Saturday, May 8, 2021

Sonya, jacket, soup and Misfits

Today started with a great Zoom discussion among Sonya Philip, great clothes designer and nice person, and the Modern Daily Knitting duo, Ann and Kaye. They're great knitters, purveyors of yarns and other knitting needs, plus great supporters of indie designers.

Sonya is a knitter, also a great clothes designer and teacher, about creating and upcycling simple wearable stuff you want to wear. 

She has a new book out: The Act of Sewing. That's what the presentation was about. She's a lovely person altogether, just wants people to make what they want to wear and not worry about what the industry wants. She assembles colorful unusual combos that make you want to do likewise.

MDK, given in full above, has a terrific newsletter with all kinds of readable people writing for it.  It's where I discovered Franklin Habit, to whose vlog I am now devoted, and others. So I recommend them too, even if you're not a passionate knitter, for the entertainment value.

Anyway Sonya is such an original, happy person, who always looks exactly right in her own designs, and anyone can learn to.

So these are free shout-outs to all of them.

And I have finished stitching together the Mitered Squares, so now I have to weave in 136,685 ends before I steam it, then stitch up the seams. 

Spent a while weaving in ends. Watching Sonya renewed my confidence in this project. Also the spring weather here is still cold enough to wear the jacket without waiting for Fall, so there's that.

Then I needed lunch so I made a cream of rainbow carrot, celery and white bean, which, decorated with dandelion leaves and chives was decorative and pretty good, too.  Art as food.

I  spent a lot of the afternoon watching a presentation on Greek embroidery of the 17th and 18th centuries, with a foray much earlier than that. From Oxford's Ashmolean Museum. I'll blog it tomorrow when I get the screenshots organized and cropped and my breath back.

Then finally Misfits arrived, a day late, though they did warn me, and short a can of broth, which I expect they'll refund.



Is this not a natural artwork




Soooo, here's Friday night's salad, on Saturday instead.  Romaine, tomato, cheddar, chickpeas, tuna, crowned with a strawberry.

Today turned out to be much fuller and richer than I'd expected.





16 comments:

  1. Sounds like you had a great day! Looking forward to tomorrow's post about Greek embroidery.

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  2. Now I understand what "tying up loose ends" means! Of which I have a metaphorical plenty - it's so hard for me to totally finish a project. I can get to 98%, then stall out. Sigh.

    That tomato skein is indeed a work of art! As is your salad.

    Just dashed over for a look at Franklin House. Wonderful, even for this paused knitter (very paused - it's been decades since I picked up my needles). The days are too short to fit in yet another vlog, alas...especially as the garden is becoming insistent (and the overnight temperatures are beginning to settle in toward gardening weather). But appreciate the recommendations!

    Chris from Boise

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    1. The good thing about Franklin Habit is that he doesn't vlog often so it's not a big commitment.

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  3. I think, thinking about all those eleventy-billion ends to be sewn in, that I might have been tempted to cut them about an inch or so long and leave them as a design element. I probably wouldn't, but at least I'd think about it. As always your Misfits box looks great. I remember Franklin Habit from somewhere - seems to me he does/did wonderful knitting cartoon drawings featuring a sheep??

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    1. Yes, that's the same Franklin. He's a knitting designer, teacher, writer and cartoonist.

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  4. You've had a busy and enjoyable day! The jacket looks great but that sure is a lot of ends to weave in! Sounds like a project to do during a book on tape or a movie. Your Misfits look great as usual and that salad looks delicious!

    Happy Mother's Day for tomorrow!

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    1. Thank you. Happy mother's day.
      The ends went faster than expected!

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  5. I came in possession of a farm box from a local farm, it was their small box which goes for $30. you don't get to choose, it's just what they have. it was too heavy on carrots and potatoes and had things we don't eat like kale, swiss chard, radishes. also contained yellow squash and zucchini both of which I would have picked before they got this big, cucumbers, beets, and fresh dill. I'm glad I didn't have to pay for it. I gave away a lot of it because quantity-wise it was far too much for two people.

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    1. That's the drawback of local farm shares. They have limited crop selection and they have to do the choosing. From Misfits I get onions in ones and twos, potatoes same, as needed. It works better for me. And I never order radishes, squash, cucumber, which I don't like. I'm glad you could find takers.

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  6. There was a long article in the New Yorker about two women who started a knitting thing on FB and I read the whole article and now I can't remember much about it except that it exploded and knitters are way more political and opinionated than you'd think!
    Lovely, lovely salad. I'm going to have to start buying my salad greens again and dammit- I will be so disappointed every time. I just know it.

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    1. I'm familiar with the story in question, and know too much about the people involved. I dropped them a while back because of the appalling attacks on disabled designers, by someone in a protected group themselves.
      Yes, any interest can go downhill, sadly. People can channel hate into the most amazingly benign areas. It exploded in the last couple of years, just when hate was being directed by the administration. It got everywhere. So I learned caution.

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  7. I like the idea of misfit veggies although the ones you showed look fine to me. Methinks I am not a connnoisseur of vegetable beauty, unless it is made into soup like the one you also showed a photo of. Now that is beautiful! Wouldn't you like a sweater in that colour?

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    1. That's an interesting thought, a soup colored sweater! It us a kind of rosewood color, if you see it as fabric.

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  8. Your misfit box resembles my shopping basket. Is that a cantaloupe back there?

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    1. I think we have similar tastes. That's my first cantaloupe of the year.

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  9. Your jacket looks good, and so does the soup.

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