Category Archives: Fiber

Embroidering

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Probably I should have spent more time today studying than I did. But I had signed up for a software class (embroidery) a couple of weeks ago. First I had purchased the software. Ravelry is dangerous. People give you all sorts of good ideas, many of which wind up being money out of the pocket. In this case, it was an excellent idea. Several days later I received a class list from Dublin Sewing Center. My new software had a class listed for today.

There is always a challenge, teaching a class on software. First you have to hope that everyone in the class understands how to do the basics on the computer they brought. Sadly, if you have 15 people, there are going to be some in the group who don’t. In this case we had about five. This included some with challenges involving inserting, opening and copying files from a flash drive.

The class was still worth it. There were a lot of things I probably could have figured out on my own (if I had thought about them, or read the manual rather than just looking a few things up).

Since I have been home –

dish towel

t-shirt

and flour sack towel

The flour sack dish towels are easy, the t-shirt is black and I will replace the photo when I have a picture in daylight.

but it is 2030 and time to get ready for the morning….

Close your eyes

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Don’t watch. Seriously, you don’t want to see this.

Cal was at Stanford today for the second of their two games. The first, Thursday, was at Haas Pavilion with Cal pulling out a win on Asha Thomas’ buzzer beating last basket. Today the favor was returned in spades. No clue what was going on, but baskets were missed, passes easily intercepted, literally a dozen opportunities lost. Stanford had its act together. It wasn’t pretty.

Then there was the heartbreaker of the Blackhawks beating the Wild 4-3 in overtime (Hockey, for those who don’t recognize the teams).

Otherwise, I spent a small amount of time on homework, but mostly worked on various embroidery projects. All told, six items completed. The cutest –

x two. reversed colors

were a pair of flour sack towels. The purple is called Orchid – that orange? Allegedly it is Devil Red.

She likes unicorns

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Besides schematics on a lot of flour sack towels, I have been trying various designs on terry towels. It was a while ago, but there was Felix and Felicia (bib and towels). I messed around with a couple of other patterns and dumped them on Daughter #2 who always has a need for towels. Two dogs, one a golden retriever who loves water and mud.

And then I have a friend in Alabama. She wound up there secondary to job, family, and retirement from military fun and frolic.

Her daughter loves unicorns especially those from My Little Pony. I remember My Little Pony. That set/series/whatever has been around since my daughters were young. Until I looked, I had no idea that there was more than one unicorn involved. I just remembers a white unicorn which made sense. I mean really, who isn’t familiar with Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn? The movie by that name post dates the book. I will always vote book over movie. In this case, both book cover and animated movie had white as the color of the unicorn’s coat.

So I took one large unicorn design – mostly head, horn and a couple of flowers added for accent and fought my way through the design. Not the best, but it went out in the mail. Then I tried a different design on a hand towel. I still have a couple more patterns that I might want to try.

for the love of unicorns

and it is always fun to send things when they aren’t expected.

Q Cafe

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on an apron

UC Hastings College of Law has two buildings on McAllister in San Francisco. They lie across an intersection from each other. In the Admin building, besides offices, the second floor boasts a cafeteria called the Law Cafe which is open from 0700 and provides basic food options for students, faculty, and staff. Across the street is the classroom building. On the first floor, which in the US is the entry level, there is a small coffee stand which features coffees, various snack items and a cooler of yogurt, sandwiches, beverages, and wraps. There is some relation between the cafe and Peet’s Coffee. Q Cafe is staffed by trainers and trainees, the later of which seem to be making a transition from jobless/homeless to having a simply employment skill which can gain them a job and get them back on their feet.

Over this academic year, I have taken the opportunity at quiet times to speak with various workers. All seem to maintain a sense of humor and the student body seems to reciprocate. Coffee being such an essential portion of a student’s daily diet. Along with the other schematics I found, there was this one of a complex espresso machine. Adding it to an apron front just seemed like a natural idea. Besides, I have a couple of apron blanks.

Of course I do. It is part of my bad habit to want to be stocked on those items which I might need. When the kids were young I had a shelf in my closet that housed various items which could, on no notice, becomes presents for an event that they remembered on the way out the door. So why wouldn’t I have supplies on hand? Because I might never use them? Ok, I will grant you that. I have yarn, fiber, fabric, patterns that I probably will never use.

But anyway, I will drop off the apron in the morning.

Microscope as schematic

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flour sack towels

Everyone can always use dishtowels, right? I mean seriously. No matter how inventive dish-washer manufactures are, there are simply a number of items that don’t fit. Much less that favorite coffee mug or tea cup that is just right in your hand. Or various kitchen items that have been handed down in the family and are just too fragile to trust to modern standards of time and temperature. And, speaking of temperature – not all (or I really think most) plastics are truly dish-washer safe.

