Posted on May 5, 2023

When I travel for a few days I don’t usually1 bring any other shoe than the ones I’m wearing, plus some kind of slippers for use inside hotel / B&B rooms.

It’s good for not carrying useless weight, but it always leave me with a vague feeling of “what if my only shoes break”, followed by “on a Sunday, when the shops are closed”.

So I started to think in the general direction of hiking sandals, shoes that are designed to be worn when resting, and lightweight to carry, but are a passable substitute for regular shoes in case of an accident to the main ones, maybe with the help of an extra pair of socks2 (or when crossing fords, but that’s not really a usecase I have).

My requirements are easier than the ones for real hiking sandals, since I’m only going to be walking on paved streets (or at most easy unpaved ones), and the weight considerations are a thing, but not as strict as if I had to carry these on my back while hiking many hours in a day.

My first attempt was a pair of hiking sandals from things I already had in my stash, with vibram soles, neoprene padding and polyester webbing. After a couple fixes they sort of worked, but they had a few big issues.

• While comfortable when worn, the neoprene made the sandals hard to make, as it tended to deform while being assembled.
• Polyester webbing is slippery. Some strips of hot glue in strategical places helped, but they weren’t perfect and in time they are peeling off.
• Most importantly, to make the sandals stable enough to wear while walking I had to add a strap around the ankle that needs closing: this makes it a bit of a hassle to use the sandals, say, when waking up in the middle of the night for metabolic reasons.

And then, one day I made my linen slippers, and that lead me to think again about the problem: what if I made a pair of slippers with a rubber sole, technical materials and maybe uppers made of net, so that they would be lightweight, breathable and possibly even still suitable in case I ever need to cross a ford.

This was also readily attainable from the stash: some polycotton for the sole lining, elastic mesh for the uppers, EVA foam for padding and vibram soles.

I decided to assemble most of them by machine, and it was quick and painless (possibly also thanks to the elasticity of the mesh)

For the soles I may have gone a bit overboard with the vibram claw, but:

• I already had it in the stash;
• if I need to wear them on an unpaved road, they are going to be suitable;
• why not?

The soles were glued to the slippers rather than being sewn, as I don’t think there is a reasonable way to sew these soles; I hope it won’t cause durability issues later on (if it does, there will be an update)

As for the finished weight, at 235 g for the pair I thought I could do better, but apparently shoes are considered ultralight if they are around 500 g? Using just one layer of mesh rather than two would probably help, but it would have required a few changes to the pattern, and anyway I don’t really to carry them around all day.

I’ve also added a loop of fabric (polycotton) to the centre back to be able to hang the slippers to the backpack when wet or dirty; a bit of narrow webbing may have been better, but I didn’t have any in my stash.

The pattern is the same as that used for the linen slippers, and of course it’s released as #FreeSoftWear.

I’ve worn these for a few days around the home and they worked just fine, except for the fact that I had to re-glue the sole in a few places (but I suspect it was glued badly in the first place, since the other sole had no issues).

Right now I have no plans to travel, so I don’t know how much I will be able to test these in the next few months, but sooner or later I will (or I’ll keep wearing them at home after I’ve thoroughly tested the linen ones), and if there are issues I will post them here on the blog (and add a link to this post).

• the exception would be when I’m also bringing some kind of costume, and even there it’s not always true.↩︎
• and one should always carry an extra pair of clean socks, as they are useful for so many things, as Pratchett reminds us.↩︎

blog.trueelena.org/blog/2023/0…

Posted on May 4, 2023

I hate going out to buy shoes. Even more so I hate buying home shoes, which is what I spend most of my life in, also because no matter what I buy they seem to disintegrate after a season or so. So, obviously, I’ve been on a quest to make my own.

As a side note, going barefoot (with socks) would only move the wear issue to the socks, so it’s not really a solution, and going bare barefoot on ceramic floors is not going to happen, kaythanksbye.

For the winter I’m trying to make knit and felted slippers; I’ve had partial success, and they should be pretty easy to mend (I’ve just had to do the first mend, with darning and needle felting, and it seems to have worked nicely).

For the summer, I’ve been thinking of something sewn, and with the warm season approaching (and the winter slippers needing urgent repairs) I decided it was time to work on them.

I already had a shaped (left/right) pattern for a sole from my hiking sandals attempts (a topic for another post), so I started by drafting a front upper, and then I started to have espadrille feeling and decided that a heel guard was needed.

As for fabric, looking around in the most easily accessible part of the Stash I’ve found the nice heavyweight linen I’m using for my Augusta Stays, of which I still have a lot and which looked almost perfect except for one small detail: it’s very white.

I briefly thought about dyeing, but I wanted to start sewing NOW to test the pattern, so, yeah, maybe it will happen one day, or maybe I’ll have patchy dust-grey slippers. If I’ll ever have a place where I can do woad dyeing a blue pair will happen, however.

