we planted a tree, and other projects
Jul. 9th, 2023 07:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaMy apprentice Bjarni followed us home after Frostheim Medieval days, and stayed here nearly a week, during which time we used an old sheet that came with the house to devise a pattern for Viking trousers for them which are only a little poofy, and fitted over the calf and use pretty much all of the 1.5 meters of really nice wool twill they bought at the event. Then we drew it out on the good fabric, marking every piece by pinning a label to it showing which direction is "up" on the trousers, and which is the outside of the fabric, and what piece it is. After triple checking the layout and measurements we cut the fabric and went looking for something to sew them with.
I prefer to use a decorative and heavy thread for osenstitch for seam finishing because the stitch is nice and elastic, and the seam becomes very durable. However, we have still never really sorted in the various yarns we got from Keldor's mom's stash, and we weren't finding anything of an appropriate weight in enough quantity for the project that I was willing to part with. Just as we were ready to give up and decide that we would have to go shopping the next day (which would mean riding in with Keldor to work at 05:30, and then waiting at his dad's till the stores open, then waiting for him to get off of work in the evening, since we still haven't had time to fix the brakes on his car) we found a ball of royal blue cotton yarn I had found at a second hand store (for 10 kr), with someone's crochet project still attached at one end. I had bought that intending it for seam finishing some of my own trousers, but given that we had only the one week to get this project (their first hand-sewing project) to a point where they can finish it on their own, I donated it to the cause, and we started sewing.
Back stitch for the first pass of the seams, and then fold the fabric edge under to make an external flat-felled seam using osenstitch. I prefer to work without pins, constantly adjusting the position of the fabric, and, for the finishing, rolling in the edge as I go, so that I never have pins stabbing me as I work. However, that is a lot of details to keep track of at once, so I pinned each seam Bjarni would work on (using safety pins for the first pass of each seam, positioned just past where the seam would go, so that they wouldn't even have to be removed as they stitched, but straight pins for holding the rolled edge in place for the second pass of each seam) and used chalk to draw a "sew here" line. Then we worked side by side, me on one leg, they on the other, starting with frequent "is this stich right?" questions that gradually decreased in frequency over the course of the week (sometimes the question got a "yes", and sometimes it got a suggestion for which direction the needle should move to give a better result).
By the time Saturday morning rolled around all of the pieces, save the waistband, had been attached to one another, and many of the seams had been finished. So I spent my fortnightly Zoom call with my sisters sewing on my own, to get the seam finishing past the seam junctions in the crotch of the trousers, and then worked on my own during the 1.5 hour drive to the Umeå ferry terminal to attach the waistband to the trousers.
We arrived before the ferry, so I kept sewing, and Bjarni, who was feeling the nerves that can come with an impending journey involving multiple public transit connections, opted to let me, but not sew themselves, which meant that I was able to get the waist seam finished, and, by the time it was time for them to board, there was only one leg seam left that they will need to finish on their own.
The apprentice safely on their way, we asked the GPS how to get to the store that sells fish for aquariums, and it soon had us turn off the main connecting road between the highway and the harbour area. A minute or two later we saw a sign that says "Skeppssättning". Neither of us knew that there were any ancient burials outlined with standing stones in the shape of a boat this far north, so, of course, we turned, and were soon admiring what the sing assured us is the furthest north example of such stone ship graves, which was located next to a couple of Bronze Age burial mounds. photos over on FB
Just a short way from there we found Smultronställen, a "handelsträdgård", so we stopped, looked around at the many trees and plants for sale, admired their cute little arch bridge, and sat for a bit in their garden as he enjoyed a coffee and cake and I tried their homemade mango ice cream before we bought a pear tree and two åkerbär (Arctic raspberry) plants. The pear tree we chose is a Vekovaja (Pyrus communis), which is described as:
Höstpåron zon 6
En rysk höstsort som ger stora (ca 170 g), saftiga frukter med rodnad på solsidan. Gott och friskt päron med sötsyrlig smak. Helt sjalv fertil.
