#INKtober Earrings & Knitting

Here's another page of #INKtober sketches from the 17th through the 23rd, this time of earrings belonging to my mom, with one exception. You'll have to read the story behind my delicate gold and diamond earrings. These are pretty much drawn actual size, and in checking for maker's marks, I did find one. Since following Antique Road Show and seeing so many instances of people thinking they had relatively worthless costume jewelry only to find it might have been made by Tiffany or some other big name, or at the very least, contain real gemstones upping their value, I've often checked my mother's jewelry just in case, but to no avail - no riches hiding in those jewelry boxes. As for the maker's mark I did find, it is for a costume jewelry company called Pakula which was started in the 1950's. I found out a little about the company's history including this description:

Without exception, all Pakula decorations demonstrated their impeccable quality and expressive design. Traditionally, the Pakula craftsmen used metal alloys of gold and silver tones, faux pearls and high quality rhinestones. Also, they used fashionable material at the time – colored enamel, which, in combination with the gold surface formed an unusually beautiful duet. 

Though high quality, vintage pieces I found on the internet are only selling for $25 to $50. Makes me wonder how much they cost when new. A few examples have similar design elements as mine.

Sleeves being lightly blocked

After doing much dragging of feet plus company interruptions, I hunkered down over the weekend and got the second sleeve of the eyelet cardigan sweater finished. I am so glad to have the knitting done as it has been hard on my hands - the combination of worsted wool yarn and pattern requiring knitting two stitches together over and over was more work than the pattern used in the lavender sweater. Will have to remember that when I choose a pattern for the denim blue worsted wool still waiting. 

So now that the knitting is done, I'm giving it a "light blocking" before joining the sleeves to the body and joining the sides, along with a small join at the back of the neckline, per instructions. Not a favorite job, but not particularly onerous. All looks a little questionable at this stage, but after joinings are done, it will get one more good block, probably with a soaking of that Olive Knits product per her instructions. One thing is puzzling me. You might remember that I ran short on yarn when knitting the lavender sweater which put me in a panic. Somehow calculations on how many skeins I'd need was off. I think I added an extra skein to my calculations for this sweater, and I have 3 untouched skeins left. I give up!

The two binders are full of loose photos with info on the back

I meant to share this picture in my last post when I mentioned my company poring over old pictures and photo albums. These are most of what I am the keeper of that we spent time looking at. I've digitized some, would like to digitize it all but that project has turned out to be much more time consuming than I anticipated. I have so many other interests that it is hard to find time for the scanning  and adding descriptions to the scans. A lot like the slides I'm part way through. I wanted to do the digitizing partly for my nieces and nephews but that nephew who visited wasn't waiting; I caught him snapping away with his phone whenever he saw a photo that interested him. Good for him!

Company, Decorations, #INKtober Pins

Me and my motley crew

I survived the few days of family visit pretty well and had a better time than I'd anticipated. Maybe it was because I spent so much time gabbing with my brother's step-daughter while "the boys" immersed themselves in watching Dodgers baseball games. :-) We also spent an afternoon looking through the old family photos and albums that I am the keeper of. I took them all out to dinner on my brother's birthday, to my little town's famed steakhouse, The Hydra. It has been in business at the same location since 1975 and it did not disappoint. I was pleased that my brother thought their Filet Mignon was the best he'd ever had and that since it was his birthday, he got a huge slice of Mud Pie which we all got a taste of. In the above picture I'm sitting in between my step-niece and her husband, while we are bookended by my brother on the left and his son, on the right.

After they all left, I caught my next door neighbor girl and her mother out surveying the Halloween decorations they had put up. We sort of share that tree and I am always happy to see them putting up holiday decorations, something I just don't do. This year they put goblets in the hands of the skeletons. There's even a skeleton of a cat!

I skipped a few days of #INKtober sketching while company was here but quickly got caught up. This page is all about pins - a huge angel one and a variety of circle pins that were popular in the 1960's. Including a lot of storytelling and speculations.

Page Two of #INKtober Sketches

This so describes me and is pertinent right now as I do some panic cleaning in preparation for company, panic because I thought I had another week before they came so plenty of time to pace myself with the cleaning. Instead, on Thursday I stared at the calendar in disbelief. No this can't be. They are due on the 13th; how did I miss, as I wrote the date on each #INKtober sketch, that the 13th was just a few days away? Well, procrastination thwarted and I'm nearly ready!

