Weekend update, 1-4 March (Storm Emma!)

Well, we survived the "Beast from the East" and my first-ever snow day more or less without incident. On the first day of the storm, I arranged to work from home, but by around 9:30 the university decided to close up shop, so I got an unexpected 4-day weekend!

The view out our back window on day 2 of Storm Emma.

As someone who grew up in Los Angeles, I still get a little giddy whenever it snows even a little bit, and we had much more than a little snow this weekend. The cold weather didn't stick around in South Wales nearly as long as it did in other parts of the country, but my area did get just under two feet of snow over the course of two days, accompanied by 45mph winds. In spite of the giddiness, I confess I did worry a bit about our garden as the snow drifts rose over the tops of our raised beds and completely buried a large portion of our herb garden. I was very glad that that we'd finished the raised beds and put new cloche hoops and fleece over them.

By Sunday morning, the snow was beginning to thaw and I peeked outside to inspect the damage to our herbs, which weathered the storm without protection. Much to my amazement, the only casualties appeared to be a recently-transplanted garlic mustard and a couple of broad beans whose cover blew off during the worst part of the storm. Plants are amazing.

Problem-solving: embroidered early 19th century shift

The University of St Andrews' special collections department has a rather wonderful blog, Echoes from the Vault, on which I was an occasional contributor between 2012 and 2015.

In 2014, their blog had a theme: 52 Weeks of Historical How-To's. Every week, a member of staff (or some enthusiastic volunteer) would choose an item from the collection and use it as an instruction manual to do or make something, and write about the experience. Some people baked, others brewed, some made paper cut-outs, others took baths, some made ink and paper, and still others went on holiday.

For one of my contributions to the blog, I dug up an 1825 tailor's manual and followed the directions to make a lady's shift. That blog post is here.

A few weeks later, I decorated it by following (more or less) an embroidery pattern in an 1825 ladies' magazine. That blog post is here.

Unlike when I write for this blog, however, I have deadlines when I blog for work. And hand-sewing and embroidery are not particularly conducive to meeting deadlines.

Recycling: black lace insertion tunic

I have an awful lot of unfinished projects.

Most of the time, I can trick myself into thinking my backlog isn't all that bad because there are only four or five things that I've actively been working on within recent memory, forming the top layer of clutter in my sewing room. I've been pretty good about following my "finish two projects for every one you start" rule, so the front of my brain thinks that I'm doing okay. Managing my addiction. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I know that's a lie.

Every once in a great while, I'll go through aaaaaallll of my unfinished projects, one by one, and find things I'd completely forgotten. This is one of those things.

Crochet project: Jute Basket

The Viking/Victorian shirt has been hibernating recently, partly due to indecision over a minor construction detail, and partly because all of my limited supply of energy has been devoted to my application for Indefinite Leave to Remain (aka permanent residency) in the UK. I've continued to make some things, but they tend to be either brainless chipping away at slow, tedious projects (like stitching over the anachronistic metal eyelets on my wedding cotehardie, or knocking out a few more embroidery motifs on my early 19th century shift), or quick, instant-gratification type things like baking, making lemon curd, or gathering elderflowers for cordial.

Today's post is about one such instant-gratification project: a basket/bag crocheted from jute garden twine.