Video Notes:
This video is a look into craft projects and creative work accomplished during the month of January.
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Notes:
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-2021 Making Goals-
Deadline Makes:
NY Sheep & Wool Festival, Oct 2021:
Cole by Martin Storey in handspun brown cormo
https://knitrowan.com/en/free-patterns/cole
End of Year:
Finish Cozy Memories blanket
Memory Blanket by Georgie Nicholson
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/memory-blanket
Advent:
Just Feel Festive Shawl by Caleisha Ryan
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/just-feel-festive-shawl
Salazar Slytherin:
-Tunic
-Trim for tunic
-Belt
-Hose
General Makes:
Deep Woods Toque by Kiyomi Burgin
https://kshandknitdesign.com/kiyomis-patterns#/deep-woods-toque
Terauley by Laura Chau
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/terauley
“Cozy Up With Me” Pants by Lauren Riker
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cozy-up-with-me-pants
Loop Fiber Studio Handspun & Knit Cowl
18th Century Shirt – silk noil fabric to be dyed with madder
Button Down Shirt Pattern Draft
Finish Embroidery Kits:
Fairy Ring
https://www.etsy.com/shop/cozyblue
Owl Embroidery
https://www.etsy.com/shop/jennyblairkits
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– Black Vest – Original Pattern is Simplicity 4762 Vest & Tie
– Pinstripes Are In socks – US 0/2.0 mm needles. Stockinette sock tube, split for toes, afterthought heels. Once Upon a Corgi (now Plies & Hellhounds) “Pinstripes Are In” from the A Series of Unfortunate Events club.
– Loop Fiber Studio – Bull’s Eye Bump in “Heartfelt”
– Machine Knit Cowl – adapted from the Machine Knit Cowl by Katie Rempe – https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/machine-knit-cowl – LK 150, dial 4. Fingering weight yarns held double.
– Pillow – 26″ x 20″ stuffed with shredded scraps
– Salazar Slytherin Hose – US 1/2.25 mm DPNs
— Surprise Stripes by Anna Johanna – https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/surprise-stripes-3 – https://missaneuloimmekerran.blogspot.com/2014/08/oodi-tiinalle.html
— Smooth Operator Socks by Susan B. Anderson – https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/smooth-operator-socks
– Cole Sweater – US 8/5mm & US 7/4.5mm needles – Handspun 3 ply cormo
– Loop Fiber Studio – Bull’s Eye Bump in “Blue Bayou”
– Destash yarns overdye for warping
– Madder dye – raw silk noil fabric
– Salazar Slytherin dye – 50% blue/50% yellow/5% black dye. Fingering weight BFL yarn.
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Attributions:
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Title Card Sound Effects:
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“Static,Stylophone,A”
InspectorJ
https://freesound.org/s/415924/
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
“Dial Tone”
ramicio
https://freesound.org/s/158427/
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
“drone Space wind sci-fi”
stitches
https://freesound.org/s/370754/
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Background Music:
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Wintersong – Melodic Celtic Fantasy by Alexander Nakarada
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/5722-wintersong—melodic-celtic-fantasy
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
End Screen Video:
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Made using Canva.com with photo taken by @freakishlemon
Transcript:
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[Sound: buzzing and a telephone busy tone fades in and out]
Hello and welcome to my craft room. I’m Adrian. I’m the Freakish Lemon. I use masculine pronouns and it’s January 2021. Wow. We made it.
I don’t have a ton to preface this part of the video with. I don’t know what this wing is doing. But let’s go to the board and clean it up from December.
So this first column has Salazar Slytherin costume, a knitting deadline thing, and my dye list. I’m going to erase the knitting deadline and what I finished for Salazar Slytherin. I’m not actually going to add anything to Slytherin at this time. The next thing to get done on the Salazar Slytherin costume is the tunic and the way I have that broken down includes a lot more steps than what would fit in this space at the moment. I think for right now I should just focus on finishing the things that I’m working on and we will revisit this section of the board once I’ve gotten those done. The dye section is not changing. We’re crossing our fingers that that uh madder dye silk project gets done.