Growing up in the 1950s – we didn’t have a dishwasher. In fact, we didn’t have one in the 1960s either. Nor in the 1970s when I lived in various apartments during University, Med School or Residency. I washed dishes, I air dried dishes and occasionally used a dish towel if I needed a particular item NOW.

As I think back, I am not sure when a dishwasher became a standard appliance in my kitchen. Perhaps the 1990s? Thinking back that many living places and decades puts a strain on my memory. But there are some realities, even if you live in a location with enough resources to have one in your kitchen. If there are not several people in your household, you may run out of dishes before it is reasonable to run the dishwasher since you probably don’t use all that many items every day. It really isn’t particularly sanitary to leave items unwashed for days and days. It uses more water to rise/prewash dishes followed by a dishwasher cycle than it would to just wash the dishes in the first place.

All of these thoughts lead me to dishtowels. Everyone needs a few. Flour sack dishtowels, bought in bulk, are inexpensive and provide a wonderful blank canvas on which to test out machine embroidery. If it doesn’t look great – hey, it is a dishtowel. If it does? Hey, presto! I have just created a nice present.

Which leads me to the photo which started this particular discussion. If I am going to practice machine embroidery, the item should reflect the interests of the victim recipient, right? College guy is headed out for spring quarter. He is a science/engineering type. Since I haven’t found a schematic of a laser yet, he will have to settle for the microscope.

As far as I can go

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on my shawl for the Wild Swan MKAL. In case I haven’t explained it – MKAL stands for Mystery Knit Along. The pattern for the knit-a-long is published in increments which means that none of us participating have a clue as to what the final product will look like. Ravelry has updated their software so that it now possible to post progress pictures on the forums but have them hidden under a “spoiler” label so that each person can make the choice of whether or not to peek.

Me? I don’t want to wait until after the full pattern is published to start – that takes all the fun out of participating. But peeking means that if, for some reason, I decide it isn’t worth my time, I can bail out earlier in the process. I really don’t need any more UFOs (Unfinished objects) lying around.

So here I am – 6 rows short of completing Chart G, the last.

see the needle?

After reading most of the discussions, I decided that I could end the shawl after o this particular row with a regular rather than a picot bind off. Not enough yarn. I am stuck and am very glad that I contacted the dyer several weeks ago for more yarn.

I don’t wait well…..

Avoiding assignments

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in spite of all my good intentions, I am heading to bed without completing an assignment due at 1420 tomorrow. On the surface, it seems to be an incredibly simple thing: take a list and turn it into an outline/table of contents. What turns out to be tricky is deciding what goes where, and why.

No problem – I can just take my favorite Army regulation and use that as a pattern – right? Except that civilian lawyers, especially those who have worked for various international organizations and NGOs just don’t think the same way as those of us who are steeped in the tradition of admin regulations.

And, as it turns out, the military is one of those exceptions to the APA (Administrative Procedures Act, 1946) so some of the standards which all of those who are US law school trained just don’t apply. One of the other students in this 8 person seminar has spent time related to military regulation drafting, he understands my point of view. But, being a law student, his attitudes are probably a bit more flexible than mine.

The upshot is that I knit four more rows on my Wild Swan – starting from here –

End of Chart F

Unlike a number of those in the KAL, I am not going to run out of beads. I have lots and lots of beads. Some of them are the wrong size or color, but I have the 250 that I will need to finish the shawl.

Yarn? That is another question. I think I have enough for maybe two more rows + the bind-off. The problem is that there are eight rows plus the bind off. I thought this might happen, so contacted Fierce Fibers two weeks ago and have a bit more on order in the darkest color. But it isn’t here yet…..

And then there was the embroidery tonight. Got through the pattern in spite repeated thread breakage (but no needle challenges) and bobbin snarls only to find that the last two colors shifted themselves right from where they belonged by about a cm. It is obvious. Really, really obvious since those two colors complete a frame around the main pattern. I am just glad it happened on a napkin. Not that expensive, I can try it again. But first – I need to figure out if it is the embroidery, the machine or me. Not inclined to repeat the same mistake.

And, oh, gee – it is too late to finish that outline. Or wire diagram. Or whatever the H it is.

Morning?

and today is?

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It was partway through the day when I figured out that one half of the email list was dated correctly and the other half stated it was “19 Jan 2019.” Now obviously that was not true. What was probably worse was that I originally thought that the 13th was the incorrect date.