I missed a few days of sketching because of this but I was able to catch up yesterday. Couldn't do these pieces of jewelry without adding some color with colored pencil Also couldn't resist including the heart-shaped box that the ring rests in. As always, click on the picture for a larger view.

That ring is one mom received for Christmas in 1951 - before I was born. I love it when I can find pictures from long ago of objects I still have. This is a scan of a slide, thus the poor quality, but you can clearly see the ring on her finger along with a compact and lipstick holder that were also Christmas gifts that year. I do remember those but no idea what happened to them. I suspect the fancy pajamas she's wearing were also Christmas gifts. It was sort of a thing every year to get mom new pajamas, and then me too when I got older. And after gift opening pics like this were also a thing with our family. How about yours? 

Well, off to complete my preparations for company . . . 

It's #INKtober!

I can't remember exactly why but I skipped INKtober last year. This year has been doing a good job of slipping away from me so I wasn't thinking about it even as October quickly approached. Then my goddaughter made a comment that she was looking forward to my INKtober sketches. Oh dear . . . and that was mid September in the midst of my big dyeing project. Would I be up for a daily sketch come October. Yeah, she sorta shamed me into it, at least thinking about it - lol. I've always done better keeping up all month if I have a theme and as soon as I settled on one, I got excited about INKtober again. Remember my year of shoes? Well, this is going to be my year of jewelry!

Here are the first six days. I'm starting with favorite pieces that belonged to my grandmother and going from there into pieces my mother wore and some of my own favorites. Click on the pic for a larger view. Hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane. 

Wrapping Up The Dyeing

Gads, could it really be the first of October? Seeing this tree when I pulled into the library parking lot last week left no doubt about how far into the year we are. However, I found some solace in this quotation from an essay by Joy Williams on the truth-telling of fall: 

 

 

“Fall is. It always comes round, with its lovely patience. If in the beginning it’s restless, at the end it’s resigned, complete in its waiting, complete in the utter correctness of what it has to tell us. Which is that we’re transitory. We’re transient, we’re temporary, we’re all only sometime.”

 

Another nudge toward acceptance might be the colors of the final dye runs for my friends. The reds, oranges and golds are definitely of the season. I'm very pleased with how these turned out, although the golds could have been a little deeper towards an orange. I think it's an old dye to blame.

I'd been holding back some earlier runs that had been rinsed but not put through a Synthropal wash because I knew I'd have more fabric in similar colors that could be washed with them. Here are the greens, sort of lime greens in the middle (struggling with camera to get every color right) but nothing that was very teal green even though I tried some overdyeing. On the bottom is the "teal green" that in no way is green. At the very top is a half yard dyed with some leftover purple and fuchsia dyes I think (I sort of lost track of the combinations I tried using up leftover dye solutions). That fuchsia makes it almost neon!

In the same way that my friend kept repeating "lime green" she also repeated "folded fabric". So I did two fat quarters folded different ways and put them in the "teal green" dye solution. The lighter portions do look like they are trying to lean towards a teal.

With the "precision" dyeing finished, I had fun playing with leftover dye solutions and came away with some stunners I may have a hard time giving up. This is the technique of stuffing a fat quarter into a tall narrow jar like an olive jar, covering with soda ash solution, pouring a little dye solution in and letting that set for about ten minutes while the solution starts settling to the bottom. Then pour a little more soda ash solution and another dye solution color on top and let sit overnight or up to 24 hours. 

Trying to get a closeup of the subtle texturing in the white part. 

Here's another one, the sort of thing we literally dye for.

And still with plenty of dye solution to play with, I dyed up three linen napkins that go with a linen tablecloth used at my grandparents' golden wedding anniversary reception. I've seen the pictures of its otherwise uninteresting yellow as it peeks through the lace tablecloth thrown over it. Not something I ever thought I would use but it came with a cedar chest full of other family treasures after they died and I've hung onto it out of pure sentimentality for over 50 years. But with the newfound skill of dyeing, I've often thought about cutting it up and overdyeing it, and now I know it can be done with excellent results. The upper two were done in bags, the lower one pinched in the middle to create folds falling down before putting in a glass jar.

I still have some dye solution left, and being raised in a "waste not want not" household, I feel I should do a few more one of a kind pieces rather than toss it. On the other hand, my dye powder supply overfloweth, and I have company coming in about two weeks which will require that flurry of housework in preparation. Maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead . . .