowel, which worked just fine the first time, but you really don’t even need a stick. A rolled up piece of paper will also work (especially if the cat is comfy on your lap and you can’t reach your stick, but there is a handy piece of paper).
Wrapped yarn ball (left) versus center pull ball (right)
I’m sharing because I really found this way of winding to be life changing. And it is so simple.
On a separate note, Adobe Premier now will make captions from my audio automatically. So that saves me a bit of typing. It still needed editing because “nostepinne” is not in its transcription vocabulary. Shocking. The video isn’t fancy because I’m still learning the software.
It felt good to do a little spinning again. I’ve been busy making things with yarn, but haven’t spun any in over a month. My eldest recently used shades of green and white wool to fill a clear plastic cup for a “kelp-achino” prop for a play (it came out well, by the way. Did I take a picture? No, of course not, darn it.) There was left over wool. Hm. It found its way into my fiber bag, and onto a drop spindle. Then we wandered outside because the weather was nice. I prefer to spin standing up because there is more vertical space for the spindle to spin, which is a problem in an orthotic boot, at least for long periods of time. The doc told me to rest, and I’m trying, truly.
Critters and Craft 