season's greetings

sarah and i teamed up for christmas this year and made gift bags for our families. though each was a little different, the basic idea was as follows: a jar of cranberry jam, a jar of pear chutney, a sample of maldon's smoked sea salt (the brown bottle) and a small plum wood cutting board (made from urban salvage lumber and a bit of corn and citrus oil). variations included a bit of honeycomb from the hives on the roof at bluebottle, a bag of coffee, a nice tall beer, and a few other odds and ends. my mama's bag came with a couple knit dishcloths:

she got the two basketweaves on the left. i gave the other two to sarah.

we wrapped them up in scraps of muslin, tied with a bit of rosemary, and a note in sarah's french cursive. a pretty pretty little gift if i do say so myself.

feliz navidad, y'all.

old new things

whoa man, holidays.

but now that that is over, some delinquent projects:

after thanksgiving, when the cranberries were cheap, my special lady friend and i made a whole lot of jam. i think the two batches used, oh, six bags of berries, total. some of it went into christmas gifts, but there is still plenty for delicious cranberry and almond butter sammiches.

there were also plenty of fiber arts this fall. i finally finished my new orange cable scarf and boy is it sweet. i've been wearing it for my bike rides to work and have found it to be the perfect knit size to pull over my mouth and nose- small enough to keep the warm air in but big enough to get good ventilation. (i'm not going to write out the pattern unless anyone is particularly interested in having it, let me know.)

and then there is this chambray work shirt. i used the one shirt pattern i own, but rebuilt the front to open with a three button polo-style placket instead of the full length deal. the pocket and the cuffs have mitered corners and i added rounded shirt-tails as well. the stitching is ecru and is a nice contrast to the light blue fabric. buttons are aluminum, hand-made with (now standard) three holes. as i tend to roll and unroll sleeves a lot, especially on a work shirt, i didn't add buttons to the wrist plackets.

the only issue with this shirt is getting it on and off. the slim cut isn't really suited to a pull over, so if i build this shirt again, i'll add small pleats to the back panel to loosen things up a bit.

i also built a dress this fall. a little grey number from a vintage pattern for sarah, but i don't have any pictures, yet. soon, hopefully.

oh, and the weaving moves slowly forward. with something like 7 yards of warp on the loom and plenty of other projects, it will be a bit longer before there is a finished product. but that finished product will be 4 or 5 stripey scarves. also soon, hopefully.

'lectronics

i bought an arduino almost two years ago, messed around with it a little and then put it in a drawer.

but then i had an awesome idea for a halloween costume that would have all kinds of light up bits and what-have-yous. i spent a lot of time programming and researching and making stupid syntax errors.

and then i got really busy and had to skip halloween. but i was too deep to just shove my work back in a drawer. so i finally got the last few resistors that i needed and finished soldering up a 25 led display with four 74hc595 8-bit shift registers. it looks like this:

the shift registers allow you to independently control more outputs than the arduino board has room for so you can hail each led independently within a program. (if you really want to know more about 8 bit shifters, or if you want to get a great arduino library to help program them, go here.)

unfortunately, i don't really need a halloween costume right now and i have yet to come up with any good uses for this bit. thoughts?

new bowls on etsy today!

a selection of new bowls just went up on etsy today. you should probably go check them out.

a stitch in time

sometimes, when you are waiting at a stoplight on your bike, the weird second pocket of your new work pants gets caught on the horn of your saddle and then the light changes and you rip your pants.

or maybe your old jeans are getting a hole where your cell phone rubs.

both of these examples are great times to use my favorite patching method- adapted from a method taught to me by sarah who learned it from a fellow who learned it from his housekeeper in south america... 

a shawl pin

while in washington several weeks back, allyce's awesome mom described to me what would be required for a very nice shawl pin. after leaving a little sheet of yellow paper with my notes on it next to the lathe for about a month, i finally whipped up this prototype.

the ring is of sycamore, my current favorite wood (for its honest, even grain and its gentlemanly way of not overpowering the colors and textures around it), and the pin is of walnut.

the pin is a bit heavy- just under a quarter inch at the thickest point- but i was still able to get it through my current knitting project, a cabled scarf knit on #8 needles.

i assume it has not been delivered to susan yet, so i don't have a review, but i think it is a solid start.

weaving

quite some time ago, my auntie lucy gave me a loom. she had gotten it from somebody, played with it some and had decided she was over it. then it sat in my room for a while. then it sat in the basement for an even longer while.

the problem was that it was pretty crappy. the reed was rusty, the legs were wobbly, the ratchet had come loose from the beam and a lot of the strings were all chewed up. and who wants to learn a new process when you can't tell if the troubles are your mistakes or the machine's?

