milkweedman

[milkweedman]

...another one. This is some southdown babydoll traditional 3 ply from roving that I spun up for socks a few years ago. This is just the leftovers; figured it would make a good mesh bag as it's very stretchy. I did try to use a pattern for the start, because I always have problems with ruffling. But the pattern made it ruffle even worse. Took like 4 or 5 restarts but I finally got a decent base just by guessing. Need a couple long projects for the weekend and this one should be slow.

#crochet #crochet bag #handspun yarn #southdown babydoll

[milkweedman]

Impossible to photograph this massive fleece without cats all over it. Look how big though !! Might be the biggest I've ever worked with.

#cats #fleece #wool washing #shetland #this is the moorit fleece i got a few months back !!! finally washing it

[milkweedman]

The one bizarre thing to me about textiles is that warp-weighted weaving is at least 6500 years old, but our oldest knitted artifacts are only ~1000 years old, and crochet 200 years old. Even though you need less equipment to knit (two sticks) or crochet (one hook) compared to warp-weighted weaving (frame, loom weights, batting, heddles). Why the big gaps between these inventions? And why did each one appear and spread when it did?

#ooh fascinating #prehistoric fashion

[milkweedman]

A client asked what I was making (a bag) and I was talking about it while checking them in and when I got to the point where I said I'd made like 15 or so bags this month they just. Stared at me.

#look its a normal number #we all crochet 15 bags a month somebody back me up on this #crochet #crochet bag

[milkweedman]

"Don't just throw ripped jeans away, you can repair them using these 10 cute Visible Mending techniques!!" unfortunately my friend the first point of failure for every single pair of jeans i have owned in my life has been the Crotch and Ass. Knees: fine, cuffs: fine; but 3 years in, and all that stands between the world and my astronaut-patterned taint is 0.5µm of denim worn so thin that every squat threatens to tear it to shreds like wet toilet paper. If the Tiktok craft community could figure out a way to resurrect jeans afflicted in such a way that doesn't involve adding a whole ass buttpatch like some sort of inverse assless chaps situation then that'd be great

#i have finally figured out mending jeans crotches #and yes it was a pain but now i don't have to throw out jeans after 6 months bc thats where they always fail #next pair i buy im going to try to reinforce before i even wear them and see how much that helps #visible mending

[milkweedman]

So many requests for bag infodump lol. I may have to write it up later

#bags are just cool and i like them and have made like 50+ at this point #but do i know a lot about them ? not...necessarily #so we'll see #i know what i know but..

[milkweedman]

It can be hard meeting people at work bc sometimes they ask what I like to do and the honest answer is that I've been getting really into bags lately but I can't say that because if they ask any follow up question I'll never shut up. About bags.

#i am a huge fan of mesh bags in particular as im sure is obvious but theres so many different variables if you care to get nerdy about it #just finished another bag except for the decoration #crochet bag #handspun yarn

[milkweedman]

put himself in the knitting bag

#chuck behavior... #cats #knitting

[milkweedman]

Knitting youtuber: I like to knit for 25 minute long blocks at most at a time with a 5 minute break within each so I do not get injuries.

Me who did a 14 hour marathon on the weekend with a team of 7 spinners and knitters to shear a sheep and knit a man's jumper in as short a possible time:

#ajsbhds what ????? this is so cool !!! #wool fleece #spinning #knitting

[milkweedman]

It's done !!! And it's huge.

Stuffed it with random stuff while it dried; it could easily hold twice that but I ran out of things. Dimensions unstretched are 1.5 feet x 1.5 feet (50 cm by 50 cm), and it can stretch about double that.

Just huge ! Gonna put fleece in it. I wanna switch up my fleece and wool storage so I can actually see everything and I'm thinking bags hanging from the wall would be nice. So I need to make way more of these basically lol.

More specs and stuff below the cut

6.4 oz/181g of handspun opposing 3 ply jacob. Spun it on my wheel a couple years ago, was supposed to be sock yarn but it didn't work out. Actually made a ravelry entry for this one: https://www.ravelry.com/people/goaliemagics/handspun/jacob-commercial-roving-sock-yarn

This is what it looked like as yarn.

Pattern is self drafted as always, crocheted on i/5.5mm hook. (US terms ahead) base is just double crochet, mesh is *trebel crochet, ch4*. For the decreases I first switched to *trc, ch3,* then *dc2tog, dc*, then dc2tog. Then single crochet for the last few rounds. Handle is just single crochet as well. The opening is very small which was intentional, otherwise things would spill out of this constantly (i have experienced this with other wise bags). It does mean it can't fit large items, just tons of small ones, but that's fine.

It ruffled like badly when I was crocheting it but it's so smooth and perfect now, which is nice--didn't think it would block out tbh, but it did.

Anyway. Um I have started another bag.

Gonna be a smaller bag obviously, I have way less of this yarn. I think it was 50 yards or so. Knitting it cause my wrists are killing me lately.

