Ingenuous

O HAI

I HAZ A SWETTER

Pattern: Ingenue, from Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard

Size made: Small (33″)

Yarn used: Artfibers Ming in color 11, 915 yards. This is a fantastic yarn. It’s holding up pretty well so far, a little fuzzing on the surface, but not too much, and no pilling to speak of. I bought a tiny bit for a cowl before, fell in love with it, and eventually splurged on the yarn for this sweater.

I chose this color, black shot with iridescent tones of scarab green and shimmery burgundy, after admiring it greatly in Stitchywitch’s Open Waters wrap and gleek’s Flair. It is really beautiful–I couldn’t quite capture all the colors in my photos, but here is a closeup to give you a better idea:

And it is next-to-skin soft, of course, being a 50-50 silk-merino singles yarn, very evenly spun. Perhaps when I’ve knit up the sheeps and sheeps of yarn currently in my closet, I will buy some more and make another Ming sweater.

Needles used: US 8/5.0 mm nickel Options circulars

Date started: June 18, 2009

Date completed: July 12, 2009

Mods: None, as far as I remember (unless maybe length? But that hardly counts). I got this book out from the library, so I can’t cross-reference the pattern now.

Notes: I love the neckline on this pattern, and I feel like it looks good on just about everyone on Ravelry–there are plenty of great patterns in Custom Knits, but this was hands down my favorite.

It was a quick knit–it would have been much quicker, actually, if I had gotten enough yarn to start with. I bought a 715-yard cone of the yarn from Artfibers, thinking it would be enough for a worsted weight sweater with 3/4 length sleeves. However, the collar of this sweater, being 1) sort of huge and 2) a double thickness of hugeness (folded over and sewn down to the inside), takes up way more yarn than I would have thought, so I had to order another 200 yards of yarn, and was still sweating whether I would have enough yarn as I was finishing the sleeves–and the sweater’s still a little shorter than I’d like.

The second dyelot I got wasn’t a great match. The original cone of yarn was a much deeper and richer color–it reads as black, while the extra 200 yards were a softer color that reads more as dark gray. I tried to divide it up and alternate rows as I knit both sleeves at the same time, magic loop. I don’t know how much time I wasted untangling little tiny balls of snarled yarn from the sweater and the needle cables as a result of that decision. I swear I started with four little skeins of yarn and wound up with about 12 of them, all tied up in knots, once I was at elbow length.

Anyway, I think the trouble was worth it, since the dye lot transition is not too noticeable and the sleeves are the same length.

I wish the collar was larger and stood up more around the neck, like the book photos, but I think this might just be a function of ease… same size collar on a very skinny-necked model, maybe. I also wish the sweater was longer, but this was a function of running out of yarn and not being willing to pay shipping a third time to top off the yarn supply.

Anyway, I like it: it’s a comfy, soft pullover with a gorgeous neutral color and classic design. A useful wardrobe piece, if maybe not spectacular from a knitterly point of view–no show-off cables or lace, no weird Norah Gaughan-type shaping, just a basic top-down raglan with a few lovely design details. I’ve gotten many compliments on it already (well, from knitters, when walking through the yarn shop, but that still counts, right?)

Also, I went to Wisconsin Sheep and Wool with my knitting pals Liz and Liz and bought a book (Magnificent Mittens), a bit of yarn (not pictured), a bit of pygora fiber–I behaved myself, really, overall!–also went to a Ravelry meetup and got a few pictures of creatures. Mostly they came out blurry, but here is a video of a sheepdog herding trial, and some photos:

Baby lamb!

Enthusiastic goat!

Knitters at the end of a long and wool-filled day!

It was a lot of fun, and an ungodly amount of tempting fiber and yarn offered up for sale. The festival was the same weekend as Stitches Midwest, which was about an hour farther away, and since I’ve never been to Stitches, I was agonizing a little over which one to go to, but Selkie’s report about Stitches being disappointing put my mind at ease. Maybe next year they’ll schedule better and I can go to both, to compare and contrast for myself.

Next time: maybe some pictures of my next newest FO…

forkily

p.s. I forgot to add: we found out the reason the sink was constantly clogged and full of bilge. The previous tenants had dropped a fork down the drain and left it there.

