Yes, I'm A Freak - It's Blogapalooza

I was in the mood to post recently, but didn't really have anything to say. I was looking over my page, and noticed what a long list of categories I have. And it came to me ... I'll do the annual (?) Category Update, with a little blurb about each thing on the list.

Okay - I suppose the 'blather' category can come at the end (if the middle doesn't cover it).

In knitting news: I went back to work on the sweater this week. Hopefully I'll keep steadily at it, and maybe get it done by ... umm, spring? Sigh. Oh well. I wasn't too keen on the last pair of socks I started, so I may scrap them and start a new pair. I decided some time earlier this year that life's too short and uncertain to waste time on projects I've truly lost interest in. It's a hobby - for fun. Not something (else) I have to force myself to do.

I haven't thought about whether I'm doing any Christmas knitting this year, but if I am, I'd better get busy planning that.

SCA: This is the time of year that my post-Pennsic glow (if there was one) is waning, and I start forgetting about the whole thing till next year. Bad idea. This is the very time of year to keep motivated on long-term projects, and if I did, I'd be very happy with myself next year. So I'm going to plan to work on some of my projects at least once a month throughout the winter. Some of the things I want to do:

• make some more (better) garb


• decorate the garb I have - embroidery and such


• make my tent cover


• make a new top for my shade pavilion


• hmm, I'm sure there are some more things, but that's a good start

Gardening: Well, I started strong this year, but was disappointed in my follow-through. But the good news is, since I decided to start treating gardening as work-in-progress, as an experiment of sorts, I'm not too angsty about it. I learned a lot from this year. I lost steam about mid-summer, and didn't maintain my plants and things well. I especially lost it after Pennsic - I stopped watering things, and being August, it kind of did them in. Nothing really ever recovered. I also didn't plan my fall plantings as I'd have liked - I'd wanted to plant some of these gorgeous mums I'm now seeing at the stores, but I didn't plan a space for them, so I don't know where to put them. And I wanted to plant some bulbs for spring flowers, which I also haven't done (although I don't think it's too late for that). There are still some things I need / want to do before serious bad weather - mark where my perennials are, so I don't disturb them next spring when I want to start digging around in the flower beds; prune the roses; trim the shrubs out front; clean out the planters; and clean up the pond. Those things I hope to do soon, to at least get prepared for next season.

Weaving: I haven't done any weaving in way over a year. But it's something I'm still very interested in. I'd like to continue learning about tapestry weaving, but to do that now, I'd probably have to start over in my 'tutorial book' I bought last year. Well, it'll stay on the wish list for awhile yet.

Tyler: Tyler's doing great. He had a wonderful time on vacation, running around on the beach. He seemed to do well on the trip there and back, despite it's length. I just had him to the vet's on Saturday for a T4 check (testing his thyroid to see if his current medication needs adjusted), and they told me his levels were perfect, so his meds are fine. He's lost some weight though, and is getting kind of bony. I know part of that is aging (he'll be 14 next month!) but I'm going to work on bulking him up a little without letting him get too fat. I'm adding a third snack / meal to his day, consisting this week of a half-cup of whole wheat pasta and some mozzarella cheese. We'll see how that does for him. I'd also like to start taking him out more for exercise - as I mentioned, he did great on the trip, wanting to run around and seeming very energetic. Here he just lays about all the time, but I think he truly just gets bored because we don't do much - it's my fault we don't go for walks and outings anymore. As long as he still feels like it, keeping him active can only be good for him. Unfortunately, I waited till fall when the weather will be turning bad - but we tend to have relatively mild winters here, so hopefully if I ever get started, there will still be lots of exercise to be had in the coming months.

Embroidery: I have several embroidery projects I'd like to get back to. One is the embroidery on the pirate coat (a separate entry). Another is some embroidery on garb (mentioned in the SCA entry). I want to finish The Dread Reverend's Sea Chameleon favor, as the only person who has one right now is Berg, and I certainly thing the Commodore deserves one at least as much, if not more. Maybe over the winter months.

