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.