Sabrina, and a little story about hippie Christmas

Hello! So we moved house a few weeks back. It’s been busy. It went a little something like this:

6:30 AM: at Penske, waiting for the doors to open so we can get our moving truck.

7 AM: Truck is back home and we are loading stuff. So far, so good! We’ve been (read: Rahul’s been) packing stuff for weeks in preparation, so we figure it should all go smoothly. The property management guy is supposed to come do a move-out inspection at 12:30.

9 AM: Some ratty-looking guys in a ratty-looking pickup truck come by and ask if we need any help. I feel a little creeped out and say “no.”

11 AM: “the last few things” we left unpacked (cleaning supplies, toilet paper, two cups/plates/forks) seem to have bred while we weren’t looking, and now seem to occupy a space equal to about twice the remaining space in the van. We realize there’s no way we will get the van entirely packed by 12:30, and instead focus on trying to get everything out of our house. I am kicking myself for having said no to the creepy pickup truck mover guys.

11:45 AM: house now looks like that coffee table book where people are photographed with all their possessions on the front lawn to show off the gross excesses of decadent first world living. Moving day in Madison is also called “hippie Christmas” since so many people put out freebies for the taking. Hence we also have to fend off a lot of people wandering by and asking us if they can have our stuff.

11:50 AM: OK, house is empty–time for the final vacuuming! I have almost 45 minutes, plenty of time to get the place spic and span so we can get our whole deposit back. I start in the back room and vacuum happily for about 2 minutes before the vacuum makes a roaring noise, coughs, and then just makes a sad, quiet little “vweee!” noise. When I turn the carpet brush off, it makes no noise at all, suggesting that the suction is completely broken and the “vwee!” is the sound of the carpet brush merrily pushing dust around the floor.

11:55 AM: As I hunt for the broom and dustpan, I see the property management rep coming up the front walk, weaving his way between our pillars of first world debris. “Are you ready for your moveout inspection?” I try to explain the vacuum situation while trying my best to sweep up the huge dust bunnies in the corners.

12:30 PM: Although I have taken the day off work,  I get an urgent work-related phone call while I am trying to cram a potted plant into an empty space in the car. Little do I know how many things are blowing up at work while I am absent.

12:45 PM: Everything is finally in the car and van now. We are both drenched in sweat and exhausted. We look at each other and Rahul says, “OK! Now we just have to go to the new house and reverse that entire process.”

The thought of this is absolutely soul-crushing.

1 PM: We show up at the new place. Our landlord is not here–he has asked the previous tenants to just hand us the keys. So no move-out inspection, no move-in inspection. The house reeks hugely of pot, every cabinet is still full of junk–e.g. old toothbrushes, a half tube of “Beard Lube,” an electric popcorn popper, Nilla Wafers, an embroidered bag from Guatemala–and the kitchen sink turns out to be full of bilgey gray water. When I run the garbage disposal, the water goes glooping down one side of the sink and bubbling up out of the other side like a filthy geyser, then restores 6″ of bilge water equilibrium in both sides after a few seconds.

I manage to catch up to one of the previous tenants and when I ask what’s going on with the sink, he kind of shrugs and says “I don’t know, that happened a few days ago. No, we haven’t told the landlord yet. We figured since we’re moving there was no point. Oh yeah, and there’s some trouble getting the shower to drain, too.”

I go to check out the shower. When I turn the cold water tap, it comes off in my hand.

3 PM: We are tired and moving very slowly, so the van is still pretty much full and it seems impossible that we will ever manage to get everything unloaded and the van returned in time. We decide to go on Craigslist and hire a mover.

3:30 PM: the mover shows up. A stroke of sheer luck, the first guy I called was available right away, and he charges only $15 per hour (4 hour minimum) and has worked as a professional mover for 12 years–just got laid off from his job doing corporate cross-country moves, so he’s a total pro. I will never regret spending that $60; I only regret not hiring someone to help us all day. He gets everything else moved into the house in about 2 1/2 hrs.

6 PM: All done! Now we just have a household to unpack, furniture to assemble, a bilgey sink to unclog, no cold water tap in the shower, years of accumulated garbage in the house from the previous tenants, and various other wonderful issues to deal with that we have not yet discovered. But we have moved. Victory.

The place is actually really spacious and nice aside from the maintenance issues, and we finally have an off-street parking space, so we’re pretty happy with the house so far.

