Pickles and Pottery

Today's post falls at the intersection of two seemingly unrelated hobbies: pottery and fermentation.

The fermentation started innocently enough in college with just the odd batch of mead. Then, sometime in 2006/7, one of my coworkers heard that I make mead, and mentioned that she'd just made some T'ej (Ethiopian honey wine) from a recipe that called for no yeast (or rather, wild yeast that occurs naturally in the air of your kitchen). Intrigued, I asked to see the recipe, and she loaned me her copy of Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz.

I'd been taught that, to make mead successfully, everything that came in contact with the must (mead before it's fermented) had to be carefully sanitized and controlled or else the mead would be spoiled--or worse, make you violently ill. The T'ej recipe, however, said that it was perfectly possible to get a good fermentation by just leaving your must covered with just a cloth to keep out bugs and dust for a few days before putting an airlock on it. My coworker who'd made the T'ej insisted that it came out great, and that she'd suffered no ill effects from drinking it, apart from a slight hangover.

I flipped through the rest of the book, finding recipes for all sorts of interesting stuff like kombucha, yogurt, and kimchi. I'd tried making pickles before, using a recipe in The Joy of Cooking that involved putting cucumbers in spiced vinegar, but I found the results extremely sour and unappetizing. After the recipe, there was a cryptic warning that while it's possible to make pickles in brine instead of vinegar, but it's far too complex and requires too much specialized equipment to be attempted in a domestic kitchen. Yet here was this book, telling me that brined pickles are easy and don't require anything that isn't already in most kitchens or easily acquired from a thrift shop.

Interlude: Bead Jewelry

I had originally intended to follow the previous post on my herringbone linen tunic with a bit of a rant about historical accuracy and what we label "accurate" vs. "fantasy" and the social signals we send when doing so, but since the discussion thread that inspired the rant is now a couple of months distant, I've decided to let it lie for the time being. Instead, I'm going to show you some shiny things that I made.

I don't often wear jewelry (apart from a few pieces that rarely get changed out, like piercing jewelry and my wedding-ish ring), but I enjoy making it.  I don't consider myself a particularly skilled jewelry-maker since I don't know the first thing about soldering, casting, wire-wrapping, or any number of other techniques, but I can tie knots in a string and I'm pretty handy with a pair of needle-nose pliers.  Recently, I got a hankering for some new bead necklaces and had a rummage though my supplies.  These are the results:

First finished object of 2015: the Black Herringbone Linen Tunic

Right, so, this post was supposed to go up at the end of January, except that a combination of insufficient natural light to photograph a black garment, other priorities besides blogging that took up most of my creative energy, and some good old-fashioned procrastination got in the way.  Better late than never though, right?

This week (i.e. the last week of January), I am very pleased to report about my first finished project of 2015: the black herringbone linen tunic. This was a (relatively) quick project, begun over the Christmas holiday using a remnant of some fabric that I bought for my husband's wedding clothes. (I confess I might have bought a *teeny* bit more than I strictly needed.) My aim was to create something that would work equally well as either modern or Medieval(ish) clothing, and that would be comfortable and go together quickly but still incorporate some decorative details.

Unfinished Project Profile: the Blue Blanket

If you read last week’s introductory post, you will have seen that my rules for crafting include a stipulation that, on any given day, I must knit at least two rows on the Blue Blanket before working on any other craft project.  That’s because the blue blanket, although a much beloved project, is becoming something of an Albatross.  

At about three years old, it’s been in the works for a while, but is nowhere near my oldest unfinished project. (I just recently finished assembling an afghan whose squares I started to crochet more than ten years ago.) 

At two layers, each 259 stitches wide and 622 rows long*, it may very well be my biggest unfinished project, but that's not the main reason why the blue blanket gets pride of place.

No, the reason why the blue blanket comes before all other projects is because it's for my nephew, and although I started it several months before he was born, I'm beginning to wonder whether he's going to get it before he goes off to college.

Well, actually, it's as much for my brother as for my nephew.  I have some doubts as to whether it will actually reach my nephew or be confiscated by his father.  You see, the blue blanket has a history...

Permit me to introduce myself...

Hello, and welcome to Things Made Slowly, a blog about doing things by hand, and taking the time to do them well.  I’m a thirty-something rare books librarian with a nasty habit of picking up new hobbies--mostly costuming and its associated crafts (sewing, embroidery, knitting, crochet, spinning, tablet weaving, etc.), with occasional forays into other areas such as pottery, woodworking, and odd culinary avenues.

What my stash looks like now: a mixture of old
Renaissance Faire costume bits, unfinished
projects, fabric, and other textile-related
tools and supplies.

Formerly based in Southern California, I was for several years a regular attendee at the San Bernardino/Santa Fe Dam, Ojai (now defunct), Long Beach (also defunct), and Escondido Renaissance festivals, Vista Viking Festival, Riverside Dickens Festival, Labyrinth of Jareth Masquerade, (Los Angeles) Edwardian Ball, and of course, Costume College.  Consequently, my crafting projects ranged from early medieval to late 19th century, with plenty of fantasy and gothic styles thrown in.  I made (too) frequent shopping expeditions to the L.A. garment district, amassed a tremendous fabric stash, and racked up a staggering number of unfinished projects.

In 2012, I moved from West Los Angeles to rural Scotland, near St Andrews.  In packing up my collection of fabric and unfinished projects for the move, I was appalled at how much *stuff* I had accumulated.