sewing binge

Bolstered by the success of my first Infinity Dress, I have gone on a huge sewing and fabric-buying rampage lately. (Apologies in advance for the quality of the photos in this post. They almost all came out very bright and overexposed. Just pretend it’s a halo of heavenly light and I am about to ascend into a hovering spacecraft, and you are an exclusive witness to this special moment.)

First, Rahul and I biked out to Wal-Mart the other day–a harrowing 4.5 mile ride along narrow, busy roads, on the west side of town, across a freeway. My bike nearly fell in a ditch and when I corrected to stay out of it, I nearly got hit by a truck. It was scary. But my reward was 4 yards of 1×1 ribbed black knit fabric for only $1 a yard. I went home and made another Infinity Dress, and then made a drape neck top with the leftovers. Because my fabric was only 45 inches wide, I made a gathered skirt instead of a circle skirt, so this one has a slimmer silhouette.

I also accidentally sewed the band on top of the straps instead of underneath, but I think it’s still OK.

Here’s the drape neck top. It is sewn together rather poorly. The rib knit was much stretchier than the jersey, so I ended up with a lot of lettuce edges where there shouldn’t have been any. The pattern is Simplicity New Look 6470, View B.

Here’s the new dress.

“Oh my god, that looks SO WEIRD,” said Rahul this morning, as I was going out to water my basil plants on the balcony, and took this picture of the back of the dress to demonstrate how weird it was that my dress had no back. I thought it looked fine, but the sleeves fell off when I was bent over my plants, so I retied it to cross over in the back.

Because the skirt has a pretty slim silhouette, I just wore it underneath my next two FOs instead of changing into a new top.

These are both made with quilting cotton I bought a while back at Shiisa Quilts, from their $4.99 bed sale.

This one is made with a dark purple fabric printed with white dragonflies. I made it into a circle skirt with ties and a zipper at the waist. Because I only had about a yard of 45″ fabric, it came out shorter than I would have liked and the overall silhouette is a little bit 80’s. A learning experience. I should have stuck with a plain A-line wrap skirt like I had originally planned.

This one I’m very proud of. The fabric is a Rowan/Westminster Martha Negley cotton, dark red, striped with tree trunks. I drafted my own pattern according to the A-line skirt, fitted waist directions in Sew What! Skirts, an excellent book for the beginning skirt-sewer like myself–highly recommended. I went on to cut the pieces on the bias to make chevron stripes, put in side pockets (these need some work–for some reason, I cut them so the pockets don’t really dip down, just go straight in, so I can’t put anything in them, though I can use them to warm my hands) and installed what I think is an invisible zipper in the back. I just need to put in some snaps to secure the waistband.

After all that, I went to Jo-Ann and back to Shiisa Quilts, where they’ve dropped the price of the bed sale fabrics to $3.99 a yard and are having a buy one yard, get one yard free offer through today, so I scored a bunch of nice fabric for just $2 a yard.

Here’s some of what I got:

Cloud fabric (not on sale, but I loved it. This is Moda fabric, named, puzzlingly, “Bears just wanna have fun”)

Gray fabric with chartreuse hydrangeas, Kaffe Fassett Lille Arbour. I loved this fabric last time I was in the store, but Rahul prevented me from buying it with his protestations of how hideous it was. So I went back without him and bought several yards of it for half price. I think I might make the Anna Dress with it.

Some other stuff: from Shiisa, some blue Rowan Martha Negley fabric with green plums, some blue striped fabric, the aforementioned Kaffe Fassett fabric, and blue fabric with delicate geometric traceries–this is Free Spirit Mendhi Lotus, and is much drapier and silkier than the other fabrics. I haven’t decided what to do with any of this yet, though the default is “knee-length skirt.”

The linen print with brown embroidered flowers is from Jo-Ann (was also on sale) and is destined for another simple A-line skirt.