Then we continued on our way and bought him some fish (20 of the cute little blue and red ones that like to stick together, plus 10 larger ones, (4 and 6), some of which are silvery and have graceful arching not-wisker things, and the others prefer to swim near the bottom (no, of course I didn't learn any of their names), before continuing over to Drake's to give him some scrap sheet metal for making helmets for their new fighters. We lucked out on timing on that delivery, as he'd baked some bread rolls, so he gave us a handful, still warm, which we happily ate while diving, two before we stopped at a grocery store to pick up some things that aren't available in the small store in our town, and the last as we left the city.
During the drive we passed a lot of cars from the 1950's, there having been a classic car event in Umeå this weekend, and at some point in the conversation the word Maserati was mentioned, at which point I a few words from the song ("My Maserati does 185, I lost my licence, now I don't drive..."), but he didn't recognize it, so, of course, I had to pair my phone to the car stereo, find the song on Youtube, and play it for him. He liked it, and countered with another good classic rock driving tune, so we spent the rest of the trip home listening to good music (and trying not to drive too fast), and pulled up to the house just as the last one (Still Rock and Roll to Me) ended.
The drive having been a fun date, we arrived home with good energy, so he cleaned the fish tank, installed the new pump we'd also bought, and replaced the behind the tank backdrop to one in a happier shade of blue before moving the fish in, while I changed the cat litter, washing the litter box and scrubbed the toilet, and vacuumed up the litter that didn't manage to stay in the box.
Then we planted the tree and the åkerbär and I moved enough things in the garage to be able to get the hose out of the closet in the garage and install it outside for the summer so we could water them.
By this time the artichoke (which I started cooking before all the other chores), had pretty much steamed enough to eat, so I melted some butter and added rosemary, garlic, lemon, and pepper to go with it for me, and he fried up a couple of spicy sausage to eat with the leftover soup from the other day for him.
Thus fed he took a nap on the couch, and I started some laundry, did a bit more filling in the low spots on the wall where the basement shower will be, and then did a bit more much-needed cleaning and organizing in the garage. I even finally went through the big bucket of broken tiles from the wall in the laundry room, and sorted it into organized piles by shape. I then boxed them up and put them in the closet, where we had previously packed the tiles that hadn't broken when we removed them.
Now that I have a rough idea how much of the white we have I can go look at the stacks of coloured tiles in the attic, and get an idea of if we have enough to do some sort of mosaic for the new shower enclosure, or if we are going to have to buy or scrounge more.
I prefer to use a decorative and heavy thread for osenstitch for seam finishing because the stitch is nice and elastic, and the seam becomes very durable. However, we have still never really sorted in the various yarns we got from Keldor's mom's stash, and we weren't finding anything of an appropriate weight in enough quantity for the project that I was willing to part with. Just as we were ready to give up and decide that we would have to go shopping the next day (which would mean riding in with Keldor to work at 05:30, and then waiting at his dad's till the stores open, then waiting for him to get off of work in the evening, since we still haven't had time to fix the brakes on his car) we found a ball of royal blue cotton yarn I had found at a second hand store (for 10 kr), with someone's crochet project still attached at one end. I had bought that intending it for seam finishing some of my own trousers, but given that we had only the one week to get this project (their first hand-sewing project) to a point where they can finish it on their own, I donated it to the cause, and we started sewing.
Back stitch for the first pass of the seams, and then fold the fabric edge under to make an external flat-felled seam using osenstitch. I prefer to work without pins, constantly adjusting the position of the fabric, and, for the finishing, rolling in the edge as I go, so that I never have pins stabbing me as I work. However, that is a lot of details to keep track of at once, so I pinned each seam Bjarni would work on (using safety pins for the first pass of each seam, positioned just past where the seam would go, so that they wouldn't even have to be removed as they stitched, but straight pins for holding the rolled edge in place for the second pass of each seam) and used chalk to draw a "sew here" line. Then we worked side by side, me on one leg, they on the other, starting with frequent "is this stich right?" questions that gradually decreased in frequency over the course of the week (sometimes the question got a "yes", and sometimes it got a suggestion for which direction the needle should move to give a better result).