So… anyway, we’ve been trying to get everything in order, and we’ve finally settled in somewhat. (We are still turning the cold water on and off with a small wrench we keep in the shower for this purpose.) But I haven’t had much time for any crafty stuff.

Knitting-wise: I am still diligently knitting away on my Tangled Yoke cardigan–the one I cast on over my July 4 vacation. I just finished the yoke and neckband and now have to pick up and knit the sleeves from the provisional cast-ons I left in place (I was impatient to get to the yoke) and do the button bands. It takes a long time to knit on size 3 needles (couldn’t get gauge on larger ones). Fortunately, I like the feel of the Felted Tweed enough that it doesn’t seem like too much of a chore, even though it’s been dragging on forever.

Next up, assuming I ever finish this cardigan, I want to make a pair of these awesome Totoro mittens. Look at the way the umbrella forms the pointy part of the fingertips! Aren’t they adorable?

Also, my knitting buddies and I have a field trip planned (tentatively, anyway) to Wisconsin Sheep and Wool this weekend. Everything seems to happen at once: in addition to WI Sheep and Wool, Stitches Midwest is this weekend, and Cat Bordhi is coming to town next week. I probably won’t have the time/energy to make it to the latter two events, sadly.

And last but not least, sewing-wise: aside from sewing up some simple bird curtains for our kitchen window, I sewed up the Sabrina Tunic, a dress pattern from indie Serendipity Studios, and reviewed the pattern for Sew, Mama, Sew! (Hello SMS readers!) You can click through for all the fun details. I have been wearing this dress a ton and the only thing I want to add is that with the extra ease I added in the back, the zipper is actually unnecessary, so I might just sew the next version up the back instead of going to the trouble of putting in the zipper.

Anyway… here’s to moving being over and done with! One last thing: I did end up kind of scoring something from Hippie Christmas. I regretfully passed up the Sex and the City book, roll of barbed wire, and box of syringes (!) our downstairs neighbors found in the basement, but in one of the cabinets full of junk, I found, and am wildly happy with, a genuine Le Creuset saucepan in a pretty shade of blue. And they all lived happily ever after, the end.

(Will report back later on Sheep and Wool and the cardigan, once it’s done.)

Celebrity stole encounters

I wish I could say that my near-total blog silence this summer has been due to being too busy building houses for the homeless, or traveling to distant lands, or inventing a perpetual motion machine, but I don’t really have anything too exciting to attribute it to. Just long, lazy summer days and sunny evenings… and there’s a certain measure of ill-defined guilt built up in there as well. I’m not sure what the cause of it is, psychologically, but sometimes I feel like I have all the free time in the world, and other times I feel like I have no time at all and all the minor complications of life–bills, housecleaning, laundry–are bearing down on me like the boulder from Indiana Jones. The actual, objective amount of work or complications that may be involved is irrelevant.

Anyway, this weekend, I’m trying to chip away at the nagging items on my to-do list and reduce the size of the boulder. Today I spent a few hours sitting in a cafe and catching up on work, and after finishing, instead of heading straight out to enjoy the sunny day, decided to stop and write this quick blog post.

Yesterday was maybe even more productive: I cleaned the kitchen, re-seasoned all our cast iron pans, harvested the green beans from the garden, and did a lot of packing and throwing stuff away. We’re moving in two weeks to a place a few blocks away, and trying to get a head start on getting everything packed, furniture dismantled, and the apartment cleaned so it’s less of a mad dash on the day of the move. The packing process is stressful–as I was sitting there sorting stuff, there was a lot of yelling from the other room of “what the hell is this [insert random craft item]” and “do you really need to keep all these knitting magazines” (answer: yes). But I’ve put together several boxes of things to get rid of and that feels good.

Anyway, I thought I might post a few yarn-related pictures from a family trip I took about a month ago. I went to Taos and Santa Fe with my mom, stepdad, and sister, and while we were wandering in Taos, we accidentally stumbled across La Lana Wools! (well, semi-accidentally… I found a tourist brochure called something like “The Fiber Arts Trail in New Mexico” and contrived to stop by when I realized from the address that we were right around the corner.)