This is my new favorite summer dress. It was so fast and easy it hardly counts as an FO, since it’s essentially putting together a kit. I saw the fabric on sale at Jo-Ann and bought it on impulse: they sell a big roll of cotton gauze pre-smocked with elastic thread, and you just buy a piece a couple of inches larger than your bust size, sew a tube, add straps as desired, and hem it. I made nice wide straps to cover up bra straps and this dress fits perfectly, aside from the fact that I didn’t pre-shrink my fabric so I ended up with a dress an inch or two shorter than what I had wanted.

Edited to add, since I had some comments about this: if you’re in the US and don’t have a Jo-Ann Fabrics nearby, it looks like you can get pre-smocked fabric online via Hancock Fabrics. I couldn’t find this specific fabric on the Jo-Ann website, but when I was in the store they also had the same stuff in pink and green, and some tropical Hawaiian-looking smocked fabrics.

I also have some brown jersey (not shown) for yet another Infinity Dress and another try at that drape-neck top. All I can say is that it’s a good thing sewing is so much faster than knitting.

Speaking of which, here is the current progress on the Loquat Shawl:


Apparently, as maid of honor, I’m going to have to make a toast at this wedding, which fills me with a deep sense of terror and anxiety (I would rather eat bugs than do any kind of public speaking). If only they were traditionalists and left all the public speaking to the best man and all the fussy lady’s maid duties to the maid of honor. I’m sure I can carry bobby pins and straighten hairdos like nobody’s business.

I must soothe myself with admiring my newest yarn acquisition, the first shipment of the Sundara Seasons club, June 2008, the Autumn season. This is Sundara Sock yarn in Arabian Nights, a rich, warm brown shot through with henna highlights. Isn’t it gorgeous? I have a pattern idea in my head for this already, but can’t start anything new till I’m done with the shawl.

And a knitter’s PSA: Knit Picks is having their annual 40% off book sale, and they’ve just posted a bunch of new yarns for sale: delicious-looking semi-solid kettle dyes, new colors of many yarns, Imagination hand-painted sock yarn, Swish Bulky superwash, and more.

Look at the stars, see how they shine for you

Here’s a little sneak peek at the current progress of the YELLOW! wedding shawl I’m making for my best friend. I could use some encouragement that yes, it looks pretty and is worth continuing on with… it’s a bit of a beast to work, as there is lace patterning on every row and due to the little minicable-and-lace increase pattern leading into each repeat of the honeybee-and-faggoting pattern, the chart is 46 rows long. Still, each individual bit of it is pretty intuitive, as long as I don’t get mixed up about which part of the pattern I’m working.

It’s a top-down triangle and I’ll finish it with a sideways knitted-on edging. I’m really loving the color and the yarn.

Llamas!

About two years ago, not long after moving to Bloomington, I was googling pure llama yarn with the intention of making a scarf for my friend Molly. We’ve known each other since I was five, and long ago, we wrote a parody of a romance novel together called “The Mark of the Llama.” Molly happens to be allergic to wool, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to sample some exotic fiber and also make her a nice little in-joke of a present.

This was before Mirasol Miski and Elsebeth Lavold Baby Llama came on the scene, so it was a little hard to find something suitable–most of what I was finding was wool-llama blends, like Cascade Pastaza. One of the first hits that came up when I searched for “100% llama yarn” was Yellow Wood Llamas (or maybe it was their web store, Farmhouse Fibers), run by Fred and Laura Keller. When I looked at their site, I noticed that they were located in Martinsville, just north of Bloomington, so I inquired about the possibility of coming up to their farm to pick up my purchase (and meet the llamas) rather than having it shipped down. Laura and I emailed back and forth for a while but never managed to get the dates worked out, and the idea fell by the wayside.

Well, recently, since Rahul finished his master’s, it dawned on me that Molly was probably finishing her graduate degree as well, so I’d better get cracking on that present for her. I contacted Laura again and we finally set up a date for llama-viewing.

Thus it was that last Friday, Kalani, Elli, and I spent a gorgeous summer evening driving up to Martinsville to hang out with a pack of large furry animals. I loved the visit so much, I think my new life plan involves owning a llama farm at some point. They have so much personality and charm, I love their gigantic golf-ball eyes and long eyelashes, and their fur is soft and silky as can be.

