Old-Fashioned Fruitcake
But I’m darned if I know what to call it. Follow the process, if you will, and advise accordingly.
As so often happens, necessity was the mother of this design. I got sick of constantly mislaying my tiny scissors – the ones I use for snipping off ends of thread, yarn etc. What with working on the rose quilt and churning out a stream of granny squares for prayer blankets – not to mention wrestling with socks – those scissors were getting a lot of use, in a lot of different places.
It’s been 20 months since I finished the Giant Quilt of Craziness, and the memory is perhaps beginning to fade a little. I thought about it a lot this last week, though, as resuming work on the Rose Quilt (moderately giant & definitely crazy, albeit not a crazy quilt) convinced me that now was the time to make the Hussif of Perpetual Remembrance, crafted from the leftover materials of the GQC.
This hussif is not only going to save me a world of trouble (in carting about a needlecase, scissors, thimble, pin container and reels of thread), it is also going to remind me of a Very Important Lesson.
Small is Beautiful.
Small is elegant, well-designed, pleasingly executed. Small is, in fact, Sanity.
Even the process of making the hussif has been a revelation. The careful planning and exquisite care of a small thing well done is infinitely more satisfying than the ambitious blaze of a Big Thing Begun followed by years of procrastination, dutiful slogging and regret.
Not that small things are guaranteed to go well, of course, and something going less than well in an enormous ‘just get it done’ project is probably less distressing than something going badly in a project which was, until then, Just Dandy. (Do not click for larger images unless you want to see some terrible stitchery.)
Mad ambitions aside, it appears I still have some lessons to learn.
Stretch + Non-Stretch = Frustration, for example. Physics is (are?) non-negotiable. Except you can finagle a little when you’re dealing with fabric – but only a little. Except for stretch fabric, which finagles itself whether you want it to or not. Ditto slippery fabrics such as satin.
Other lessons include: always check carefully that the line of stitches you are snipping and unpicking is the line of tacking, and not the line of intended permanence; and always assume that everything will take longer than you expect. (Try to enjoy this.) The lesson about proper needle-thimble interactions I will spare you; and don’t worry, it doesn’t look like I’m going to lose the nail.
I am considering this as a working toile: something which you do for practice and to see how it works, but which can also (hopefully!) be used as a thing in itself. Which takes the pressure off a bit: every time the reality fails to connect with the beautiful dream in my head, I remind myself that I can make another. (Without stretchy or slippery fabrics.)
Who knows? Perhaps when all this is finally done and dusted, I will make another one out of the leftovers from the Rose Quilt. That sounds a bit more cheery than this one of black and grey and purple: the colours of Victorian half-mourning. Rather than refer to it as the half-mourning hussif, or the Hussif of Perpetual Remembrance, I am using the less mellifluous but cheerier title of the Butterfly Hussif.
As you may have guessed by now, I did not make much progress (translation, any progress) on the main projects this week. But I did make (and finish!) a useful tool which I trust will make me more efficient in future.
Consider this a sort-of-progress report; your Gargoyle Chips for the week. Rose Quilt 0, Curtains 0, Hussif 1.
No, this is not a post about playgrounds, although while I was on holiday I did pay a brief visit to the largest playground in the Southern Hemisphere. (Well worth a visit. I especially enjoyed the Archimedes’ Screws, reminding me as they did of piston-filling fountain pens.)
Rather, I thought I would start my fourth blogging year (can you believe it?) with some exciting news on the Simplicity Front. Remember the epic quilt of craziness I slogged away at in my Year of Finishing Things? I finished it.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am now an official card-carrying member of that mysterious cadre, People Who Finish Things. (All right, there isn’t a card. But there should be. Maybe I’ll make one. I’ll even finish it…)
Not only did I finish the Giant Quilt of Craziness, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I also delivered it to the intended recipient and it is no longer in my house. I do still have the scraps, but I am intending to make a hussif with them as a permanent reminder to myself never to begin such an enormous and ambitious project again.
So far so good. The house is less one large sewing project, which is a good step in the direction of simplicity. But… what you lose on the swings you make up on the roundabouts.
There’s the Box. The ancestral box which came down to me from my grandmother via my mother (the latter, I am happy to say, is not deceased, but rather, well ahead of the pack when it comes to pruning).
The box started out as three bags full (which should give you some idea of what was in it, if this didn’t). Actually, four bags full – there was a small one hiding behind one of the big ones. What it worked out to, once I had cunningly smuggled it home in my luggage (and the Caped Gooseberry’s luggage, obviously) was a 60L clear plastic storage container full to lid-not-fitting with yarn. “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.” Instant stash (although not SABLE, unless I pop my clogs well before my odometer ticks over to three-score and ten).
Not all of it is actually wool: some of it is 100% acrylic (I am shocked, Gran, shocked) and some of it was made up of worn out slippers and odd sleeves, button bands etc. Some of it was a Gordian Knot of odds and ends partially wound into little balls and partially wound into each other. This was gradually unwound over the course of three days with the help of The Occasional Visitor. (Alexander may have had a swift solution to his knotty problem, but I’d like to see him try to knit with it afterward.)
Deceased slippers and assorted body-parts aside, I am welcoming this boxful into my home. Why? Because the point of simplicity isn’t to have as little as possible of anything. The point of simplicity is to have just enough of the right things – that’s lagom – and for me the right things include knitting wool. It makes me happy, and I make it into useful things for keeping people warm and well-dressed.
But fear not! I have by no means given up on pruning, or on Finishing Things (details to follow). In the meantime, I have large quantities of mystery yarn to test for fibre content. By which I mean setting bits of it on fire. So much happiness, from just one box…