September 2015 - Rachael Herron

schoonsoap_logo

I adore Stephanie Klose, and I have for a long time (so much so that we’re vacationing together soon!). She’s a knitter extraordinaire, and a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. You’ve seen her Best in Show Craftsy’s 2014 Silvermine knitted wedding dress, right? Oh, you should see it now, if you haven’t:

Let’s kvell for a moment. Linen/cashmere, people. Her own design.

Okay. Whew. *wipes brow* I will never get over that dress.

Her side hustle is makin’ soap, and she’s just as good at soap as she is at everything else she does.

Schoon Soap. Now, there are a lot of soap makers out there, and I’m a scent-fiend. I have one of those dog noses (which makes it very hard o live with dogs, I’m telling you). Scents are hugely important to me.

And basically, I never ever ever want to live a life without her Herkimer soap. It’s spicy and clovey and completely wonderful. (Clove, cinnamon leaf, rosemary, eucalyptus, and citrusy, earthy litsea cubeba.) I love ALL her soaps, but this one has become essential to my day.

And she’s doing a giveaway AND a discount code for us!

1. Hey, Stephanie, in life, what’s your very favorite smell?

As if I could narrow it down to one—there are SO MANY smells I love. 🙂 Some of my favorites, like mulch or woodsmoke, don’t really lend themselves to soap, but some do, like cardamom and bergamot. And then there are plenty of scents I love that are perfect
for soap, but can only be achieved using synthetic fragrances (lilac and almond come to mind), so they aren’t a fit for Schoon.

2. Do you do all this boiling/making in your home? What’s your setup like?

I do all of it at home! Part of me likes the idea of a dedicated studio, but if I had to go somewhere else to do it, I’d be a lot less productive. I make the soap in our kitchen and use the guest room/office/amp storage room to cure the bars, wrap and label them, and store the wrapped soap. We also do all of the packing and shipping in there.

[YOUR HOUSE MUST SMELL SO DAMN GOOD.]

3. We are going to Iceland together! What are you going to be knitting? And will you be wearing any Alabama Chanin while there?

I’m SO EXCITED about Iceland! I’m not sure yet what project(s) I’m going to bring to work on (something at least moderately interesting to keep me entertained on the flights and something simple for bus rides and so on while we’re there, I think), but I did spin and knit a sweater especially for the trip. The yarn is one ply of a variegated charcoal Gotland fleece I bought at Rhinebeck two years ago and one ply black commercial silk/merino top. The Gotland is pretty hairy and wild so the silk/merino is barely visible; it just gives the yarn a little weight and drape. The sweater itself is a completely plain stockinette raglan pullover that I think I’ll wear to death if I ever get the neckline right. I’ve redone it three times now, but I’m still not 100% happy with it.

I’m going to try to pack as little as I can get away with (something I imagine you’d approve of), but I do have an Alabama Chanin skirt in the works using an old wool jersey dress I felted. That might be just the ticket for dressing up in Iceland in late October. 🙂

ONE WINNER will win a four-pack of soaps of your choice.

TO ENTER:

Go here. Peruse her creations. Leave a comment with which four soaps you would prefer if you are the lucky winner! Winner will be drawn in two days, Saturday afternoon. (International entries okay.)

Get a bonus entry by joining her email list.

If you miss out on winning, or just can’t stand waiting, use the code SOAPAGOGO for 25% off, good till Oct 16, 2015.

And if you buy all her Herkimer, I will come to your house and get some because I can’t live without it.

Winner has been drawn – congrats, JudithNYC! You’ve been emailed.

A-line dress in black, pewter stitching, red/black Bloomers stencil skirt

I was wondering why people were asking me, all worried-like, if I was still knitting. I didn’t get it. I’m always knitting. Of course I’m knitting! I’m mostly done with Bethany’s long-overdue sweater.