All of La Lana’s yarns are naturally plant-dyed, and many of them are handspun. I bought some pretty yarn from the sale bin–this is Phat Silk, a 50/50 wool-silk blend:

There were lots of other gorgeous, if horribly expensive, yarns to choose from:

The highlight, though, was getting to see and handle THE original Lady Eleanor entrelac stole from Scarf Style. Unfortunately, it was kind of dark in there, so I had to take this picture with flash, which kind of ruins the colors. It’s a huge stole, though, much bigger than I’d thought.

Both Taos and Santa Fe were really pretty. The clouds and mountains are gorgeous, and there are hollyhocks growing everywhere. I always associated hollyhocks with England and France, but I guess they’re pretty happy in hot climates, too. Like Georgia O’Keeffe, who, I found out at the O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, was from Sun Prairie, WI and went to high school in Madison, right up the street from where I live.

Santa Fe was also surprisingly small and walkable, a really gorgeous and friendly little city. I think it would be a really great place to live if you didn’t feel like the sun was punching you in the face every time you stepped outside. (I guess maybe it’s not as fiercely hot when it’s not the middle of summer.)

Tangled up in blue

My friend Casey and I were roommates for several years in college, starting from sophomore year in the co-ops. She later moved to Europe and I didn’t see her for a few years, moved back to San Francisco for a summer, back to Europe again, and then flew back to California last month to get married.

She asked me to be a bridesmaid, but unfortunately, I couldn’t make it out there for her wedding. I was really honored, though, and wanted to be there in spirit if not in flesh and blood, so I offered to make her a shrug to wear.

We emailed back and forth for a while about what she wanted. She was getting married by the sea, where the breezes off the Pacific could get quite chilly, so she wanted something warm and cozy and chunky, with a high neck or mandarin collar. She mailed me a swatch of the blue sash she was wearing and the ribbon she was using for her ribbon roses, and her inspiration board, and I set to work shopping and swatching.

The best yarn I ended up finding was Malabrigo Merino Worsted in Stone Blue, a sort of medium cool denim shade, but the color wasn’t quite right. I decided to hold it along with a strand of Kidsilk Haze in Hurricane, which is a darker blue, and would also add a bit of bulk, softness, and depth of color. Here’s a picture of the Malabrigo beside her fabric swatches.

She loved the Drops A-Line Jacket that everyone was going crazy about last year, but wanted it short (shrug-length), so I swatched, got a ton of measurements from her, and modified it to be worked top-down, at a gauge between the worsted and super-bulky weights the pattern lists, with top-down seamless set-in sleeves. And, of course, I shortened it, and curved the fronts a little bit.

The details:

Pattern: 103-1 Jacket in Eskimo or Silke-Alpaca with A-shape, by DROPS design

Size made: custom

Yarn used: Malabrigo Merino Worsted in Stone Blue, 2 skeins; Malabrigo Silky Merino in Cloudy Sky, 0.5 skeins; Kidsilk Haze in Hurricane, just over 2 skeins.

Needles used: US size 11/8.0 mm circular needles (sleeves were knit magic loop style)
Date started: Not sure what date I started originally, but I had to rip and restart the project on May 1, 2009
Date finished: May 5, 2009. The wedding was on May 9!
Mods: too many to count, really; the only things that stayed the same were the double moss stitch lapel fronts and the collar.

• worked top-down following the formula in Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top: seamless CO at shoulders, short-row a bit for shoulder slope, work back down to armhole, increase a few stitches; then pick up the other side of the CO at shoulders and work the fronts downwards the same way, curving inwards a bit for front neck, then casting on a lot of stitches for the double-breasted overlap area in the front; join under the arms and work till end; pick up sts around each armhole and short-row sleeve caps
• gauge changed for size 11 needles
• measurements changed to fit the bride
• shortened to shrug length

Notes: This one was a real nail-biter–I was down to the wire on finishing it in time, and so worried I’d let her down. I was doing fine and on track until a few days before, when I decided I’d better put the shrug on some longer needles and check it out, and discovered that I had done the math wrong and her requested high neck (from which I was to pick up a mandarin collar) was a fetching scoop neck instead, and I had to rip back pretty much the entire thing.

As if that weren’t enough, I then started running dangerously low on the main yarn, Malabrigo worsted. “No problem,” I said to myself, “That’s why I bought the yarn locally–I can just go down to the Knitting Tree and buy another skein.” But, of course, when I went down to the Knitting Tree, five days before her wedding, they had sold out of all of that color of yarn.