We went into the backyard, past their pond bordered with honeysuckle and yucca plants, and home to fish, snapping turtles, and pesky muskrats, and as we started up a hill towards the pasture, a little herd of llamas ran up to the fence to see what we were doing. (There are dozens more of them, but the males almost all live in on a separate plot of land across the road.) I thought that might be it–interaction across the fence–but no, they took us through the barn and into the midst of many friendly and curious llamas. Cooper (or perhaps his name was Hopper?), a seven-month-old male, was especially friendly and spent so much time breathing into our faces and giving us kisses and nibbles that Laura took him away and put a muzzle on him so we would have some breathing room. Here he is, getting in Kalani’s personal space:

Michele is their ambassador llama, an incredibly good-natured and friendly creature. We spent a lot of time giving her back scratches and cuddles. She was very fond of Elli.

This enclosure was home to all the outcast camelids. In the back we have Phantom, aka Paco, the lone alpaca in the herd. In the front, Lewis, the spunkiest, toughest little llama ever. This guy has had a very hard life–born blind, he later broke his leg very badly, had it set with pins and plates to hold it in place–and then the leg got infected, so he spent a lot of time at the OSU veterinary hospital being patched up and tended. You can read more of his saga on the Yellow Wood blog.

On this side of the barnyard was also a three-legged llama–I forgot his name, but he got tangled up trying to jump a fence when he was a baby, and injured his leg so badly it had to be amputated.

He seems pretty good-natured about it now, though.

Here are more gratuitous llama photos (and more here):

And if you click on the picture of Paco below, you’ll get to see a video of an adorable inter-species greeting:

So we spent a good long time showering attention on the llamas and asking all kinds of questions, then we stopped in the barn where we saw a pregnant barn kitty:

and Kalani got to feed a llama named Captain Curry, and then we went into the house, where we were confronted with a beautiful room full of yarn and fiber. I didn’t think to take a photo of the room-o-fiber, but you can see me wallowing in yarn in Kalani’s post.

Here’s what I got:
A 1.4 oz. drum-carded batt of silky, glossy, jet-black fiber from a llama named Kona (this picture came out much too brown):

4 oz. of roving from our buddy Michele:

Super Silky sportweight in Plum, a delicate rose-pink semi-solid:

Super Silky sportweight in Lily, a beautiful turquoise/teal. This is destined to become a lacy scarf for Molly, probably Branching Out:

A skein of naturally colored dark brown sportweight shot through with green and orange angelina sparkles:

All of it is silky soft and beautiful, and I can’t wait to work with it. If you’re interested in buying some yourself, you can do it through the Farmhouse Fibers website. Of the yarns I didn’t end up buying, the Phantom alpaca-silk blend (made from Paco’s fur!) was especially tempting, as was the Sassafras worsted weight.

Fred and Laura’s business is primarily online, not brick-and-mortar, so I really appreciated their taking the time out to host us crazy, obsessed knitters for a few hours on a Friday night. It was really a wonderful field trip, well worth the 40-minute drive, and the handspun yarn from Michele’s coat will be one of the best fibery souvenirs of Southern Indiana I could possibly take with me when I move.

What is inside?

When I saw Macoco’s fantastic Greta Garbo sweater, I became intrigued by the book it came from–Hollywood Knits, by Bill Gibb–so I added it to my shopping cart the next time I had an Amazon purchase to make. I didn’t know anything about the book aside from seeing that sweater, so it was a leap of faith to buy it. All I knew was what she’d posted–that it was a book of sweater designs inspired by classic photos of various Hollywood stars in knitwear.

(A brief long aside: I used to do this all the time back in high school. I found out about the Magnetic Fields from a friend from an online chat room and went out to buy a copy of Holiday based on his recommendation alone, having no idea what the band would sound like. I somehow obtained a paper catalog from Firebird Records and randomly ordered British folk rock CDs based on one-paragraph written descriptions of the music.

Nowadays, we depend so much on sample-before-you-buy, no-commitment purchasing, whether it’s downloading an entire album and listening to it for weeks before deciding to buy it, scarfing free samples at Costco, or buying 20 pairs of shoes at Zappos–something we discussed at knit night tonight–with the ability to return them all if you change your mind. We’re guarded, we’re picky, we use Metacritic to sort through dozens of reviews at once and can reject an album before ever hearing a single note of it.

