The Griffin Begins

 Or is is Gryphon?  Somehow, that sounds pretentious, like people who spell vampire "vampyre."

Some people have to have something completely designed and built in their heads before they start.  That's not me - I have to start, and then see what happens next.  I used to think that doing it like that was somehow inferior.  But I remember that one day Tolkien pick up his pen and wrote "in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" when he had no idea what a hobbit was.  He had to write the story to find out.  The same with Ursula K. LeGuin - one of her books started just with a vision of two characters struggling in the snow, and she had to start writing to see who they were and why they were there.

So - to start.  I need a head.  Bird head.  My most comfortable medium is foam, so I'll be fabricating out of that.  I think about sculpting a head out of foil, and taking a pattern from that (that's how I did my pig skull mask).  But then I wondered.  I started the dragon with a marvelously detailed dragon skull pattern from Kamui Cosplay.  I wondered if she by any chance had a bird skull pattern.  She did!  It looked somehow familiar.  I already owned it - it was in the same pattern collection as the dragon skull.  Duh.

Her patterns are very detailed.  This one had 34 pieces to first cut out of paper, and then the craft foam (I sprayed the pieces with adhesive and stuck them down.  It's much easier than transferring all the markings).  Many of the pieces have miniscule darts to shape them.  

Pattern cut out and arranged ("knolled")

The pattern pieces on foam

I cut all the pieces out, made those tiny darts, and glued it all together.

The eyes will be made from one of those plastic Christmas tree ornaments that you can pop open and put stuff in.  I had to cut them down to size (I used a soldering iron to melt the cut line.  The plastic is brittle and I was afraid it would shatter if I used a dremel cutter on it).

I'm sampling the fabric for the body.  I'm using the long-haired Icelandic fleece for the mane, and I wanted the body fur to be similar.  I have about a pound and a half of the wool roving I got to weave the blankets for the waulking at the Scottish games - it's a natural gray.  I wanted some color variation so I carded it with some black alpaca and white mohair (23 grams wool, 4 grams each alpaca and mohair).  I felted it into a flat sheet this morning as a sample.

Then I had to stop for awhile because the cable people are coming to try to improve my internet so I have to be back waiting at the house.

But I only started this on Sunday, and I had to work and do errands yesterday, so it's coming along rather well.  I think I'll use the same body pattern that I did for the dragon.  I'll need to figure out how to make lion paws for the back feet and eagle legs for the front (maybe Worbla for the eagle legs?

It's a start.

Another Shirt; Starting the Puppet

 Only a month gap this time.

I did finish the pink pirate shirt.  For some reason this one seemed to take longer than the first to hand fell the seams - but I love holding that lightweight linen, so that's OK.  I also spent a few hours doing a bit of fancy latticework smocking on the sleeves.
Someday maybe I'll get a full-length mirror and put it somewhere other than the bathroom.

And the fancy work on the sleeves

And now on to the puppet.  I'm really going to try to write this up the way I planned on doing this blog - a place for all the fussy details that don't really belong in my life blog.  We'll see.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've felt the urge for another puppet for a long time.  I've been able to visualize myself working on it - I just couldn't visualize the puppet itself.  All I knew is that I wanted to use the other Icelandic fleece that I have to make fur like the varafell I made.

The clock is ticking.  About the only place I have to take a puppet is the Infinity Con - and that's coming up July 8.  In 2019, I took Lurlene, my little post apoc girl walking puppet - who disturbed the hell out of some people.

The con didn't happen in 2020, because Covid.  In 2020 I took the dragon puppet, which was a huge hit.

I took it again last year (that's what this picture is from) and while again it was a hit, I also got too much of what ever Maker doesn't want to hear:  "I remember that from last year!"

I dig out my Spiderwick Press books and start thumbing.  And there was the griffen - half bird, half lion.  I could give it a mane.  

And now he's going to get his own blog entry.

Another Update

 And I'll have to come back later and put in pictures.

