A Bluestocking Knits

Finally ...

I've left the last few letters of my ABChallenge rather long, I'm afraid, my excuses being that Nancy has been AWOL (bloggers are quiet / sometimes when life gets busy, / but they are still missed) and that X, Y, and Z are a lot harder to do than most of the previous ones!

In fact, I was a bit stumped by "Y," wanting something a bit more unusual than, say, "yellow" or "yawn," so I perused the "List of Unusual Words that Start with Y" at The Phrontistery, as one does, and while there are in fact quite a lot of unusual and interesting words that start with Y, most of them are unphotographable, at least by me -- yair, a tidal enclosure for catching fish (impractical), yang-chin, a Chinese hammered dulcimer (haven't got one, alas), yare, "marked by quickness and agility, nimble" (not impossible, perhaps, but not exactly on hand, either) -- but then ...

"Yarborough, n., a hand in bridge or whist containing no ace and no card higher than a nine, named for Charles Anderson[-Pelham], second Earl of Yarborough, English nobleman said to have bet a thousand to one against the dealing of such a hand".  Who knew?!  I suppose I could have done yew or even yoga, but yarborough, well, even though I don't play whist or contract bridge, I can't pass that up.

These cuties bloomed the day before yesterday, just in time! --

Chippendale Desk in 1:12

I haven't done anything with my carpet shop for nearly a month, after clearing off my "work space" -- which is the dining-room table -- for Julia's apparently-annual birthday tea.  (Not that I'm complaining about that, mind you.  I had the tea part all organized with a prep schedule, everything made ahead except the scones, so didn't feel at all overwhelmed and in fact quite enjoyed it, and the guests did too.  The only part that wasn't organized, to my annoyance at myself, was tidying up beforehand.)  Anyway, I've pulled out much of the shop from its various storage/hiding places, and realize that I'm quite far along towards completing it.

This is the House of Miniatures Chippendale Desk ("ca.1750-1790"), kit no.40017, which despite the "$5" written on the box was on the giveaway table at one of my miniatures group's meetings some time ago.  I knew that I wanted a desk for the carpet shop, so I was delighted to see it there.

But this little piece proved to be puzzle upon puzzle upon puzzle, in both its background and the putting-together.

Wait a minute, two bags of hinges?  After some pondering, and an unrelated inspection of the parts list, I realized that the second bag in fact does not belong here, as the screws on the parts list illustration are clearly round-headed, where these are flat. It is possible that a previous owner decided that the round-headed screws were too bulky-looking and hoped to substitute a spare set with flat-headed screws -- quite likely, in fact, as I thought the same thing when trying to decide which to use! -- or they just migrated inadvertently into another box -- also quite likely, as I have seen the workrooms of dedicated miniaturists, tidy but very full.

Wait a minute -- again -- in the photo on the box the slant front is attached coving-side out, and on the little "historical fact" note, the slant front is attached coving-side in.  The writing surface in both of these illustrations also clearly has no galumphing hinges on it either.  But the instructions tell you to start off by carving out (yourself) tiny notches for the hinges....

By the time I got this far, I had seen Maria Nikolajeva's post on the desk, and then I found a post about one that Brae had done, and after reading the post a couple of times thought "wait a minute -- hers has pins instead of hinges!"  The page for this kit at the (unofficial) House of Miniatures webpage says that there were two versions of the slant-front desk, one 1976-1979ish without pigeon-holes inside and a few years later one from 1979 on with them, but it seems that there were two versions of the earlier one as well, one with hinges and one with pins.  It looks like the pinned version of the earlier desk has no coving on the slant-front, either.

Well, this research was all very curious and interesting, but much of it was, really, my putting off doing the hinges, about which I had no choice because there they were.  So I just dove in.

There was not any end-grain sealer to be had at the local hardware store, and I didn't want to keep running around to different stores (as I had just done looking for stencils ...), so on the advice of a number of woodworking sites, I made my own, out of 9 parts water to 1 part white glue, in an old jam jar.