But back in the day, I think I used to discover a lot more cool new stuff because of that necessary leap of faith. Once I had committed to the random purchase to learn about something new, I had an investment in it, and it was in my own best interest to give it a fair chance and find things to appreciate about the item I’d already bought. Sort of like an arranged marriage, maybe; once you’re committed, even if you might not have originally made that decision if you could have made a fully informed, consenting choice, you really try to find something to love.)

So, in that same spirit, I ordered the book. Oddly enough, almost all the listings for used copies of Hollywood Knits on Amazon have it as being by “Bill Gibbs,” but it should be Gibb, as far as I can tell, like this listing and this listing have it.

I’m kind of amazed that Macoco took her own leap of faith to make the sweater in the first place. The sweaters are all illustrated in two ways: 1) the photo of the inspiration sweater, and 2) a crazy 80s “fashion” line drawing of the sweater, very stylized and inevitably with gigantic, padded trapezoid shoulders tapering to a carrot-like waist. Some of the inspiration photos are sort of hard to see, too, so I guess you just have to read through the pattern and hope for the best.

Anyway, I thought I’d pay a little debt back to the Internet, and enable all you fickle noncommittal shoppers to get a taste of what’s inside Hollywood Knits. The Bill Gibb book, not the Suss Cousins one.

In no particular order, here are the photos of the patterns found in this book. There is interesting chatter about the patterns and the movie stars in all the facing pages.

Greta Garbo, in the sweater that piqued my interest in the first place.

Jean Harlow in a polo shirt.

Lana Turner in another polo shirt. Both of these seem kind of similar to Salina, from Vintage Knits.

Adele Jergens in a fluffy monstrosity.

Loretta Young in what might be a cute, classic cardigan. Who can tell?

Claudette Colbert in a pretty puff-sleeved blouse embroidered with flowers.

Vilma Banky in a tennis vest with flags on the chest. I would make one like this with two American flags and embroider “THESE COLORS DON’T RUN” across the stomach. I think that would be very classy.

Joan Crawford in a puff-sleeved sweater that’s sort of hard to separate from her overall suspendertastic, old-man-feeding-pigeons-in-the-park look.

Peggy Cummins in a turtleneck that might be very cute but also has giant shoulder pads for the Carroty look.

Cary Grant in a basic cabled V-neck. NEEDS MORE ANGORA AND SHOULDER PADS

Jane Greer in a sweet blazer, holding a giant tie

Jennifer Jones in a big textured coat I think I might love, if I could only see what the front of it would look like.

Dorothy Lamour in a bejeweled boatneck.

Jane Wyman in a shirt emblazoned with embroidered cigarettes.

Marilyn Monroe in a turtleneck vest thing with the neck pinned down by a brooch. It looks fabulous, but I suspect it loses some of the overall fabulous effect if you do not look like Marilyn Monroe.

Virginia Mayo in a bird sweater.

Robert Taylor, in a cabled sweater as boring as his name.

Gary Cooper, in a sweater with kind of an awesome colorwork band across the chest.

Errol Flynn. Yeah, baby!

crap, counting these now, I think I’m short one pattern, but I don’t know which one it is. Anyway, that’s at least 19 out of 20. Now you’ve sampled what’s inside, and can find excuses not to buy this book.

Tonight I’m visiting a llama farm with Kalani and Elli! Hopefully, many cute llama pictures to come.

Infinity!

