2025 52 Card Project: Week 39: Making
Oct. 3rd, 2025 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrI had two Year of Adventure meetings this week, both dedicated to teaching me how to make something new.
I met with my sister Betsy, who showed me how to make an apple pie from scratch, including the pastry. The secret, I was duly informed, is the use of lard (which makes the pastry light and flaky) and tapioca to thicken the apple filling. Okay, I will admit that the pastry cover was placed a little crookedly, but I can assure you that it was delicious.
I also got together withcarbonel, who invited me to her home to give me my first lesson on spinning wool into yarn. I had some experience with a drop spindle many years ago, but spinning on a spinning wheel takes a degree of coordination that I obviously did not master in the time we were working together. First, the treadle must be worked in the correct direction at a steady rate--I kept hesitating on the pedal, and the wheel would aggravatingly start turning in the wrong direction. And the hand coordination was another thing: I kept holding the rover (the combed wool) in the left hand too tightly ("hold it lightly, as if were a baby bird" carbonel kept chanting in my ear with only a hint of exasperation), and my clumsiness with the drafting (feeding the wool with the right hand) meant that the yarn kept overtwisting.
But at least I have my first effort of spun wool sitting on my dining room table, and I keep glancing at it with an interesting mix of pride and embarrassment. It is very, very bad, but at least I can now say that I have tried spinning.
This collage is not one of my favorites, being both too busy and too monochromatic, but hey, that's what I have.
Image description: Center: a smiling woman (Peg) stands at a counter with a rolling pin and an unbaked apple pie. Top left: hands cut a pastry cutter through pastry dough in a bowl. Top right: hands work pastry dough in a bowl. Below that: various apple pie ingredients. Lower left: a hand holds unspun wool. Lower right: a spinning wheel. Lower center: a butterfly of (badly) spun undyed wool.
Making
Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.
I met with my sister Betsy, who showed me how to make an apple pie from scratch, including the pastry. The secret, I was duly informed, is the use of lard (which makes the pastry light and flaky) and tapioca to thicken the apple filling. Okay, I will admit that the pastry cover was placed a little crookedly, but I can assure you that it was delicious.
I also got together with
carbonel, who invited me to her home to give me my first lesson on spinning wool into yarn. I had some experience with a drop spindle many years ago, but spinning on a spinning wheel takes a degree of coordination that I obviously did not master in the time we were working together. First, the treadle must be worked in the correct direction at a steady rate--I kept hesitating on the pedal, and the wheel would aggravatingly start turning in the wrong direction. And the hand coordination was another thing: I kept holding the rover (the combed wool) in the left hand too tightly ("hold it lightly, as if were a baby bird" carbonel kept chanting in my ear with only a hint of exasperation), and my clumsiness with the drafting (feeding the wool with the right hand) meant that the yarn kept overtwisting. But at least I have my first effort of spun wool sitting on my dining room table, and I keep glancing at it with an interesting mix of pride and embarrassment. It is very, very bad, but at least I can now say that I have tried spinning.
This collage is not one of my favorites, being both too busy and too monochromatic, but hey, that's what I have.
Image description: Center: a smiling woman (Peg) stands at a counter with a rolling pin and an unbaked apple pie. Top left: hands cut a pastry cutter through pastry dough in a bowl. Top right: hands work pastry dough in a bowl. Below that: various apple pie ingredients. Lower left: a hand holds unspun wool. Lower right: a spinning wheel. Lower center: a butterfly of (badly) spun undyed wool.
Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.
