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.

Summer Blouse -> Spring Dress

I got really inspired by this blog post of Heather Ross’s about ideas for converting her Summer Blouse pattern to a sleeveless shift dress using a Marimekko print or some other fabric with a large central motif, taking off the sleeves, and lengthening the pattern pieces.

So I ordered some home dec fabric with a giant vertical flower motif and set to work! Last things first, here’s the end result:

I re-traced the pattern pieces and made a bunch of modifications before cutting them out, based on my earlier Summer Blouse: lowered the front neckline, lowered the shoulder seams to make the armholes smaller, took in the sides a LOT, added back darts, and lengthened the dress, using my hip measurement as a guide and cutting straight down from there for a straight skirt style.

I made a muslin out of a thrifted bedsheet, made further adjustments to the pattern, and finally decided (after confirming I could get in and out of the dress without a zipper) that I was ready to cut it out from my fashion fabric.

I hit a slight snag, though–I had bought 2 yards of 60″ fabric, which was indeed more than enough to make a shift dress out of, but unfortunately not enough for a centered line of flowers down both the front and the back. I ended up having to cut the back in two pieces (adding a seam allowance to each) and lost the kind of neat colorblocking effect of the single vertical stripe on the front of the dress. Behold the weird double line of flowers:

I finished both the armholes and the neckline with 1″ bias tape cut from the main fabric, and sewn on using the method described in the book (I think)… I can’t find a photo tutorial for the life of me, but basically this is what I did:

• fold the double-fold bias tape in half
• align the raw edges of the bias tape with the raw edge of the fabric (neckline or armhole edge), on the right side of the fabric, and pin in place
• sew the bias binding to the fabric, removing the pins as you go, stitching in the line made by the ironed folds of the bias tape
• fold the bias tape to the inside of the dress neckline/armhole and carefully topstitch in place.

My bias tape and sewing were not entirely even, so I had a little trouble with this last part and spent quite a bit of time ripping out seams and re-sewing to make them look decent on the outside while also catching the folded bias tape on the inside.

When I made the Summer Blouse before, I didn’t read through the book’s instructions and just stuck the neckline into the fold of the bias tape and topstitched, which I think works just fine as well, but maybe doesn’t look quite as neat, and also doesn’t fold away the seam allowance accounted for in the other method, which might be why the neckline seemed so incredibly high first time around.

I thought about using this method as well: with this method, the bias tape is not visible from the outside. It also seems like it might be easier to sew. Maybe next time.

You can see the bias tape finish a little bit better here, and also the amazingly long placket that goes down to about my belly button (I think I did a pretty good job sewing up the center opening so that it’s not too obvious that there’s a big central chunk missing from the flowers in the placket region, but next time I might just skip the whole stitch-up-the-placket bit and just cut the placket to be shorter in the first place):

Pattern: Summer Blouse from Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross, heavily modified as described above
Size made: Small
Fabric used: 2 yards of Anna Maria Horner’s Anna’s Drawing Room home dec fabric, from Fabric.com, “Trellis Stripe” in Rose. If you buy anything from them, make sure to use a coupon code, they have tons of them out there! I believe I got 20% off with the code “SIMPLICITY”
Date started: forgot.
Date completed: forgot, but it took about two evenings to put together.
Mods: described in detail above
Notes:
I think this dress looks a bit better with something to define the waistline, like a sweater on top:
(I love this red sweater… sadly, it’s not a handknit, but an end-of-season cashmere sweater from Old Navy)

The perfect dress for a visit to the zoo to see the capybaras enjoying the sunshine!

Sadly, the lovely weather in these photos didn’t hold up over the weekend, when I volunteered to demonstrate drop spindle spinning at the 2009 Great Midwest Alpaca Festival. It was a rainy and dismal day, but I had a great time meeting alpacas, spinners, and spinners-to-be. Rahul came with me and even he enjoyed himself, even though we were there for almost 3 hours and normally his patience with fiber events wears pretty thin pretty fast.


These bedraggled ones are suri alpacas.

These puffy ones are huacayas.

Alpacas are cute. And they hum! It makes them sound kind of annoyed all the time, like Marge Simpson when she makes that disapproving noise.


This dude has the smallest neck and biggest head in the entire world.

