flintandpyrite

[flintandpyrite]

Portuguese crown jewels and Amélia de Orleães, last Queen consort of Portugal, (1865–1951), wearing a sapphire pendant

[flintandpyrite]

I recently fulfilled a deep desire of mine to go out to sea and pursue the sight of maritime birds. The ocean was beautiful, as soon as my ship left the embrace of False Bay and lost the sight of the Cape of Good Hope we were greeted by flocks of the beautiful Pintado Petrel with wings recalling the pattern of melting alpine snow. We saw the Southern Fulmar, who’s ice-colored plumage recalls the Antarctic wildernesses where it rears it’s young, the fragile storm-petrel who’s wings seem far too small for the unyielding open sea, and the giant-petrel, of whom legends have been told that include the bird’s predation on sailors that fall from the decks of their ships. At last, about 30 miles from land we saw a Northern Royal Albatross, a bird with a wingspan nearing 10 feet. Upon sighting the bird I raised my camera to document the near-mystical creature, however, I found myself unable to hold my hands steady in the face of the jarring waves. I was overcome with the torments of Neptune, and at last, while still gripping my camera attempting to continue following the magnificent bird- Gracious reader, I frew up.

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Nothing says Festive like Decaying Log (TM)

@milkshakemotel I was obviously inspired by your ganache bark and shelf fungus, but I don’t enjoy meringue much so I used marzipan and cocoa powder instead. The slime mold is apricot jam and the bug eggs are sugar pearls.

[flintandpyrite]

120 hours and a half of crocheting; 50,400 stitches; 2,9 kg of yarn. It measures 1.5mx2m. The most slavic thing I’ve ever made is finally done.

Validate me pls.

[flintandpyrite]

Shop updates, December 12, 2024:

Need an easy last-minute gift? I have digital gift cards up on my website! I keep a backup of my whole Etsy inventory there.

Needle threaders are back in stock! They aren't indestructible (rip, I was trying to thread a standard sharp needle with perlé cotton) but they're a damn sight sturdier than the aluminum ones in cheap sewing kits

(speaking of sewing kits, ours come with these needle threaders already inside them! And they're perfectly complemented with a leather thimble or thread conditioning wax)

So sometimes I look at Victorian stencils and designs just kind of... happen.

[flintandpyrite]

let’s say that being hot as a form of empowerment for all women could even be a thing. let’s say it’s possible to look hot for yourself and not for men. where did your idea of hotness come from? why is it important to you to look hot? who decides what’s hot? why must you change something about yourself or cover something about yourself to get hot? what makes you not hot at your most unmanicured state? why? how did you know what to do to get hot? do the people around you view hotness in the same way?

[flintandpyrite]

if you start reading books again. you will feel at least a little better. I promise

[flintandpyrite]

something that came to me in a dream

[flintandpyrite]

We had latkes and eggs and smoked salmon for dinner with sour cream, capers, and my dad’s pear chutney playing the part of applesauce. It was amazing. I also made a single glass for each of us of smitten kitchen’s small batch eggnog with whiskey in, which was exactly the right amount. I am definitely drunk though. 10/10 merry christmases.

I am also in the midst of making a yule log cake inspired by @milkshakemotel and Claire Saffitz. So far so good. Will update tomorrow when I try to frost it.

[flintandpyrite]

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, as covered by The Mountain Goats

A pretty great blog I follow just reminded me of this jem

Take note of then he sings ‘through the years, we all will be together’, and then turns to the person on the floor next to him and says ‘in the grave, that’s where we’ll all actually be together, in the grave’

I swear to christ

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[flintandpyrite]

If you want some atmosphere while cooking this evening or tomorrow, I recommend the annual Milk Carton Kids Holiday Livestream, where they play holiday songs and a few of their own favorites to a live audience. The live portion of it actually happened last week but I missed it due to Being in Maine and it’s just as good a little late

[flintandpyrite]

happy normal fuckin day to everyone who doesnt celebrate christmas or rly any holidays today n tomorrow. hope you have an average day. hope its chill like any other

[flintandpyrite]

The pond is mostly frozen. I did some walking in circles on it while on the phone with my parents debating the pros and cons of my job offers…still no decision. Hopefully can decide by weeks’ end!!

