My Valentine Skirt

Happy Valentine's Day!!

About two weeks ago, I ordered a pretty red dress online and afterward thought it would be great to wear on Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, it didn't show up by Saturday.

Come Sunday, I decided I wanted something red to wear anyway.

Remembering I had some red fabric in my stash (received as part of the same group of fabric that became the granny skirt) and grabbing a simple previously made pattern (Simplicity 2758). I whipped this skirt up in an evening.

It is generally know that I am not a fast sewer.

It was only a through a confluence of positive circumstances that it came together so quickly:

1. I happened to have all the materials on hand, including the fabric, interfacing, red thread and a sufficiently long red zipper.
2. I has sewed the pattern before, so the pattern pieces were already cut out and I knew it fit well.
3. The pattern is basically three pieces: skirt front, skirt back, and waist band. Plus the added strip for the faux bow.
4. Only two seams to finish!
5. The material is a faux suede, so I couldn't really iron it. Meaning, I didn't have to iron it!
6. The zipper went in super easily on the first try.

To add a hint of pizazz, I added some top stitching on the waistband and on off-center bow.

And voila! Festive Valentine's Day skirt!

Sweater Update

I'm going to call it a case of hubris. I was knitting my bulky sweater and going through about 1½ balls of yarn a day and I'll admit it, I was thinking - you know, I might be able to knit this sweater in a week!! When last I showed this sweater (on 1/28) it looked like this:

January 29:

January 31:

February 2 (Morning):

February 2 (Evening):

Cue trombone sounds: "Wha-wha-wha-waaaaaaaaaaaah!"

I took the whole thing apart.

I had  swatched, washed and blocked and measured my swatch, but then on a larger scale, my gauge grew and the sweater was just too big. So I frogged it and started again the evening of the 2nd in the next size down.

The good news is, it fits great now, and I'm right back to where I left off the first time yarn usage-wise and a little further ahead pattern-wise.

February 9:

On the Wires, On the Needles

Wednesday night I finished my lace project and put it on the blocking wires. Getting a project like this wet is awesome and terrifying, awesome because the lace really opens up and becomes truly lovely, terrifying because I had no idea how big it might get. (I generally only do gauge swatches for sweaters).

Fortunately this "scarf on steroids" project, as I've come to call it, ended up wider, but not substantially longer than the pattern. Not to say it isn't huge anyway - for a sense of scale, the orange strip on the ground is a yard stick.

This weekend I'll pull it off the wires and do some wearing demo photos and then it'll be packed up and shipped off to my mother in Northern California.

My long-neglected second sock not piquing my interest enough, I immediately cast on a new project (after swatching!) yesterday morning and I've already knit through a ball and a half. Lord love bulky yarn!!

Here's what I've done so far.

Must knit more!!

I Think I Ate a Whole Pie Yesterday

So the day after I moved in, I naturally invited a bunch of people over for my second annual National Pie Day celebration, like you do.

There were knitting quizzes and pie trivia!

There were door prizes!

There was much tea consumed!

There were rows knitted!

And there was a pie per person! (and some creme brulee that snuck in, but who can complain?)

(Counterclockwise from bottom right: quiche (egg pie), shepherd's pie, vegetarian shepherd's pie, banana's foster pie, cherry cream pie, spinach feta and phyllo pie, lemon meringue, and s'more pie.)

In other news, it's -10° F outside, but the house is warm and there were a pair of beautiful cardinals chirping outside my living room window as I ate my breakfast this morning.

And I have a bunch of leftover savory pies for my lunch. Not a bad start to a cold day!!

Work In Progress

In the midst of all the painting, packing and scraping, it's nice to have a simple lace pattern to turn to at night.

Mr. Cleaver's Christmas Shirt

Last year for Christmas, I  secretly knit Mr. Cleaver a sweater. This year, I secretly sewed him a shirt.

Secret sewing is much more difficult than secret knitting, especially when your sewing machine lives in your bedroom! But I squeezed the project in on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, when Mr. Cleaver left for work early (except for one when we lost power!).  I did kick him out of the house for an hour and a half on the 22nd or 23rd so I could do the buttons and buttonholes, and I thought for sure he was onto me.

But Christmas morning came and he opened his shirt and I had to tell him I made it, even though I stitched something inside one of the cuffs,  which I guess is a good thing. I did work really hard to make it the shirt as professional as possible, including doing flat-felled seams throughout and matching the plaids wherever possible.  You could practically wear this thing inside out!

A flat-felled seam.