It was a nice way to spend a rainy Saturday. I spun up about half an ounce of silvery gray alpaca while I was there, and wrote down the Jenkins Woodworking contact information for about 10 people who were very interested in my Turkish spindle. (If only they had a referral program! I know at least one of those people bought a Turkish spindle after seeing mine.)

In addition to all this sewing and fiber festivaling, I will also have some actual knitting to show off soon. Really. I finally finished the accursed never-ending mittens I’ve been working on for the past month! However, continuing the trend, after taking forever to knit, they are now taking forever to dry. I think this is the third day they’ve been sitting there on a towel in a room with good air circulation, and they’re still faintly damp. I have faith that one of these days, they’ll finally be dry, and I can finally take some pictures and call them done and dusted.

whoa tweed

I don’t know whether to rejoice or be worried about the new yarn from Knitpicks, City Tweed. (It’s also available in DK weight, in a smaller put-up.) I haven’t seen it in person, but the pics online make it look gorgeous. Just look at those colors!

On the plus side, this is very affordable for a fancy luxury tweed, and it looks like a great substitute for Jo Sharp Silkroad Tweed. The drawback is that I’m kind of afraid I might fall off the wagon and buy some despite not needing it AT ALL, especially not in spring/summer. (I should probably keep in mind that since it’s a KP yarn, it will always be there at a good price point, or at least I’ll have plenty of warning if they decide to phase it out.)

Someone needs to buy some and review it so I know what it’s like!

Fiber Jubilee has nothing to do with digestion

I think it is customary, after a long craft blog silence, to say something like “Life’s been crazy! I’ve been so busy!” or “Look at all the amazing things I’ve been making in the meantime!” but I really don’t have much of an excuse or anything super exciting to show off.

I have been sewing a bunch and have at least 3 new dresses to show off at some point, but only have photos of one of them and they all came out too ugly for me to show off here, so I will just tell you that two are from Weekend Sewing and one is a Vogue pattern. (And the photo below is not actually any of them–it’s a vintage shirt pattern that turned out HORRIBLE, giving the effect of a pregnant linebacker, so lucky the gingham was a dollar a yard and I could just scrap the project.)

I got a really exciting copy of Hansi Singh’s Amigurumi Knits–you may remember Michael Phelps from a while back, who was a Loch Ness Monster knit from a Hansigurumi pattern (included in this book, so now I own two copies of the pattern);

I’m excited about it–so many things are in my queue from this book; I want to make some crazy-ass toys for my best friend, who’s expecting a baby in June. The jackalope, octopus, hermit crab, and squid/kraken are all pretty high on the list, but I also really loved the Nessie and kind of want to make one for myself (I still have a lot of green and white yarn left). I think the book looks pretty good overall, definitely a good buy if you plan to knit up more than two of her patterns, but a few patterns in there felt like filler–the earthworm and cucumber spring to mind. I guess they’re meant to cater to beginners, so you can build your skills on a simple toy before embarking on a full-on cephalopod or preying mantis. I do still want the Horned Owl pattern, which has gotten good reviews on Ravelry but is not in the book.

I went to a Fiber Jubilee (what a hokey name, right?) in Richmond, WI, about an hour away from Madison– I went with Mary, Liz, and Liz, from my Wednesday night knitting group:

It was pretty great. We saw goats being sheared, I bought a sweater’s worth of locally grown white merino yarn (and she threw in a skein of natural gray laceweight as a bonus) for $16, and we sat on a picnic bench in the sun and ate Sloppy Joes made by the ladies of a local church.

Shearing!

The stall where I bought the merino:

Various scenes from around the farm:

I met Minou from Ambrosia and Bliss–she spotted me as I was going upstairs and we got to meet in person, so that was cool! We had corresponded on Ravelry/via blogland for a while but never actually met up.

I bought some natural-colored Corriedale there that I’ve already spun and plied into about 310 yards of worsted-weight two-ply. I only have pictures of the singles right now, but the other ply is a sort of creamy oatmeal color and it’s a really nice, squishy, bouncy marled yarn:

And I will be volunteering this Saturday from 10-12 at the Great Midwest Alpaca Festival, demoing spinning for a couple of hours, and I can’t even tell you how excited I am about going to a gigantic convention center full of alpacas. And I get to keep whatever I spin while I’m there (incentive to spin faster!)

