And upgrading my paint box.
There are some colours I use a lot more like Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre, so they get more pans. I also left a special spot for Potters Pink as I would love to try that one day.
(these blog entries are coming in a bit out of order, but I hope to catch up to the current day in a few months)
-web-ready.jpg "and there's a chicken")
Painting that it's a doll is hard, so I just focused on the idea.
But also, something was missing, so I added some gold ink to his robe and stars
The second thing that must happen is a Wizzard! (comment if you know why it has two Z's)
Here our Wizzard is having a walk in the potato patch. He loves potatoes.
Only, it goes all wrong somehow.
Details on how Nicole made this mighty wizzard here.
this is me just showing off another needle felted chicken by fairy grove creations
And my other favourite thing - coffee!
(make note of how small that coffee plant is in the coffee bag, it comes back later)
To understand the next painting, two things must happen.
First, chickens!
This is needle felted henny penny! You can get your own epic chicken here.
It's amplifies what I love about watercolours - the paints participate in the creation. They flow and granulate adding texture and surprise.
A review from a new painter of HannahLouMyers handmade watercolours and a variation on the review I wrote here.
The magic of using good quality materials is something any craftsperson can relate to. Like carving a beautifully grown apple branch into a spoon or knitting with lovingly handspun yarn. Spaghetti sauce from homegrown tomatoes. The materials add a flavour to the final project that is more than knowing where our ingredients come from, it adds a feeling of life to the final creation.
So when I started learning how to paint this summer, I looked around for handmulled paints that would give this feeling to my paintings. Commercial paints are lovely, but they feel like the pigment is flat on the paper and it takes a lot from the artist to add that extra dimension to the painting. Thus the quest for handmulled paints began.
I suspect if I had spent as many hours painting as I did seeking out the perfect handmade paints, I would be a master painter by now. But I finally settled on HannahLouMyers' handmade paints on etsy and I am over-the-moon happy with these paints. (I just hope I'm worthy of them).
They look like handmade chocolates, but the inside is even better. I bought the set of 6 handmade watercolour half pans in a tin.
Okay, I want to stop here and say that these paints smell amazing. Like all the good memories of winter holidays in one tiny tin.
The ingredients include clove oil for preservation and honey to help the paint flow smoothly. Local honey! This is another reason why I choose this maker as the shop is just the next city over and they source many of their ingredients locally.
I hear you saying "alright already, but how does it paint?"
Before I decided what colours to get, I bought some dot cards. These are small mounds of watercolours on a bit of paper we can use for swatching. HannahLouMyers has generous size dots that I was not only able to see what the colour looks like, but to swatch and do some colour mixing to see which combination gave me the most versatile and useful palette.
I am really glad I got some dot cards first because I had no idea that paints could be so lively. It's not just the colour, but each paint has a personality it adds to the painting. Some of these paints are so textured you can feel it on the page and it makes the most marvellous effect. The thing is, I've only been painting for two months and I worried that my skill wasn't up for those paints... yet. So I chose some of the calmer paints.
The Colour Theory or Primary set has great mixing power so they were an obvious place to start. The more muted yellow and red (forsythia and maple) are very much like my most used colours of yellow ochre and burnt sienna. But different enough that I'm going to have fun learning what these paints can do. As for choosing brine... well, that was an oddball for me. Of all the colours I swatched, that was the one that sang to me most of all. I don't know why or how to use this colour but I just knew it would improve my painting if I tried it.
So, the next step is to swatch out a little cheat sheet for my tin until I can get to know the colours better.
I love this little set and the only big adjustment I've made is to add magnets to the bottom of the pans so they don't rattle around.
And a final comparison between commercially made paints and the hand mulled watercolours.
The commercial paints have the advantage of being consistent and predictable. But when I see them next to the handmade watercolours, the handmade paints look more lively and the commercial ones flat.
I'm very excited to try out these new paints, but I'm also worried that now I have them, I will be too afraid to use them because I'm not yet good enough. I need to find something too paint soon so I can get over the fear. There's no point having beautiful paints and not using them.
additional to the original review:
I love these paints and I especially like that they include pigment information. The pans are overflowing with paint and considering these are cheaper than commercial paints, I am definitely getting my money's worth.
What I didn't mention is how long shipping takes. I've had things arrive the same day from that city, but it usually takes 2 to 3 business days to get here. I'm very lucky if I get my order in under 3 weeks.
The paints are less consistent than commercial versions, but I kind of like that as these paints participate in the art instead of just sitting where I put them.