but i really did want to give weaving a try. for a while i thought i would build a new loom. but how could i design something for a process i had never tried?

so finally i figured it out. i tuned up the old one well enough to be comfortable learning on it- bought a new reed, made new legs and replaced a lot of strings and rusty hardware- and then i warped it (that means i tied it all up and got it ready to weave).

all i've made so far is this test/practice run out of cotton warp. it is somewhat uneven and has some tension and selvedge issues, but the pattern is consistent and, hey, it's a piece of fabric. that i made. and that is really cool. (unfortunately it is about 6 inches short of being a scarf.)

and now that i have a little experience and have found a lot of little issues with this loom, i think i might build my own. but i think i will do a little more practicing first.

fall sale in the etsy shop: 25% off!

hey yall,

despite what i think of as some nice results on the lathe, i am still pretty new to turning. at this point, i feel like most of my pieces are created purely to hone my skills. and those pieces quickly stack up.  i set up my etsy shop as a way to get my bowls out of my house and into yours and set my prices at a point that pretty much just allows me to keep buying stock to fill that drawer back up.

but the price of a new tool rest and a full drawer of backstock have inspired me to have a fall sale! so visit my etsy shop and use the coupon code "autumn" at check-out for 25% off anything.

this is a somewhat limited time offer, though i'm not really sure what time it is limited to.

oh, and sorry for a lack of pictures. i'm out of the house today!

a lathe update and other things

here we see 7 of the 8 bowls i started last week. unfortunately, a broken tool rest has lead to a pause in production. but i got my brother kevin, a machinist (among many other things), making a new and improved version.

now that my art obligations have eased up, i have started in on a number of new craft projects, with the lathe leading the march. a new stack of sycamore logs collected from behind the benicia state capitol and some interesting new design concepts should keep me busy for a while. look for etsy announcements soon including things like drink muddlers, matched bowl sets and maybe even an end of summer sale...

as for the blog- look out for new posts on my rad new chuck, that tool rest i mentioned above, how to make beeswax bowl finish and even a post on how to fix and operate a loom (once i figure out how to fix and operate a loom).

a productive weekend

for some reason, sarah and i ran through a surprising number of projects this weekend.

there was plum jam- maybe the last jam of this summer. 5 pounds of very soft fruit from the farmers market with a yield of something like 6 pints... though that number now seems miraculously high. where did it all come from?

there were spicy refrigerator pickled carrots with plenty of thyme, mustard and garlic.

and i also got a hold of a big pile of thai peppers and strung them out to dry.

though there are no photos, i promise we made some delicious sauce from 101 cookbooks (i'm starting to think there should be a hell of a lot more paprika in my life) and sarah whipped up some great bran-nana bread.

good work, team.

dilly beans and fall garden

 

made 6 jars of dilly beans yesterday using this recipe and 3 pounds of beans from this farm.  we used this garlic.

also replanted a big part of the garden this morning with seeds from the seed bank. rocky top salad lettuce mix, siamese dragon sir-fry mix, tonda di parigi carrots and hardneck garlic.

it's been a while

poor ole' ghost town of a blog ain't got any attention since july. but these things happen, i suppose.

in an effort to catch up to current projects, i'm just skipping all the august and early september stuff and moving right on to the present. if i did do posts for that lost time, there would be things about making and canning pear butter, mixing beeswax wood finish, a few new turnings, picking blueberries in washington (and being gifted black & blueberry jam), salt preserving lemons, re-learning how to knit- properly this time, and trying- and failing- at natural dying. i figure i will try a lot of these things again, so i'll just tell you about them later.

as for the future: there are hopes for another canning project this weekend, some gardening and a few new knitting projects. and, if we are really lucky, a new loom.

but we'll just have to wait and see. check back soon!

quilting, part 2

i started a quilt for a baby a while back and, just today, i finished it.

after i had sewn the sandwich of fabric and batting, i coaxed sarah into stitching the edge binding for me (using this as a guide), as hand sewing tends to make me angry. to avoid getting super angry about the hand stitching, i decided to finish the quilt with knots.