Panic set in after I called the other yarn stores and found that they didn’t have any Malabrigo worsted either. I went to Plan B, and bought some Malabrigo Silky Merino in a nearly-matching shade of blue, and turned the yarn shortage into a design feature, using the silk blend to knit the cuffs and collar. Phew.

I was up late into the night weaving in ends, sewing on the little pearly buttons, and panicking, but finally I finished it and mailed it to her just in time, a day before the deadline.

And she wore it at her wedding, it kept her warm, and she got lots of compliments and questions about it! She had just dropped me a quick note from her honeymoon, but I am looking forward to the full report and pictures when she’s back in business, and happily ensconced in her new married life.

In the meantime, the only pictures I have are the ones where I modeled it before sending it off…

Front…

Back…

Cuffs… the match between Silky and Worsted isn’t bad, right?

Collar…

And lying flat, ready to head off to its new home.

Congratulations, Casey!

How much knitting can you get done in 8 hours?

We spent some time in Missouri with my boyfriend’s parents–just drove back up in one long go of it and here is how to benchmark that eight-hour drive:

• 2 episodes of My Name is Earl + Shattered Glass + Shattered Glass DVD Commentary, or
• Completion of 1 amigurumi jackalope ear, 2 amigurumi jackalope antlers, 5 1/2 amigurumi octopus tentacles, and a pair of Fleegle’s seamless take on Saartje’s baby booties (was I the only one who wound up with an extra isolated stitch resulting from the bound-off stitches in Round 25?)

While we were down there, I also finished knitting a baby vest (Lime by Jane Ellison) and the Side Slip Cloche from Boutique Knits. Both fun little knits, and if I can get my act together, I’ll actually post about them sometime soon, with pictures…

Other productive things I did this weekend include eating fried alligator and getting poison ivy, both for the first time, but not at the same time. (Verdict: tastes like chicken/feels like burning.) Ah, the delights of southern Missouri.

The gate of heavenly peace

I was thinking today about Tiananmen Square.

Today is June 4, 2009, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. I was reminded of this by, of all things, reddit, which usually mainly serves as a clearinghouse for internet lulz and random cute animals. Yesterday someone posted this Youtube video. Today they’ve created a commemorative Tank Man logo.

Since I was pretty young in ‘89, I have only vague memories of this happening at the time, but I remember a plaster statue of the Goddess of Democracy being erected in Portsmouth Square in San Francisco Chinatown. Looking it up, it seems like this must have been the initial model for the bronze statue that stands there now.

In 2007, Rahul and I visited mainland China through a program with his business school. That’s where the photo above (with the Kittyville hat) was taken. It was in March, and Beijing was still very cold–although the sun was shining, the wind was icy, and whipped across the open spaces of the square. All I could think of as we walked through the square, past the soldiers in their uniforms, representing the same government that was in power 20 years ago, was Tank Man.

So I thought I’d post a few interesting links…

Western journalists are currently being obstructed from filming around the square by men carrying giant umbrellas and walking in front of the video cameras. Watch the video–it’s farcical, surreal; would almost be funny if it weren’t so creepy.

Frontline’s Tank Man documentary is available to view online via the PBS website.

Here is a link to an interesting page about current Google.cn censorship.

The New York Times Lens blog has a couple of really fantastic stories about this. (CNN, on the other hand, has vetoed any coverage whatsoever, in favor of a DEVELOPING STORY!!! about David Carradine’s seedy Bangkok death-by-autoerotic-asphyxiation, and stories with the headlines “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s your neighbor“, “Gator had personal swimming pool“, “Topless coffee shop burns down; official says it was arson“).

From the NYT:

One photo of Tank Man a minute before the encounter, walking towards the tanks. This is the first time this photo has been released to the public,

And the first-hand accounts of four journalists who captured Tank Man on film 20 years ago. One photographer hid a roll of film in the toilet to save it from the PLA soldiers who burst into his room and confiscated his camera. Another journalist had a French student smuggle out the film in a packet of tea. A third smuggled out the film with the help of a long-haired college student wearing a dirty Rambo t-shirt.

The BBC has some interesting interviews with Chinese students about what they know about Tiananmen.

150,000 people gathered in Hong Kong for a candlelight vigil.