(Which provided me with a bonus "V" for the ABChallenge --

"adj. 1. another term for vermicular [like a worm in form or movement; vermiform]."  Which leads me, word geek that I am, to wonder, in both admiration and mystification, why on earth we need three words in the same language for "like a worm in form or movement"?!)

I cut the hinge slots myself, with David's direction, after practicing on a piece of scrap wood.  The person who had the kit before me had penciled in two of the four placement marks and stopped there, 20+ years ago -- fair enough, it was a pain.

To give you an idea of scale, those are David's fingers (casting a shadow) at upper left!  He is making the pilot holes here -- you attach the hinges before anything else, then take them off again and put the desk together and finish it, then reattach the hinges in the established locations.

He carefully filed off the tips of the screws, so that they would be short enough not to poke through the desk front.

After that, it was a walk in the park, really.  I did everything myself except trim the screws and make the pilot holes -- I did the holes in these drawer fronts with a pin vise! -- so I'm rather pleased with myself.

The piece is stained with one coat of General Finishes Black Cherry, and finished with two coats of Ceramcoat gloss varnish.  I added in some aging along the way, smearing a bit of glue that was on my finger onto the top of the desk as a sort of water stain, and lightly sanding off some of the stain along the top edges of the drawers where there would be more wear over time.  I also used the metal ferrule from an old pencil to stamp some glue on the desk top, just beyond the right-hand hinge, hoping that it would look like some careless person had left a coffee mug on it, but unfortunately (!) maybe it wasn't enough glue, as the stain seeped underneath, nearly disguising it entirely.  (Ironic, of course, that when you want to leave a cup ring on a piece of furniture, it doesn't work!)

So now that the rather nerve-wracking bit of doing the hinges is long over, I'm very pleased with this, and happy to see that the chair I wanted looks just as good as I had hoped, an antique desk with a modern office-type chair!  Later, I will make some IKEA-era cubbies/organizers for the paperwork that I'm sure will have accumulated in an old carpet shop ....

W is for Whimsy

Someone gave me a set of "Pride and Prejudice" page flags which I found irresistibly like paper dolls, so here is a bit of Whimsy for my ABChallenge W!

The background image is an illustration of a ball at the Argyle Rooms in London, from "The English Spy" serial (1825).

V

Tiny, but oh-so-charming enameled shank buttons.  The last pair in the shop, no chance of getting more.  But they do make me very happy.  I'm thinking a pair of mitts -- black, with a little faux strap at the wrist ...

Happy New Year!

I am actually knitting, though you wouldn't much know it from recent posts, to be sure.  The Gladys socks are done and waiting to be photographed, as many things have interrupted, including -- hurray! -- a spate of rainy weather, much welcome in the parched Southland, though just not very good for photographing indoors.  I've also started a "hug-me-tight" of sorts, from a 1917 Priscilla book, hoping to race through its simplicity in time to take advantage of it in this sudden chill.  (Quick! garter stitch!!)

(This first ball of Matchmaker had FOUR splices and a knot!!)

Well, it is the time of year, of course, for looking back and then ahead.  I didn't accomplish many of my sewing ambitions at all, I'm afraid, finishing only two of the nine projects I named.  Sigh.  Sometimes I look back, say twenty-five or thirty years, and wonder how on earth I managed to read so much, and write so many letters -- long ones, too, fifteen or twenty sheets of airmail paper sometimes! -- but then I remember that of course that was both pre-children and pre-internet (which came in that order for me), and both can be massive time-devourers.  I still do want to sew all of those projects I chose, and have fabric ready for the apron for sure, so that may be on the schedule fairly soon.  Laura has in fact made some tentative I-want-to-learn-to-sew noises lately, which might help get my sewing inspiration warmed up again.

(And wouldn't you know it, as I write, Julia comes creeping in -- it is 5:45 in the morning on the first day of school after the holidays -- and says, "Um, it's raining and I have to take my clarinet to school, could you drive me, please?"  I have added the "please" myself, but as it happens even without it this was very polite for Julia.  Well, I can't really be annoyed at the interruption, as I am frequently saying, "Careful! don't let your clarinet get wet!" as she now has a very nice wooden one for concerts and fine days!)