Quilting: This is one of those hobbies that I'd like to have time for, but never do. I mentioned in knitting that I'd learned the difficult lesson of giving up on projects that were no longer 'getting it' for me. I'm about to that point with the Tolkien quilt. It's at least 10 years old, and I've just really lost interest in it. I think if I could scrap it with a clean conscience, it would free me up to do some other useful things. I would like to make a scrap quilt; I got a book awhile back full of patterns for scrap quilts made with 5" squares (so it's easy - you cut all your material into 5" squares, then you can choose any pattern from the book and you're all set for it). I spent an entire weekend some time ago cutting all my large, accumulated fabric stash into 5" squares, and have added to it since - I could probably make several of these at this point. And this type of project (if I don't over-engineer it) could easily be completed in a couple of weekends. So perhaps that's something I'll think about getting done this winter as well.

Poi: I'm still practicing! I had a wonderful evening on the beach in North Carolina doing some solitary poi with glow-sticks on the poi balls. It was around sunset /dusk, and I was actually standing in the swash zone, with the income waves washing over my feet. It was magical. I plan to continue working on poi, although I haven't learned anything new in quite awhile.

Travel: Well, the NC trip was a success (despite some dark spots which I won't go into here). I cannot WAIT to go back. So my vacationing for this year went really, really well. The only thing I want to do differently next year is plan a spring vacation - whether it's NC or some place else - because as it stands now, my only two 'real' vacations fall at the beginning of August and the end of September - too close together, with that hideously long stretch of 10 months in between.

Shenanigans: We haven't had many of these for awhile. We had the one wild porch party this year, but that was about it. We have our annual Samhain party coming up, but I've been getting lazy and not really wanting to turn it into an overnighter / weekend event anymore. I'd rather have something more quiet. Wild raucous parties are fun - except for having to deal with the aftermath the next day. I wish someone else would host the party; then I wouldn't have to worry about that part of it.

Project: Pirate Coat: I've done nothing with it since before Pennsic, except wore it in the surf in North Carolina and got saltwater on the bottom. :o) Which was planned. I need to remove the temporarily-sewed-on cuffs and finish the embroidery on them; and then do the embroidery on the rest of the coat. I ought to think about starting that soon, because that's going to be a winter-long project.

Sewing: Yeah, I don't even know why this category is here. I don't make much of anything that wouldn't fall into the SCA or Quilting categories. Fact is, while I enjoy the idea of homemade things, I don't really much like sewing.

New House Project: While the original house that spawned this category is old water under the bridge, I haven't deleted the category because it's kind of a never-ending dream of mine. I'm back on it, at least temporarily. As I've said many times before, my house is simply too small for the people who reside here throughout the month. We desperately need a bigger house. The problem is (a) affording it, and (b) figuring out how to unload my house in this market. But I'm currently re-obsessed with a house I first noticed a year and a half ago, which is still on the market, recently changed realtors, and on which they've significantly dropped the price. I have an appointment to go see it tomorrow. I really love this house (what I know of it) and it would be perfect for us - 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a living room, family room AND rec room; 2 acres; an in-ground pool; just gorgeous. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

And that brings us to recipes, which I've only ever posted once. That's only because it was my mom's recipe, and so not copyrighted. But I muck about with recipes all the time. Maybe over the winter I'll see fit to post some new ones.

Well, I guess that's about it - and certainly covers the blather. That's my life in a nutshell right now: desperately trying to figure out a way to afford a bigger house, and fit my many hobby dreams and wishes into my life. Winding down into the cocoon of autumn, and thinking a lot. But that's a post for another time.

Pirate Coat Update; A New Edition of "This *^#$% Old House"

My house doesn't have a real attic, it has these cubbyholes along the eaves. Like this.



And while rooting around in this one in the last few months, because it's where the holiday decorations are stored, I noticed the insulation was falling down alarmingly. It looked like this ....



Although I probably should have just replaced the insulation entirely, that was a project I wasn't up for. But I decided I did need to do something with it, so I resorted to Plan B - stapling plastic up over it to basically hold it in place (and keep any that wasn't already ripped up from getting ripped up).

So Saturday I went out to Big Lots and bought a couple inexpensive but relatively heavy clear plastic painter's drop cloths. Then I spent awhile in this cubby fixing the mess. The section I got done was the worst of it. I had a swirl of little tiny insulation fibers floating all over the place, and I'm sure a bunch of them got inhaled (because I didn't think about wearing any kind of mask for that, until it was too late and I was already in the middle of it). I had little itchy bits of annoyance stuck on me all day. And I only got this one section done.