So that’s what I’ve been doing wrong

I got a 1949 edition of The Singer Sewing Book at a library book sale (a treasure trove! I also got several Little House books, back issues of Cook’s Illustrated, FiberArts, and Interweave Knits, Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here for the Food, and How to Cook Everything).

The first chapter in the book is “To Sew Successfully,” which seems like a useful thing to know.

OK. So how do I sew successfully? The book advises:

“When you sew, make yourself as attractive as possible. Go through a beauty ritual of orderliness. Have on a clean dress… Have your hair in order, powder and lipstick put on with care. Looking attractive is a very important part of sewing…”

Maybe this is the real secret in producing professional-looking garments. More mascara, less ratty pajamas.

The book does have a lot of good information:

• a burn chart for identifying fibers (though plenty of other new synthetics and weird cellulose fibers have come on the scene since it was published),
• basic patterns for things like potholders, a tailor’s ham, baby bibs, book covers, seat covers for the car, ruffled aprons, kitten-shaped bean bags (how long have I been looking for a pattern for those!)
• information on how to estimate required fabric yardage for various types of garments: “two lengths of 40″ fabric, shoulder to floor, will cut a straight sleeveless or short-sleeved dress. Allow 3/4 yard more for long sleeves, three lengths if skirt is full…”
• information on basting, pinning, marking with chalked thread, tailor’s tacks, notching,
• A proto-Color Me Beautiful insert about appropriate clothing colors for different varieties of white person (Light and True Blonde Types, Medium Blondes or Hazel Types, Gray-Haired Types, Red or Auburn, Medium Brunettes, and Dark Brunettes)
• various stitches for hand sewing and embroidery,
• a TON of different seam finishes, darts, tucks, gathers, ruffles, pleats, godets, hems, facings, etc., how to make them, and appropriate uses for each; also pockets, fastenings, neck openings, sleeve finishes, plackets, belts…
• information on fitting and adjusting patterns for different body types,
• and the following advice about “The Rule of Three”: “Remember this when you start to make anything: One third of the value of a garment lies in the cost of the fabric, one-third in the fashion-rightness of the style and its becomingness to you, and one-third in the workmanship you put into it–the cutting, fitting, stitching, finishing. For example, if your fabric costs $10, then you must add $10 worth of right style, and, through your best efforts in making, produce a dress worth $30.”

This seems like good advice for knitters as well, although I think the rule should also point out that your labor is very valuable, so your materials  must be of a certain quality in order to be worth as much as your labor in the equation. (And “Fashion-rightness” and “becomingness” frequently get left out of this equation altogether when it comes to knitting, in favor of how easy or interesting a garment is to make.)

miscellanea

Kalani posted this on Facebook and it cracked me up. (And while we’re on the subject: tapestryshopp’d)

marriedtothesea.com

Also, since I mentioned them here recently, Fabric.com emailed me a coupon code to share with anyone who’s interested: blogfeather will give you $5 off a single purchase from fabric.com, through May 14th, no minimum purchase required. Go forth and sew! Perhaps, staying with today’s theme, you would be interested in sewing some authentic cotehardies or houpelandes.

(Me, I think I’m going to go for this circle skirt soon… I have an embroidered linen tablecloth I got at a thrift store that will make an excellent skirt once I actually iron it.)

Here is the knitting project I’m working on right now.

A Jackalope from Amigurumi Knits! He has no face, ears, or front legs, so he kind of looks like a roasted turkey right now (big brown torso with drumstick-like hind legs sticking out), but I have faith that he will be much more stagbunny-like soon.
Here are some completed ones I found on Ravelry that I love. I hope mine turns out just as cute. I wish I could use safety eyes, but this is destined for a friend’s baby.

clematis blouse, herringbone mittens

Some actual knitting makes an appearance on the blog, for the first time in ages!

Pattern: Herringbone Mittens with Poms from elliphantom.com

Size made: Women’s Small

Yarn used: Patons Classic Wool in 00231 Chestnut Brown and 166488 Dark Natural Mix; less than 1 skein of each (weighing my leftovers, it looks like it took 30 grams of the brown and 25 grams of the tan, or about 67 yards and 56 yards, respectively, if I’m doing my math right–seems like an unreasonably tiny amount of yarn, doesn’t it?)

