Month: February 2013

Candle Day…

Candles in glass jars

Today I did get as far as making some candles – these are in 120ml amber glass jars, just waiting for their wicks to be trimmed before I pop the lids on. The tealight should give you some idea of the size, although I’ll admit that the picture’s at a bit of a funny angle.

Those of you who wonder why I don’t bake may begin to understand why when I reveal that I managed to get the weight-to-volume conversion for these completely wrong. I thought I was making five 120ml candles. In fact I turned out to be making seven 120ml candles plus another six tealights! Which means I now need to order more glass jars before I can finish making the rest of the fragrances. But on the plus side – more candles!

While I was placing the order for the second batch of jars, I thought I might as well make it worth the shipping fee by ordering a few more bits and pieces as well. I’m almost out of hand cream and moisturiser, which I usually buy from Lush, but I thought I’d have a try at making my own. I’ve done it before, and it’s no more difficult than making the candles… as long as you get the weights and measures right!

I’m currently a bit galled about having paid £30 for ingredients when it would have cost me £20 to go and buy my usual stuff from Lush. But then I’m buying a much greater quantity of oils and butters than would fit in my two little black pots, and their shelf life’s long enough that I’ll be able to make a good few batches with them, so it should work out more economical in the long run.

I plan to drag my aromatherapy training out of the depths of my memory (or perhaps read my old text books!) to make it even better for my skin. Hopefully I’ll be able to come up with something that smells nice, feels nice, and takes down a bit of the redness that the fibromyalgia causes. That might be a bit of a tall order for my first attempt, but I’ll give it a go!

Jewellery Day

Labradorite earrings

Today was going to be Candle Day, but Paul’s at home with some horrible lurgy, so it seemed rude to make the house smell when he’s feeling poorly. They may be nice fragrances once they’re in a candle, but they’re very strong while you’re actually making them!

I’m not feeling too brilliant myself, so I thought I’d start the day gently by making a couple of pieces of jewellery. The earrings above are a little treat for me, and I bought all of the necessary bits from Kernowcraft. They took less than five minutes to put together, and I’m really pleased with them. Despite having three pairs of holes in my ears, I’m always bemoaning my lack of nice earrings – so now I have some lovely faceted labradorite cabochons. They were so easy to put together that I might just have to treat myself to a few more.

Helen's bracelet

This lovely bracelet belongs to my friend Helen, the Bright Lady. It just needed extending a little bit, so I added a couple of extra jump rings, and replaced the original fiddly little fastener with a better one. Again, a simple five-minute job, with all the necessary bits coming from Kernowcraft.

I feel a little bit like a walking advert for them sometimes, but I’ve been shopping from their catalogue since I was a teenager and my Mum had to write cheques for me to send off in the post! Yesterday they announced a job vacancy on their Facebook page, for somebody to design the catalogue and look after the website, and I must admit I spent a little while looking up the price of houses in Perranporth just in case.

Vintage Underwear

Vintage Underwear

On Saturday morning I went to a local antique shop, looking for a wooden hand that I could use to display gloves. (As you do.) I didn’t find one, but I did find four lovely pieces of vintage underwear that I snapped up with great glee!

Vintage Underwear

First out of the basket was this petticoat. It’s in perfect condition, just a few rust spots here and there, and it actually fits me! I’ll just need to shorten the straps, and unpick the tape that’s been used to create gathers under the arms. Then I can wear it underneath the dresses I’m planning to make from my new pattern.

Vintage Underwear

Next up was not one, but two pairs of great big drawers! They’re decorated with drawn threadwork on the legs, each in a different style. Both pairs are a bit damaged. One has a lot of yellowing and a hole in the crotch. The plan for these, I think, is to cut away the worst of the damaged fabric and put in a whole new panel. I’ll also need to replace the elastic and drawstring at the back.

Vintage Underwear

The threadwork is gorgeous though, so fine! I genuinely can’t tell whether the spots in the middle of the squares are made by hand or machine. They’re so even!

Vintage Underwear

The other pair has a simpler design, but no less lovely. These have been repaired quite a lot, and will need a fair bit of work doing if they’re going to be rescued and returned to a wearable state. There’s a small tear at the front waist, and the drawstring channels have come apart on both sides. The crotch is intact in this pair, and in fact looks to have been replaced. The stitching is so tiny that the seams are virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding fabric. There’s also quite a large tear in the back of one leg, that’s been mended in a similarly delicate way.