[flintandpyrite]

Hooking rugs that look like dogs

Here's how I do it:

The process I use is called rug hooking (not latch hook or punch needle or tufting, though it is the forerunner of the latter two techniques). Rugs are hooked by pulling loops of fabric strips or yarn through the holes of a base fabric with a coarse open weave, like burlap, or linen, or rug warp. The loops are pulled through the fabric with a squat-handled hook whose business end is shaped like a crochet hook.  There are no knots and the loops aren't sewed down in any way.  The whole thing stays put just by the tension of all those loops packed together in the weave of the foundation fabric.

This isn't a true detailed tutorial but a walk-through of my particular process. The same information is on my web page, emilyoleary.com .

I hook with yarn, rather than with cut strips of wool fabric, which is what many rug hookers use.  I can get a looser, more organic distribution of loops with yarn than I could with wool strips, which are hooked in neat lines. 

Mostly I use wool yarn. In terms of yarn weight, I can use DK, worsted, or Aran.  If I'm using thicker yarn, I leave more holes un-hooked; if I'm using finer yarn, I hook more densely or double up lengths of it.  I particularly like using single ply yarns (like Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride or Malabrigo Worsted).  I don't keep count, but I think I usually use around two dozen types and colors of yarn per dog.  

This is my yarn wall in my apartment. Mostly brown and gray yarn!

I start from a small drawing in my sketchbook, then I head to FedEx office to use a copy machine, blowing up the drawing repeatedly and experimenting with how big the dog rug should be. 

After transferring the image onto my linen, I immediately go over it with Sharpie, because the Saral is really difficult to see and really easy to rub off.

The rug is held taut by a PVC quilting frame that I set on my lap.

I push my hook down through the fabric with my right hand and my left hand stays below the fabric and guides the yarn while I pull it up and through with the hook. Not every hole in the fabric is hooked. Hooking every hole would make the rug too dense. I do hook pretty densely, though-- If you pick up one of my rugs you’ll see they have a slight curl to them, which is because they’re hooked pretty tight. I'm using all different weights and types of yarn, so it's a challenge to keep the overall tension even.

I hook my loops at varying heights to create a very low relief. Sometimes I trim the loops to make them fluffier or wispier or to shape a particular part. I look at a reference photo while I work and pull out and redo sections a lot.

My q-snap frame can accommodate the growing dog rug. I have extenders to make it bigger and I can clamp around my hooking.

The back of a rug looks like lines of little stitches. The lines are little worm trails snaking around because lines of hooking are not supposed to cross over each other. It's important to start a new length of yarn rather than cross over a stitch you already made! I read this when I first started and took it to heart. It makes it much easier to undo and redo hooking if you have to (and I redo sections A Lot). It also keeps the back from getting too bulky and resulting in uneven wear on the back of a functional rug that gets floor use.

When I’m done hooking everything I turn the rug over and brush watered-down Sobo glue on the edges of the dog, making sure to get one or two of the outermost lines of hooking. I do a couple coats of this thinned out glue. I'm careful not to use so much that it seeps to the front of the rug. When the glue is dry I cut the rug out, but I don't cut so close that the loops don't have any linen to keep them in.

​ It generally takes me at least several months to finish one dog rug. My hooking frame and yarn bag are very portable (though bulky) so I can hook out and about at coffee shops or the library or a brewery if there's enough space and light.

Hooking in the wild makes me an ambassador for making things in general and rug hooking in particular. I answer people's questions and always emphasize how relatively easy it is to get started hooking. Sometimes I get anxious that other people will hook rugs that look like mine but better, but I think that working in a traditional medium means you should share your knowledge for the good of the craft.

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Finished! This really is a wonderful pattern. I folded the brim to the inside and stitched it down as suggested by the pattern and the combination of 1x1 rib on top of colorwork gives a really plush and warm hat:

If you recall my previous post, I had accidentally knitted it about twice as long as necessary, so I did have to rip back roughly half of what I had done and restart the decreases at about 2x the rate. This still gives the appealingly cute peak but without awkward flopping this time. I really love the braided tassel—I’ll have to do that on more hats going forward.

[flintandpyrite]

Sampler (English, 1804).

Silk and metal wrapped silk embroidery on linen.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Catalog Photo   Wikimedia.