pretty pins and a clarification about the iron dye

I've gotten a good start at organizing my embroidery floss.  It's taking a bit longer than I thought, but I keep telling myself that it will be worth the effort.

At any rate, they look pretty lined up on my table.

A few of you had asked about the greying solution I used on the pins, so I thought I'd clarify just a bit.

I take an old jar and fill it with about 1 1/2 cups of white vinegar and add a pad of steel wool.  I used 000 steel wool, but I suspect you could use any grade, or even other steel objects like nails.  I let my solution sit for 24 hours, remove the steel wool, and use this solution to paint on the wood.  The solution you saw in yesterday's post has been around a while and it is quite rusty.  A new solution will still be clear, not rusty and scary like mine.  Be sure to use a jar that you don't mind getting covered in rust.

I dunked the clothespins in the solution, shaking the jar until they were fully coated, then removed them to dry.  After they dried, I rinsed them well with water and dried them again.  You'll get different effects depending on the type of wood you use, and you can also choose to water down your solution for a more subtle effect.  It's good fun.

Hope that helps.  Happy Tuesday!

clothespins and neurosis

One of my goals for this new year is to organize myself better.  Organization isn't my strong suit, it takes real effort for me, but I recognize that when I am organized it makes a significant impact on all aspects of my life.

One area that grew to monster-like proportions during the busy pre-holiday season was my case of floss.

 

Behold:

Not only is it less-than-delightful to try to find a certain color of thread in this mess but I've also jabbed myself with porcupine quills, more than once, that have nestled themselves in there.  Also my ipod is in there somewhere but I'm reluctant to dig because of the aforementioned quills. (what? doesn't this happen to you?)

I needed to tame this beast but I don't like using the cardboard bobbins for floss.  I liked the idea of clothespins though so I grabbed a handful of well-worn ones from the line and started winding.

It worked out rather nicely but since I had a limited supply of these perfectly greyed pins on hand, I fetched  a couple of packages of new ones from the closet.

I looked at the new pins and thought "they're so... new."  And it bothered me.  They're perfectly functional of course, which is the point, but... and here's where I face the fact that I am, in fact, a freak.

Rather than wind the rest of my floss on those unsightly new pins, I decided to age them.  I keep a jar of iron solution on hand for aging wood and for overdipping when I'm doing natural dyeing, so I grabbed it and got to work.

That's better.  Some of them even look spalted, which is cool.

I'm still kind of shaking my head at myself for going through the (admittedly minimal) trouble of aging the pins.  Why should that matter?  It doesn't affect its function.  I'm not sure why it mattered, but it did...

I'm not the only one, right?

Working on the weekend

I spent some time this morning organizing the studio area. It's been largely unusable since this spring's floodings. My work tables were piled high with materials of every imagineable type in an effort to save them from the water so I've been doing all of my working in the living area of the house (much to my hubby's chagrin). I got down there early today and started to make it a usable space again and I can't wait until it's finished.

As a reward for my hard work, I treated myself to some sewing time and some of hubby's fresh from the oven soft pretzels (with mustard, naturally). I'm working on some teeny owl brooches today out of felted wool sweater material. They're each about 2" tall and have little vintage mother of pearl buttons for eyes.

What are you working on today?