Talking of fine days, we stayed at David's parents' house in Pasadena on New Year's Eve, to get Julia up for her three a.m. call before the Rose Parade.  It was alarmingly windy in the night, but dawned, as it so often does for the Parade, cold and sunny.  We didn't get grandstand seats this year, but watched the first half or so on television, then walked over to the park at the end of the route, where the floats and equestrian units broke off in one direction, and the bands went in another to have something to eat -- it was past ten by that time, a long stretch for teenagers to go without food, let alone after a 5 1/2-mile march! -- and then to get back on the buses which would take them back to the starting point.  So we had to stand to see the end of the parade, and not quite optimally, but this photo shows how close we were to the bands!  They sounded great, too -- at the Parade and a few days earlier at Disneyland -- we were very proud parents!

I still have a few letters to go on the ABChallenge, and it's getting a bit harder now as the last letters are not so ubiquitous -- oh, there's another "u" word!  I found this rock on the trail (urban, another "u" word) where I walk, and took it home because it is so pleasingly different.  No idea what it is -- the lighter parts look granitey, but then there are those curious strata, quite different from our common salt-and-pepper native granite.  Folded granite or migmatite, maybe?  (Whew, that Wikipedia article is like the Peanuts "wa-wah-wah wah wah wa-wah" to me!  I still really like my rock, though.)

That challenge reminds me that I actually still have a couple of project left to do on my "Knitting the Knitter's Almanac" project, since I, er, paused after the Nether Garments Event.  I didn't mean to give up, and so still consider that I haven't, although twelve years is a fairly long time for just a pause!  I still have October's Open-Collared Pullover, November's famous Moccasin Socks, and December's Hurry-Up Last-Minute Sweater to go.

And a pair of plain socks on the needles for something portable -- plainish.  This is Loops & Threads Perfect Pair sock yarn in the puzzlingly-named color "Drive All Night," which is actually very charming and springlike.

ABChallenge: T

I haven't forgotten about the ABChallenge -- that is, I did forget for a while, then somehow got stumped for literally weeks on T.  (Tea, far too obvious.  But I'll have another cup, thank you.)  Then I was reading the latest post over at Mr. Micawber's Recipe for Happiness, as one does, and enjoying vicariously, and somewhat wistfully, Mrs. M's countryside autumn, and I decided then and there to walk to Michael's for that skein of embroidery floss I need -- it seems a horribly long walk when you drive it, but it's only about half an hour there on foot, stop whining -- and that I would take my camera and photograph our Southern California signs of autumn.  (This with a somewhat hollow laugh to myself, as it's difficult to photograph "brown-er," let alone a very slight nip in the air.)  Well, things being what they were, I realized after not very long that what I was taking photos of instead was textures.

As it happened, I wasn't much looking forward to the walk itself, but I quite enjoyed the challenge.  The above "texture" is, sadly but nobly, the remains of our front lawn, which we have not watered since the early summer of 2017 when water restrictions began to arrive.  We are now waiting for the rest of the Bermuda grass to give up, and are making plans for planting a California-natives cottage garden.  (To give some idea of the ex-lawn's lassitude, you can still see even a year later (!) the remains of our late and much-lamented camphor trees, wood chips and twiggy bits and a number of dried berries, which trees the city decided must be removed after having first trimmed the roots on the street side -- to fix the street -- and the sidewalk side -- to replace the broken sidewalk.  Their explanation was quite logical -- the trees would have less than half of their roots left -- but it was with great difficulty that I restrained myself from flinging my arms around those two beauties when the chipper arrived.  The crew were quite kind, though, and let me save large pieces of trunk, which are now curing on blocks in our garage.  And a few months later, we did find two new saplings in their places.)

Blue chalk sticks (Senecio mandraliscae), in front of the public library, whose landscaping went drought-tolerant about two years ago.

Ah, here's a little sign of autumn!  Golden leaves from some tree I don't know the name of, but I love the way the leaves have collected in the center of the young palm (Sabal mauritiiformis?) underneath it.