But ... at least I got that done, and could (finally) put the Christmas decorations away. There's quite a lot more of it left to do, but I kind of figured that was enough for one day.

Then I worked on the pirate coat!

I had initially started the embroidery in rayon floss, because I thought it would look a wee bit fancier - it has a bit of shine to it, almost like a satin or silk. But even practicing and trying to be careful, it was turning out like this.


Messy. I wasn't terribly happy with it, so last night on a whim I decided to try regular embroidery floss. Wow - what a difference.


I'm definitely glad I tried this, because I'm definitely sticking with this now. It's so much easier to work with, and it looks much better.

I'm still working on a practice piece for the cuff, because I want to experiment with different stitches and how the whole thing will look, before I just start on the actual cuff. I'm really debating on adding a little bit of color, or at least shading, to help the different elements of this particular motif stand out. If I don't do that, I think I'll have to simplify it somewhat, because as it is now, it's a pretty complex motif, and if I do it all in black satin stitch, I think it's just kind of going to be a big blurry blob.

I've been waffling about the color issue steadily, because I'm afraid even a little color will sway it over into the realm of just looking tacky. I want to first try some 'shades of black' - like adding a bit of charcoal gray.

But I don't have any of that color. I considered running out to Joann Fabrics again today to pick some up, but ... we're in one of those arctic freezes, with wind chills near - 15 and a high wind warning, and I'm just not entirely sure I want to go out today. I mean, who wants to go out in this to buy embroidery floss ...


... especially when there's plenty of other stuff to do.

I could shift my focus to another part of the coat, and begin planning the embroidery for the neck band and button band. Of course, there's always knitting. Or I could just curl up under the log cabin blanket and read and drink tea all day.

While I'm on the topic, I have to brag about this ...


... this is the transfer paper I found for transferring my designs onto the pirate coat for embroidery. Okay, so everyone else in the world probably already knew about this stuff, and I'm just out of the loop. But no matter - I've found it now, and it's going to save my life on this project. It is so incredibly easy to use ... I just placed it on the fabric, placed my pencil-drawn design on top of it, and traced over it with the point of a knitting needle. It easily transferred crisp, clear lines even onto this black twill fabric. And, the coating on the transfer side didn't seem to 'disappear' - the package says you can use it over and over, and it seems to be true (well, to a point, I'm sure). This was a sampler pack with a variety of colors, but the yellow and white are probably going to be most useful for me on this project. I am so impressed with this stuff! The only thing I noticed was that as I worked with the piece, it did begin to rub off the fabric a bit. But that was easily dealt with - every so often I removed the embroidery hoop and re-drew any faded places with a white pencil. It's not coming off so fast that I can't keep up with it, so I don't think it'll be any major trauma. And the advantages of it far outweigh this little bit of necessary maintenance. So ... great stuff, highly recommended.

Magnum Opus: Pirate Coat Update

I worked on the pirate coat all day yesterday. Literally. I had a nice dinner planned, and was resisting even dragging myself away from it for that, so the Dread Reverend suggested we order pizza and wings. He so rocks.

I got the coat mostly done. It doesn't technically look much different than last week, just hanging on a hanger, so I didn't take a new picture. Maybe one evening this week I'll model it for a photo shoot. But I got the entire front and neck facing put on; I put the second sleeve in; and I completely fixed the cuffs.

The cuffs in this pattern are really difficult. The first time I made this coat, for the Dread Reverend, I ended up scrapping the suggested cuffs and just making some modified simple cuffs. A friend of mine who also made this coat told me he had trouble with the cuffs as well. The two problems are, the directions make no sense and don't tell you what you actually need to do; and the cuffs are way too huge. Everything else about the coat is very well made, but those cuffs are like a fantasy costume instead of a realistic pirate coat. They are just silly big.

I knew going in that I'd need to modify them. But since I had never completed the cuffs on this pattern before, I didn't know how or how much I would need to modify them without seeing them in their original form. So I made one complete cuff, basting it only, and then once I figured out what it needed, I removed it and modified it. I ended up taking off 2" from each side of each cuff piece (for a total circumference reduction of 4"), and taking 1 1/2" off the height of the cuff. I had already taken 3" off the bottom of the sleeve to fit me, which also reduce the width somewhat, since the sleeves flared out at the bottom (for some stupid reason). After taking another 2" off the width of the sleeve, everything fit together great.

