Finishing a homegrown cloak

 Winter has been a bit meh this year.  A bit of a health setback before the Holidays and the only game we get to play on the farm is catch-up.

I've also been working away on several projects and finishing almost none of them.  

But finally, I got one done!  Just in time for (what I hope is) the last snowfall of the year. 

If you like the video, please pop over to youtube and leave a like or even a comment as it helps me out tremendously.  

And here is the full playlist that takes us from sheep to finished cloak!

I enjoyed this project.  It's the first time I've made something from sheep to clothing that feels like a quality garment.  What's more, it's a sheep from my farm!  One that I feed every day and who loves cuddles.  

In a lot of ways I've gained confidence.  I understand better how the yarn behaves in the woven cloth and that I can actually make something from scratch.  I also understand why a more historically accurate cloth would involve a lot more people: a shepherd, weaver, spinner, seamstress, etc. It seems almost that I lose as much as I gain doing each step myself.  

One of the things I worry about is this sets the bar too high.  Both for me and for viewers.  

There's no need to do every step ourselves.  I did it because I was curious if I could and I'm a cheap little chicken who can't always afford to buy the cloth I want to work with.  Even in this project, I combined modern cloth with traditional methods.  Add growing, spinning, and weaving the lining to the mix and I would need another year or three to get it done.  But even then, I don't think it would have been as good for the cloak as the lining I choose.  

It's about learning from history instead of trying to reproduce it.  What can I learn from the past and how can I incorporate it in my life today.  There's no shame in it.  There's no shame if a future project has bought yarn or I go to the shop and buy fabric.  And yet, it's a nagging worry that I now need to progress to better and better things, especially on my youtube journey.  That's not the path I want to take.  I want to make projects that fill me with joy, and sometimes that means buying yarn.  Sometimes it means spinning it.  

Sometimes there won't be any yarn involved at all.  

Most of all, I'm happy with the improvement in my video-making skills.  I'm getting better at what to film and what to leave out.  My voiceover confidence is improving.  I'm still seeking a balance between showing enough for the technically curious and keeping the story moving, but on the whole, I've moved up a notch and am now about 11% of the filmmaker I want to become.