Contrary to the typical espadrillas I decided to have a full lining, and some padding between the lining and the sole, using cotton padding leftovers from my ironing board.

To add some structure I also decided to add a few rows of cording (and thus make the uppers in two layers of fabric), to help prevent everything from collapsing flat.

As for the sole, that’s something that is still causing me woes: I do have some rubber sole sheets (see “hiking sandals” above), but I suspect that they require glueing, which I’m not sure would work well with the natural fabric uppers and will probably make repairs harder to do.

In the past I tried to make some crocheted rope soles and they were a big failure: they felt really nice on the foot, but they also self-destroyed in a matter of weeks, which is not really the kind of sole I’m looking for.

Now I have some ~ 3 mm twine that feels much harsher on the hands while working it (and would probably feel harsher on the feet, but that’s what the lining and padding are for), so I hope it may be a bit more resistant, and I tried to make a braided rope sole.

Of course, I have published the pattern and instructions for the slippers as well as those for the braided rope sole as #FreeSoftWear.

Now what is left is trying everything under daily use, and I hope I will have updates on this at the end of the season, rather than soon :D

blog.trueelena.org/blog/2023/0…

Posted on April 30, 2023
A few months ago we may have bought a few ESP32-C3-DevKit-Lipo boards from Olimex.

Since every time I go back to working with them I’ve forgotten how to do so, and my old notes on the fediverse are hard to find, this is the full procedure.

Setup

I start by sort-of-following docs.espressif.com/projects/ar…

• Install arduino from the distribution packages (version 1.8 is ok).
• Under File → Preferences, add the development URL to the Additional Boards Manager URLs field. (on 2023-04-30 that’s https://espressif.github.io/arduino-esp32/package_esp32_dev_index.json).
• Under Tools → Board → Boards Manager make sure that you install a version of esp32 by Espressif Systems that is above 2.0 (on 2023-04-30 there is a 2.0.8 that works).

Programming

• Under Tools → Board → ESP32 Arduino select ESP32C3 Dev Module.
• Under Tools → USB CDC On Boot select Enabled.

You can now compile and upload your sketches.

If something goes wrong, to force the board to bootloader mode bring GPIO9 to GND.

Note that the serial port device /dev/ttyACM0 only appears when in bootloader mode, but uploading sketches and the serial monitor will still work even if the port is not set in the arduino IDE.

blog.trueelena.org/blog/2023/0…

Elena ``of Valhalla''

2022-12-08 16:56:35

I've decided I need to do something vaguely useful with a few microcontroller boards I have, use some of the simple ESP8266 ones to collect temperature and humidity data from various rooms of the house to a MQTT server, collect that data in a RRD and show the current values on an epaper panel together with the current time and weather forecast.

Current status is:

* the MQTT server at home is no longer working (uops, that's why I wasn't receiving other unrelated notifications. I believe I know what the reason is, and how to solve it, but not today. I have mosquitto installed also on the laptop and that one is working)
* the python library I wanted to use to read data from MQTT is broken in debian testing (bug opened at the end of november)
* I can't find the ESP8266 boards. I know that they are around here somewhere, but WHERE???

#microcontrollers #arduino

Posted on April 5, 2023

For this summer, I’ve just made a nice sleeveless dress, but that doesn’t mean that I’m planning to go around with bare arms like, I don’t know, a peasant or even somebody with no health issues, perish the thought!

Instead, at the end of last season I’ve bought a remnant of white ramie / viscose jersey that is a bit too transparent to be decent when worn on its own, but should still give some protection from the sun without being unconfortable in the heat, with the intent to make myself a new top.

Because of the transparency I wasn’t sure whether to actually use it for a top, or just to make camisoles, but with the decency preserved by the dress the choice was made: I had enough fabric for a top, a camisole and maybe something small.

I already have a trusted pattern for the top and camisole, but they still had to be published, so I took care to write down instructions and take step-by-step pictures; maybe the white fabric isn’t the best, but it’s better than nothing, and I can still take better pictures the next time I’ll do another make. They are of course on my pattern webiste: top and camisole.

Since the fabric was bought online as a remnant, I didn’t exactly know what to expect, and was pleasantly surprised by how soft it is: it feels like touching a cloud.

This however means that it felt like working with a cloud, and, well, let’s just say I’m happy that both patterns were quite simple and I didn’t have to deal with fiddly bits.

I was also not so pleasantly surprised by the fact that part of the fabric had a few small holes as if the end of the roll had been caught on something; I was able to cut everything around the holes, other than a small bit that I hadn’t noticed and had to be mended. It’s not a big deal, but I suspect it’s a sign that this fabric may not be as sturdy as it could have been, and that there will be more mending in the future as I wear it.