I'm feeling scattered.  I seem to have a lot of stuff going on.  Possibly because I have a lot of stuff going on, to wit:

My new couch cover.  This I actually got done.  I kept seeing ads on FaceBook for a linen couch throw - and with my obsession (fetish?) with linen I would just look at the picture and feel my blood pressure go lower.  I wasn't too enamored of the $400 price tag, especially without being able to see/feel it first.  So, for about a third of that, I ordered 10 yards of natural linen.  It was a bit awkward to cut it in half crosswise an then sew it together lengthwise and them hem the whole thing - but I did.  To most people it's just a big piece of beige cloth - but I love it, and linen soothes me.

Here's the comparison - the old green polyester stretch one, and the new linen one.

                               

At least that got done.  Works in progress:  A scarf/shawl from a yak/silk yarn that I spun in the hospital.  For some reason, although I used to knit compulsively, I haven't knit much at all since I came back.  This yarn (Greenwoods Fiberworks, color Apple Cider) is of greens and pinks.  I just spun and plied it, without worrying about the color, and honestly, it's a little muddy.  And I don't seem to have the dexterity that I used to in knitting lace, possibly because I'm out of practice.  It's now at the "each row takes forever" stage.

I'm knitting three samples.  I got some autumn colored silk and have spun some of it.  I'm trying to decide if I want to ply it with itself - probably not, because I don't have that much of it, and I don't want to muddy it up like the apple cider.  So I've done a sample with gold eri silk, fawn yak, and now am working on one with dark brown alpaca.

I started a year or so ago using a gotland/silk blend for my "spin while walking".  That will go on until I run out of the Gotland.  I did get some more carded and blended today.

Doing a project I hadn't planned.  My friend Christy from the feed store put out a call wanting fleece - some for a friend to use for house insulation, some for friends to insulate beehives.  That gave me a good chance to pass on some of my "guilt" fleeces - fleece that isn't bad, but still not good enough to warrant the time needed to process it.  While I was digging through the stash, I found some black alpaca that a friend had given me awhile ago - like 2008.  I knew I had "some" nice black alpaca - I hadn't remembered that there are at least 3 pounds of it.  And gasp! horrors!  Some of it had moth casings!  It didn't look like an active infestation (no moths) and there weren't many, but enough that I felt compelled to pick, fluff, and rewash it all.  That took a few hours.

Over years of spinning here and there, I had accrued about a pound of various cotton yarns (which is a lot).  My original thought was to put on a mixed color warp and then spin a consistent weft - but a lot of the yarns weren't strong enough for that.  I like vertical stripes in clothing, but not horizontal.  I thumbed through pinterest, and saw several saori inspired garments made of narrow strips used on the bias.  So I put on a 9-yard warp, 4 inches wide, and I will weave in random patterns (plain weave, twill, pick and pick, clasped weft, basketweave, whatever else comes to mind).  I got it on the loom a couple of weeks ago but haven't woven much on it yet.

I loved the linen pirate shirt so much that I wanted another one  When I ordered the fabric for the couch cover, I had the choice of paying the pretty heavy shipping fee, or buying enough cloth so that shipping was free.  Well, duh.  So two more yards of handkerchief linen in a color somewhere between pink and gray.  Just a shirt like that last one isn't enough, though.  I decided that instead of just gathering the sleeves in that I would lattice smock them.  That's going to add only a few hours of handsewing to the project.  The problem is marking the 1/4" grid.  Trying to draw lines with a washable marker went wonky (and my marker is about empty).  Trying to do 150 dots a quarter inch from each other is crazy making.  What I ended up was machine basting the grid - the distance from the needle to the edge of the presser foot is 1/4 inch so that gave me a guideline.  Of course, if/when I ever get the smocking done I'll have to go pick out the basting lines (or not - I made them with thread to match the fabric)

So, if I count on my fingers:

Couch cover - done (with arm and back covers to protect from the cats)

Rewash black alpaca - done as of this afternoon

Spinning autumn silk - in progress

Knitting samples with silk - in progress

Lace shawl - in progress

Narrow cotton weaving - in progress

Carding, blending Gotland/silk - ongoing

Pink linen poet shirt - in progress

So it's no wonder that I feel a bit scattered and unfocused.  And what I really want to do is make another puppet.  The Infinity con is in July, and I've taken the dragon puppet for the last two years.  I've been having the puppet-making urge, but that's as far as I've gotten.  I don't have any design ideas yet, other than using my remaining Iceland fleece for fur.