By the time Saturday morning rolled around all of the pieces, save the waistband, had been attached to one another, and many of the seams had been finished. So I spent my fortnightly Zoom call with my sisters sewing on my own, to get the seam finishing past the seam junctions in the crotch of the trousers, and then worked on my own during the 1.5 hour drive to the Umeå ferry terminal to attach the waistband to the trousers.
We arrived before the ferry, so I kept sewing, and Bjarni, who was feeling the nerves that can come with an impending journey involving multiple public transit connections, opted to let me, but not sew themselves, which meant that I was able to get the waist seam finished, and, by the time it was time for them to board, there was only one leg seam left that they will need to finish on their own.
The apprentice safely on their way, we asked the GPS how to get to the store that sells fish for aquariums, and it soon had us turn off the main connecting road between the highway and the harbour area. A minute or two later we saw a sign that says "Skeppssättning". Neither of us knew that there were any ancient burials outlined with standing stones in the shape of a boat this far north, so, of course, we turned, and were soon admiring what the sing assured us is the furthest north example of such stone ship graves, which was located next to a couple of Bronze Age burial mounds. photos over on FB
Just a short way from there we found Smultronställen, a "handelsträdgård", so we stopped, looked around at the many trees and plants for sale, admired their cute little arch bridge, and sat for a bit in their garden as he enjoyed a coffee and cake and I tried their homemade mango ice cream before we bought a pear tree and two åkerbär (Arctic raspberry) plants. The pear tree we chose is a Vekovaja (Pyrus communis), which is described as:
Höstpåron zon 6
En rysk höstsort som ger stora (ca 170 g), saftiga frukter med rodnad på solsidan. Gott och friskt päron med sötsyrlig smak. Helt sjalv fertil.
Then we continued on our way and bought him some fish (20 of the cute little blue and red ones that like to stick together, plus 10 larger ones, (4 and 6), some of which are silvery and have graceful arching not-wisker things, and the others prefer to swim near the bottom (no, of course I didn't learn any of their names), before continuing over to Drake's to give him some scrap sheet metal for making helmets for their new fighters. We lucked out on timing on that delivery, as he'd baked some bread rolls, so he gave us a handful, still warm, which we happily ate while diving, two before we stopped at a grocery store to pick up some things that aren't available in the small store in our town, and the last as we left the city.
During the drive we passed a lot of cars from the 1950's, there having been a classic car event in Umeå this weekend, and at some point in the conversation the word Maserati was mentioned, at which point I a few words from the song ("My Maserati does 185, I lost my licence, now I don't drive..."), but he didn't recognize it, so, of course, I had to pair my phone to the car stereo, find the song on Youtube, and play it for him. He liked it, and countered with another good classic rock driving tune, so we spent the rest of the trip home listening to good music (and trying not to drive too fast), and pulled up to the house just as the last one (Still Rock and Roll to Me) ended.
The drive having been a fun date, we arrived home with good energy, so he cleaned the fish tank, installed the new pump we'd also bought, and replaced the behind the tank backdrop to one in a happier shade of blue before moving the fish in, while I changed the cat litter, washing the litter box and scrubbed the toilet, and vacuumed up the litter that didn't manage to stay in the box.
Then we planted the tree and the åkerbär and I moved enough things in the garage to be able to get the hose out of the closet in the garage and install it outside for the summer so we could water them.
By this time the artichoke (which I started cooking before all the other chores), had pretty much steamed enough to eat, so I melted some butter and added rosemary, garlic, lemon, and pepper to go with it for me, and he fried up a couple of spicy sausage to eat with the leftover soup from the other day for him.
Thus fed he took a nap on the couch, and I started some laundry, did a bit more filling in the low spots on the wall where the basement shower will be, and then did a bit more much-needed cleaning and organizing in the garage. I even finally went through the big bucket of broken tiles from the wall in the laundry room, and sorted it into organized piles by shape. I then boxed them up and put them in the closet, where we had previously packed the tiles that hadn't broken when we removed them.
Now that I have a rough idea how much of the white we have I can go look at the stacks of coloured tiles in the attic, and get an idea of if we have enough to do some sort of mosaic for the new shower enclosure, or if we are going to have to buy or scrounge more.