 

this is the back, with knots laid out on a 5" grid, before i trimmed all the strings. after a run through the wash and a tumble dry, the now extra fluffy quilt is done.

despite not really having a plan, i'm pleased with the results. to me the design reads as a beach sunset, and the nautical colors just work to reinforce that. the next project in this vein will probably be a duvet cover as i will get all the fun of piecing without the binding and quilting parts. and it will hide my gross comforter. (and jessa, if you read this blog, i'm sorry i totally ruined the surprise by posting pictures before you got it.)

tinctoria and banana bread

the blog's been pretty quite of late, stemming from a pretty sweet family vacation followed by preparations for a couple of upcoming art installations (more info later on!) but that's not to say things haven't been happening. it's more that things haven't really been coming to completion.

to build and keep momentum, i've been doing a little more cooking lately. today i made some banana bread from my mama's recipe:

for one loaf:

1/2 cup butter

1 c sugar (brown or white) [preferably brown]

2 large eggs

2 c flour

1/2 t salt

1/2 t baking soda

1 1/2 c mashed bananas

1/2 c chopped nuts

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat well. Combine dry ingredients. Stir into creamed mixture alternately with banana. Fold in nuts.

Pour into greased pan. Let stand at room temperature for 20 minutes.

Bake at 350º for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

some tips: use frozen over ripe bananas. they smell sickly sweet as you mash them but the texture is perfect. if you use glass bakeware, plan on the cook time being a solid hour or more. serve for breakfast toasted with butter.

also, i got this in the mail today :

it looks kinda like a jar of powdered midnight but it is, in fact, indigofera tinctoria. more on that later.

a button card

ah the power of the internet! a recent commission. (you too can tell me to make specific things in exchange for money- drop me a line via an etsy conversation, the comment box, the facebook or either of my email addresses).

putting up

i've been wanting to preserve things for a while now- ever since that fateful day in seattle when we made some spicy carrot quick pickles (the kind that live in the fridge for a few weeks or, um, days, as you eat them all ravenously)- but a new blog discovery (thanks to liz) put me over the edge. here is the recipe sarah and i mostly followed from food in jars.

all we did different was use organic local nectarines instead of peaches and replace the cinnamon and what have you with vanilla and bulliet bourbon.

we yielded almost 6 pints of jam from 3 or so pounds of fruit. sarah took 3 small jars i kept these 5 to put downstairs with the garlic in an attempt to not eat it till at least the early fall and we each ended up with a bit to munch on right now. (don't worry, that black thing in the larger jar is vanilla bean)

hopefully there will be follow up sessions for pickles of some sort, maybe some berry jam and maybe some tomatoes. for now i'm just going to have some freaking awesome toast.

renegade

so i went to renegade craft fair at fort mason center on sunday. there were some cool things but in the end i was pretty underwhelmed. it seemed that there were two major product catagories: 1. puns and jokes in different forms- written on a page from an old book or printed on a shirt, for example, and 2. the exact same antique brass necklaces and pendants- apparently all purchased from a single manufacturer of cheap hipster jewelry.

but maybe my expectations were a bit too high. i guess what i was secretly hoping this craft fair would be was an artisan fair. a place where the usable and useful works of highly skilled individuals would be available for my perusal. i wanted there to be people who owned looms and chisels and dye vats putting my little projects to shame...

i dunno, maybe i'm just thinking of one of those olde tyme faires. in the end, i'll be going back next year with an adjusted perspective and things should work out ok.

the photo above is the one piece i bought. a beautiful tea bowl made by eri sugimoto. (here is her etsy which seems to be empty at the moment.)

the other stunning work was by sara paloma. you really should look at her work. really.

garlic's up

some sizable heads among a lot of pretty little ones, twisted into utilitarian braids. now they are off to dry.

new orleans iced

the new orleans style iced coffee is perfect for these ridiculously hot summer days. blue bottle will sell you one, but you can also find the recipe here.  now go forth and be caffeinated.

first you:

 

then you:

 

(pro tip: scrape off as much of the coffee crust as you can to speed up the decanting)

 then you:

(a second pro tip: make the simple syrup with a bit of the coffee concentrate to keep from watering it down)

NiP suggests: 101 cookbooks

i think i'm pretty late on this one, but 101 cookbooks is great.

the basic set up for each post is simple: a bit of a story about the inspiration for or the start point of a recipe, or maybe just a bit about what is happening in author heidi swanson's life. and then a great, healthful, vegetarian recipe. but what moves the site beyond being just a good blog and brings it to the level of useful cooking reference is all the sort functions- you can find recipes by category, season, ingredient.

and the dishes tend to fall in to the "totally plausible" realm. rarely is there something that requires shopping at specialty stores or (if your pantry is well stocked) even planning ahead. the flavors are simple and lovely and ready for reuse and personal embellishment.

things i have made from 101 cookbooks:

a great, not too sweet raspberry cake with a touch of salt.
basic tapioca. i think i overcooked mine a bit, but it was still good.
a salad with miso dressing. i will surely be making this dressing again.
poached eggs on noodles (instead of the rice called for, i used soba.)