And it was perfect. The cuffs looked much better this way. So I put both cuffs together, but did not attach them - because I have to have them unattached until after I finish the embroidery, so I am not embroidering through both layers, and the underside of the stitching will be hidden inside the cuff.

The only other thing I didn't finish on the coat was the bottom hem. That's a pretty simple thing which can be done any time, but which is going to take awhile (it's many yards of just straight stitching a hem), so I left it for later.

Now comes the embroidery - and with the ideas I've been having and the brief experimenting I've been doing, if I pull this off, and do what I want to do, the way I want to do it, this thing is going to be a work of art. It's going to be my embroidery magnum opus. Which is pretty ambitious considering I haven't really done all that much embroidery in the past - I've started a few small projects, only one of which I ever actually finished. It's going to be amazing. It's a lot of embroidery. I'm only mildly intimidated. (Okay, maybe a little beyond mildly). But I'm going to forge ahead and go for it.

I decided (quite wisely, it turns out) to do practice embroidery before I start on the actual coat, using some leftover scraps of the fabric. I'm starting out trying rayon embroidery floss, because it's satiny with just a tiny bit of shine, which I thought would look nice. Here's a picture, more or less - it was very difficult to get a good picture this morning, due to bad lighting ... future pictures will probably have to be taken outdoors with natural light to look like anything.

I began with 3 strands (the part labeled A), but it seemed too bulky and was hard to keep neat ... it just looked kind of sloppy. Then I tried just one strand, outlining the design in regular split stitch (part B), but that wasn't doing anything for me either. (It looks far neater in this picture than it looks in real life).

My next experiment was outlining the design in split stitch, then going back over that line with a tiny satin stitch (C). I liked that better, but decided it was a little too tiny, delicate and tedious. I'd been having an idea of doing a sort of couching over a piece of string of some type, to give nice raised edges to the designs. So I tried that next, over a piece of sock yarn (D).

That looked pretty awesome - although for the actual coat I'll use black yarn. This just happened to be something I had on hand to experiment with.

And if I decide to do that over most of the design, it may well take me the rest of my life. Ah well. It'll be worth it.

One thing I know for a fact I have to do is find some better lighting to work on this. One of the reasons even the single strand embroidery was getting sloppy is because I couldn't really see very well ... black floss on black material, indoors at night, with nothing but a regular table lamp for light - no freaking way that will work for this entire project. But I'm sure we can rig up some better lighting for me.

The other issue with the practice pieces is that I just drew some quick designs out freehand, with a white pencil which desperately needed sharpened. So the designs weren't neat or clear at all. But that's okay for just practice. When I go to transfer the real embroidery patterns to the coat, I'll be much more careful. Saturday when I was out I found some transfer paper in white and yellow, for dark colored fabric. When I go to transfer the actual patterns, I'll make sure I have clean, clear drawings, then trace them onto the coat with the transfer paper, and I'll be able to do a much better job embroidering them.

And I gotta tell you ... when I accomplish those two things (better lighting and a clean pattern to work from), this is going to go extremely well.

I can't wait to get it done and wear it!! But it's going to be a long time before that happens. I'm seriously wondering if I'll even be able to get it done by Pennsic in August, much less the first event in May. But I'll have to decide early, because once I start on the embroidery on the main coat, I won't be able to wear it till it's done ... I can't wear it around with half-done embroidery around the skirts. It'll be all or nothing.

I'm going to do the cuffs first, so I can attach them and be done with them. Next I'll do the buttons and loops, and I'll be embroidering something decorative up both sides of the facing, around the buttons and loops, and across the back of the neck. I don't know what yet, but that will be Phase 2.

When I finish those two sections, technically I could wear it as is, since that part of the embroidery will be done. The next phase will be moving on to the voluminous skirts - that part will take a very long time, and that's the part I won't be able to stop in the middle of to wear the coat. So I'll have to see how much time I still have when I finish the cuff and facings, and whether to start the skirts, or leave it alone until after this year's events. Knowing me I'll plow ahead and try to finish the whole thing before wearing it anywhere. Maybe, if I plan well, I can do the embroidery in phases which will allow me to still wear it when only part of it is done. Well ... it's something to consider, anyway.

