My eldest gave me a button maker for Mother’s Day. I can now make cute little pins and magnets and other pressed together items with my chosen image.
The word “button” is used for so many things. I’ve been on a whole rabbit-hole excursion on the definition and etymology of the word because it bothers me that a button can be something used to fasten a garment, or as a pin with a slogan, or something you push. Knowing that word comes from a number of sources helps, somewhat. Ah, English.
In September 2014 I made a button art tree by sewing colored buttons to a stretched canvas.
My button grandma had a high distain for anything that destroyed buttons, such as glue or cutting off the shank, since that makes them unsuitable for button collectors. So all the buttons are recoverable from this art, should they need to be. I do like how I used the lighter colors to indicate light direction.
I went to rinse and block my small twined cotton bag and was a little shocked when it held water. It wasn’t completely water tight, there was a slow drip, but it didn’t absorb water like I expect cotton to do. My hypothesis is that because I hadn’t washed it at all to this point, there may be some natural water resistance on cotton bolls. Not enough to keep the harvest safe from rain (as this cotton farmer describes), but some. Or the twining is tight enough and thick enough to resist the water for a short time.
I’ll file this under “things that make me go hm.“
I finally made myself a twining loom, after returning my neighbor’s to her. I tried other shorter methods, but having the warp hang freely makes it so much easier to twine.
The boards were in my scrap pile and 18.5” long. I used my band saw to cut one board down to 1.3”, then clamped them together and drilled seven 7/16” holes, four on one side, three on the other so I could always tell how the boards line up. The wider board on the bottom gives stability. The multiple holes give me options on bag width. Ironically, the dowels have a slight bend, and line up with nonparallel holes. Hm.
My eldest gifted me some pretty green wool blend yarn for Mother’s Day, so I thought it best to make something for myself. I can never have too many project bags, and I like twining, so I just needed a loom. I had some synthetic rug yarn in my stash that was a pretty rich brown, so I used that for the warp to maximize the variegated green yarn available for the twined weft.
This will not be a quick project, but it will still be an enjoyable one.
In July of 2014 I was experimenting with making “viking knit” wire chains. I did a number of trials with different metals and gauges of wire. I stumbled across this picture that also showed the time it took to get a small section of work done.
I like viking knit chains, they have a nice feel and drape. The technique is looping, which years later I learned to do with yarn in a method called nälbinding. I still love nälbinding too. Neither are fast crafts, but they are satisfying.
Critters and Craft 