The Year in Review

 I knew it had been awhile since I was here - but 14 months?  I've been writing almost obsessively in my "life" blog, but for some reason freeze up at the idea of keeping track of my projects - anywhere.  I also have a notebook or two, not updated.

Once again.  Starting over.  Looking at the life blog to see if I have anything there for the last 14 months.

June 2022.  The Infinity Con was coming up, and Rob wanted to bring Zeke.  He asked if I could make something for Zeke to carry, so I made a miniature version of my dragon puppet.  We were cute together.

In July I wove and sewed a ruana.  I had written last time of spinning a Corriedale fleece (it was my "spin while walking" project.)  I dyed half of it in various colors (amazing how well a dark brown fleece takes color) and did a shadow weave.  I fricken' love the way it turned out. The fabric looks antique; the pattern, subtle.  It was even cold enough this winter that I wore it a few times.

Last fall I was asked if I could come demonstrate at the upcoming highland games in February - spinning, of course, but then the idea of doing a waulking came up.  So, of course, I had to weave the cloth for it.  A retired weaver was generous enough to donate her old rug yarn.  So that the weft would be consistent, I bought a huge (5 pounds but it looked enormous) bump of roving from R. H. Lindsay, and spun it (which took about 5,000 yards)  (although it looked so cool all twisted up it was a shame to disrupt it) (and now I'm wondering what a 20 lb. bump would look like).

8 yards, 42 inches wide.  I really enjoyed having a project on the loom, where I could just go back and throw the shuttle and listen to music.  And it was *so* satisfying when it was done and rolled off the loom.

In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I did it again (after all, it was a two-day festival).  Unfortunately the weather was so nasty on the first day that we couldn't do the waulking.  It was also nasty the second day - windy and very cold, but at least not raining, so it got done, and we had fun.  Now I have one in reserve if we want to do it again next year.  (Meanwhile, I have all this fabric, somewhat rough because it's rug yarn, and no idea of what to do with it.  It's a process thing)

To wear to the games, I made something that I've wanted for awhile - a handkerchief linen "pirate shirt" (aka poet shirt).  Don't have a picture, but I love it - that linen just feels so good.  I also made a blue linen pleated skirt.  Alas - with the weather, I got soaked, and the little pouch I was carrying my phone and keys in had once held a leaking pen, with the result that the skirt and shirt ended up with ink stains.  I was able to bleach out the white shirt, but the skirt (all that pleating!) was ruined, so it's been deconstructed and the fabric will be recycled.

And that's all I can remember, or wrote down.  I'm still having troubling focusing or concentrating.  At the moment I have bits and pieces scattered about, and I was going to write about them, to try to get them somehow organized in my brain, but it's late and my bed and book are calling me.  Hopefully I won't wait another 14 months.

List of Projects

 I envy the people who keep project books, with samples, labels, pictures.  I've even started them, several times.  It just doesn't appear to be how I roll.

And I started the "Demon Thread" blog to attempt to do that again.  Separate from my "life" blog, this was supposed to have all those details.  Nicely organized.  Talk about each project.

Again - that's not how I roll.

So I'm just going to list where I am now.  Maybe at some point it will become coherent.  Like my other blog, I'm just going to do some brain barf.

What's going on now.  I just finished spinning and chain plying some BFL/silk in the "Sunset at Manzanita" colorway from Capistrano Fiber Arts Studio.  I had gotten this to spin in the hospital while I was there with Bob, on my nano.  And I did.  And for obvious reasons stalled out.  But it's finally done, and beautiful and I might knit it up in the "Dragon Wing" pattern.  

Knitting.  There's something where I seem to have lost my mojo.  I used to knit a lot - while watching TV, riding in the car, waiting at the doctor or dentist or at jury duty.   I kept my knitting bag hanging up where I could grab it during the time that Mom seemed to end up in the ER a lot.  I knit while sitting beside her in the hospital, and in the hospice house.  I knit incessantly while in the hospital with Bob (3 projects for different levels of stress).

And, other than casting on and knitting for a bit and then deciding that the yarn color and pattern weren't friends, I haven't knit since I came home almost two years ago.  Those three projects?  They've all been unraveled and turned back into balls of yarn and been tucked away.