four-in-hand

i don't often have a reason to wear a necktie, but that doesn't mean i don't like them. in fact, i think they can look pretty great. but last time i pulled out one of my few ties for a wedding, i was surprised by how raggedy it was.

so i pulled it apart,

and took some measurements,

and made myself a new tie. it is navy blue mid weight cotton canvas (with red quilting cotton lining the points) and a little embroidered embellishment that i'm not terribly satisfied with. the canvas is the perfect weight, though- soft and flexible but with enough body to lay nicely.

after finishing this one, i decided it was a prototype and went on to make a second, with a cleaner embellishment. if you are looking for a new four-in-hand, you might swing by the ol' etsy shop.

compost

my garden has taken quite a beating this season. first the chickens ate my carrots and chard. then once all the stuff they love was gone, they developed a taste for cauliflower, fennel, and radish greens. and then they decided, what the hell, let's strip the tomato plants bare.

my only successful homestead-y project this season is the compost bin:

sweet dirt, bro

i've been meaning to start a bin for quite a while and, a month or so ago, i finally did. it is fed mostly with kitchen scraps and wood chips from the garage- only from around the lathe, though, where there is less chance of the chips being polluted with plywood adhesives or petro-based wood glue. occasionally, it gets the chicken coop scrapings and i'm thinking i might add cotton sewing scraps (though horror stories of the amount of pesticide and other chemicals used on cotton crops have made me hesitant. maybe just the organics?)

anyway, i'm really amazed at how well it seems to be going: there is no bad odor- just a little earthiness- and the moisture level seems pretty self-regulating. 

the bin itself is just some old redwood fence scraps and 2x4's scavenged from the side yard. the open front makes it easy to stir but it gives the chickens full access. and they like spreading things out. so it may be time for a little movable fence to keep things a bit neater.

in the end, fresh dirt doesn't quite make up for the loss of pretty much every crop i planted. but it helps.

shorts

now that summer is finally upon us and the weather is warm and parties are starting to take place completely out-of-doors, it is a good time to invest in some shorts.

because y'all wanted to see my hairy white legs

i finished these up just in time for a graduation party at a pool and then tried them out for a pic-a-nic at a lake. all and all, they're pretty good. i'm still not convinced that they aren't too short, though having them likened to something james "sean connery" bond would wear makes me feel a little better about that.

more pictures and details below!

bee keeping

my friend sarah, who gets mentioned a lot on this blog, works for blue bottle coffee in oakland (try the new orleans iced if you go) and when a beekeeper came and asked if he could put some hives on the roof she said, "heck yes!" or something along those lines.

that beekeeper, who is also a sailor and carpenter and all around good guy named brian, and his partner terry, of urban bee sf, installed three hives a few months back and added two more yesterday.

after all the gear (including two heavy cardboard boxes that made sounds like pop rocks but were, in fact, full of 20,000 bees a piece) was hoisted to the roof, brian went to work assembling the new hives while terry, brad (a blue bottle employee) and i suited up. unfortunately, i didn't have my camera. but sarah had hers. since brian and terry only had 3 suits and one net hat, sarah braved her camera duties sans protection (and did get the only sting of the day).

here terry explains to brad and i the different features of the comb of one of the hives that was placed a few months ago. lots of drone brood (that's baby boy bees) and not very much pollen or honey suggest that the continuing shitty weather has left the hives a little stressed out and hungry. the drone brood suggests that the hive may be prepping to swarm, sending half the hive off to search for more food and to establish themselves elsewhere.

it was amazing how little the bees seemed to care that we were there. though they brought a smoker along, there was really no need to even pull it out. which is for the best, anyway, as the smoke doesn't really "calm" the bees. it just interrupts their ability to communicate and leaves them all kinda wonky.

after checking up on the old hives, b&t set up the new ones.

the cardboard box'o'bees is called a nucleus or "nuke" and contains 5 or so frames. it seems like the nuke method is a way to buy and move a somewhat established hive. sarah described that when the first three hives came, they were in "package" form. a package is just a box full of bees (no frames) that is opened and dumped into the hive. i guess that's more like buying bees in bulk.

beekeeping is very interesting, very complex and just a little bit freaky. though not a project that i wish to take on myself (what with the keeping things alive and happy and probably getting lots of bee stings), i am very grateful to have the opportunity to participate peripherally.

now let's all pray for better weather.

quilting

i'm making a quilt for the yet-to-be born baby of a person who i am pretty sure doesn't read this blog, so i'm not really that worried about ruining the surprise.

