Tag: I’m a Luddite

Preparing for the Fantasy Faire

On By Jennifer Mugrage6 Comments
  1. Set up modern tent, measure proportions

2) Measure and cut four panels of black felt. (Three can be cut whole out of the fabric we purchased; one needs to be pieced together from two end pieces.)

As I worked in the yard, the chickens kept coming up and I had to chase them away from the felt. The rooster tried to eat one of my pins.

3) Join panels together with a whip stitch, using yarn in a contrasting color. Besides making the tent look sort of cool, this will allow us to locate the corners of the felt cover more easily.

(This is the biggest sewing project I have ever worked on. It’s very physical handling these big pieces of cloth. Still, the pressure is less than when making tailored clothes. The biggest mistake I have made so far was I began to join one of the panels with the wrong side facing out. I had to pull out the whip stitch and turn the panel over.

The felt has a pleasant odor. I’ve always like fiber smells. Unfortunately, I don’t know whether this odor is a property of felt itself, or whether it comes from chemicals perhaps used in the modern but not the ancient felt-making process.)

4) Put the cover over the modern tent to see whether it fits.

When we got the tent out this time, we were confronted with a problem. Two screws from the frame had fallen out. I was able to locate & replace one. Looks like the other will have to be a substitute screw from our junk drawer. We suspect a chicken ate it.

Yay! The cover fits! And is even a little roomy. Now, to patch pieces of felt to complete the peak.

5) Put the cover back on again. It looks okay

The tops of the pieces don’t join in a perfect cone, but it’s got a nice witch hat/smoke hole look, so I think I’m going to leave it. Fixing it won’t be worth the extra time, when there is so much more prep to do.

6) Pin star fabric to corners to make sure you have enough.

7) Sew large washers to the sides of the canopy to hold it down in windy conditions.

8) LEDs

9) Set everything up exactly as it is going to look the next day.

The Final Chicken Update

On By Jennifer Mugrage3 Comments

Tom, you won’t be able to see this, because it’s a gif and you can never view those. It’s a short video of a man holding at bay three velociraptors … which is exactly what it now looks like when I feed my chickens.

I now wonder whether a chicken owner was behind the animatronic dinos in the Jurassic Park franchise.

Bonnet Mania

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

Here are three “fairy bonnets” that I made using a pattern I bought off Etsy. It’s a very simple, easy pattern. The bonnet is worked flat and then sewed up the back. You can do it with one ball of yarn if you are making a child’s size. In this case, I used cotton because these were meant to be spring bonnets for some little girls I know.

It’s not good to post picture of kids’ faces, so this Styrofoam model will have to do. As you can see, the corner where the bonnet was sewed becomes an adorable point on the wearer’s head. The wavy, tipsy effect is achieved as follows. On one row, a bunch of extra stitches are added. Two rows later, these stitches are reduced, alternately using Knit Two Together (which tends to lean right), and Slip-Slip-Knit (which tends to lean left).

I later made a navy-blue version of this same bonnet, and then completed one with a varicolored ball of yarn. They knit up quickly and make good gifts. (At least, I think they are good gifts!)

I am experimenting with adding a large button on one side and a crocheted loop on the other, rather than the long knitted tie strings, which look cool but might be inconvenient. I’ve had good luck with the button/loop arrangement on bonnets I’ve made for myself. The loop is less obtrusive than a string or a tassel when the bonnet is not fastened, and you can pull the loop across and hook it around the button one-handed if you need to.

Baby Chicks

On By Jennifer Mugrage2 Comments

You can see that they are bigger and more developed just in the day or two between the first and second videos.

Now, as I post this, they are so much bigger as to be unrecognizable.

Arguably, the most fun part of getting baby chicks is the naming of them. Meet:

  • Jane Wayne
  • Ginny Cash
  • Andrea
  • Chick-sha-Mary

Farm Shoes

On By Jennifer Mugrage3 Comments

So, this week I bought these farm shoes. I know that some people call them “wellies,” but I don’t know what they’re called around here. Just “rubber boots” maybe.

I need them not because I am a real farmer in any way, but because Spring has sprung (sort of … we are also still getting snow), and even if a person only has 3 chickens, their run is still surrounded by mud. With these boots, I feel that I have leveled up in some small way.

As a person who romanticizes the past, the boots naturally got me thinking about what people did for mud shoes (in Europe, say) before they had access to rubber. The answer, of course, was clogs or wooden shoes. You can see them on French peasants in Millet’s paintings sometimes.

“The Gleaners,” by Millet. You can’t really tell what the shoes are made of, but you can see that they’re sort of in the clog family.

But I’m Dutch (actually, Frisian) by ancestry, and we have our own iconic version of the wooden shoe. I don’t know about other peasant clogs, but Dutch wooden shoes have to fit rather large and be worn with several layers of socks. They float, which is important in Holland.

Here is me in a partially authentic “Dutch costume” that my mom made, displaying the klompen. (That’s what the wooden shoes are called, for obvious reasons.) She did not make the klompen. We got those at De Klomp Wooden Shoe factory in Holland, Michigan, which is still in operation to this day. There, you can buy everything from tiny souvenir klompen to ones that fit you to huge painted klompen to put on your porch. You can watch the shoes being carved and hollowed out. You can have your name woodburned onto a pair if you wish. The whole place smells really good, like fresh wood shavings and woodburning smoke.

Here is someone I know (also of Frisian blood), modeling the klompen and the milk maid buckets. I know the blurring, and the basket in the foreground, make it look like this picture was taken in a studio, but it was actually snapped outdoors. The roses are real and those are real, fake Dutch farmer accoutrements.

If you, Reader, work outdoors (whether it’s farming or forestry or plein-air paintings), what do you prefer for spring mud shoes?