But I digress.  I have finished this yarn, and it's beautiful (greens and golds and oranges).  And I love this pattern.  I've made it before - must find my own picture but this is what the pattern looks like.

And I've spun a few samples.  I had some while back gotten an order in of some gray penduncle silk, and some Gotland roving, which happened to be the exact same color.  I've done two sample skeins - one where I spun a single of each and then plied, and one where I carded them together - I far prefer the latter.  The gotland roving was somewhat difficult to draft, but the mix of gotland and silk (75%/25%) was lovely.

Just saw that I have this picture too.  The roving was a bit compacted, and one way of dealing with that is to steam it, which helps reactivate any crimp and sort of "wakes up" the wool.  Just simply holding it over a teakettle makes a noticeable difference.

Those skeins are now in my "to be considered" bin.

I recently cleaned up some of my fiber stash.  In addition to all of the bins in Chez Wicca, and my storage cabinet in the den, I also had a set of plastic drawers and a basket, and stuff piled up on top of the drawers.  I decided to clean that out a bit.  There were a *lot* of small bits and blobs and samples of fiber.  I swear, Scout's honor, that when I stuff a sample of fiber into a baggie that I stick information in there with it - but a lot of this stuff was unlabeled.  And a lot of it was small samples, a quarter ounce or so.  I gathered them all up, went down to Chez Wicca, and carded it all together.  So there's various wools, quite a bit of alpaca, some silk, some bamboo.  A lot of dark natural colors, with copper and green bamboo and some other greens and blues and orange (I opted to leave out any bright reds).  To add to the fun, I'm spinning on my great wheel, which I have not used in years.  I had forgotten how fast and graceful it is.

And I'm still working on the Eternal Corriedale Fleece.  I'll have to see if I still have the date - it's one that I got off of FB, the "Dirty Fleece" page, a whole large fleece for $20.  Usually you get what you pay for, but that wasn't the case for this one.  It's lovely, dark brown and soft.  I've likely been working on it for at least three years now - it's my "walk while spinning" fleece.  I've been hand combing it, which takes forever but then is lovely to spin.  The pile  is very slowly getting smaller.  The pile of yarn is slowly getting bigger. 

And yesterday I took the time to give my Jenkins wheel a good cleaning and rubdown with Howard's feed and wax.

To be continued . . .

 

 

The Great Cape Caper--Done (almost)

How very odd.  I was coming on here to start writing about the next project (or two) now that I had finished writing about The Great Cape Caper.  And lo! and behold! -- I hadn't.  Maybe in my mind, or my dreams, but not here?  I even checked to see if I had a draft of a post--nope.

So--what can I say.  After 8 months (granted, three of those were on hiatus) its, well, over.  There's always such an anticlimatical feeling about that.  The purpose of a project like this is to be a project--a thing-in-progress.  When it's finished--well, then it's just a thing.

So--it's done.

Last blog post I was cutting and sewing and weaving endless trim.  So then it was all sewn, and all of that trim sewn on.  And the big fur collar that started all this was sewn on (I thought about making it tie on, or even snap on, so that the cape could be worn without it, but a) when am I going to wear this at all, and b) when would I wear it without the collar.

One thing still remains--I have copper penannular broaches that I made for fasteners--but I need to tie something between them.  I've tried a necklace that I have, and just some cording--don't like either of them.  Maybe I'll learn Viking knitting (which makes a flexible wire tube).  I have until Halloween to decide.  And now I need to make a dress to wear under it.  Which will be ironic.   This Great Cape Caper, in financial terms, cost me nothing.  I already had the fleeces on hand (in some cases, for a decade or two).  I had the dyes.  I even had the heavy copper wire for the broaches.  So the cape was free (except for the couple of hundred hours I put into it).  But it needs a dress or some sort of costume under it, and the only fabric that I think is the right texture is linen.  At $12 a yard.  So the accessory to the "free" cape will cost me $60-$80 (and more time).  For something I might wear once or twice.  Sigh . . .

But it's done. And I absolutely love it.  Despite the heavy appearance, it's lightweight (a couple of pounds).  Lovely drape. Heavily textured but subtle fabric.  Dramatic.  I took it to a party and people did the proper "ooh" and "ahhh" over it (and some even tried it on, despite the fact that it was close to 100 degrees.