so far i have most of the piecing done, except for a simple border. here's what the back looks like:

i'm really enjoying this process (even to the detriment of some other projects. whoops.) because it is very precise and careful and structured and takes some consideration of angles and seam allowances and whatnot but you don't really have to plan if you don't want to. i guess what i mean is that the final result is dependent on working carefully, not planning carefully.  it's a nice change of pace from woodworking and tailoring and the way i approach art pieces and pretty much all the other things i work on.

my only thought going in to this piece was that i wanted there to be a chevron pattern as a main component. after that was done, i thought some diamond check would make a nice pairing. and then i thought it was looking pretty symmetrical and that it would be fun to see if i could piece a circle. so i did those things. no biggie.

here's a picture of all the circle pieces:

in the end, the circle needed some modification to deal with a pooch-ey center, but that was kind of a fun challenge.

i'm already trying to figure out how i can include more of this kind of work in my artistic sewing projects but i wonder if i will still enjoy this once i get to all the hand sewing...

more pictures as i move along.

buy things! that i made! on etsy!

gentle reader,

might i point you in the direction of my etsy shop? just follow this link to J. Ruszel Goods. there you can buy one of my sweet wooden bowls. and do check back occasionally, as new bowls and, at some point, objects that are not bowls will be posted regularly.


remember, the jack rabbit seal ensures freshness!
lovingly yours,

john

4 is one better than 3

you may remember a while back that i was gluing blocks to bowl blanks so i could mount them on the lathe. well, that's kind of a slow way to turn a bowl. since you cannot flip the bowl along its axis, you are forced to work the outer surface of the bowl up against the headstock, where there isn't a whole lot of room to adjust.

a much faster way, used by, as far as i can tell, most professional woodworkers, is the chuck. with this method, you mount the blank with a faceplate or a big ol' worm screw, cut the exterior surface of the bowl (away from the headstock) and then flip the piece, clamping the foot of the bowl in the chuck, so you can cut the inside. i've been playing with this method lately and find it to be mostly really great. but here is the problem- my chuck is a million years old, only has three jaws and is basically a piece of crap:

where modern chucks have 4 jaws that form a complete circle when clamped tight as well as a carefully formed inner and outer edges that ensure maximum grip, this one has three almost-comically-small-by-today's-standards "jaws."

what this all means for me is that if i work at too high a speed, or on too large a piece, or too aggressively, or with a dull tool, this happens:

note the dents. those are from when it flew across the room, hitting the garage door, the ceiling and another wall before coming to a stop.  i've been hesitant to use the three jaw chuck since then and am currently making room in my budget to make the upgrade.

really not much of a farmer

i've mentioned before that i'm a pretty bad farmer but i really am trying... sorta.

today i pulled a few carrots- less because i thought they were big enough and more because my sister's chickens jumped the short garden fence and stripped the stems of almost every leaf (they also razed the chard). but, as it turns out, the two bigger ones were ridiculously woody and inedible. i'm thinking it was the clayey soil and less than ideal watering conditions. still, the small ones were tasty with really woodsy (like a forest, i guess) notes. once again, my gardening experiences have left me unsatisfied but somehow undeterred. just have to keep trying till i figure it out, i guess.

i just can't help myself

more bowls:

clockwise from the big one at the bottom (6.5" dia.): plum; sycamore; sycamore; mulberry with charred exterior; sycamore. all are finished with beeswax. colors are milkpaint.

i've been having fun with the milkpaint, mixing slight variations and even playing with layering: the big one has a reddish undercoat that is just visible in some spots where i sanded through the blue coat. the charring was fun too: careful use of the blowtorch not only blackens the wood but also brings out some interesting grain texture. the wax coat seems to lock in any residual soot and keeps the black from transferring to fingertips.

i've also seen a vast improvement in my cutting speed and finished surface quality even since my bowlathon post. this is thanks in part to an intense sharpening session where i reset the cutting angle on my two favorite tools (read: ground them down on the wheel for a good long time) and worked them back up to a not-quite-mirror-but-still-pretty-good finish.  the other part is the use of an old three jaw chuck, but i'll get more into that some other time.

glider rocker

my brother and sister in law just had a baby. he's real cute. but this isn't a blog post about babies. even cute ones. 

we were playing a game of "make weird faces." liam sports old man pants.

no, this is a blog post about designing and building a glider rocker. my brother tom commissioned me to build one for his wife lesley and then-fetus liam. and at the start of the project i thought, "eight months? plenty of time." but then things got really busy around the start of the year and next thing you know, there's a baby and your rocker isn't quite finished. i made delivery two days late, though if liam had stuck it out to his due date, i would have been 5 days early. so who's really at fault here?