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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.
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.
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!
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
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.