It didn't go well.
From here on, it's pretty much a mix of mostly Cotman paints being slowly replaced or supplemented with Van Gogh (my favourite student grade), Winsor and Newton, Rembrandt, and Holbein when I can afford or find it. Unless I specify otherwise.
It's tricky because he's a black chicken but the black isn't black, it glows lots of colours.
the idea is the background would be part of the shimmer of the feathers.
you can see him in his full glory helping in the garden
Cotman watercolour but still, I have a lot to learn.
For years, I avoided weaving with linen, and when I finally tried it, yep. It's hard. So hard that I sent my loom to a friend's house to finish off the weaving, and even she had trouble.
I've gotten to know linen a bit since then, and here is basically the video I wish I had watched when I was a new weaver. How to make weaving with linen easy.
Distaffs (or distaves) are used for all sorts of different fibres. It's basically a third hand that holds the fibre while our other hands are busy spinning it into yarn.
Distaff Day is on the 7th of January and is the most important holiday in the spinner's calendar. Well, I say holiday, but it's actually the back-to-work day but we do it with great fun.
This year, I dressed distaves in flax fibre for spinning linen yarn.
Here's a free PDF guide on dressing a distaff with linen fibre.
Last year I did the same with wool
Now, how do I up my game for next year? Anything about distaves you wanted to know?
Chaotically
So this is a list I made for myself. This includes the videos I am actively working on and if they have any deadlines (and yes, dyslexia is a thing - don't even bother correcting, I promise it will do more harm than good).
To get on this list, the video needs to be in the filming, editing, writing, crafting, or gathering materials stage. The list fails to include some of the long-term projects where I'm gathering footage over several years (I started a flax video in 2019 for example), videos still in the planning stages, or videos that got stalled in the editing due to not having the right story to be worth making... yet. There are also a few secret projects that won't make it into this either.
What unexpected yarn has fallen into your life? Do you have a go-to project you love to make with found yarn or do you wait to see what the yarn says it wants to be?
About a year ago, I stumbled on some free yarn, leftovers from the now closed local mill. Talking to people who used to work there, this was part of calibrating the spinning machine, so it contains a lot of different fibres from a variety of farms. Most of them are less than a day's journey away.
So I made a thing. And I made a video about the thing. And the yarn. And deep thoughts about the yarn, fibreshed, and my personal textile history.
Layers!
Hens are great layers. But even better are clothes layered on top of each other. It transforms a seasonal outfit into a multi-season extravaganza!
Winters on the farm are muddy, mucky, bloody, and occasionally snowy. I do a lot of laundry.
Come lambing season, I can do two or three loads of laundry a day.
So I want farm clothes that wash well, like cotton. Only the problem with cotton is that it's not very warm. It actually, what's the opposite of warm? A single layer of cotton is terrible for working outside in the winter because if the cotton gets wet, it chills the human and can cause health issues. So we could be forgiven for thinking that if a single layer does harm, a lot would do more.
Layering the clothes creates air gaps that allow the skin to breathe and provide insulation so I can stay outside longer to get things done. And since I often wear skirts or dresses when working on the farm, I can take my fall and spring cotton skirts and transform them into winter skirts by adding a petticoat or two underneath.
This matches well with my capsule wardrobe goals.
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.
So I did what I do when I want to make something new. I got out a load of books from my library, the old family recipes, and my historical cookbooks. This is the recipe I came up with. It's a lot more flexible than most, but I've made it a few times and it is amazing! Someone asked for it on reddit, but the post ended up being too long so I decided to share it here.
Variations of the pudding go back a few thousand years so the recipes are more of a guide. If you want the full Dickens pudding, go with brandy and suet as they would be staple ingredients this time of year. If you can, get the shredded suet from one of the small butchers rather than the commercial stuff as that has a few extra ingredients in it and often doesn't taste as fresh.
This is close to the Victorian Pudding. The recipe is heavily influenced by the family recipe which comes to us from the late Victorian period, but with more flexibility because dry fruit is expensive. Apricots, raisins, and plums are my favourite mix. Dates go well in it too. But traditionally, people would use what they had to hand.
It's usually made a month in advance, kept at room temp to cure, and boiled for one hour before serving. I've read suggestions that this will keep 13 months at room temp, but I always eat it way before that.
