Round table...

Food, even if you aren't a foodie, is such a defining part of our universe. From the day we are born to the day we die we think about it, we smell it, we hear it, we feel it, and best of all we taste it. We can define cultures by their food, pasta - Italy, noodle - China, beef and potatos - Ireland, Herring and root vegetables - Scandinavia.  We can tell a persons social status by their food, caviar,  escargot,  and others.

The thing is food today is more of a prepackaged deal, it cost just as much to by the froozen dinners as it does to buy the materials to make it. I have found though with my very little budget I am buying more fresh and expermenting more. You see for the longest time I didn't like cooking but living on my own I am liking trying new creations from what I have. I grew up in a home surrounded by amazing smells of cooking and baking.  So much my mom made from scratch when she could. When our family gets together usually all the girls would end up in the kitchen making different dishes.

At work it is one of the first comments as visitors come into my house, "something smells good/amazing/wonderful." At my day job I make potages with margrim, sage, thyme, mints, lovage and other pot herbs and it fills the house with almost a peaceful smell. Laying the board was essential to everyday life. A meal was cooked using things from the garden, the fields and the woods. It was made with time and love. The chicken bellow alone took me three hours to roast using 17th century methods. Will tell though it smelled as good as it looked and tasted even better. So worth the wait.

At home though cooking means something else it isn't about smells or the history of it but the memories.  I can count on one hand how many times we went out as a family that wasn't McDonalds or pizza. For my family even on vacation my mom made us supper. I would go to school and my friends would complain about their mom's meat loaf or other dishes. I on the other hand looked foward to my mom's cooking and even my Grandmothers'. There is nothing like my mom's chicken ala king or my Gk's pie or GG's Lobster. Now as I sign off and go use my GK's cooking tools, plates and silverwear to make some supper I hope you enjoyed my oen little dip into memories.

My GK's stand mixer I used to make cake. Sunbeam date unknown.

Spin, Spin, drop, clatter

Spinning is the art of making yarn using a drop spindle or spinning wheel to create fine materials to weave or knit into fine garments. Although its origins are unknown we do know it is one of the oldest form of fiber making. It begins with roving fibers that are formed from the raw material. Most spinners I have spoken to spin wool, but a few spin linen, silk or cotton. Regardless of what you spin the fibers become one of a kind.

The art has often been done by women and from what I have found the men that did it were usually weavers or knitters. In most cases though it was womens work. Done by widow women, orphans or by a weaver's wife the yarn would be made and then sent off to the next step.

The drop spindles can vary just as much as the color Found in the yarn. The first samples were twisted between the fingers and then wrapped around a stick. The next step was to hang it from a rock as a weight and then combine the two, weight and stick. Today the weight is called a whorl and sits either on the top or bottom helps to weigh down the spinning fiber as it draws from the roving.

Every spinner will tell you that there is no one way to spin. My teacher taught me to first draft and then spin the yarn using park and draft, I was soon drafting while spinning. They all say to practice but some prefer top whorl which is the easiest to find, while others prefer bottom whorls. I do have a bottom whorl but prefer the top, I find it easier to get a nice spin on my spindle.

So I will leave you with a though why is it called a drop spindle?
The spinner spins ever so quickly, drafting,  creating beautiful one of a kind pieces until it snaps, the spindle drops to the floor. The spinner not dishearted picks it up and just keeps going.

A Young Girl's Sample.

It seems every towns' historical museum or museum on the home has one thing,  samples of embodiery. Today most embroidered pieces are done on machine or done in cross stitch on special cloth. However there was a time it was done on spare cloth and a young girl would spend countless hours practing her stitches on it making what was called a sampler. I still have plans to make my own, someday. Each one varried depending on the girl but all had commonalities like her name, the alphabet,  numbers 0-9, the year or month, some phrase (usually from the bible), and an image.  I have seen the image varry from flowers, to homes, to a tree. I have even seen one where the girl embroidered her family in front of a house.