Needles used: US 4/3.5 mm, US 2½/3.0 mm, US 6/4.0 mm. I started the ribbing on size 4 needles, realized the wrists were coming out too big, and switched to the size 2.5 needles for the remainder of the ribbing. I used the size 6 needles for all the colorwork. I knit these two at a time, Magic Loop.

Date started: March 25, 2009

Date completed: April 26, 2009

Mods: Elli, I’m so sorry, but I did not Respect The Pom. I meant to, but I accidentally left out the eyelet row and by the time I realized, there was no going back. I also accidentally left off the cute CC starting row.

Notes: These mittens are gorgeous, but they have been the bane of my existence for the past month, because I felt like when I picked them up, I entered some kind of weird time warp in which all my knitting proceeded at a quarter of its normal speed, and my pattern recognition skills devolved to the level of a chimpanzee’s. It seems entirely unreasonable to me that I should knit monogamously on a tiny project like mittens and take more than a month to complete it.

Things started off swimmingly. I used a tubular cast-on for the ribbing, divided the stitches and got going with the magic loop, got pretty much all the ribbing done in one knitting night plus another evening, and then everything went to hell when I got to the colorwork. It was a two-row repeat and every other row was easy to remember–just K2 MC, K2 CC, the entire way around. For some reason, I just could not get the rhythm of the second row until I was more than halfway done with the mittens (3 weeks after starting them).

The second row goes a little something like this: K2 MC, K1 CC, K1 MC, K2 CC, K1 MC, K1 CC. Not that hard, right? But for some reason I couldn’t memorize it and kept screwing it up, losing my place when trying to follow the chart cell by cell, and frogging every other row as I realized I had messed up the pattern. When the pattern finally stuck in my head, I felt so dumb, as though I had been staring at this logic problem and gotten it wrong every day for the previous 3 weeks:
Q: 1, 2, 3, 4…: what is next in this series?
a) 5
b) 2
c) K1 MC, K2 CC, K2 MC, and… oh, crap.

Anyway, I finally finished them up. Finally. And they look gorgeous! And fit beautifully! I’d been admiring them since Elli brought the prototypes to our knitting group in Bloomington to show off ages and ages ago.

The sad part about this all is that I’m not even going to keep them. I knit them for a swap for the Madison Knitters’ Guild–”Cold hands, warm feet”: we traced our hands and feet on a piece of paper and brought this and some yarn in a brown paper bag, swapped it for another bag, and knit some kind of hand or foot covering to fit the recipient. At next month’s meeting, we’ll bring the bags with FOs back to their rightful owners and swap back. My contribution was Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sport in Jeans, from the same enticing giant basket ‘o’ blue Lorna’s Laces at Yarns Unlimited that drew in chemgrrl. I am hoping to get a pair of nice blue socks back.

Anyway. Sadly, this neverending, stupid-making, beautiful pair of mittens will find a new home soon. But like Rahul said when I lost my Bird in Hand mittens, “luckily, you can always make another pair.”

I love the bias knit striped thumbs–I’ve never knit a pair of mittens with a thumb designed like these before.


Wool mittens: the fashionable accessory for spring!

“But what,” you might ask, “is that fabulous blouse the mittens are accessorizing?”

Pattern: Simplicity 4077, View D
Size made: 12, blended to a 14 at the waist and hips
Fabric used: Amy Butler Daisy Chain Clematis in Gray, 2 yards, from Fabric.com. As an aside, they were really fabulous to deal with–I had bought some other fabric from them, and my order arrived n disappointing condition–stained and with multiple yard orders in multiple pieces–so I wrote to complain. They immediately offered to send me a replacement. Unfortunately, they were out of the original fabric I’d wanted. I asked if I could sub this one, which was slightly more expensive, so I said they could just send me 1 3/4 yards or whatever the equivalent amount was, but instead they sent me the full 2 yards in this fabric. Anyway. I think it’s a lovely fabric, the quilting cotton works well in this blouse, and am pondering the idea of an entire wardrobe made of Amy Butler fabrics.

Date started: Tuesday, April 28
Date completed: Thursday, April 30 (I cut out the pieces Tuesday night and sewed it together Wednesday night, and spent about 5 minutes today hammering in the remaining snaps. Rahul came home around 10:45 and found me sitting on the floor, hammering snaps, and said even if our downstairs neighbors are undergrads and probably stay up until 3 AM, it would still be polite not to hammer things on the floor at 11 PM, and I grudgingly admitted he had a point.)