The day before the big boil
- >500g dry fruit
- <100g candy peal (if you can't get it, chop up the peal of an organic orange or blood orange or leave it out)
- <100g candy cherries
- 150-200ml brandy
Mix together, cover with a cloth, and leave 12-48 hours, stirring at least once every 12 hours.
On the day
- 1 cup flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- >100g bread crumbs
- 150g ground or shredded suet
- 1 tsp each spices of your choice (the more the better - chinamon, cloves, ginger, etc... adjust to your taste)
- pinch salt
- <150g brown sugar
- 1 apple or quince cored, peeled and grated
- 3-5 eggs
- zest and juice of an orange (optional - organic if possible)
Mix dry together. Mix wet into dry. Add soaked fruit. Hold back the liquor and add as needed for texture. It should be a very thick batter.
Now, this is very important if you are going for the Victorian traditions - everyone in the household has to have a good old stir. Wishing is traditional.
Wrap in pudding cloth (tightly woven cotton that has been recently boiled and rubbed with oil and flour on the inside) or into a pudding mould. I don't put trinkets in my pudding as I don't want anyone to break a tooth, but now's the time to do it. Be sure to boil the trinkets well to clean them first.
Now to steam or boil the pudding. Either is fine for this one, but if you are steaming maybe add another hour or two. If you want to go full traditional, we'll boil it in a cloth.
Lightly boil a large square (about 2' per side) of tightly woven cotton or linen. While wet and hot, place it wrong-side-up on a clean counter and rub some oil into the cloth (concentrate on the centre) then sprinkle some flour on top of the oiled cloth. Turn the batter onto the cloth and tie it up with some string. Place gently into a large pot of boiling water and boil for 6-8 hours (you can't over boil) being sure to check the water frequently if it needs topping up.
Alternatively, if you have a pressure cooker, it takes about an hour and a half at high pressure, slow release.
When cooked, remove from the water and allow to cool. Hang in a dark place until the feast day. Then boil for one hour before serving.
Do you have a favourite holiday dessert recipe you love? Want to share?
It's been difficult to work on my Albion Coat when the weather has been so warm. But the rains are trying to break through and it's now cool enough in the mornings to light the woodstove until the sun is high enough to heat the house.
So I'm spending that half an hour of coolness between the time I light the fire and my coffee is finished brewing and ... what's a good way to say "getting drunk" without it sounding like my coffee is boozing it up at 6am? Anyway, I'm spending that time working on my Duffle Coat.
The worst part so far was cutting up the paper for the PDF pattern. There is so much wasted paper in this pattern (and yes, I checked the measurement to make sure it was printing the right size). It's especially noticeable after working on that free PDF pattern for my cloak where I didn't have to cut up any pieces of paper. Here, I'll show the difference.
Wow, I may have just jumped the shark here, but I did it. I made a cloak, entirely by hand, using traditional methods, from sheep to finished clothing!
For those of you new to the adventure, you can catch the full playlist here.
Basically, I gave in to peer pressure and put my life on hold to make this cloak. It turned out amazing, but I still have a lot of work to do to finish it up. Something to keep me busy this winter.
I want to talk about the pattern because the video was long and I edited that bit out. Also I don't really feel qualified to assess a sewing pattern as a complete N00b!
I get obsessed when learning a new craft. I take great pleasure in learning everything and to find out what the limits of the craft are, what my limits doing that craft are, and what happens when I push past those limits.
Last month, I experimented with pushing past those limits - twice.
First, I finally took the dive into making a fully (ish) homegrown garment from sheep to wearable clothing. To keep me focused, I gave myself a timeframe - one month - to get it done.
I choose the wrong month because September is pretty much the busiest time on the farm and the only month of the year the weather is friendly, so I'm regretting this.
But the yarn community is lovely and supportive. Sure there are opinions, but so long as we remember when someone says "the best way" or "the right way" what they really mean is "this worked well for me", it's much easier to deal with absolutes.
The second limit was to see if I could make videos about this adventure on a time budget. (time budget? deadline).
I did better than I expected.
And worse.
The thing I'm learning about making videos is that it is a craft - like knitting, spinning, weaving...
I talked about how the craft of weaving has its own personality (ISTP on the Myers-Briggs scale). I suspect we could do that for any craft. Video editing and youtube creation is no exception. Actually, I think it might be entirely off the scale.
But first, proof that I did finish the cloak in time - even if I'm still struggling to finish the video.
Edititus Troglodytus: a subspecies of the Homo sapiens who dwells in dark grey caverns and worships glowing screens while moving around little boxes that look thus
The Cloak is done ... well...