The wall of the railroad underpass.

A California live-oak trunk, wonderfully knotty and scarred.  (It is called "live-oak" because it is not deciduous like most oaks.)

The only indoor photo, at my destination.  The floss is stored in poky little cubbies, but the perle cotton is hanging on hooks and there is always a lovely variety of colors and that wonderful sheen I find irresistible.

A street tree, possibly some kind of eucalyptus, with fabulously shaggy bark twisting around its trunk.

Ah! another sign of autumn, hesitant as it is -- this is a new liquidambar in someone's front yard, only about six feet high so far, but curiously with leaves evenly distributed all of the way up and down its trunk, and today with a hint of brownish-red just beginning near the bottom.

There is a very small historic building, one of the first in town, that has been relocated to a small park in the civic center. 1887.

This is the grass du jour, it seems, but maybe that's because it has become invasive here -- I think it's Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenuissima, aka Nassella tenuissima.).  A pity, as in swathes it reminds me rather deliciously of a golden retriever.

I love the Georgia-O'Keeffe-ness of this agave.

Fountain in front of City Hall.

 This is a Southern California autumn!

And finally, back on my own front porch, a Kalanchoe tomentosa (chocolate soldier!) in a pot.

"R"

Q for Quilt

For my first 1:12 scale quilt, I decided on an Amish-style one instead of the jewel-box, as the pieces are bigger (!) and thus I felt on more solid ground.  I'm drawn to Amish quilts anyway, the richness of colors and the simplicity -- they have a kind of peacefulness to them.  There are a lot of patterns I like but I chose Diamond in a Square, for its relative simplicity yet with the subtle liveliness of the diamond's angles.  Interestingly, the Diamond in a Square pattern (sometimes called Center Diamond) originated in the 1930s, among the Lancaster County Amish.  It seems so timeless that I assumed it had been around forever.  There are some variations that can be made -- the corner squares on the narrow borders can be omitted, one or both, or the narrow border around the center diamond -- but of course the basic elements are the same.

I found an image on Pinterest which I then couldn't track down --

which seemed to me quite unusual with the tan/beige, but was very appealing, so I started with that and just played around with different colors in Kona Cotton, which I really like for its quality and the richness and wide variety of its colors.  I ended up getting these --

which are from the bottom, Parchment, Laurel, Hibiscus, Teal Blue, and Garnet.

For the assembly I was going to just wing it (she said blithely), but when I was looking around for old quilts for color ideas, I also came across the Diamond in a Square mini-quilt tutorial at Purl Soho, which turned out to be a very helpful starting point.  Not having much quilting experience myself, it was a bit of a revelation that I didn't need to cut all of the pieces beforehand, which turned out to make it much easier and less stressful to adjust the next piece here or there if it needed it.

I decided to press all of the seams open, figuring that that would distribute the thickness more evenly, which I suspect at this small scale might be obvious.  I didn't use any batting at all, thinking it might make the quilt too stiff to drape properly -- I've heard that some miniaturists use fabric cut from an old T-shirt, though, so I'll keep that in mind.  The binding is just folded over from the back and stitched down by hand on the front, mitering the corners.

Yes, the last corner is really wobbly!  I didn't notice until after I'd finished -- so that's the end that gets tucked in!

I was really grateful for both the quality of the Kona Cotton, which took a bit of a beating getting sewn and resewn more than a couple of times on some of the pieces but still looks great, and also for the Purl Soho tutorial and the advice I read somewhere (last summer when I was making the sling bag) that people will never know how long it took you to sew something but they will see how much care you took sewing it, which on occasion must be translated as "yes, pick out the wonky seams, you will be glad you did," which is entirely correct, for just look at the results --

Any quilter reading this will no doubt notice that I haven't actually quilted this yet, and I think I will leave that for the time being.  Obviously it won't get much wear-and-tear in the dollhouse, so there shouldn't be a problem with things shifting around, or the seam allowances bunching up.  My hand-stitching is still a bit rough, so I think it prudent to wait until I've had a bit more experience in keeping the stitches both small and even!