I am still slowly working on this bag. I have found its much easier to do even on a bumpy bus ride than at work while holding a phone with my shoulder. So I mainly am working on it on the bus.

It is quite big ! Happy with the size. Just started the mesh, I think I have enough yarn to make it quite long if I wanted.

Also, now that i have gotten used to this green bag it works so well; honestly indispensable.

#crochet #knitting #handspun yarn #jacob

[milkweedman]

Finished the big crochet bag today, super excited :D

Immediately started another bag, which I'm sure will surprise no-one.

It's using this yarn which was 2 singles I intended to leave as singles, but ended up deciding otherwise. Added some more twist and plied it. Really pretty result :3

#handspun yarn

[milkweedman]

Lots of fleece things recently; trying not to move with old dye or raw fleeces so I've been using stuff up. Also I always get into a fleece fever in the spring

From top to bottom, left to right:

Shetland scrap (as in, my last little bit of that beautiful fleece) after avocado dye with copper mordant, drying. Happy to add some light pink to my naturally dyed shetland collection. I've got some updates for that too but I'll wait until I've spun all of the different colors probably.

Hampshire fleece in the avocado exhaust. I'm using some old bottled avocado dye from last year plus the bits of avocados I had from recently. It's still a very dark dyebath so I oughta be able to get at least another round of full dye before actually getting exhaust. I forgot how crazy potent the avocado dye was (cooked it down from about 1 gallon to a pint which is about 80% less volume if my completely wild guess is correct). Oops.

White: shetland x clun forest, drying. The green is more hampshire that I mordanted quite some time ago, forgot about, and recently found. I believe its copper mordant because it was very green already, but after dyeing with yellow hollyhock and yellow marigold it is even greener. I know it looks vaguely brown here, but it's a sort of khaki green

And then more shetland x clun forest. This is the first batch; I moved it to the bathroom drawer that's directly over a vent and thus very good for drying things. It's still wet though. The hampshire is dry already and I dyed it at the same time.... I'm chalking it up to more weirdness from this crossbreed sheep. I want it to dry already so I can sample some and see if it spins up weird too. I hope it's good as a yarn. The lack of stickiness in the fibers is really odd for what the parents were... kinda reminds me of karakul ? Idk, I'm sure it will be a little easier when it's dry.

#wool washing #natural dyeing #avocado #marigold #hollyhock #shetland #shetland x clun forest #hampshire

[milkweedman]

A 5200-year-old pottery bowl from Shahr-e Sukhteh bearing what could possibly be the world's oldest example of animation. It shows 5 images of a wild goat leaping, and if you put them in a sequence (like a flip book), the wild goat leaps to nip leaves off a tree. Museum of Ancient Iran

#show us the hat ezra !!!!!!!! #i need to knit this as well...i am obsessed #historical fashion #goats

[milkweedman]

I've been slowly working on coding my own neocities website bc my tutorial link list keeps breaking bc tumblr, and it is the absolute worst thing to fix repeatedly. Have found that 1) I actually really enjoy coding now and 2) I maybe have too many things to say about wool.

Also 3) I have backed myself into a corner and the only out is to define medium wool, finewool, longwool, and 'other' in a way that makes sense to beginners but also is like... accurate. and i have been stuck on this for some time now

#ifanyone has an answer im listening #the nice thing is that whenever the code sucks and i hate it i just work on the text part and then whenever that sucks and i hate it i just #work on the code #win-win #tbf to me it is simply a new and exciting way to talk about wool

[milkweedman]

I freaking love when you possssttttttyttt

Auhfhf well thank you )))))

[milkweedman]

My mom asked me to mend this top for her last time she visited. It's silk and very old; i mended it in the past (very badly) and I think my mom mended it before that as well. There was 2 layers of mending. Also some staples. The original seams are totally gone, so I will need to reassemble it.

Anyway, I took the old mending out as it had completely deteriorated and also was very badly done. Then I washed it... the dye bled a TON, but it did need to be washed. Idk. Now I'm darning the holes; after that I will try to gently iron it, and then reassemble it. I'm sure I won't have time for all of this before she gets here again this week given that darning this tiny spot has taken half an hour already. Oh well. It's not like she's paying me and this is a lot of work (ngl, would not have taken it on if I'd realized the condition it was in) so it takes as long as it takes.

#mending #visible mending #silk #idk what kind of top this #maybe someone can fill me in when you guys see it assembled #oh my god i hate darning with thread btw it SUCKS

[milkweedman]

First batch is still drying, but I did speed dry a piece for comparison--pretty nice ! This wool doesn't stick to itself like at all, it's very odd. Will be very curious to spin it up. Just put the second batch in !

Washing the very exciting clun forest × shetland cross fleece I got this winter (for 10 whole dollars btw. 2 pounds of fleece !). It's going weirdly. Usually the fleece clumps a bit and wants to hold onto itself but this one is just tearing apart. It's drying right now, and I only washed half, so we'll see. Can't wait to try it out tho.

#clun forest x shetland #wool washing