Something tells me that I was not feeling as well as I would like to have imagined.

It was obviously a slog to get to school. I made in through my two morning classes, the return through BART and was grateful for a pick-up by George. I was going to use the excuse of being completely brain dead as to why I wasn’t really studying for the rest of the day. But really, is knitting a complicated lace something I should be trying in a brain dead situation?

Through Chart E

the left “wing”

I won’t bother to tell you how many corrections I had to make on the return rows to finish the last portion of clue 3. Let us just say that there were a lot of yarn overs and beads involved.

Yep. Gave up. Went to bed with the intention of getting up early….

What used to be here

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A long time ago – or when I lived in Heidelberg – which may or may not be all that long ago in geological terms I wrote about some of the brass plaques inserted in various sidewalk locations in memory of those who had lived at that location and were taken and killed as part of the Holocaust.

As it turns out, there are plaques with a similar purpose set in the sidewalks here in San Francisco. These don’t relate to the Holocaust (obviously). So far I haven’t found any that relate to much of the California shame of the WWII internments. But what I found on my walk from the Powell Street BART to UC Hastings via various streets in the Tenderloin – was the following:

B’nai Brith arrived in San Francisco in 1855. Started originally to help widows and orphans, nationwide it became a strong supporter of the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel Foundations and BB Youth Organizations.

And here is a link to the California Digital Press Archives from 1897.  The archives are searchable and there are a number of contemporaneous articles on the 1906 Earthquake and the aftermath (1, 2 , 3- which discusses the libraries that were lost in the fire)

In researching more recent times – there were three remaining Lodges in SF which combined in 1997 to one. Of interest is that of those involved was still named the Golden Gate Lodge (see picture above).

In 1999, the official office closed and the organization became completely run by volunteers.

At some point, they even decided to admit women.  (gasp!  I remember the mother of a good friend saying – the men do B’nai Brith, the women do Haddasah. The local chapter likes to bowl, and bowling is just not a Jewish sport, I don’t belong! This was the early 1970s. )

In 2005, the remaining San Francisco lodge celebrated 150 years of activity in San Francisco.

It was at this point I ran out of time following various links down newspaper archives and various other bit-buckets. Something about a couple more classes this afternoon and maybe being prepared?

Wild Swan

now through 94 rows –

Wild Swan

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For something completely unrelated to all my usual bitch, moans, and whines – knitting!

The Gradient Group on Ravelry is having a knit along (KAL) and the pattern is called Wild Swans. After looking at several of the spoilers, it actually seemed like both a nice shawl pattern and an interesting knit.

Of course I have yarn. I have lots and lots of yarn. So no excuse to buy any more. I also have a significant number of knitting needles in almost every size (which means that I spent almost 30 minutes digging through draws, bags, bins, and boxes till I located exactly the needle that I wanted).

The yarn is from Fierce Fibers which I purchased last fall while in Portland on that American Steamboat cruise with George. The yarn type is Abyss which is a 50/50 merino & silk blend. It is not superwash (duh) in color Midnight Oil at about 645 yds.

 

Abyss Yarn – Midnight Oil

The pattern starts with an I-cord tab. The clues are released on 1, 3, 5, & 12 January with the deadline 15 Feb.

Clue 1 included Chart A

Chart A – 36 rows

Clue 2 includes Charts B, C, & D

Thru Chart B – 42 Rows

Which means that I am now off to tackle Chart 3 after which I will have 48 rows (and 144 stitches on my 3.5mm needle)

Machine Embroidery

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We will skip that portion of the day which has to do with adding coolant to the car, finding the line at Acme Bakery more than 2 blocks long and quick stops at both Safeway’s Community Market (nee Andronico’s) for a few items and Peet’s for some much needed coffee.

Months ago I accumulated a variety of clothing and other blanks on which I was going to experiment. Adding embellishments and otherwise embarrassing the recipients with my largess. Because, of course, it would be what I wanted to make.

Then I peeked around the door into my studio space and observed chaos. There was no way that I was going to be able to get anything accomplished unless I spent some serious time cleaning up and organizing.

2 hours later, 3 bags of trash and some sorting done, I was ready to start. But for one small issue. My sewing machine informed me that there was a firmware update. Oh, joy. Restart the machine and watch as it downloads, and downloads, and downloads.

But wait! I can still play while it is doing its thing. As I found out, most of the designs on the machine were too large to place on small bibs, so I had to go with bagels and bunnies). For the piece de la resistance, I was going to do a unicorn (see yesterday) for Dani. It is not a small file, nor a few stitches. Rather than place it on a shirt that would not be wanted or appreciated, I took one of the hand towels and decided that would make a good test run.