So right after Cosmicpluto alerted me to the existence of the infinity dress, I ran right out and made myself one, too. Blurry photos:

It was so easy I can’t believe it–I want to make 10 more of these! Here’s the timeline:

Last night: Measured myself and drew out some schematics for cutting out the dress.
Today at lunchtime: Drove to Hobby Lobby , where print cotton jersey knits were on sale for $3.99 a yard (I hear you can get them for $1 a yard at Wal-Mart, but that’s all the way across town). You could choose from camouflage, pink with white floral, pink with white polka dots, blue stripes, blue with white polka dots, acid green with black polka dots, black with white polka dots, and white with black brocade. I decided on blue with white polka dots–thought about the stripes, but they don’t play well with circle skirts, and thought about the black, but thought it would be better to minimize the visual contrast between RS and WS of the fabric. I got 4 yards of it and have a lot left over.
Today at 7 PM: Cut out the four pieces for the dress. Tried to set up the sewing machine, found that the presser foot no longer wanted to raise itself up, cursed and struggled for a while. Ate dinner.
Today at 8 PM: Finally got the presser foot working again.
Today at 8:30 PM: Finished sewing the dress. One seam for the waist, one seam to stitch closed the waistband.

Here are the schematics I used:

• Circle skirt: Fold 60″ cotton jersey into quarters, then cut a 27″ quarter circle out of the fabric. I did this freehand, with one end of the measuring tape held at the central corner, inching the measuring tape gradually upwards and cutting the curve in short arcs.
• Circle skirt waist: Cut a 3.5 inch arc out of the central corner. Against all odds, this made a waistband that was slightly too big. According to mathematical principles, I thought this would give me a 22-inch waistband… is my math off? 2 pi r equals circumference? Anyway, it definitely ended up bigger than 22 inches.
• Straps: Erring on the side of slightly too wide, since I know the jersey fabric wants to roll up (it’s basically stockinette, after all) I cut two pieces along the length of the fabric, 13 inches times 100 inches. Basically these were lengthwise strips from the long edges of the entire remaining length of the cut of fabric.
• Waistband: I cut a crosswise piece from the end after cutting the straps lengthwise. This ended up being about 30 inches by 12 inches. I folded it in half for a 6-inch-tall waistband and overlapped the ends by about an inch when sewing it to the waist of the skirt.

I assembled this all with a straight stitch on my sewing machine, with the overlap of the waistband hidden behind the middle of one of the straps. I decided to sew the ends of the waistband together when I was done. Two seams.

If you decide to make one, I highly recommend pinning or clipping the pieces together before you start sewing. Once you’ve gone around about a quarter of the waist of the circle skirt, you just have a giant, tangled mess of twisted-up fabric and it’s very difficult to keep it all flat and aligned.

WWKIPD

Saturday was the most exciting day I’ve had in a long time! It was World Wide Knit In Public Day, and I did that in the morning–more about that later–followed by:

• a bike ride with Jeanne to tour a local cob-built house,
• my first visit to a new Ukrainian deli a few doors down from the new yarn store, where I bought lactose-free cultured sour cream and poppyseed lebkuchen and we shared some strange sodas (Duchesse pear and “bouratino”-flavored sodas: Pinocchio, un burattino, turns out to be the Eastern European symbol for cream soda. Who knew?)
• a Bloomington scavenger hunt (more on this on another day, it merits its own post). We won, amazingly! This scarf played a pivotal role…
• Starting to read a very interesting new book, The Fruit Hunters, by (oddly enough, though I should have known from the reference to fisting within the first chapter) the editor of VICE Magazine (link probably not safe for work)

So–WWKIPD. The Bloomington group was on the top row, very center of the WWKIP Day photo mosaic yesterday! I didn’t finish writing this blog post before the end of the day, so we’ve been replaced in the meantime…

I prepared the night before by going through my stash and pulling out all the yarn I wanted to destash, realizing I couldn’t possibly carry everything on my bike (Rahul was out of town and had the car), and sorting it into potentially saleable items and things I just wanted to get out of my house and into good hands. A skein of Shetland cobweb-weight yarn, piles and piles of recycled sweater yarn from thrift store sweaters (some not quite out of sweater form yet, but all of it pretty nice, if I do say so myself), a few skeins of leftover Lopi, random skeins of handspun, various leftover partial skeins of nice yarns like Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece and Malabrigo… I had to leave most of my saleable yarn at home, to sell later on Ravelry, but wound up packing my entire bike basket, a backpack, and a messenger bag with yarn and biking (in a very wobbly and overloaded way) to the market.