But I’ve always been the knitter who doesn’t blog about knitting, haven’t I? I get completely OBSESSED with new things, but it’s never to the exclusion of others. Knitting and writing I always go back to. They’re always with me, no matter what. I just don’t photograph them as I’m going along.

But I tell you what, the Alabama Chanin sewing? It’s blowing my mind. No WONDER people are wondering if I’m still knitting!

Anna’s Garden stencil

I made it myself, after finding out the stencils run from $90-120. (Alabama Chanin encourages you to learn how to make your own things, using her technique. You can make your skirt from 2 thrifted T-shirts = $4. Or you can buy a kit from them = $300. Or you can buy one sewn by the artisans = $1900. Your pick. It’s awesome. I recommend the fourth book, which comes with a CD that has all the previous books’ patterns and all the techniques.)

People have been asking me about how I made the stencil:

I bought a large-enough sheet of .75 mil mylar from a local art supply (I think it was 24 x 30 inches, something like that). I also bought a $5 printout of the Anna’s Garden stencil from the Alabama Chanin site. I used blue Sharpie to mark the mylar, then I used a heated stencil cutter* to cut it out (rested the mylar on the glass of a large picture frame so I didn’t burn anything underneath). It took about 3 hours total, but since it’s the stencil I’m most in love with, I can foresee using this one a long time.

Kay Gardiner commented on Instagram that this kind of sewing scratches the same itch that knitting does, and it’s so true. I’m not a fan of sewing-as-in-mending. I’ll let a ripped shirt go to the thrift store for recycling (watch this movie on Netflix, The True Cost, to learn more about the clothing industry — fascinating), and buttons that fly off my sweaters (because I swear that’s what they do) tend to stay off for way too long. And I love to sew clothes, but it’s really time-intensive. You have to be with your machine. You have to have your stuff. I was never a person who could sew for just twenty minutes and then put everything away.

But this hand-sewing is portable. You’re embroidering small pieces. Everything is in my little sewing basket. No one stitch matters too much because there are so many of them. If you screw up, you’re going slow enough to fix it (not so with a serger! Oh, no! Zip! And your finger’s lying on the ground along with the sleeve of the dress! Maybe I’m not the best with my serger. Hmmm).

And this kind of sewing is gorgeous. Slowly, so slowly, I’m making pieces of clothing that works with MY aesthetic. So far I’ve made a skirt, and a dress, and a tunic, and now I’m working on an embroidered tank. I want to wear all of them, every day. This is my style. This is ME, because I chose it. I spent hours and hours making it, thinking about it as I went. I made the dress out of Alabama Chanin cotton I bought at Verb, but the other pieces are all from thrifted T-shirts (god bless a 5XL man who’s not too hard on his clothing — I SCORED at Thrift Town — some still had tags on!)

It’s bringing out creativity, too. Shirts big enough–those 5XLs aside–can be hard to find. I love gray. So I cut up 5 shirts and started piecing them, for the tunic.

It was fast and dirty, just like everything else I do, but it worked out well. I cut strips and basted them together so they were big enough to use to cut out the pattern pieces.

Ended up with pieces like this:

which I then sewed together into this:

Comfy worn with this gray skirt! (Flat-felled to the outside, knots in, 2 ply black button thread.)

Now I’m working on a black-under-blue tank (same as the above tunic, just a bit shorter).

I sponge-painted the pieces with Jacquard cloth paint. It was a SUPER messy process, and I did it on one of the days recently which was like 140 degrees in the house, so I sweated and swore my way through it. But it was worth it.

Look how beautifully it’s stitching up!

That particular pattern, Anna’s Garden, just makes me weak in the knees. This one will take a while (the simple sewing, like the black a-line and the tunic, go REALLY fast — appliqué like this, of course, goes slower. Still, everything is faster than knitting, amirite?). But slow is okay.

Slow can be really darn fine, actually.

* affil link: That stencil cutter was a piece of crap and I broke both tips. But it worked till I was done, so there’s that.

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Still Knitting

Archives for September 2015