Well, after this success, of course I had to hurry up and make the rest of the bedlinens, so I stitched up a set of sheets ...

... four pillows, and cases.  The pillows themselves are sewn from plain bleached muslin stuffed with one fluffed-up cotton ball each, and the sheets and cases are from a partly-worn-out sheet, the rest of which has that lovely old-sheet softness.  The fabric proved to be awfully ravelly, but the cases do look good.

Next time I will try and get the scale a bit better -- this house isn't particularly "realistic" as dollhouses go, but I'd like to have things not too "dolly" here -- but really I'm quite pleased with the quilt, and very happy with the colors and the way they play together.  Plus "quilt" starts with Q, so there's my ABChallenge!

O and P, and a Birthday Tea

I have been stuck on "O" for the ABChallenge for an inordinate amount of time -- I could only think of subjective things, it seemed, like "optimism" and "ornerieness" -- but as David was leaving for work he said, "Look at the huge flowers!" and I smacked my forehead (mentally, of course).  These are Mexican evening primrose, Oenothera speciosa.  Many gardeners think of this as a weed, but I love the blooms' delicate pinkness and the plant's cheerful lack of temperament.  I got these from my mom about six weeks ago -- she begged me to take all of them.  I suppose it is that in more-cultivated gardens it tends to insinuate itself everywhere, but here in my inhospitable driveway bed, I think it will be less rampant.

I got "two for one" this morning, as I had planted the oenothera in an empty spot next to this penstemon, which is the California native "Margarita BOP".  Yes, BOP in full caps, as it is short for "Back of the Porch" since it was discovered in that location at someone's house by the folks at Las Pilitas Nursery in central California!  My plant was pretty last summer, its first in my garden, but this year it is covered with buds and flowers, fairly exploding just this week.  The plant itself is rather small, but as you can see, well worth it for the mass of bluish-purple flowers.

As for the "tea" part of this post, Julia turned sixteen a few weeks ago -- a big milestone for all of us. I asked her if she wanted a party -- she hasn't for quite some time -- and she said promptly, "Afternoon tea!"  I think she had sort of written off afternoon tea as one of Mom's Anglophile quirks -- until I took the family to Brown's Hotel in Mayfair one memorable day last summer, and she got to experience first-hand what a real, if exceptionally luxurious, afternoon tea can be.

I was quite willing to cater an afternoon tea, less formal than Brown's of course, with my higgledy-piggledy blue-and-white china, but heartfelt nevertheless -- cozily lavish, if you will!  There were egg-and-cress and cucumber sandwiches and chicken salad in puff-pastry shells, then my trusty Ritz Book of Afternoon Tea scones recipe with strawberry jam and Devonshire clotted cream (the sine qua non for Julia), and a selection of cakes, including rosewater shortbread (a variation of one from River Cottage) and a modified version of Nigel Slater's seed cake recipe (with a bit more caraway seeds, despite his caveat, and some cinnamon and clove, and a rather amazing crust of demerara sugar inspired by Oakden's version -- I do like seed cake).

I was inordinately pleased with the flowers, which for once in my gardening life are all home-grown.  There are three newly-opened "Gertrude Jekyll" roses (with a truly wonderful scent), some gangly stems of yellow bladderpod (Peritoma arborea), sprigs of purple de la Mina lilac verbena (Verbena lilacina "De la Mina") and "Margarita BOP" penstemon, a single big bunch of feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium), some long white fortnight lilies (Dietes iridioides), and sprigs of dark salmon-pink coral bells (Heuchera something-or-other).

Chocolate and raspberry cupcakes, with raspberry and white chocolate cream icing -- inspired by ones from Martha Stewart but adapted from a recipe at Serious Eats.  (Instead of having a jam center, I just put the -- seeded -- jam in the batter; I also used 1/3 cup of cocoa as it was a bit dry with 1/2 cup, and doubled the amount of white chocolate and jam in the icing for more flavor.  Quite a hit.)  You will have to take my word for it that I am not a fussy baker nor especially handy with a piping bag, because I thought these turned out amazingly pretty.