In attendance:

• Nicole
• Kalani (go see her writeup!)
• Katie (I’m stealing the photos her husband took to use on my blog, with her permission, because I couldn’t fit my camera into any of my bags, so I have no photos of my own). Her photo is the one featured in the Flickr photo mosaic.
• Anna
• Fee (go see her writeup! I suspect that might be my destashed handspun in the first photo)
• Sylvia
• Mari
• April
• (Am I forgetting anyone? If so, please let me know. Also, undoubtedly there will be more writeups coming along soon.)

Nicole and Katie had made flyers with LYS, “learn to knit” books, and S’n'B information to hand out; Katie made Ravelry business cards with the name of the local Bloomington group; Fee potato-stamped patches with yarn ball-and-needles motifs to hand out; Nicole brought her pile of “Hello, my name is” Ravelry buttons. We talked to various knitters and crocheters and handed out lots of flyers, cards, and yarn. (I contributed lots of free yarn, as did various other attendees, but Fee’s “FREE YARN” sign and basket was the most instrumental in actually getting it into people’s hands and attracting knitters to our group.)

I did some fairly mindless knitting (Sarah’s lace wedding shawl is in slow progress/swatching stages, but didn’t seem appropriate to bring to a public, group knitting event with my laptop and all), bought chard, honey, and garlic scapes from the market, and ate a tamale from my favorite stall.

I wore my Rusted Root, as you can see in the top photo. (Also, a new haircut):

L-R: April, me, Mari, Sylvia, Nicole, Fee’s husband Bryan, Fee, Kalani, Katie

This is the photo that was on the WWKIP website, though a few people were cropped out of it, I think. You can also see one of the plastic bags of yarn I brought to destash, right by Katie’s brown knitting bag: white Berroco Plush, the end of a skein of Malabrigo, recycled cream-colored Irish lambswool, a partial skein of navy blue acrylic, a small skein of handspun singles.

A good time was had by all, and best of all, I left the market minus what felt like about ten pounds of yarn, feeling very light and free–my backpack, bike basket, and messenger bag now empty. Kalani, Nicole, and I had lunch at Esan Thai, a Northern Thai restaurant across from the library, where I had a Thai iced coffee for the first time in ages… yum. I’ll definitely post more about the scavenger hunt at a later date–it was lots of fun, and I think other current or former Bloomingtonians might enjoy seeing how they would have done. Unfortunately, Steve accidentally deleted some of the earlier photos, and we’re hoping he can recover them from the memory card using a free recovery utility.

On the sewing front, I saw this infinity dress Cosmicpluto made and I am now obsessed with making one myself. The tutorial is here, and you should also page through the Craftster thread–it looks like an extremely versatile, comfortable, and flattering dress–not to mention extremely easy to sew, with just one seam as long as you use a stretch knit and don’t hem it. If I make it, if I can find thinner jersey fabrics to use, I was thinking I might line the strap parts with contrasting fabric. It would look cool, would provide a finished edge, and would also provide extra thickness and coverage. I hope I can find a nice stretchy knit fabric locally, because I just love love love this dress.

Berroco previews are up!

The Berroco Fall 2008/2009 previews are up! As I predicted, I totally love the Woodland Gothic story in Norah Gaughan Vol. 3… no surprises there. The cover cardigan, Violette-le-Duc, looks interesting, but I’d like to see it worn upside down, as “a more traditional cocoon cardigan,” as they mention in the pattern description.

There are some cute patterns in the other books; I really like the Chapa pillows and the Paley cardigan. Some of the designs in the new Ultra Alpaca collection, like Unity or Ursa, look like they would be really nice to wear, but not very interesting to knit.

They have some new yarns up, too–I’m especially interested in the wool/silk blends, Inca Gold and Palace, but whether I end up using them will depend on the price point–Inca Gold is “at an honest price,” but I don’t know what that means.

There has been some crazy flooding here in the last week, but living in the middle of town, on the second floor, I thankfully haven’t seen any of it in person… just some wild electrical storms and rain. Nearby towns are almost totally underwater, the governor has declared a state of emergency, and they closed off the interstate freeways I-65 and I-70 going through Indianapolis, “the Crossroads of America,” and 37 North out of Bloomington. Pretty wild. Lots of pictures of the flooding in Bloomington in this slideshow.