One long list (26 color changes and an insane amount of converting from Madera threads to the Isacord colors that I have), 39k worth of stitches and it was finished. Good thing that I did the test. She was fine with the towel but didn’t want a shirt or sweatshirt. Not even if I changed the pinks to purples.

But I had a fine time testing out everything.

Now I just have to clean up the mess…. again!

Quilts and a side of As

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Ok, you have managed to avoid having to listen to me discussing baseball for, oh let us say at least a day. So first I will mention that the As are doing fine – in spite of a couple of the relief pitchers. Essentially they rock. A goodly number of my fellow Right Field Die Hards are in Anaheim this weekend expressly for the purpose of watching the As walk all over the Angels. Well? 2 out of 3 ain’t bad as the old country song goes.

Otherwise, I have put a bit of time into quilts that different daughters were making for friends babies.

To be clear – my daughters are not having children, but have several friends that are doing same.

The Eldest finished all but the machine quilting and just wasn’t up to it at the moment so

top

and I took it over to her today.

Meanwhile, the quilt and bibs that Daughter #2 sent off in the mail have arrived –

the model, quilt, bib towel

and just to make sure

One game, three loads of laundry

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Not sure which is of the higher positivity – managing to arrive at the stadium and slide into our seats less than five minutes before the opening pitch – or doing three loads of laundry after we got home.

The As won.

Now that is out of the way… no wait. We had a rep from Foxx News-Detroit in the stands with us for about four innings. Apparently some Tigers fan got upset yesterday and Tweeted (!) about the drum noise. Unlike some of those who use social media without checking their facts, this particular individual, suit and all, decided to stop in. End result? He seemed to have a good time and asked questions about the group origin, rationale behind the various beats and the general upbeat nature of the group. Decided that one reply on the previous day “they can’t be controlled but can be contained” was probably correct.

Then there was laundry.

But the most fun (ack) of the day was finishing the machine quilting for a project of the Eldest.

at least I don’t have to do the binding….

Cleaning

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Which is absolutely not my favorite thing in the whole world. But then, I have a daughter due back from Germany today, a couple of cats to get back to their own cozy home and no in town baseball game to provide me an excuse.

You see, I have this upstairs room that is variously called my craft room, my studio or that junk room. You get the idea. It had gotten to the point where I wasn’t willing to even step inside the room which leads to serious secondary and tertiary affects. Projects don’t get completed, I contemplate buying more supplies since I can’t locate what I know is in the room and my kids look at me with the “lead by example much?” quizzical look that I can’t refute. So I broke down starting yesterday and started to put the room in order.

To understand the magnitude of the task just think sewing, machine embroidery, knitting, spinning, quilting, cross stitch and you will get the idea. Each of those mentioned above has supplies: patterns, books, fabric, threads, yarn, needles, notions, machines, a spinning wheel or two, fiber, coffee mugs, tea cups and a sheep skin (doesn’t everyone need a sheep skin?) to just start the list. And then there are the various audiobooks in physical copy that I have accumulated from both Graphic Audio and Audiobookstand (going out of business….) that I haven’t yet heard.

plus the able helper

I did mention the cats? Onyx seemed to think it was his job to assist in all things. The third time I pulled him out of behind boxes or that he tumbled boxes and books off the shelves along the slanted wall he was evicted. Not pleased, as it is the given right of cats to walk wherever they want. Ten minutes later, I was forgiven as the custodian of the bag of treats.

Any way, we picked up the daughter safely, transferred her and the cats to her house and it still left me enough time to make a serious dent in the disaster.

I can actually find the floor…..

Lou update

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I didn’t take any complicated handcraft to Madagascar. I wasn’t sure that cross-stitch or knitting a bus was an objective possibility. Then there is the issue of dust, stains and sudden stops which could involve a colored food or beverage item. It just seemed safe to focus on something with an extremely limited number of colors.

All of which explains why I hadn’t made a lot of progress on Lou in the last month. I pulled it back out after we returned home then couldn’t find the floss which I had carefully stored. A trip to JoAnn’s solved that problem which meant, of course, that a day later I was organizing in the bedroom and “noticed” the box sitting square in the middle of the dresser. The obvious box into which I had carefully placed floss, needles, scissors and chart. Go figure, right? But I can always use extra thread.

Any way, as of this evening, between stints of stitching and audiobook – I have come this far.

25 June 2018

Who knew?