Fresh blueberries and lemon curd in ready-made tart shells, improvised.  Also a success, and easy-peasy!

And we are still basking in the glow of a very enjoyable afternoon!

"Make Nine," and J-N

I'm kind of torn about internet challenges, which for me are a lot like New Year's resolutions -- wonderful and admirable in theory, but often simply just more than one can manage in the allotted time.  Possibly I am either too ambitious, or too easily distracted (ooh, a new "44 Scotland Street" novel ...), and frankly, I suspect the latter. Be that as it may, I do have a list of things I want to sew this year, and when I came across the 2018 Make Nine project the other day -- I shan't call it a challenge, then -- I thought, "well, I like the 'gentle' part!" and so I hope that seeing my to-do list in this rather fetching nine-patch will keep me focused.

At the top, from left, is Purl Soho's Quilted Vest, because I'm finding those really comfortable in our not-quite-winter, since they are warm but not a coat, and this particular one because I love that collar!; the Circle Tech Pouch, a free pattern from Coats, which will be stocking-stuffers come Christmas; and the Hawthorn dress from Colette, because I've been wanting a really good shirt-dress pattern and hope this is it!

In the middle, Very Shannon's Reversible Sock Knitting Bag, because we all need a pretty bag to carry our current sock knitting in, right?!; and Simplicity 8050, a retro reprint from a year or so ago, because the 1940s patterns seem to suit my figure pretty well (I can't decide which I like better, though, Miss Bias Tape, though probably in a less air-raid-siren color than that, or Miss Many Buttons); and a jewel-box quilt in 1:12 scale.  This particular one is from someone on the Petitpointers list, whose pictures are also on Flickr -- I really like the jewel tones against the white -- though I might practice on something a little simpler.

And at bottom, the Ladies' Edwardian Apron from Sense & Sensibility, because I've had a hankering for this pattern for quite a long time, and other things keep jumping the queue; a new pair of Walking Shorts from So Sew Easy, because my favorite pair has now been mended with a darned hole where I must have splashed some bleach on it at some point in the distant past, and narrow bias tape around the fraying hems, and my other pair, despite being marked as my size is at least four inches too big around the waist, which impresses people who notice it into thinking that I've lost a lot of weight, but really is only annoying because I keep having to hike them up, and the pockets are far too small.  Now that I walk pretty much every weekday, having more than one pair of shorts is pretty important.  I found this free pattern online, and think it will suit my needs -- i.e., comfort and pockets. And lastly, another Very Shannon freebie, the Reversible Box Tote -- because we all need more project bags, right?!

I think it goes without saying that there will be knitting chez Bluestocking this year -- I just don't have any firm plans yet!

I've had a number of ideas for the ABChallenge, and even some photos, but (ironically) was stuck on J.  Then we went to some friends' house for a "soup exchange" and game night, which was a lot of fun.  We brought Bowl of the Wife of Kit Carson for the soup, and for the game a 1970s-era Mille Bornes.  Both are excellent in their respective ways, and it was a cold, rather damp evening, also eminently suitable for both soup and board games, as well as good company.  I had never heard of this game until we played it one night at David's parents' house some years ago, and found that not only is it an amusing family game but it has these wonderful 1950s graphics, very chic, so we have glommed on to the game and played it a number of times since, and David chose it to take with us this time.  When I remembered that the French for "board game" is jeu de société, the evening was complete!

An alligator lizard, very common here in Southern California.  This one was hiding near the garden hose, so I couldn't quite include its tail, which was easily twice again the length of its body!

An old and I'm afraid rather dusty brass engine of my dad's, the 0-4-0 "Mudhen" in HO scale from Ken Kidder.  These particular model engines are not very popular with train enthusiasts as they are rather plain and slow, but I have a great affection for this little Mudhen as when I inherited my dad's collection this was the only one of his dozen or so treasured brass engines that started right up -- after some thirty years! -- and chugged off down the track, merrily as could be asked for.

And a sunrise the other morning --