Not Ready for New Year

I have to stick to the list or the input hints won’t get done. It is okay if I don’t reach 100 as long as I progress compared to not having the list. And that can’t happen if I stop to do everything that occurs to me. I just spent forty minutes adding cardboard shims to the couch and actually the arm did stop wobbling but I just about exhausted my ability to stand on the detritus of this project. (trying to run the roomba only once the couch is back together to save duplicating the work. The work of running the roomba is to charge it, clean up anything it would get stuck on (like a cable

Or a sleeve or a fringe and anything horrible it might track around, run it, maybe confine it in a room with furniture blocking the doorway except not this time because the whole house is dirty. Then clean its brushes and empty its bins and plug it in.) I enjoy these tasks but not at the expense of something on my list. 

Ready for New Year #5: remove carpet stain

I don’t want to do this anymore. The carpet was a very cute headboard substitute but now I moved my bed so it’s in a weird place and also what even is this stain. Stain remover (mine is soda ash based) is harsh on wool so that’s a last resort. Also once I wet it I won’t be able to see if the stain is gone. 

Okay I am just going to wet a rag and grab the citric acid so I don’t have to make two trips if the water isn’t enough. (Vinegar would do the job the same way but I find it easier to keep citric acid on hand; our vinegar is always used up) 

Ready for New Year’s #27: Stain Couch

Sanded a little 

Doctored the weird white glue (?) of the original with sharpie to turn it black for a better base for painting. The idea with using a sharpie was something that would (1) stick to the mystery glue, (2) that the polyurethane would stick to, and (3) that I had on hand. That ruled out for example watercolor (1), crayon (2), and specialty products (3). It looked a little scribbled on so I blended it with some denatured alcohol on a paper towel. 

That lustre.

Ready for New Year #24: hair trim

Before

And after 

Ready for New Year’s #3: order fabric

 Well, this is swatches (for the couch from Ready for New Years #1, not the couch Ready for New Years #2), but I have to see the swatches to pick a color. 

Ready for New Year’s #1: couch webbing

Good lord this webbing. 

Ready for 2023

 Got any new year’s plans? 

No. 

It would take a long time to explain that I observe New Years by getting everything clean and nice and for me that looks like a maybe fatal amount of project wrap up. I just sat and wrote out what was bothering me. I decided to keep it to 100 items so I can function. 

Ideally nothing on the list requires anything I didn’t have on hand but inevitably a few do. I am saving the last ten spots for the things that need doing immediately after they are done so I can do them at night on New Year’s Eve. 

New webbing, same as the old webbing

Furniture

Rehabbed stained glass window

Completed 

Stained glass

 Windiw

Nanoleaf plus fiber

Red

Local landmarks for window village

Coliseum

Street find Chair

Yes it got rained on

Kraft paper window village

Lit 

Sound Dampening Tapestry

We share a back stairway with another unit. 

Milk Protein Fiber

From the moment I heard milk can be made into textiles I never completely stopped thinking about it. How does milk, a liquid, become a warm soft garment. Well the process is I think the usual slurry that manmade fibers from natural materials go through. I maybe couldn't breathe when I first saw a video of rayon being spun, but now it's normal to me. You think, oh, how did eucalyptus become yarn? And it's the slurry. And the interesting difference is the part of the milk that is used is the protein, casein. 

I could not for the life of me find a milk protein shirt to buy, or anything like that, although now that I spin my targeted ads and videos and everything have adjusted. I was sounding out a Japanese wholesale website as best I could before hitting the barrier of trying to understand the strand diameter. 

Anyway, now I can find milk protein yarn all day.  For example, here is a commercially produced 100% milk yarn available to individuals: Bellatrista. 

I've been spinning it up night and day. First I spun it by itself as a test. It was gorgeous and lofty. It smelled a little bit like milk. Then I blended up a batt of materials I'd like to make a top from. Spun it. Blended another. Spun it. and so on. In my inexperienced hands it spins up totally differently from silk. Every time I reach a silk portion of the batt the yarn I am drawing thins out to well under 1mm. The milk appears to be gummier or grippier. I rinsed the garment while it was still in progress in order to see if the yarn changed substantially, so I could make any needed changes. I wasn't the most systematic with this but it did grow larger when washed. It also took many days to dry. That was very alarming and I am not sure how it will work for a top. 

My reasons for exploring alternative fibers are endless. Every time I use plastic I like it to be because it was the best and only thing for the job. Generally textiles do not need to be acetate, acrylic, polyester. The things I make should outlast me under archival conditions, but not in the ground. I also love color and in particular natural dyes that I make from really anything. Dyes work best on natural fibers, and natural dyes are typically so delicate in the first place that really only protein, cellulose, and nylon will display the beautiful colors. 

Saxon Blue on Milk Protein yarn

 

Another two dreams come true. The spun bundle is milk fiber, made from milk. It fascinated me as soon as I heard of it. Milk has a protein, casein, that can make things like a plastic. 

I don’t have exact details on the source of my roving but it’s supposed to use waste milk, not food milk, when there is more than can be sold. This came from World of Wool’s online shop. A UK shop with an absolutely charming address, every line cuter than the last:

Unit 8

The Old Railway Goods Yard

Milnsbridge

Huddersfield

West Yorkshire 

Everyone (online) says it’s like silk. At first in the sliver (chunk of fibers) I didn’t think so at all. Silk feels completely different from anything. However, spinning it up it slipped through my fingers so silky and maybe even easier to use. 

And then the second dream is-Saxon Blue. Natural indigo leaves are processed with sulfuric acid so that the indigo just strikes on the fiber with no vat. 

The reason I’m interested is that I am obsessed with color and love the indigo plant but not the color it gives. (On me) (I like it okay in shibori and jeans and everything but it doesn’t make me stop breathing like, oh, onion skins, undyed flax, sandalwood, really dozens of things.) 

So, Saxon blue is a treated version of natural indigo that fortunately has much less red in it and gives a purer cyan type blue. 

I was able to find it at the incomparable Grandma’s Spinning Wheel, an incredibly lucky find while we were in Tucson. The shop is I would say equal to the other best fiber shop I know, Dharma’s Trading, and it focuses on spinning whereas Dharma’s focuses on dyeing. 

I was just so thrilled to have it in my hands and also to be back at the dye studio in which I live that I dyed up a sample in a glass jar just to see, just for reference. 

 There's always something to do. 

Having gifted the 14 color merino wool vest I worked on off and on from March to March and then on to the following October- many small projects clamor to be next. 

shoes: 

-resole new taupe ankle booties

materials: shoe goo or contact cement, natural or gum color rubber sheet 

-outdoor soles for canvas dance booties

materials: shoe goo, vibram furoshiki outsoles

-reinforce leather laces in barefoot sandals

materials: shoe goo, leather thong, sandal sole

-replace tennis shoe cork insole with wool footbed

materials: leather shoe, insole for tracing, blanket weight wool

category: socks

-knit ankle high socks 

next step: put half socks back on size three needles

-repair shrunken geek socks

next step: put socks and remaining Boulder yarn in project bag

category: christmas

anemone hat for mom

next step: put hat brim back on size 7 circular needle

bulkyish hat for Nick

next step: find size 7 dpns

reflective tape for cycling?

stranded hat for Dad

next step: set aside chosen colors in a project basket or bag

category: outerwear

rain jacket

apply nikwax, learn to put in ventilation, maybe reflective tape