Ahhhh.  *Now* on to the next project.

The Great Cape Caper: Sewing

Fabric having been woven and fulled--time to cut (gasp!) and sew.

I was using the pattern that alternated straight panels with rectangles.  The first cut was the hardest--I was expecting it to dissolve, but the fulling held everything in place even though the fabric was still quite gauzy.

To make the triangular wedges, I cut the fabric in half diagonally, then flipped one piece so that the narrow ends were together, butted the selvedges, and used a mattress stitch to sew them together, using the Lincoln thrums for thread.  Yes--I have some rippling edges there.  I had sleyed the selvedges more densely so they fulled a little differently.  I just smoothed them out the best I could while I was sewing.

Hint for using yarn as sewing thread:  run it over a cake of beeswax - - which is a fairly common thing to do when hand sewing even with commercial thread -- but then run a dry hot iron over it to melt the wax into the yarn.  It's stronger and smoother and even easier to use.

I folded the diagonal edges over about 1/2", then overlapped the selvedge edge of the straight pieces and sewed with a running stitch down both sides.  This covered all the raw edges.  As I had 5 straight pieces alternating with 4 wedges, this took awhile.  I listened to Neil Gaimen read his Graveyard book, and also took this time to make some dye samples.

Fortunately my work table is where I can also keep an eye on my stove.  I knew I wanted to make trim for all the edges of the cape (for appearance, and to protect those openweave edges).  I had thought about cardweaving, which would be more authentic--but this cape is pure fantasy.  Cardweaving is slower and produces a thicker band; using the loom would be faster.  I picked out the pattern called "Walls of Troy" because I like the interlocking zig-zag design.

I used pattern # II

 I wanted a glossy, non stretchy yarn for this so I went stash-diving again.  I spun up some Leicester Longwool, but I wanted a fairly tightly spun yarn and this wool became quite wiry. Diving deeper, I found a bag of Cotswold that had been given to me--like the Lincoln, about 15 years or more ago.  While also a fairly coarse wool, it was softer than the longwool but still had the high shine that I wanted.  The Lincoln samples didn't go to waste, though, because I used them for my dye samples.  Different types of wool will take dye differently, but the longwools will be quite similar.

I really had no idea of what colors I wanted for the trim.  I wanted it to define the edges, but not be the star of the show.  So I simply dyed a bunch of colors and then auditioned them against the cape fabric.  My technique for sampling is to use mason jars and 10 grams of yarn or fiber.  Four of those will fit in a pot (alas--my pot that was big enough for 5 sprung a leak).  I fill the pot about halfway with water, bring it all to a boil, and then let it sit until cool.

I chose to use the green (second from the left) and a lighter version of the copper (sixth from the right).  I used the Dharma acid dyes:  the green was gold ocher and black in a proportion of 7:3, at .9% depth of shade.  The copper was gold ocher and violet in a proportion of 9:1 at a 1% depth of shade.

So at this point the work schedule was going to my studio when I had a reasonable length of time to sew, run dye samples, and listen to Gaimen.  During TV watching time in the evening, I combed and spun the Cotswold.  The trim took almost 500 yards of yarn.

I wove about 12 yards of trim.  Putting that length of warp on a loom at only 1 inch wide and keeping the yarns from slipping is, well, impossible.  I didn't even try.  What I did was to rig up my warping trapeze, toss my warp over it, and tied it to plastic cup with 1 1/2 pounds of weight in it.  (That took sampling--1 pound was too light and 2 pounds was too heavy)  That way I could weave about 5 feet before retying the warp down further.  This turned out to be a brilliant way to weave.  This little loom has only about a 5-6" weaving depth before you have to advance the warp--but all I had to do was crank it on; no releasing the break and no resetting the tension each time.

I enjoy weaving but have to admit that this got a bit tedious at 20 ends and picks per inch.  So I would weave for awhile and sew for awhile.  I couldn't even listen to audiobooks while weaving because I had to focus on the pattern.  When I had finished sewing the cape pieces together, I cut off enough of the woven trim to start sewing the top and side pieces on when I needed to take a weaving break.

I think I looked at this view forever.