The To Do column needs a lot of work, so let’s clean that up. So here we have our new clean, crooked To Do list. Just so you know, this list will never be straight. I’m writing it at a very strange angle. Warp the 10-inch loom. Weave the 24-inch loom. I had neglected to put it on the board before, but looking around the craft room, I can easily see forgetting that it’s even there unless it’s up here.
Machine knit the cowl and then I added all the finalizing steps for the black vests. Cut linings. Thread mark. I don’t have a ton to thread mark at this point. I do have to mark with thread where the pockets will go, the like line up point for the pockets. It’s just very important that I not lose where those points are as I’m assembling them. I’ve been experimenting with those um these frixion pens. “Frixion”? “Friction”? I’ve seen a lot of historical costumers talk about these. The ink disappears with heat. It does reappear slightly if you leave it in a cold place. I’ve had some experiments just like hanging about. I have been using it on the muslin interlining on one of the vests, but every time I iron it goes away. So some markings I want to be semi-permanent with thread as I’m assembling.
Buy buttons. I do have one set of five buttons that would work for these vests, but I only have one set of them. But to be perfectly honest, my button stash doesn’t have a ton of things outside of shirt buttons and the buttons on the vest, I would like to be a little bit bigger. So I’ll have to gather my coupons and look for potential buttons and maybe some you know, future project buttons of a similar kind just to build up my button stash a little bit.
Assemble. Line the first vest. I’m considering the vest with the stiff interlining vest number one because it’s the one that I’ve been intentionally working on. Interior finish number two. So because of the way I’m making the second vest with the lining fabric flat lined, I will have to finish the seams off so that they don’t fray inside of the vest. This will either be done by turning under that seam allowance and felling them down or using a like a seam tape type of thing to sew to the seam allowance and then tack down to the lining inside. And then, of course, buttonholes and buttons.
And I think that’s it for now. I don’t know what this month is going to look like in terms of other commitments outside of the craft room. I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself, but I’m hoping that soon the draft button down shirt and the Truly Victorian trousers will move from future into To Do relatively soon. I’d especially like to get those trousers done so that I have the trousers and the vest out of the same fabric so they go together. It’s a thing. Like an outfit.
Before we get into the monthly montage bit, today is New Year’s Day and I wanted to go over my 2021 making goals with you a little bit. Just to get an idea of the kind of things that I’m looking to do during this year. So I’ve structured it similarly to my making goals from last year.
At the top of the list are some deadline makes for the New York Sheep and Wool in Rhinebeck, which we are crossing our fingers that the state of things will be in a way that we can go in person in October. Wear your masks, people. Get the vaccine. I’m hoping to finish my brown cormo cabled sweater.
Also, by the end of the year I would love to have finished my Cozy Memories blanket. I enjoy working on it, but I am ready for it to be done.
Also this year, I’d like to have my knitting in a state where I can do an advent project in December. I had no chance of doing that in 2020 because I was working on that Christmas sweater and in years previous, I’ve started projects, but it’s usually been blankets. They take forever. So I’d love to do Caleisha’s Just Feel Festive Shawl in December. I do have an advent calendar that I made myself last year that I didn’t break into this year, so good luck to me. I’ve no idea what’s in it, but I vaguely recall it being semi-rainbow progression, so I think Caleisha’s Just Feel Festive Shawl would be a great project for that.
I have one 2020 work in progress that I want to finish in 2021, and that’s the Pinstripes Are In socks. It’s a cuff to cuff sock tube where you split it down the middle, do toes, after thought heels. I really cast it on in 2019 just have a thing for carrying around Rhinebeck, I think. So I’d like to get that off the needles and start putting my Star Wars self striping yarn back into the sock rotation once I get to a certain point on the hose for Salazar Slytherin.
Speaking of Salazar Slytherin, there are four things on this list that I would like to have done by the end of 2021. I’m not holding myself to a strict deadline there, but it would be nice. They are the tunic, the trim for the tunic, the belt, and the hose.
And then I have the list of things that I’d like to get done at some point during the year. It’s longer than last year’s list, but it’s also more than just fiber craft, so I feel it kind of balances out a little bit. If I don’t get these things done, I won’t be mad, but you know, it’s just a direction to keep heading towards.