The embroidery itself seems to go fairly quickly, despite it's tiny size, once started. But it's kind of deceptive ... each tiny motify may go fairly quickly, but when there are so many of them over such a large area, there's no way around it taking a very long time.

One of my biggest challenges right now is choosing the actual patterns I'll be using. I have a bunch of ideas, stuff I found in books or online. Now it's down to designing the actual patterns, modifying the patterns I've decided to use to fit the space I'm working in, and making clear copies in the proper size to trace onto the fabric. That, too, is going to take awhile.

Needless to say, the log cabin blanket didn't get finished this weekend. And I'm so close ... I'm on the fourth border, and have about 4 rows of that done. It's going to be hard to tear myself away from the pirate coat now to finish it, but it's so close, I can't abandon it now!

Unfortunately I may not get to work on either tonight ... since I fluffed off the whole weekend on my fiber obsession, I didn't get anything else done I should have. I have a tax appointment Thursday to prepare for (all my tax papers are stuffed randomly in a big tote bag ... I don't think the tax lady would be very happy with me if that's what I hand her), laundry to do, and a pig-sty of a house to clean up. I hate when mundania interferes with my creative endeavors.

And so it begins ...

I started on the pirate coat today. I was obsessed, I was a sewing fiend ... mostly because I don't really care so much for the sewing part, and really just wanted to get to the embroidery part.

I didn't make it that far ... but here's what I did get done between about 11:30 this morning and 6:00 tonight.

First I cut out all the pattern pieces and pinned them to my fabric. This took a lot of time, for several reasons. First, my fabric was 54" wide rather than the 45" called for in the pattern. If I had any math sense, I may have been able to figure out how much less I needed, since the fabric was wider, and not have had to get the whole 6 1/2 yards. But I'm not that mathtelligent, so I just got the 6 1/2 yards. Consequently, after first pinning the pattern pieces out according to the pattern schematic, I realized I could save a lot of space by rearranging them ... so I did. (I also had quite a bit of fabric left over, but I'm sure I'll find a use for such nice twill).

Finally, I was ready to start cutting ...


... this part always makes me nervous. I'm always afraid, what if I screwed something up? At this point, I'm totally committed ... if I screwed up, it'll be too late to fix it once I cut everything out.

Eh, whatever. I cut them out, and then laid out the back and one front side on the table, to begin brainstorming my embroidery coup de grace. (The material is all black, it just looks all different kinds of shades in these pictures).




But I wasn't really getting inspired from looking at it this way, so I decided to put at least some of the coat together. I figured I could envision my embroidery scheme better that way, and it wouldn't really make it any harder to embroider some parts of it ... like the skirts.




Then I got paranoid that the sleeves might not fit, so thought I'd better do them to make sure, before I invest any time in embroidery. I got one done ...

... and it fit fine, but by then I'd pretty well lost steam (it was getting close to 6:00) so I called it a day. My one-armed pirate coat is hanging out awaiting further developments.

One small project I might have been able to start on tonight, embroidery-wise, is the cuffs. But I needed interfacing to begin putting them together, and I hadn't gotten any at the store yesterday. I thought I had some, but it turns out I didn't have enough. I don't want to embroider through the interfacing, but the way this pattern is set up, there is a cuff set with interfacing (the 'facing' cuff) and then a cuff set without interfacing (the 'outer' cuff), which you then sew together, turn right side out, and use as the cuff proper. I don't want to get that far before I do the embroidery, but I do I want to put them all together at least pinned, to get a good idea of exactly where on the cuff the embroidery will be most effective, and how much space I have after seams. To do that, it would be easier to work through the process in order, and that would have required putting the interfacing on the cuff facings to proceed from there.

Had my mind been clearer, I may well have been able to figure it out without the interfacing, but ... it was getting late, I was hungry, there'd been rum, and I'd been working on it for over 6 hours. I decided anything else I did at that point was highly susceptible to serious screw-up, and my best bet was to call it a day, and relax in front of the TV knitting (and probably watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3!).

Meanwhile through much of this, I'd been throwing together a pot of beef stew. It's funny - I learned to make beef stew from my mom years ago. Then for a long time I couldn't get it to turn out quite right, and was always futzing with it. But the more I futzed, the worse it turned out. This time I really wasn't in the mood to cook, and was just tossing stuff at the pot on my downstairs breaks from sewing on the way to or from the bathroom or to make another drink ... and this is the best beef stew I've made in a long time. Apparently it doesn't like futzing.