Woot! I made cloth!
I'm a fairly good weaver but I do have my comfort zone and this wasn't in it.
Actually, there is a pretty good reason. I wanted to understand how circle cloaks work so I made some tiny mockups. And since the only thing I have that resembles a doll are these chickens...
So what did I learn?
Well, it has begun.
I'm actually doing this. I'm going to attempt to make a cloak, from raw wool, in one month. That's spinning, weaving, and sewing.
And on top of that, I'm making videos about each step - which more than doubles the time everything takes.
This might not be the smartest decision I ever made, but it's going to be a fun adventure.
So, without more preamble (because my spellcheck won't let me put 'preramble' as in the rambling on of words before the thing), I bring you SPINNING!
“The theory was that while in a Fallow state you were gathering and conserving strength, nourishing yourself through meditation, sending invisible rootlets out into the universe.”
― Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam
The duffle coat project advances. A decision has been made and after much humming and hawing, I decided to go with the Albion Coat sewing pattern. I chose this pattern because they gave away some great resources for free and it gave me confidence that I would be able to make a beautiful coat with their instructions.
Because I can never be easy on myself, I am going to sew a version of the longer coat, but unlined in keeping with the duffle coat of my past.
I've got a few other changes up my sleeve, but that's going to have to wait because this:
They say lavender is a calming herb, and I will concede it smells nice.
What I find even more healing is hanging out in the garden doing small, repetitive tasks.
Let's combine the two.
The lore around these magic wands is that the smell of the lavender hides the smell of wool clothing when we put them in storage for the summer. I think that's a lovely idea. Even if it doesn't work, stashing a few of these with my handknits and handwovens until next winter makes me happy.
And if I'm going to start having more clothes, I will either need to get more room to stash them, or put the off-season clothes into storage. The latter seems like less bother.
This arrived in my PO box this week.
The most frustrating thing about recovering is trying to find momentum. But I'm working on it, building a bit more each day. Finally got into a routine with making coffee and having an hour of craft time while listening to an audiobook or lo-fi girl each morning.
Mostly I'm working on my sewing, trying to make a block pattern. This is a map of my body that I can use to make my own sewing patterns. I need this because my body is now a massively different shape and it could open a huge world of possibilities to me - and save loads of money in that I don't need to buy new patterns each time I want to make something new.
It began as a compost pile and a birthday present.
When I asked what he wanted for his Birthday, he said something like, you know that yarn you have stashed away as a treasure? You know how you promised me a rug? That's what I want.
The yarn has a story. It's spun at the (former) local fibre mill from a mixture of fibre from the farm. Some of the animals like the rich deep black alpaca, are no longer with us. This is sad, but also happy because the rug helps us remember the good times we had.
But it's not just any old fibre, this fibre was destined for the compost heap, to get smothered with squash plants as it slowly transforms into soil. The fibre was too fragile, too dirty, too... whatever to spin into a sensible yarn. But the mill had this machine that could use inferior fibre to twist around a core and make it soft and strong and valuable.
The results are gorgeous!
Life is messy and stuff. Today is the first day I've turned my computer on after coming out of the hospital and very soon, I'll be heading back to bed for my second nap of the morning. Like I said, life is messy.
But it has given me lots of thinking and I want to leave my future self a note. Because THIS is an awesome opportunity to deliberately choose my new wardrobe. My shape has changed and I will need to buy or make new clothing, so why not see if I can find clothes I like.
What do I like? What is my style?
I have no idea.
How do I find out?
It used to be that once a year I would take an internet vacation. A month without internet, usually in February (because it's a short month). I would try to get my work holiday to match and I would worry away at projects that need finishing or something I want to get started and done.
The last time I did that, I wrote a book.
It's been a few years since I took my internet vacation and it's a bit like cookies on the browser, too much internet and I start to slow down and life clogs up. It's hard to get away and spend time doing real-world things.
This year I can't do a proper internet detox, so I'm doing a longer one. Max 1 hour per day on the internet (but more time for video editing). Trying very hard to get the farm ready for spring, grow extra food in the garden, and film more projects for youtube.
Sheep are very helpful... or enthusiastic.
It means the same thing when you are a sheep.
But this internet vacation means I haven't had much time for blogging lately. It also makes me realize how much I enjoy blogging again. So I'll be back.
Just as soon as I can get a few more things done around the farm.
Laying the flax out to dew ret - for more on that, here's a video:
-web-ready.jpg)