So I’d like to knit the Deep Woods Toque, which is a hat, by hand. I’d like to knit the Terauley Shawl. The information is here. That shall be knit by hand.
I’d like to machine knit the Halloween striped sweater that I swatched for earlier this year. That will be on my Brother KH836e.
I’d like to do this machine knit tuck pattern sweater that’s been in my brain on my LK150, using either a dk weight or a sport weight yarn. The sweater would be plain stockinette in the sleeves and the back but the front would have a tuck stitch pattern. I think that would be really fun to do. I’m going to use my basic self-drafted pattern for this. I just need to pick a yarn, swatch in stockinette and swatch in the tuck pattern. The stitches per inch and the rows per inch are going to be very different between those two things because of the construction of the tuck stitch.
I’d like to machine knit a pair of leggings. I was intending to draft a pattern for this. Recently someone converted their handknit leggings pattern to a machine knit leggings pattern. My plan is to do that entirely out of scrap yarns because I have a ton of scrap yarns and I’m most likely going to be wearing these leggings as either pajamas or an under layer for winter. So that’ll be on my KH836e. That machine is better for fingering weight clothing items.
I want to finish my Loop Fiber Studios handspun. I have one skein that I reclaimed out of a shawl that I forgot that I even knit. I have most of a loop bump on the wheel now as a single ply. I have another loop bump to spin and then I have to chain ply them. I started swatching for a cowl project and I’d love to get those three yarns cast on for that cowl project later this year. I want to sew my 18th century silk shirt that I need to dye with the madder. I may sew that one on my toy Singer machine. We’ll see how that goes. I want to finalize my drafted-from-an-existing-shirt button-down- shirt pattern, which means I’ll get a shirt out of it.
And then I also want to finish two embroidery kits. I’m pretty sure they both have phases of the moon. One has mushrooms on it. The other one has an owl on it. But I bought them at the end of 2019 and I’ve barely touched one of them, so I’d like to get those both done. And that’s really it for making goals for 2021.
That’s going to do it for this intro. Enjoy the montagey bit in the middle, and I’ll see you at the end for January’s wrap-up.
[Music: Wintersong – Melodic Celtic Fantasy by Alexander Nakarada. “Celtic fantasy music with beautiful melodies and catchy rhythms.”]
Hello. It is the end of January, which means it’s time to go over things crossed off on the board. Side Note: if the sound is a little weird, I’m filming this during a blizzard. We are standing next to a window.
As always, we start in the first column at the top with my ongoing Salazar Slytherin costume project, which looks very exciting right now. There are only four items listed there, but it’s very exciting and I’ve got a lot to talk about. First, we’re going to talk about the second item- the braies. I have finished the braies. Huzzah! You saw them finished if you watched my Salazar Slytherin 2020 wrap up video, which came out previous to this one. It looks like a cartoon drawing of some boxer shorts. A more cinematic, atmospheric making of video will be coming out at some point for the shirt and the braies. I don’t know if it’ll be February or March, but at some point. You’ll know when that goes up if you subscribe or whatever. Watch this space, I guess.
But the rest of the three items are all related to dyeing the warp threads for the green over tunic. Samples 2. So I did complete my second set of dye samples. Here they are.
There’s a lot of different ways to dye yarn. I don’t know if there’s a great way to explain my ratio system that I use because I only ever do very concentrated colors in my dyes. I’m an amateur. I’m learning as I go, but my basic principle is that I start with a concentration ratio of dye powder to dry weight. So if the dry weight of the skein is 100 grams, I start out with a base dye powder amount of 1 gram. The water is just however much water I need to achieve the type of dyeing that I’m doing, which for this kind of dyeing is just however much water will allow the yarn to swim around in the dye pot.
I have the three primary colors and a black dye powder, so in order to get a green I started out with a 50/50 split. So half a gram of yellow, half a gram of blue. And based on my previous dye sampling, I decided I wanted to tone it down a little bit with a smidge of black. 50% yellow, 50% blue with an added 5% black and I did the same thing with another one only using a 10% black. I also did two samples using a 60/40 ratio. 60% yellow, 40% blue with 5% black added and 10% black added.