Right now, though, it’s 95 degrees out and I’m going to go eat some Greek yogurt with honey and walnuts and make some pasta alla Norma out of Paula Wolfert’s Mostly Mediterranean–a really fun cookbook I have out from the library right now. (The first picture of the pasta in that link is singularly unappealing, like pasta alla garden slugs, but it’s really a very tasty dish. Kroger didn’t have ricotta salata, so I’m substituting smoked mozzarella… not very traditional, but I bet it will taste good.)

Roses are violet

OK, the burn mark on our linoleum is still there (now covered by a throw rug), and my leg still hurts, but my mental state today is much better than it was yesterday. The sun is out (this is how deep the flooding downtown was yesterday after the thunderstorm), knitting night is tonight, Rahul and I might go see a play at the fresh-baked cookie store after that. And, as I mentioned, I have some good knitterly things to think about.

Here’s one of the nice things. When I finished the Hemlock Ring, I cast on for a new hat as a reward for myself. It’s no kind of weather for wool berets right now, but who cares? It’s pretty! And it was fun and quick to make.

Pattern:Rose Red, by Ysolda Teague. chemgrrl, who was done with hers, traded the pattern to me for a skein of Rowan Calmer.
Size made: Small, but using a larger gauge. I can’t tell you what the gauge was, because I was lazy and fudged it.
Finished dimensions: I was lucky–it fits! I blocked it over a dinner plate, and it came out to 11 inches in diameter with the hat lying flat, with a band size of about 20 inches.
Yarn used: Malabrigo Merino Worsted from a Whitknits sale, in Violetas, about 90 grams (i.e. just under 1 skein, or about 195 yards).
Needles used: US size 8/5.0 mm bamboo DPNs to start the hat (it’s knit from the top down), and US size 7/4.5 mm 16-inch Boye Needlemasters for the rest
Date started: June 2, 2008
Date finished: June 3, 2008
Mods: Aside from the gauge modifications, none that I can think of.
Notes: My Ravelry page for this project is here. I loved this pattern. It’s gorgeous and intricate, fast and pretty easy to knit, and very well-written and easy to follow (I used the written directions, which I think to many knitters is akin to saying you like white wine better than red at a gathering of oenophiles–sort of crass, indicating a not-very-advanced palate.)

I finished the hat in just two days, after some marathon TV knitting (season openers of Bones and House; Barack Obama’s speech accepting the presumptive nomination; two nights of Daily Show and Colbert Report).

I usually cable without a cable needle, but this time, because of the way the 7-stitch cable is worked, I had to use a cable needle. It was fiddly and annoying, but I think it improved the look of my cables–they’re usually sloppy around the edges, but looked pretty tight this time. I used a size 6 DPN instead of one of the special cable needles you can buy.

I actually have some red DK-weight angora blend in the stash, and after making Rusted Root I was thinking I should add more red to my wardrobe this winter, so I think I might make another one of these hats in fluffy red DK weight, exactly like Ysolda’s original. Or maybe not. I’m not crazy about the way the cabled band looks, although I really appreciate the tidy, knitterly design aesthetics of continuing those cables all the way down the band. It’s just that somehow I feel like the hat looks a bit too… chef-like? and I suspect I might prefer the look of a ribbed band instead.

I think the recommended lighter weight yarn would also be a good idea. Malabrigo on 7s, even well-blocked, came out slightly too sturdy and the hat doesn’t drape well. For best effect, I think it should be really floppy. Also, I can’t quite decide how I feel about this semi-solid colorway–is it a distraction, or does it add to the charm and intricate look of the pattern? (This is not to say I don’t totally love the hat–I really do. This is all nitpicking.)

Anyway–on to the pictures. It’s really hard to take a picture of the back of your own head.

The hat lying flat.

The back of my head.

Plated up for blocking. The underside and band:

The flowery top, with cute li’l i-cord nubbin:

Me looking vaguely chef-like, or possibly medieval, from the front.

So–some other good things.

