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Some things just don’t work

I had a great idea last fall. I envisioned a multi-level yarn holder, like milk crates on their sides but with a half-height front hanging out at an angle. One could include up to four bins, because dowels are four feet long and each bin is a foot-cube, and they could be rearranged (well, except one would have to be the top permanently). It was golden! I sketched it out in my little graph paper notebook and gathered all the cotton remnants I had that are too heavy for my usual uses. I made four bins almost completely – the top edge of that front lip needed to be finished – and threaded them onto the dowels. I stood it up in my sewing room and BOW BOW. It sort of twisted and fell over.

Well, I was too busy then to get back to it, so yesterday I dove in again. I sewed up the remaining edges and then sewed dowels along the bottom outer edges of the top bin. I thought a nice square of rigidity would fix the problem. Well, it sort of did. Not quite. So I delved into my shockingly large stash of “cardboard from inside calendars” and had enough to put a 12″x12″ piece in the bottom of each bin. So, okay. Not perfect, but okay.

However, then I tried to fill it. My original plan had four hooks and eyes holding the bins together, one near each corner, and I had faked it with a safety pin in each corner. Not enough. I put things in and the second bin fall off the first one. Okay. Try again. I repinned the corners and added two pins in the center-front and center-back edges. Refill!

BOW BOWWWWWWWWW. I chose this picture out of the ones I took because it gave the best sense of how much this puppy is leaning. I could perhaps sew the bins together, navigating my lovely dowels, but I am through with this thing. I’m not sure it is ever going to look anything but saggy and wrinkly. Oh well! Not every project succeeds.

One Fish

And another is finished!

In honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday on March second, I began stitching another embroidery for the Children’s Book Quilt, from One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish:

My version is a little sleepy compared to the original, but I’m quite pleased with it. There may be a second Dr. Seuss drawing in the final collection… stay tuned.

I am the mad scientist of soap

In honor of my sister’s birthday, my first video post! I mean, the post is a post, but there’s a video at the end. Visit Kate’s blog for book reviews, art, and miscellany. Happy birthday, baby sister!

I have been experimenting more with soapmaking. I got a gift card for Jo-Ann Fabrics from my grandmother for Christmas, and I went to their (horrible) website and (with a great deal of pain and effort) ordered some clear glycerin soap and a soap mold. I already had some purple glycerin soap I’d bought at a winery, which was supposed to be wine scented but is really artificial grape flavoring scented.

I had the brilliant idea that I would mix some non-glycerin soap with the clear glycerin to slightly tint and scent it, and after a little spree at TJMaxx, came away with some acai scented soap, which complemented the grape scent well. There was one problem: grossly different melting points. I was microwaving the glycerin, which works great, but the non-glycerin does not melt at temperatures the glycerin can reach without scorching. I did a lot of whisking, which introduced some foam but did not succeed in fully incorporating the soap bits. The foam rose to the top of the soap molds, which actually produced an interesting effect. I poured a bit, embedded some shapes that were half grape soap and half plain glycerin, and poured some more.

The first picture above is the top when the soap was in the mold, and the second is the bottom. You can see the embedded shape trapped some of the foam/soap bits, and the rest rose to the top. The bat soap is one of the two for which I had to melt some additional glycerin, which is why it is not completely covered in foam. I like that effect, actually. It’s kind of like the bat is flying through fog, or you’re seeing it in the clouds.

To make the shapes, incidentally, I sliced the soaps with a wire cheese slicer and then cut with cookie cutters.

That first run made four soaps, a triceratops soap that turned out like the bat soap and now resides at my boyfriend’s apartment, and a heart soap that didn’t unmold that well and was melted down for round 2: the foamination.

I thought it would be cool to intentionally get the foamy effect of the first set of soaps, and so I combined glycerin and non-glycerin soap with some water, put it in the top of a double boiler, added salt to the bottom of the double boiler so it would boil hotter, and whisked thoroughly. It didn’t get completely smooth, but it got very thick and foamy.

These came out quite soft and I was not convinced they would hold up to use without crumbling. I wrapped them in paper towels for a few days to try to dry them out a bit before testing the two square soaps with handwashing. Verdict? Unsurprisingly, the foamy soap produced better lather. It also held up solidly, though it kind of looks like it has the mange. The square is slightly large for my hands’ comfort, but fine (I might prefer a smaller footprint with a thicker soap). I’ll keep using them and see what happens when I reach the embedded shapes.

Clean-up was in two rounds, and round two contained a surprise. It’s not exactly vulcanization of rubber, but it was a happy accident. See for yourself (and don’t mind how subdued I sound in this video):