Mods: I made a slapdash muslin of this shirt and felt like the waist was too tight, so decided to cut a larger size around the bottom of the bodice. When I put the pieces together for this shirt, though, I felt like the darts were completely wrong. I’m sure this was partly my fault–I accidentally marked the front darts incorrectly–but I had to sew them another inch or so longer and I think the placement is still a little bit too far out from center. I am also wondering if I could actually have gotten away with a smaller size on the bottom–it’s comfy but maybe a little loose compared to my favorite RTW shirts.

I didn’t cut out the front darts as the pattern calls for, just pressed them to the side. Why bother creating all those extra raw edges by cutting the dart? The fabric isn’t very sheer or thick, so I don’t feel like it’s significantly more visible to have the full dart thickness there instead of trimming it.

I used hammer-on pearl snaps rather than buttons. Easy, pretty, and avoids the issue of the janky buttonhole feature on my sewing machine. “Oh, buttonhole? Sorry, I thought you said you wanted a giant, snarled mat of thread.”

I left the interfacing out of the sleeve cuffs to give them a softer look (although I left it on the facings and collar).

Notes: Sewing is slowly getting easier! I remember when I bought this pattern a couple of years ago, it seemed incredibly complicated and difficult; but when I finally sat down to put it all together, expecting it to take at least a couple of evenings, it went together in just a few hours and with very little fuss. I guess I’m starting to get the hang of how sewn clothing is constructed.

Further notes from my review on Patternreview.com (my first one!):
The style is cute overall.

The sleeve cuff and pleats are really cute and easy to sew. Other people commented that they were too tight, but I found them very comfortable. I left the interfacing out of the cuffs so they would be sort of soft and floppy, not stiff. One thing I’ve noticed is that when you put your arms into the sleeves, it’s easy to push the seam allowances for the cuffs downwards so they’re visible from the outside. I might stitch them into place inside the sleeve–I think the pattern just calls for pressing them in place.

I don’t quite like how puffy the sleeve caps came out–my shoulders are already sort of broad, and I feel like they have an embiggening effect, and I also think they look puffier than the picture on the envelope. I am a little confused about the sizing, too. I made a size 12 muslin first and it felt a bit too tight in the waist, so I sized it up… now it seems like it may be too loose. However, I’m a beginning sewer, so I’m not sure whether this is just typical for Simplicity patterns.

I like the style of the collar, but it seemed fiddly to put together neatly, and lumpy even after trimming the seams. I couldn’t get the ends sewn on neatly and ended up hand-sewing the ends down with a slip stitch. (This could all be just user error.)

Close up view of embiggening sleeve caps and lumpy collar:

It seems like a great pattern for using pretty quilting cotton prints. I think I’ll make it again, with one of the shorter sleeve views and maybe a front ruffle, and try to adjust the pattern a little further. One of my favorite store-bought tops is very similar in style to the cap sleeve/front ruffle view, in an embroidered olive green eyelet fabric.

Next time I might try cutting the front facings as a single piece with the shirt fronts, like in the shirt dress from Heather Ross’s Weekend Sewing. I don’t see a reason they need to be cut separately and sewn to the shirt fronts as opposed to cut as one piece and then sewn and turned. Maybe it’s necessary for the views with the front ruffles.

I was surprised at how quickly this went together, and loved the cuff detail. It’s a simple, stylish, and comfortable casual blouse pattern, and I’m sure I’ll be making it again. (I first saw it on Flintknits’ blog and have been desperately coveting that Nani Iro double gauze blouse and the Amy Butler yellow polka dot blouse since they were first posted.)

Anyway, in closing, I will say that it’s kind of funny that I’m posting these two things together, since the Herringbone Mittens were designed by Elli of Elliphantom, and just as I finished the mittens, I was actually prompted to sew the blouse by Elli’s sister Rae. I noticed the Spring Top Week Sewalong she’s hosting on her blog, Made by Rae, and decided to bite the bullet and sew a spring top. She wrote a tutorial for a really cute little ruffle sleeved top on Sew, Mama, Sew! and I’d like to try that sometime soon, too.