• The Rainey Sisters alerted me to the fact that Niebling’s legendary Lyra doily is now available for $7 plus $4.50 shipping/handling through Lacis. It used to be rare and go for a LOT more on eBay–there are two copies up right now, the highest one, with 19 bids, currently priced at $81 plus $5.90 shipping. And I mean copy–it says you get photocopies of the pattern, not even originals. It must be a cash cow for the seller, since they can make infinite copies for 10 cents and sell them for $81+. That’s really kind of messed up.
• You can now purchase a couple of my patterns through Sandra Singh. She posted them today and has sold a copy of The Water is Wide already!
• Robynn sent me some freakin’ amazing yarn. Just look at how gorgeous this is.Handmaiden Camelspin, in Nova Scotia, glowing green and blue–this stuff has the sheen of Sea Silk but is much softer, probably the softest yarn I’ve ever felt, softer than the skein of cashmere I have in my purse:
  
  
  

  Artyarns Beaded Rhapsody in color 159, gleaming gold and silver:
  
  

Are those not just insanely beautiful? The timing was good; it made my day if not my week, and on balance more than made up for my Very Bad Day yesterday–thank you so much, Robynn.

Score another one for the kitchen.

I thought the day was off to a good start. Barack Obama won the nomination and gave a very gracious and eloquent speech (although Bush congratulated him on his win before Hillary did! Perhaps she still hasn’t–I haven’t checked). The sun seemed to have come out after the storms and tornado watch yesterday (there were sirens and everything! It was scary). I finished and blocked several knits. But alas, the day turned out to be rather Terrible, Horrible, No Good, and Very Bad.

A huge rainstorm came up early in the morning, while I was asleep and Rahul was out at the gym, and the rain got in through the screen of the patio door we’d left open for ventilation and soaked our carpet.

A Severe Thunderstorm hit town, with 60-mile-per-hour winds, pouring rain, brownouts, incredibly bright lightning, and the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard. Apparently it was producing nickel-sized hail elsewhere in the area. I unplugged my laptop and went to work in our bedroom for a while, where it seemed more safe and cozy than in the office.

I heard crashing from the kitchen, then some screams of “Help! Help me!” I scrambled up and across the house, into the kitchen. Another kitchen fire, roaring up from another saucepan.

This fire had considerably less comedic value than the last one. I couldn’t find the fire extinguisher (it was stowed behind the microwave). Rahul burned his hand on the pan when trying to put it out, dropped it on the floor, and left this mark on the linoleum. There goes our security deposit.

And I think I tore my right quadriceps muscle when I stumbled while running to the kitchen–the front of my thigh hurts like hell.

We were both grouchy after that. I really wanted to yell at him for setting the kitchen on fire again, but didn’t think it would be very productive to do so, so I left it at a few stern words about the low smoke point of extra virgin olive oil, and the dangers of overheating the pan. “It wasn’t that hot!” he kept insisting–but he had the temperature on the electric stove turned up to about 7 out of 9, and I never turn it above 5 unless I’m boiling water.

So I was mad at him, and then he came into the office where I was transforming this:

into this:

I had carefully asked him earlier where I could block this blanket for a day without causing him problems, and he said “in the office.” So I pinned it to the floor in the office. He had come in and out of the room several times before and always stepped over the blanket. Then he came in and stepped right on the pins barefoot (ouch!), broke one or two of them, got mad at me for pinning it to the floor “right in front of the door” and griped about it for a while.

I was working late because of the distractions caused by thunderstorms, fires, etc. and he got mad about that, too, and went out to ride his bike. I can’t go biking till my thigh heals.

All in all, not a very good day. Blah. But I have some nice knitterly things to post about–Hemlock Ring, etc.–when I’m in a better mood. I’ll try not to be such a Gloomy Gus next time.

12 hours

We spent the weekend in Missouri, with Rahul’s parents. 6 hours drive each way, plus a few hours of random knitting I managed to sneak in over the weekend, and I’ve finished the main part of the Hemlock Ring (I did one more repeat than Jared’s blanket) and now have many hours of binding off to look forward to. It makes up for the very non-productive weekend (well, it was very productive, just not as far as knitting goes) in Madison. Yay!

More later!