Vintage Underwear

Both pairs are monogrammed with the initials “MR” just to the left of the centre front.

Vintage Underwear

And last but not least, there’s this pretty little camisole. More modern than the other pieces, it’s overlocked on the inside, and made from lawn rather than densely woven cotton. I can’t tell yet whether the straps will need replacing, or whether they’ll be fine after a good hot iron.

Vintage Underwear

The ribbon that’s threaded through the channel at the front definitely needs replacing though, and there’s a tear that will need to be mended. There’s also a double row of stitching around the waist, that must presumably have once contained elastic. This one’s not as carefully made as the others, which makes me feel less bad about altering it rather than trying to preserve it. In fact, I’m thinking that I might turn it upside down, and make it into a pretty little petticoat or summer nightdress for my niece.

Not bad, for a completely unexpected find!

Snowed under at work…

MERL Garden

Not literally, thank goodness, although this is a picture of the garden at work when it was very frosty just before Christmas! But there have been a lot of changes going on, which has meant a lot of meetings, which has meant going into work on my days off, which has added up to nothing getting done! And this week’s half term, so I’m working extra days for that, so nothing’s going to get done until next week now.

Shortly after that I start a new shift pattern, which doubles the hours of one of my roles, and means working half days and different days each week. All very confusing at the moment, but all we can do is see how it all settles down in time. The best part about this change is that I no longer have to work every weekend, just one in four! So I’ll be able to spend some time with my husband again, and we can hopefully start taking our cameras out and about.

All this is a very long-winded way of saying that I have no idea when I’ll next be able to sit down at the computer and write something, but I hope it won’t be too long!

The History of Underclothes

This is my new favourite book. Originally published in 1951 (the Dover edition above is from 1992), it’s a detailed history of underclothes (the clue is in the title!) from the medieval period to the 1930s. The information is collected from magazines and catalogues, as well as museums and the study of extant garments.

The tone of the writing, as you might expect, is rather dated, and reveals perhaps more than the authors intended about 1950s attitude towards underwear! But the descriptions are invaluable, and extremely detailed.

I only wish that the book had continued to write about one more decade. At the moment I’m interested to learn about underwear of the 1940s – specifically the Utility Clothing Scheme. There’s quite a bit of information out there about CC41 clothing, but I haven’t turned up much about the underwear. Was it included in the brand? Were people expected to just keep wearing the same old worn-out underpants? Did many people make their own? I’m still at the “googling vaguely” stage of research at the moment, so if anybody has any links that might be useful, please feel free to share!

Airship fresheners…

Soy Wax Tealights

…get it? Air fresheners? But they’re steampunk? So Airship fresheners! Anyway, enough of this silliness. Look! I made candles! These little soya tealights were so easy to make. The hardest part was choosing the fragrances in the first place, and then it was all about doing the maths (ugh) to work out the correct proportions of fragrance to wax.

Soy Wax Tealights

I’m making them in tiny little batches to start off with, while I decide which fragrances (maybe all of them!) I want to make into larger candles. This is a half-size baking tray, with the tealight cups and wicks in sustainers all set out.

Soy Wax Tealights

You melt the wax in a bain-marie – in my case a pyrex jug in a shallow saucepan full of simmering water. The soya wax melts at a much lower temperature than other types of candle wax, so you can work with it really quickly.

Soy Wax Tealights

Here they are, all poured out and waiting to set! I had a teensy bit of wax left over, because I didn’t fill the tealight cups all the way to the top. The wax has shrunk down a little bit as it’s set, so I know for next time that I can fill the cups right up to the brim without worrying about them overflowing.

I’m waiting for my last little bit of packaging to arrive, and then I’m going to make them up into sets of five, one of each fragrance. The first half a dozen sets will be for sale at a discounted price (don’t ask me how much, I haven’t done the sums yet!) over on the Eternal Magpie Facebook page.

Feedback will be very welcome on this first batch, and I think it’s easier to get a discussion going over on Facebook. Are the scents too strong? Too subtle? Just plain horrible? Or just right? I really like them, but once they leave my Shed I’m not the one who has to smell them any more! It’s always great to hear what people think.

Tumblr: January archive

Here’s my Tumblr archive for January…

You can see the archive in more detail, here.