And then, when I had finished the set I was faced with another problem: taking pictures. For one thing, worn on their own they aren’t exactly decent, and then there was the fact that after a week of late spring weather in March, as I was working on summer clothing the temperature dropped and there was even a hint of rain.

I solved this by wearing the new set on top of another set of fitting top and camisole, with matching leggings. Not exactly something I would wear on the regular streets, but good enough for a picture of underwear.

Still, the pictures were taken in quite a hurry, because I wasn’t completely freezing, but still pretty cold.

Anyway, I’m off to find some other piece of summer wear to make, hoping that it will bring proper rain. :)

blog.trueelena.org/blog/2023/0…

Posted on March 16, 2023

A few years ago a friend told me that her usual fabric shop was closing down and had a sale on all remaining stock.

While being sad for yet another brick and mortar shop that was going to be missed (at least it was because the owners were retiring, not because it wasn’t sustainable anymore), of course I couldn’t miss the opportunity.

So we drove a few hundred km, had some nice time with a friend that (because of said few hundred km) we rarely see, and spent a few hours looting the corps… er… helping the shop owner getting rid of stock before their retirement.

Among other things there was a cut of lightweight swiss embroidery cotton in blue which may or may not have been enthusiastically grabbed with plans of victorian underwear.

It was too nice to be buried under layers and layers of fabric (and I suspect that the embroidery wouldn’t feel great directly on the skin under a corset), so the natural fit was something at the corset cover layer, and the fabric was enough for a combination garment of the kind often worn in the later Victorian age to prevent the accumulation of bulk at the waist.

It also has the nice advantage that in this time of corrupted morals it is perfectly suitable as outerwear as a nice summer dress.

Then life happened, the fabric remained in my stash for a long while, but finally this year I have a good late victorian block that I can adapt, and with spring coming it was a good time to start working on the summer wardrobe.

The block I’ve used comes from The Cutters’ Practical Guide to the Cutting of Ladies Garments and is for a jacket, rather than a bodice, but the bodice block from the same book had a 4 part back, which was too much for this garment. I reduced the ease around the bust a bit, which I believe worked just fine.

The main pattern was easy enough to prepare, I just had to add skirt panels with a straight side towards the front and flaring out towards the back, and I did a quick mockup from an old sheet to check the fit (good) and the swish and volume of the skirt (just right at the first attempt!).

The mockup was also used to get an idea of a few possible necklines, and I opted for a relatively deep V, and a front opening with a partial placket down to halfway between the waist and the hips. I also opted for a self-fabric ruffle at the hem and armscyes.

The only design choice left was the pocket situation: I wanted to wear this garment both as underwear (where pockets aren’t needed, and add unwanted bulk) and outerwear (where no pockets is not an option), and the fabric felt too thin to support the weight of the contents of a full pocket. So I decided to add slits into the seams, with just a modesty placket, and wear pockets under the dress as needed.

I decided to put the slits between the side and side back panels for two reasons: one is that this way the pockets can sit towards the back, where the fullness of the skirt is supposed to be, rather than under the flat front, and the other one is to keep the seams around the front panel clean, since they are the first ones to be changed when altering a garment for fit.

For the same reason, I didn’t trim the excess allowance from that seam: it means that it is a bit more bulky, but the fabric is thin enought that it’s not really noticeable, and it gives an additional cm for future alterations.

Then, as the garment was getting close to being finished I was measuring and storing some old cotton lace I had received as a gift, and there was a length of relatively small lace, and the finish on the neckline was pretty simple and called for embellishment, and who am I to deny embellishment to victorian inspired clothing?

First I had to finish attaching the ruffles, however, and this is when I cursed myself for not using the ruffler foot I have (it would have meant not having selvedges on all seams of the ruffle), and for pleating the ruffle rather than gathering it (I prefer the look of handsewn gathers, but here I’m sewing everything by machine, and that’s faster, right? (it probably wasn’t)).

Also, this is where I started to get low on pins, and I had to use the ones from the vintage1 box I’ve been keeping as decoration in the sewing room.

A few long sessions of pinning later, the ruffle was sewn and I could add the lace; I used white thread so that it would be hidden on the right side, but easily visible inside the garment in case I’ll decide to remove or change it later.

A few buttons and buttonholes later, the garment was ready, and the only thing left was to edit the step-by-step pictures and publish the pattern: it’s now available as #FreeSoftWear on my patterns website.

And Of course, I had to do a proper swish test of the finished dress with the ruffle, and I’m happy to announce that it was fully passed.

Except, maybe I shouldn’t carry heavy items in my pockets when doing it? Oh, well.

I have other plans for the same pattern, but they involve making some crochet lace, so I expect I can aim at making them wearable in summer 2024.

Now I just have to wait for the weather to be a bit warmer, and then I can start enjoing this one.

• ok, even more vintage, since my usual pins come from a plastic box that has been probably bought in the 1980s.↩︎

blog.trueelena.org/blog/2023/0…