Knitting-wise, I’m currently working on some Herringbone Mitts (warning, PDF link) for a swap. It took me weeks to get the pattern of the every-other rows so that I could do it without referring to the chart (k2 MC, k1 CC, k1 MC, k2 CC, k1 MC, k1 CC, repeat) and once I finally got it I felt really dumb and annoyed for not being able to figure out and memorize it sooner. But I am nearly at the top decreases now, and the end is in sight! I seriously don’t know how I can finish a sweater in a few days but take a month to knit a pair of mittens.

And I’m working on a shrug for my friend Casey’s wedding next month (whoa, time flies!) I hope it works out–the fabric is so delicious: one strand of Malabrigo in Stone Blue held with one strand of Kidsilk Haze in Hurricane… fluffy, smoky, tone-on-tone blue.

Anyway, that’s what’s been going on in craft land here. It’s finally starting to feel like spring around here! It makes me want to sew cotton dresses more than knit woolen mittens/mohair shrugs, but knitting is so much more fun and portable.

Glamourpuss

Pattern: Saturday Night Silk Jersey Set from Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross
Size made: Small
Fabric used: 3 yards (actually, probably closer to 2.5 yards as called for in the pattern–I didn’t measure my leftovers) of a screenprinted cotton t-shirt knit fabric I got from Hancock Fabrics for $3 a yard
Date started: March 29, 2009
Date completed: March 30, 2009
Mods: Substituted fabric; added the pockets from the Trapeze Dress pattern into the side seams of the dress (cut 4 pockets, sew pockets to edges of front and back pieces–right sides together–then when sewing front to back, sew around the edges of the pockets instead of straight down the edge). Since I added the pockets, I didn’t sew French seams for the side seams.
Notes: Verdict: awesome! I love this dress! (not really a dress. A “set.”) I wasn’t even planning to make it–I felt like it was kind of impractical (I prefer dresses you can comfortably wear a bra under) but when I was tracing other patterns and saw this only had 3 pattern pieces, I couldn’t resist trying it out. (Bonus: since it’s sewn with a knit fabric, there is no ironing involved, and hemming is optional.)

It took only an hour or two to make. Really, really easy and fast. If I ever see some silk jersey at a halfway reasonable price, I think I might splurge and make myself another one of these. The cotton knit is fairly drapey but I think it’s still a little stiffer than a silk, rayon, or bamboo fabric would be, especially because of the slight stiffness of the screen printing ink.

The set looks like a Marilynesque halter dress, but is really two pieces: a super-comfy elastic-waist skirt, and a tie-neck halter top with a draped cowl front and long, wraparound waistband ties, so you can wear the two pieces as separates if you so desire. The top is really short–I wouldn’t wear it by itself unless something miraculous happened to my abs–but I’ve already worn the skirt in public separately with a nice brown sweater, leggings, and boots; I rolled the waistband over itself a few times and wore it lower down, since for the set to work properly without a gap between the top and the skirt, the waistband for the skirt needs to sit in old man pants territory, i.e. at the “natural waist”.

The pattern is incredibly easy, and since it’s a stretchy knit fabric, with elastic waist and adjustable ties at the neck and waist, it can be easily adjusted to fit the wearer perfectly.

The front could be immodest, so I need to be a little careful when wearing this–the drape neck dips really low. There’s a ton of fabric in the front there, so it seems to cover everything pretty well, but I do wish the cut of the dress allowed for wearing a camisole or putting in a modesty panel or something. It does seem to fit well around the sides–I’m not concerned about it gaping under the arms.

I sewed all seams with a zigzag stitch, and repurposed the waistband elastic from an ancient, fraying pair of underwear for the waistband of the skirt. I skipped the rolled hem and left the bottom unfinished. If you wanted to make the pattern even easier, and use less fabric, you could probably skip the facings for the front and waist ties, and leave all the edges and seams unfinished.

The waistband instructions were a little confusing, so I’m not sure I sewed the waist elastic on exactly as intended, but it looks and works fine the way it is. The elastic is sewed directly to the fabric, so it’s really easy, no casing or facing to deal with.

Here is how it looks from the back.

Pretty great, right?