I figured the best way to find out which of these go best with my weft yarn, which is already commercially dyed, was to do a series of mini weaving samples, which is what this third bullet point says here. These are my mini weaving samples. This is just a piece of cardboard that I cut out of a tissue box with some notches in it. I took a ruler, laid it across each edge of this card, and notched the smallest measurement on my particular ruler, which was 32nds. I just wrapped the yarn around the card, sliding one strand into each notch for each of the colors, and then I took a length of my designated weft yarn, which is a cotton linen blend that I bought at WEBs, I believe. Couldn’t tell you the brand.
So I took a length of that yarn and wove just in and out with the tapestry needle each of my little warp samples. I let that information sink in for a few days, just put this card in different lights and different places to see how the colors change depending on how you’re looking at it and what kinds of lights – if it’s a cool light, a warm light, that kind of thing – and after almost a week, I decided this one is my favorite. It is the closest direct match, since there will inevitably be variations in my skeins as I dye them. I think as close as possible is probably my best bet.
Which meant after about a week, I could start that last bullet point- dye up the warp skeins. And I did. 6 100-ish gram skeins of blue-faced leicester wool in a fingering weight. They’re over there doing their final drying. All of my prep stages for this tunic are basically done. So when my loom is free, I can just start.
Moving down to the dye column, you can see that I’ve crossed off two items. The first item is the madder dye for the silk fabric. This is a silk “noil”? Silk “nwahl”? I don’t know how to pronounce this word. It’s a schlubby silk fabric that has been cut into pieces in order to dye more effectively for an 18th century shirt. And here is the final color. It’s not as red-red as I had anticipated, but I’m not mad about it. It’s definitely more on the red than the pink side, almost orangey red, but it definitely looks like a red-red that has faded over time. This is a sort of a wearable mock-up for a future project and may end up being a part of that project, depending on how ambitious I get with that costuming project, but that’s for the future.
And then at the bottom here is overdyeing warp skeins. I have been looking for warp skeins for these two yarns for two separate scarf weaving projects that I talked about in videos previous. I thought I had ordered the blue for this. Turns out that I didn’t, and due to global pandemic effects, shipping and the availability of materials is not what it was pre-2020. I was going to order some stroll fingering from Knitpicks for this, but the blues that I keep looking at keep going out. That hasn’t gone anywhere. And then trying to match this blackish brown color is very difficult and I don’t think I can confidently find it via screen. I did go to each of these companies to see if they had any more of this same yarn and I didn’t find it, but I have a little destash pile happening, which I keep meaning to post.
So I went looking in there and I found one blue yarn that wasn’t quite dark enough and one supremely ugly yellow gray green yarn. I used it to test different stitches on my knitting machines when I first got them, but I unraveled all of those swatches because I didn’t take careful notes on them. Therefore, they were not very helpful. So I decided to overdye those two skeins.
This blue- it’s the new color. It was a lighter blue. What’s a good comparison? It was more like this blue and I just overdyed it with the blue that I have to kind of deepen it out, which will make a good warp yarn for this weaving project.
And then this ugly yarn that I had, I overdyed black. You can still see a little bit of the ugly color where this tie is a little bit too tight, which doesn’t look so bad when compared to the black, but on its own, it just went with nothing and it looked horrible. But because I overdyed it black, it does have some brown undertone because of the yellow in the original dye. I think it’ll work very well as a warp skein for this particular yarn.
Next we move on over to the To Do column. Haven’t warped the 10 inch loom. I’ve done a little bit of weaving on the 24 inch loom, but I literally only sat down with it for one day during January because I was focused on other things.
Machine knit cowl is done. Here it is. Big fat cowl. There’s really not much to say about it. It’s a big tube sewn into a big tube with a lot of yarn. It’s surprisingly heavy. Other knitters will know that when you make cowls like this, they’re usually not quite so- we’ll say insulated? You do what you have to to make stuff work.
The black vests, you can see, I’ve made a lot of progress on the black vest. I cut the linings, I thread marked, I bought buttons, I assembled, and I lined the first vest. I’m now in the process of finishing the interior seams of the second one. So this is what the first vest looks like right now. This is the one with the canvas interlining in the fronts, fully lined with the bat fabric. Pockets are sewn on. We’ve got some basic thread marking for the buttons and buttonholes. I thread marked this before putting in the lining so that I could try this on, pin it, and make sure that my pockets were relatively straight.
