I bought Barbara Schoenoff’s In the Style of Queen Anne pattern as a birthday gift to myself (two birthdays ago, at least, maybe more) and although I’ve admired it greatly I haven’t gotten around to giving it a go until now. I don’t know why I have this freak-outedness that goes with doing someone else’s pattern but I’m fine drafting and sewing my own. The pattern and instructions are wonderful, it would take a concerted effort on my part to mess up.

This is my progress so far. I deviated by embiggening the nose, leaving the hair bun off (for now at least, I’m still contemplating hair) and needle sculpting the face. I couldn’t find the right sized wooden beads in my craft stash but I happened to have the right sized glass pearls on hand.

I think the glass pearls work well for the joints. There’s something very compelling about the way they peek out from the muslin.

Tomorrow there will be (in theory at least) gesso and paint and the making of clothes, but tonight I’m just going to revel a little in my progress.

That’s right, relax and revel.

I get a little kick out of watching my flock increase.

I am also slowed by the fact that I have to add all my favorite words to the spell-checker for both MS Word and my browser. Just for the record, Office 2007 no longer has a download link and the mini doesn’t have a CD drive so I faked out the install by copying the files onto a flash drive and running setup.exe from the drive– worked like a charm. Since I’m trying to conserve memory and processing I did a selective install, leaving out the back-end heavy stuff that I never use.

And I found the best coffee house on the planet.

Ever.

yes, it rocks

In no small part because this is one of the coffee tables in the wi-fi lounge. Yes, it’s a foosball coffee table. It is awesome. I am in awe. There’s also the above mentioned wi-fi, the awesome owners Clay and Theresa, a guitarist on some days, kick ass soup on Wednesdays, and– oh yeah– coffee.

wi-fi room

This is my view from the overstuffed green leather couch.

Chiloquin itself is lovely. I’m sure my friends on Facebook are going to get bored of seeing pictures of the lake and surrounding parks. The only problem I’ve really had so far is that the one place that serves burgers (Malita’s, don’t eat there) decided that medium means Oh-God-Oh-God-kill-it-with-fire! and I had to explain to the bartender how to make a capecod (seriously, there’s only two ingredients, three if you count the ice.)

We are in Chiloquin now. Staying in the RV at Walt’s RV park, pretty nice place. There are some really nice trails cut for walking dogs, of which I’m taking full advantage.

All of the above are more or less valid options.

The truth is though that blogging is a habitual thing for me, and when I don’t have time or resources to indulge my habits then I don’t. Once I stop, it can take some time to get back in the habit, and part of that is that I’m reticent to explain why I stopped in the first place.

So I missed blogging, and I’m back. For now.

A few hours and a couple of sore hands later and I have some pretty jewelry. I guess my hands aren’t too terribly sore, because I’m still able to use them to pat myself on the back.

Does anyone know what that kind of chain is called? I don’t, I thought it was called rosary style, but I’ve heard people refer to y-shaped necklaces as rosary style both with and without the beads.

I would really like to know how to describe these things. It feels strange to be able to make something but not know what to call it.

I’m running out of eye-pins.

Not much to look at yet.

No pattern, no specific plans other than to knit two sides and a strip down the middle and to felt the heck out of it.

The pattern is from Mary Thomas’s Book of Knitting Patterns. It’s called the Garden Plot Square. Very dowdy name for such a nice pattern isn’t it?

There are leaves a plenty on it. I’m 4/5ths through the first square and 3/4 of the way through my second ball of Sugar ‘n Cream in Sage green. I’m using size 4 US cable needles.

The square once finished should measure 16 by 16-ish inches, there is a lot of room to squish or stretch. Which means that making one more panel (after this one is finished) I could cover a throw pillow, three more would make a pretty throw for a dog bed and 11 more would be a good child sized throw. At about 2 dollars a ball, the project it won’t turn out to be a terrible investment of time or money.

Cashier: Your total is $13.49, you saved $3.19 shopping today.

Me: This is SPARTA!!!

Of course, that wouldn’t quite work as well as it did in the movie (if you live in a cave the movie I’m referring to is 300) but it would still be kind of fun to do.

First all the buttons are removed and then there’s a spot treatment. Spots are washed from the inside out prior to the whole washing, so they are marked with chalk and dealt with from the wrong side of the fabric (in theory to push the soil out from the direction it came) the best trick was to use table salt and rubbing alcohol to remove grease stains from cotton dress shirts, the key was using an ice cube as the scrubber instead of a finger or brush. After the spot treatment then it goes to whole wash on another frame.

The solution used depends on the fiber content. For silk it’s usually a mix of mild soft (potash) soap and some lavendar smell, rinsed with just water. For wool it’s a mild lye soap, then salt water (laundry salt aka Borax), then clean water and per the customers request a conditioner of lanolin or almond. Plant materials like cotton, ramie, linen etc get a water soluable detergent (which won’t damage them like potash and lye soaps will), a salt rinse, then a conditioning rinse that usually has a small amount of starch added. For each stage a clean sponge (big old sea sponges) is used to press the solution through the garment and then out as much as possible.

In a laundry the ambient room temperature is uncomfortably hot which would be miserable unless your arms are plunged into cold water for 8-10 hours a day (which ours were) and dehumidifiers run constantly. Ideally nothing is hung up until it’s pressed, the garments lay flat separated by warm dry towels, or rolled (jelly roll style) with a towel but not hung up. When the cloth is just damp from it’s taken to be pressed, mens suits and shirts are done on pressing machines– every thing else is ironed by hand with an iron and pressing cloth, and sweaters are not pressed at all but put on the puffer (a screen with a fan under it blowing up through the sweater.) With any luck at this point someone will remember to sew the buttons back on.

It’s been a long time since I’ve worked in a laundry, but I think washing things (especially my own creations) this way is soothing. There’s a rhythm to it, it’s economical (financially as well as enviromentally) and gives me the chance to really slow down and re-appreciate my creations.

Just as a side note, at the laundry one of the managers would come out of her office and scream at us that if we (all the current employees on the floor, about a half dozen) were not like sons and daughters to her personally we’d all be fired instantly for our sloth. About an hour later the same manager would come out and yell out that we were working too hard and she’d die if any one of her children were sent to the hospital due to exhaustion. Later in the night she’d come out again and say we were then working too fast to have done any washing and that we’d have to be more diligent.

At times she’d make us all march (yes, march) down the street and back because we needed the air and rest. After working her shifts for a few weeks it was hard for anyone to feel that their job was ever in danger, or to suppress laughter longer than it took for her to retreat back to her office. On an employees birthday there was always a cookie at the person’s station, followed by extra screaming throughout the night. I think deep down most of us had some affection for her, at least those of us that chose the evening and night shifts when she was in charge.

It’s hard to explain; it wasn’t despite the yelling and marching– you had to like, if not outright love or adore her, on some level because of it.