Trunk Club

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I recently heard about his interesting service called Trunk Club. It's a personal online shopping service for men. When I told my boyfriend about it, he immediately went online to sign up. Then a personal shopper on their end contacted him saying they would have a phone meeting to chat about his clothing style.You're all wondering, "How did I not think of this?! How did it take this long before someone put this into practice?!" I know. It's genius. Most men hate going to stores to shop. It's hard to get him to look on clothing online. And as much as I enjoy shopping, sometimes he fights me on the clothing I think looks good on him. Enter the third party of Trunk Club.

He just got off the phone with his personal shopper. The "trunk" arrives in a week! We'll see how it goes!

 

 

Botanical Garden

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We discovered the New York Botanical Garden a couple of weeks ago. The boyf's mother came into town for his birthday and she inquired about seeing the Monet Garden exhibit. Neither of us had been there, and it sounded intriguing, so we set out for the Bronx. 

It's hard to express the beauty of it, as cheesy as that sounds. I'm not interested in showing sweeping pictures of the entire exhibit, because that feels wrong somehow. Go see it, if you're in town; it's open until October 21. The greenhouse is amazing. And to have all the flowers in bloom and at the same time inside the greenhouse, well I can only imagine what sort of biological-greenhouse-feat it took to do that. If you go in October, tell me if all those flowers are still magically in bloom!

I fell in love with the crepe-like texture of this Clematis. And I was strangely entranced by the reflecting pools they had.  

Look at the striping on these beauties.

Technically this one isn't part of the exhibit, but I just had to show it. I'm think it's a staghorn fern and it grows from the ceiling (or attached to other plants) in tropical climates. Holy crap. It is so alien. I LOVE IT!

For the Love of Tools: Part 4

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Now, I wouldn't normally post about a new toy tool, but it's quite a handy little sucker. It's a temple. 

A temple keeps a weaving piece the proper width while on the loom. When weaving without a temple, the side threads have a tendency to draw in, causing tension on the outer threads. Constant tension on those threads can result in broken warp threads. Not cool.

This is actually the first time I'm using one, and I'm not entirely sure if I'm using it properly! But it has definitely helped with keeping things in line and the right width. I'm excited to welcome it to my tool box.

Seeing (dye) spots

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Several weeks ago I was dyeing a scarf with "navy". Or at least that's what it said on the label. What's important to know in this account is that dyes are either pure or, well, not pure meaning that they are formulated with a combination of pure dyes to get that specific color. That color you think you need, but really you don't. You know the ones - the ones with the fancy names like 'geranium' and 'dark sky' and 'meadow green'. I usually stay away from them since I enjoy mixing colors on the fly, and they teach you in school you're only supposed to need three technically. But when it comes to really dark colors like navy, I don't mess around.
Now this may seem trivial. Pure. Not pure. What are you getting at, Tara? Oh, it matters for one very important reason. If you don't fully dissolve the dye or if for some reason you are super sloppy and a small teensy-weeny grain of that powdered dye gets on your cloth while it sets you will get spots. Spots that won't come out or blend because the cloth is hungry for anything it can possibly soak up. Case in point:
Yes, that is a fuchsia spot in the middle of my navy dye job. You type A's are thinking, "How in the world did that happen?? How is it even possible to not dissolve dye?!" and you type B's are thinking, "Oh, it's just part of the process, dear. It's beautiful. Embrace it."
So I'm going to embrase my type B side for a moment. After this 'tragedy' happened, I thought, "Why not take this mistake and make it a deliberate thing?" Let's try it out, shall we? 

I used a urea and water mixture to keep the cloth wet while the dye set overnight. Urea is a humectant, meaning that it attracts water. Or, put another way, since urea is present on the cloth, water has difficulty evaporating leaving more time for the dye to set. Since black is made up of just about every color, I started there:

Ooooh, pretty. And as I placed salt on top (to help further set, disperse the water, and deepen the color) things started to spread:

Lovely! I suppose we'll see what happens soon? Thank you B's! Until we meet again...

Too Integral

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Do you remember that DIY bobbin winder I made? The one that is extremely integral to the weaving process? Well, the wooden handle I use to clamp it down with wriggled itself loose and then right off the steel shaft. Apparently it was only glued on and I definitely didn't have the proper tools to fix it. It was rendered useless in early May and I wasn't able to weave for a solid 2 weeks. Which is one of many reasons why I haven't been posting anything about weaving.

So I brought it to my brother, the machinist, and he fixed it. It now has this really awesome "prosthetic arm" that clamps wonderfully to my table. Really, it works way better than before! Thanks dude!

And if you're wondering if my entire family uses their hands in some way, the answer is undoubtedly yes. If the economy ever collapses and we have to go to bartering, we'll be just fine, thank you very much.

I'm back!

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I know. Radio silence. I'm not really sure what happened, to be totally honest. I'm going to blame it on my bobbin winder breaking. But it's back! And now I'm back! I'm able to weave again. So get ready for it. Whatever "it" is....

Produce bags!

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You know how you have a project to complete, but all it needs is that last little thing that you can never seem to get yourself to do? Let me introduce you to my produce bag project. Everything has been done on these bad boys, except for one small itsy-bitsy piece of hardware that has been missing: the cord lock.

Oh cord locks. Let's just say that I accidentally bought 100 cord locks that wouldn't work, not to mention the cord to go with it. Sigh. When will I learn to spend a little more for small quantities before buying the whole lot? Anyway, those are for sale if you're interested.

And these produce bags are for sale too! Check them out here.

Sweets for my sweet...

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After another 2 week long work trip, my boyf is coming home! So I thought I'd make him some macarons. Apparently I'm out of practice. I 'macaronaged' a little too much and then cooked the egg in my lemon curd filling. Tough day in the kitchen. But that's okay. The wafers taste good on their own!