And I did end up just turning under the seam allowance for the lining, pinning it in, and whip stitching it to the fashion fabric. I could not wrap my brain around flipping the thing inside out with the armholes and this linen is a little bit prone to fraying because it’s a thicker- a thicker thread than this cotton. So I was not gonna mess around with it. I just folded in the edges, whip stitched it down. I’m not bringing the other one over here because it’s full of very sharp pins right now. I am in the process of using a seam tape to whip stitch down the raw edges to the lining so that it doesn’t fray while I’m wearing it. And I haven’t started the buttons and buttonholes on the vest that’s ready for it because I like to do those types of things in batches.
I have however finally decided on all of the buttons. This finished structured one will get these plain black buttons. They’re plastic. I had a number of them pinned to this vest see them in different lights and see which ones I liked the most. While I did like some of the brown and wood buttons with this vest, it just didn’t feel quite right and of the black buttons I have, these black plastic ones change the least in the light. Some of them are much too blue for this particular fabric in warm light. Figured just go with the basic black buttons. If I hate it later, I can change them out.
For the other vest, I am going for these little metal buttons. The buckle is called gunmetal gray and this is- it’s not exactly a gunmetal gray but it is like an antique gray. It’s not as shiny as- this one has a shiny buckle. I thought it might look weird to have a shiny buckle and not shiny buttons. I’m going to do five of the black buttons down the front of that vest and I’m going to do six of the silver buttons down the front of that vest because the silver buttons are considerably smaller than the black buttons.
The neighbor is snow blowing while it’s blizzarding. We haven’t hit peak blizzard yet.
I also started a project, I guessyou can call it? I’m making a pillow because I have a ton of fabric that’s tiny little scraps that I am not motivated to make postage stamp quilts out of. I like making quilts, but postage stamp quilts- it’s just too much for me. So these are little pieces of fabric that I don’t want to, you know, chuck into landfill. So I’m just basically shredding it to stuff a pillow. So here’s my pillow. It’s standard pillow size, which apparently is 20 inches by 26 inches, and what I’ve been doing is taking scissors and/or the rotary cutter, depending on how my hands are behaving, and filling up one of these plastic bins with tiny little bits. So we’re talking this kind of size. This is a terrible way to show you this. We’ve got all sorts of fabric scraps, yarn ends, batting, all that kind of stuff. Hang on, I dropped some. Anything that’s too small for me to find another use for. Oh, I also have- here’s a tip for any other fiber artist out there- drum carder waste where it’s just like, bits- little clumps of wool that don’t brush out nicely. I have some of that in here, too. I have done two of those bins and this is what it looks like right now, nice and fat.
I’ve made a pillow like this before. It’s a smaller pillow, but it does compress rather quickly. So if you are going to make a pillow like this, over stuff it because as you use it, you’re gonna squish all the air out. This stuff is a little bit harder to fluff back up than cotton stuffing or poly fill, but I can attest it is very comfortable with that smaller pillow that I sometimes use. But you know you can never have too many pillows. It’s a practical use for all these little scraps.
Oh there’s one more thing on this table that I meant to talk to you about. This is related to the madder dye for the 18th century shirt. Natural dyeing can take a long time. It’s a lot of waiting for stuff. So what I would do for each of the pieces I was dying that day, because I did one chunk a day. And this information will be on my digital dye book, eventually, but I would heat up the madder root, drain it, dye the shirt piece that I wanted, let it sit all day, and then at about 9/ 10 o’clock at night take out that piece or pieces, reheat the dye, and throw in this bit of cotton, this cotton yarn, and this BFL skein of yarn. And I did that with every single dye pot. These guys would absorb as much of whatever dye was left in the stock as was there. As you can see, the BFL took the color like a champ. Cottons never really take color quite as well naturally as wool does, but that’s life.
I think that’s the end of this January video. So if you want to follow along with this thing that I do, consider hitting that subscribe button. Feel free to like this video and share it. Comment if you want. But I guess that’s gonna do it from me. Goodbye
[Music]
Freakish Lemon 