microposts
In a moment of grand clarity, I sewed the ends of my in-progress sleeves shut before I tipped my jumper upside down to start knitting the bottom ribbing. Now all the attached sleeve yarns (4 balls) are safely stuffed inside the body, + I don’t have to worry about tangling five balls of yarn.
Love this. Rewilding species does so much to help climate change. It stabilises ecologies and (don’t overlook this) it shows people that we CAN have a positive impact.
Trying to find actually medieval, actually from the 14-15th century, pictures of seahorses is surprisingly difficult. ‘Seahorse’ gives you too much new/fantasy stuff, ‘hippocamp’ gives you stuff about brains. Ugh.
I just want something plausible I can embroider onto my wool cotehardie a bunch.
Broke: I got a CT scan on my sinuses. Gotta wait for the results.
Woke: I got my head examined.
Bespoke: The eldritch machine has tested me. I do not yet know if I have been granted its favour.
Turns out that several years of recorder practice does not, in fact, make it easier to play the tin whistle. Damn fingerings are close enough that muscle memory takes over at exactly the wrong point in the tune and then everybody is sad. 🎵
Dammit chicken, I’m all for supporting gender exploration, but we really, really don’t need a rooster. It’s fine. Stop trying to crow.
OK so I knew that “traditional” Irish tartans weren’t a thing, but I didn’t know people had started claiming Wales had “traditional” tartans as well. Thanks go to Jimmy the Welsh Viking for the info. (Video: www.youtube.com/watch)
“Identity is something very personal, and people attach important meanings to the terms they use to describe themselves… Understanding transgender history contextualises why people use particular terms and can affirm people’s identities while acknowledging why the preferred language has evolved.” 📖
Finished Reacher S02 last night and wow, it lives up to the first season. The dialogue is fantastic, the whole thing is as much a character study as a murder mystery. Also loving the casual ace rep from Neagley, and Dixon going after what she wants unsubtley and directly. 📺
And so, having played with a few different fibres to get the feel of things, it’s time to put these bad boys through their paces. A hand distaff full of alpaca should do nicely. I did a load of this while testing and got over two hour’s worth of spinning from it, a whole distaff will last a while!
We have breached self-imposed containment and made it all the way onto the lawn. I rewarded this great display of bravery with scratch mix, and distracted Her Grumpiness so she didn’t chase them all off on principle. #chickenupdate
Me: I don’t like horror Also me: raved about Camp Damascus for a week straight won’t shut up about A House With Good Bones or What Moves The Dead is still internally vibrating from The Locked Tomb
I… may have reassess my reading preferences.
The nice thing about pirate shirts is that they go with basically everything, including modern denim and medieval belt pouches. (I made the shirt including weaving the trim, jeans are commercial and belt pouch came from a re-enactor friend.)
OK, this makes me very happy. 179 turtles in total have been bred by the zoo and released back into their native river. www.abc.net.au/news/2024…
I have had my new wool combs for less than 24 hours and they have already tasted flesh. (It was entirely user error, but they didn’t miss their chance to show me who’s boss in this relationship.)
It’s OK, I still love them. They’re still less violent than the chickens.
If you like reading about historical clothing and the people who made it, the book “Labour of the Stitch: The Making and Remaking of Fashionable Georgian Dress” is free to read/download until April 12: www.cambridge.org/core/elem…
Just about finished reading Fibershed by Rebecca Burgess and Courtney White - full review coming later - and whew. This book packs a lot into its 289 pages.
It doesn’t shy away from the bleak history of mass textile production, but it doesn’t leave you drowning in despair either. In fact it paints a bright, hopeful picture of how community-based groups can - and already are - building resilient, regenerative local systems that bring textile production back into our local regions, without all the toxic gunk that mass manufacturers depend on. (Seriously. There’s an “Ingredients to Watch” section in the appendices. By the end of it I was all “Great! Everything is an endocrine disruptor!")
<img src=“https://garaksapprentice.micro.blog/uploads/2024/fibreshed-book.webp" width=“420” height=“600” alt=“The cover of a book titled “Fibershed: Growing a Movement of Farmers, Fashion Activists, and Makers for a New Textile Economy”. It shows a white woman standing facing the camera. She is holding a large pile of folded, handwoven textiles. The bottom half of her face is obscured by the textiles. She is wearing handknit, brown leggings and a grey, handknit cardigan.">
Quite aside from how convenient it is, turns out spindle spinning is a great chance for me to practice good posture. Shoulders down, elbows in, butt tucked - all the stuff the physio yells at me to do. Perhaps I need to keep my spindle at my writing desk rather than my knitting, for thinking breaks.
Wonderful video showcasing Japanese artists, including a sakiori weaver who also grows, spins and weaves his own cotton, and a sportswear designer who does sashiko on sneakers. (Vid is dubbed English, captioned, + a transcript on the site.)
Finished: Daindreth’s Outlaw by Elizabeth Wheatley 📚
I’ma be honest, while the first book was decent, I wasn’t sure if I’d pick up the rest of the series. Really glad I did - Daindreth’s Outlaw is a solid book. It follows Amira, Daindreth and Thadred, with a different person each chapter and the character changes clearly sign-posted. It’s great to have more character development by showing how each person reacts differently to the same event.