These beautiful piece of work would be the foundation for their future because it created a basic knowledge of sewing they would use in making things like towels, napkins and eventually quilts for their home.  I have seen it on corset/stays, pockets, coifs, and so many other pieces of clothing. I have even heard that in some cases gitls would embroider the pocket that usually went under the dress and then wear it over the dress as a way of saying "I am single, and look how neat and tidy my stitches are. I will make you a useful wife."

Today we don't really think of it as a needed skill. If it is done it is usually a preset cross stitch pattern that we picked up on a whim at some museum or JoAnns. We think oh that is pretty but not really origional so it gets pushed into a corner and forgotten about.

So I will leave you with a Historical Stitcher's cross stitch origional that I did almost 10 years ago as a school art project.

For the love of a Mother

Since so much of what I do and make is tied to my family I thought I would have a special blog in honor of Mother's Day.

Mothers we love them, we get annoyed with them, we learn from them, and we couldn't live without them. They are up with us at all hours of the night, clean us, and some of them dispite this still have more, I have a brother to prove this fact. We can Never thank them enough.

For me my mother, my Godmother, my grandmothers and my aunts are my rocks. Even the ones who have moved on. I can hear their voice in my head going "you got it" or "do you really need that." Moms are great. I loved spending my weekends with my Godmother knitting or sewing and watching classic movies. I love visiting my GG and just talking. When I am with her the most valuable thing in the world is time.

Now I can't forget my mom. She taught me to sew, knit, embroider, and so much more. Spending days in the kitchen with her or walking barefoot through the garden together. Yes she was the queen of embarrassments, when she came to my swim meets to be a timer, wearing Santa hats in January and wearing long johns at girl scout camp with the flap down so she could show off my snoopy pj bottoms. She stole them from me just for this purpose. The thing is I wouldn't trade it for anything when I was fighting with my dad  because  he wasn't keen on me going to college for history and then the bribes for me to choose the NH school over the NY school she was the one, with help from my Godmother, who told me to hold my ground. He eventually came around and I think my mom had something to do with convincing him.

So heres to our Moms and all their protection, love, teaching, hugs and patience.

Tatting away

I first learned about tatting in 2007 just after my Grandfather K passed away. I had seen tatted lace all over both my Grandparents' place but it wasn't until 2008 I learned the differences between bobbin lace, which is the form most are thinking of when they think handmade lace, and tatting. The fall before my mother and aunt had been cleaning out his house and found a stash of my Grandmother's tatting shuttles and patterns of her design. At the time I was more focused on the letters from World War II between Grandpa and his parents so tatting got pushed to the side.

In the summer of 2010 I found sanity in cloth. I started making clothing, practicing knitting, and decided I wanted to try this tatting. I was living in West Virginia at the time and so my mom sent me some of Grandma's supplies. Not only was I trying to learn how I was also wanted to learn the history.

1749-52 John Wollaston

Tatting or knotting is thought to be derived from making fishing nets and after watching one of the guys at work making one I can see the similarities. Most tatting is done with a shuttle like the one seen in the woman's hand. I tat with my right so with my left I loop my thread and then move my shuttle, wrapped with more thread, around the thread looped in my left. Some what like my friend making the fishing net.

You can see our lady's shuttle is rather large and most samples I have seen going back to about 1670s are the same. I am still  trying to determine the year of the first samples of tatting but I have discovered the shuttles were bigger and thread was thicker and it is still using a clove hitch knot like today.

The skill surged in popularity among the wealthier classes and by the 1860s was a well thought pass time if you didn't do embroidery and had time to spare. With large shuttles it was clunky and started fadding away until the shuttles got smaller as well as the thread. Today it is done very similar to those first samples making loops and knots. The shuttles are smaller and in some cases people do it with special needles instead.

Today it is considered a dieing art with those able to do it making trim and jewelry. So I will leave you with images of this lost skill.