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And before you think I am totally and completely out of it, please remember that I spent most of the years between 1981-2015 living outside the US. Outside of occasional brief stints, I have had no contact with US based primary/secondary school eduction with my children. In fact, other than my own experience as a student aged 17 and under, DoDDs schools provide my only window into US based schools. I have no experience with Parent/Teacher Associations or whatever the current nomenclature for what I remember as the PTA. Certainly I know nothing about them or their fundraising outside of what I have read in fiction.

For those reading this and living outside the US (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK for English speaking plus the salting of French and German speakers) I effectively am as naive about such organizations as you.

How was I to know that PTAs have added “evenings out at a family restaurant” to their fundraising repertoire? Carmen knew about such things and explained it to me, but I hadn’t a clue. It did explain why our chosen location for dinner – The Silver Diner was packed with children and their families. Kindergarten through Second as it seemed to be. According to our poor waitress, the group had made a reservation for “about 25” which turned out to be a gross underestimation.

How does this work? The group makes an arrangement for a time when the restaurant normally is not that busy and in return gets an amount per head or % of sales from the group. It obviously made the kids happy, there were cheerful youngsters everywhere excited about seeing their friends. Kids coloring, parents and grandparents looking poleaxed and the waitstaff dodging the waist high crew as they attempted to take orders and deliver meals.

The young lady in line behind us as we entered explained that she could see kids from her class and was ever so excited. When one of the kids informed her that her teacher was having diner, I thought she would wiggle out of her skin. With rare exception, the kids were actually well behaved. As a group, it was almost as diverse as the Bay Area without the breakdown along ethnic lines that is all too often seen in San Francisco.

The menu was great, featuring burgers and other US people friendly food in varieties from buffalo through salmon to vegetarian (I didn’t want to ask if they had a separate grill) with a pick list for adding additional condiments. Veggies were offered in lieu of fries. The water was cold and served with lemon. In other words, nice comfort food, it the place wasn’t so filled with cheer, kids and noise that you couldn’t carry on a normal conversation.

The location faintly reminded me of the 5 & Diner that Noah and I ate at once in Scottsdale. With a major exception – the Silver Diner chain does as much as they can to be part of the “farm to table” movement and locally source their comestibles whenever possible.

Lou is progressing – and other than that – it is raining. Again.

16 May 2018

Lou

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I have been working on a new project for the last several days and finally inserted a page for it under the project Menu.

This was Lou

Lou was a good dog.

If you know dogs, there are some that are loved by their owners, but no one else would ever say that they were good.

Not so with Lou. He was a good dog. Sociable, traveled well, polite, friendly but not overwhelmingly so and lived for his job. His job being working all day with David. It is a hard job for a dog, keeping a contractor under proper supervision. The whole day may be traveling around in the truck and visiting job sites (we will not mention the occasional treat) and keeping one’s person properly supervised.

This was Lou’s role in life and he filled it admirably. But in April, not so young a dog anymore, he became ill. Multiple vet visits and treatments, it was obvious he wasn’t ever going to get better and was absolutely miserable.

Since there is snowballs chance in hell of David ever reading this, I feel safe in posting that I am making decent progress on a present for him. I don’t know that he wants a picture of Lou on his wall, but I think he just might need one.

Side order of cross-stitch

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I am more than capable of entertaining myself. In fact, I am probably old and cranky enough that I prefer my own company to that of strangers who don’t know when to stop talking.

And some of them talk, and talk and talk….

I neither arranged any needlework group or went to find if there was one. I have found that sitting quietly in the Concierge Lounge in the morning gives me access to as many Lattes as I am stupid enough to drink, a seat with decent light near one of the windows and the added benefit of having a 220v power point directly accessible.

Today I had the pleasure of a lovely and extremely funny Irish-Canadian lady. Patty lives near Toronto. Her journey from Ireland to attend Uni in Canada turned out to be pretty much a one way trip. (Not counting visits to relatives in Belfast on a regular basis). The kids are now grown, there are grandchildren and she has been dragging around a cross stitch of a Celtic Cross for a while needing only part of a border and a lot of backstitching.

We have agreed to encourage each other for the next few sea days and see what happens. I don’t mind that she is a tea drinker (kind of like my daughters) and she will ignore my coffee…….

Over the plate

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and not at the batter. The As batter hit by a pitch hopefully won’t have a serious hand injury. The Giants batter was hit in the butt. He was fine and later scored what turned out to be the winning run.

End score: 6:5 in favor of the SF Giants.

Otherwise, ran a few errands. Finished another small cross-stitch

 

And headed back to the East Bay tomortow