A week of Making for Ms Ginger Jane

I am acquiring my middle name for my blogging name. It feels grrrreat.

Since leaving the derby, I have had infinitely more time to be domesticated and otherwise get my craft on. This week was particularly awesome as I managed to make so many things.

T-Shirt Knickers
Making my own underwear from upcycled t-shirts is one of those things that I've intended to do for ages and have never had the time to do. I've been collecting information about it for ages - and these undies are the product of all that research. I've also been learning through doing - I'm a bit of a slap-dash sewer, but I've gone to the trouble of drafting a pattern and have been trying to be terribly patient while sewing. This is also the first time that I've sewed elastic without using the standard casing method.

There is no way that anyone is going to mistake these for fabulously made items of beautiful lingerie any time soon, but I am proud of the work that I've put in and I'm really looking forward to developing my pattern and trying out some new ideas. As soon as I recover from the experience of sewing elastic on my crotchety old sewing machine.

Pound Cake

via The Pioneer Woman

This is the second time I've tried this Pioneer Woman recipe; it has 12oz of butter in it, which is about 340 grams. This is most of a block of butter. However, the recipe also calls for butter flavouring, which is one of those bizarre American ingredients that bewilders and confuses me. What ARE you butter flavouring? And what is your purpose?

I didn't use butter flavouring and replaced the lemon flavouring with a little grated lemon peel. It was crazy delicious.

Aslan Socks

These are possibly the slowest knitted pair of socks in existence. Also, I'm scared they won't fit me properly now. Also, I have a few holes in the second sock where I didn't pick up enough stitches along the gusset. I knew that they easy solution would have been to pick up some extra stitches and knit them in while I was reducing the stitches anyhow, but I decided to flake out instead. The wool is beyond beautiful though, and is so soft. Lovely to knit with.

Crocheted produce bags
I made these after a trip to the vege markets when I became annoyed that none of my little pink mesh netting produce bags were the right size or shape for potatoes or kumara. They're crocheted out of some yarn that Shannon brought back from Nepal, a blend of cotton, nettle and hemp,* and are crocheted in the round using double treble stitch and a 12mm hook.** I grazed my knuckles crocheting with this. If you're at all inspired by my commitment to sustainability and my awesome knuckle grazing story, I think you can pick up yarn similar to this at Trade Aid.

So far, the bags haven't seen any potato action, but Shannon has discovered that they're the perfect size for holding a rigger of beer.

Tiffany neckwarmer

This is the second time I've used this pattern; the first time I used a mohair sample I received in my Knitty Sampler box (the one above)***. I gave it to Bex. My new one is knitted from a scrap of possum merino that I bought with a voucher. This is the most beautiful soft yarn that I've ever been lucky enough to use. The scarf took me something like and hour and a half to knit, and I've worn it all this week. Cute and warm? Sign me up.

Patchwork winter scarf
What is the best thing about having an obsessively craftish girlfriend? Eventually she will dress you entirely in knitwear! This is the second scarf I have knitted for Shannon. I frogged the other one when he revealed that he actually hated the colour grey.

This one is emphatically not grey. It may be every other colour but.

Spinning
This week I have finally done the little bit of maintenance I needed to do on my wheel, and have picked up a spare bobbin to make my life easier. Shannon is a Spinning Enabler, and has polyurethaned the bobbin and supplied me with all the fibre that I'm spinning with at the moment - four different colours of Nepalese yak and some beautifully soft grey/brown fleece (NZ) that is carded and scoured but is still in the grease. This means: it smells of sheep and there is lanolin on the fleece that makes my hands soft while I spin.

Since oiling et al, my spinning has improved heaps, which leads me to believe that proper maintenance of your tools is important after all (who would have guessed?). The thread is a lot more consistent which I was finding especially hard to achieve with the yak roving as it is made up of very short fibres. What I'm looking forward to doing now is spinning some kind of novelty yarn, or deliberately introducing "slubs". Or even learning how to ply properly on a spinning wheel would be good, actually.

AND THIS WEEKEND... I am planning to bake some biscuits, and work on S's scarf some more, and finally finish those GODDAMN SOCKS. And then start finishing the second sock for another pair that have been languishing for the last six months. Oh, oh, and maybe I could knit some booties for my new baby cousin?

*Yes these were declared at customs
** I had one lying around. I am as surprised as you are.
*** After having all the best intentions in the world of taking some photographs for this post I flaked out, and just used what ever I had at hand. Must try harder.