I'm so psyched about getting to the embroidery on this coat!! But I know I have to take it one phase at a time, and do each one well, if I want the whole thing to really turn out nice, and not just look trashy. So I'll be patient, and work through it. I need to get interfacing, and finish the front facing before I can hem it ... then I can start planning the embroidery for the 'skirt' panels. And I need to figure out the cuffs, and then I can start embroidery on them as well. I'm also going to be embroidering up the front facing and around the neck, and that part I could probably start on any time, although it might be wise to decide what type of fasteners I'm going to put on the coat, and get them, so I can plan my embroidery around them.

There's still a lot of prep work before I can get to the embroidery. Not to mention, finding or making up designs for the embroidery itself.

For tonight, though ... looks like it's back to finishing the Log Cabin Blanket. And a big ol' woo-hoo to that.

You want the Futzless Mom's Beef Stew Recipe? Here ya go ... but remember ... this is totally futzless, so if you're not comfortable cooking this way, either bite the bullet and give it a try once, or move on to something more precise. But I'm telling you ... all the years I tried so hard to make this beef stew "right," this is the first time it's turned out this good, and this is exactly how I did it.

Mom's Beef Stew

about 1 1/2 lbs stew beef (give or take a chunk or two)
about 3 carrots
about 3 potatoes
a can of peas
some water
some cooking oil
some flour
a heavy pot

Cut the beef into pieces you'd like to see in your stew. I use scissors for this. Trim any excess fat.

Pour some cooking oil into the bottom of the pot and heat it up.

Dump some all purpose flour into a gallon-size ziplock bag. Throw in the meat, shake it up really well. When the oil's hot, open the bag and pull out handfuls of the meat, with whatever flour you happen to grab with it. (don't try to get all the flour, but don't make a serious effort to shake any flour off the meat, either). Toss it in the pot. Let that cook a little while, then use a spatula, wooden spoon, or whatever you find handy to stir it up a bit.

Continue to cook and stir the beef with flour until it's mostly browned. Stop before it burns.

Put hot tap water in the pot till it covers the beef by about an inch or two. Cook this for 2 hours. Once it starts boiling good, turn the heat down and adjust until it's mostly simmering. Keep a lid on. Stir often. Keep it simmering. (Usually when I make beef stew it doesn't stick; this stuck horribly and had to be stirred a lot; however, as I mentioned, it turned out better than usual, so I figured it was worth it).

Go do something fun for awhile. When it's been almost 2 hours, peel 3 carrots (more or less) and chop them into about 1/2" rounds. Throw those in the pot, stir again, put the lid on.

About 25 minutes later you're going to add potatoes, so sometime before that peel 3 or so potatoes, and chop them up into more or less bite-size pieces. Toss those in, stir, put the lid on.

At various points in this process shake in quite a bit of salt (if you like salt; if you're on a low-salt diet, I'm sorry ... do your best). A generous portion of pepper wouldn't go amiss, either. Stir often, since - as I said - this version seemed to stick more than usual. (I think it was the excess flour; but that's what makes it thick and stewy - so it's worth it).

When the potatoes have cooked about 25 minutes, open a can of peas. Now you can do two things with the liquid in the can: if your beef stew is just about the right thickness (and if you played loose with the flour, it should be), you can drain the liquid into the sink. If your beef stew has managed to get too thick (hard to imagine) you can dump the liquid from the can of peas in with the peas. Either way, dump in the can of peas and stir it up. At this point it's basically done ... just leave on the heat and stir long enough to heat the peas (about 5 seconds).

If the stew isn't thick at all, you did what I'd been doing wrong for years - not enough flour at the start. This is where I start futzing, and usually bugger it up. The only fix for it I've found out at that point is to make a flour and warm water slurry, and add it to the stew. It will probably thicken it up some, but it always detracts from the color and flavor when I have to do that. That's why this pot turned out so well - I didn't have to do that this time. So remember - lots of flour at the beginning.

There ... that's my N0-Futz Mom's Beef Stew. If it's excellent, thank my mom. If it turns out like crap, it's your fault.