My biggest worry was that it wouldn't fit, even though I kept comparing it to shirts in his closet, but it fit great and he wore it all Christmas day. The fabric is a lovely light-weight wool  from the Pendleton wool mills that irons and wears like a dream. My family has a long-history with Pendleton wool button-downs, so I was glad I could bring Mr. Cleaver into the tradition.

Pattern: McCalls' M6044 - View C

Fabric: Pendleton Lightweight Wool from Gorgeous Fabrics

Flat-Felled Seam Tutorial: sewneau.com

Introducing: Fisherman's Wife Beret

This pattern is a long time in coming. I knit the first version of this beret back in 2006 in a cream-colored bulky yarn and still wear it all the time. The pattern is inspired by fishing nets, and is the kind of thing I imagine a fisherman's wife would make and wear while waiting for her husband to come back from a long trip on the seas catching swordfish.

The pattern came to pass when my friend Bristol approached me to make it into a pattern to feature SuriPaco's bulky farm yarn. (Full Disclosure - I received yarn support and compensation from SuriPaco for the use of the pattern.)

The yarn is a 75/25 alpaca/wool blend in a superbulky single ply.

The hat features a simple k1, yo lace pattern and can be completed in a couple of hours - if you have any last-minute knitted-hat needs.

The pattern can be downloaded via Ravelry.

The hat is knit at a relatively tight gauge, and the yarn is bulky and fuzzy enough that it stays warm in spite of the lace holes.

That said, I wouldn't recommend taking photos of yourself outside in 33°F weather with falling snow. It took forever for my hands to warm back up! I think I need to make myself some new fingerless mitt for photo-taking :)

Lady Grey Progress (Details)

After all my weekend travel in October, I finally had a chance this past weekend to get back to work on my Lady Grey Coat.

Some things I accomplished since Friday:

• Cut out shell fabric
• Sewed sleeves, belt and belt loops.
• Made two practice bound buttonholes and two real ones and one self-covered button (had to use my teeth to get the back on!)
• Seamed back pieces
• Pad-stitched the under-collar and one lapel (working on the other tonight).

As one might guess from this list, I'm kinda going at this a little scattershot.

I sewed the sleeves and belt because I wanted to see instant progress, and I wanted to get all the pad stitching set up so I could do the actual hand-sewing watching TV during the week. My hope is to have all the hand stitching done by the end of Friday and get the majority of the shell sewn this weekend and the lining fabric cut out. The goal is to have a finished coat by Thanksgiving. Wish me luck!!

Here are some progress photos of my favorite details:

Top stitching on the seams. It makes the coat look particularly "coaty" to me.

Pad stitching on the lapel.  It's hard to tell in the photo, but it makes a huge difference in the way the lapel lays. It's a time consuming process, but totally worth it I think. The finished lapel took me some Jeopardy!, an hour of the Ken Burn's Mark Twain documentary and two hours of Circus on PBS. (Which, have you seen Circus? It's really really well done. I'm enjoying it lot.)

Pad-stitching on the roll line of the under-collar.

Small Knits (and Crochets!)

I finally got around to photographing a few items I'd made a while back, so I figured I'd do a brief FO Roundup (In chronological order, from first completed to most recent):

My first full crochet project: Medium Stash Basket in Lily's Sugar and Cream (leftovers from another project)

Finished it in a day back in August.

My second crochet project: Filigree Bowl.

It's essentially a doily that you stiffen over a bowl shape. I have to say that I found doily making quite fun. Finished in two days in August.

Easy Peasy Newborn Hat.

For a co-worker's baby shower last week, made from leftovers from a pair of socks. Took an evening to complete.

Saartje's Booties. These kill me, they are so tiny and cute. It has a fun construction as well (Although a surprisingly large amount of seaming). Also for my co-worker.

French Press Slippers. I need to find a way to felt them, but they're all knitted up.

Which is lucky. Because I made this of out leftover's from Mr. Cleaver's sweater from last Christmas (sensing a leftover-theme?) and I had two balls of it, but by the time I ran out of ball one, I had lost the second ball. So to finish the straps I had to spit-splice a LOT of ends to make it work, and even then I had to use the purple to make it double thick like the rest of the slipper.

Spin-o-ween

Mr. Cleaver and I had a pretty low-key Halloween evening, which largely consisted of eating Chinese take-out and handing out candy.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon at Maggie's celebrating what I shall now dub "Spin-o-ween." At Rhinebeck,  a number of our group picked up spindles and Maggie needed to get started on making the yarn for her 2010 knitolution (yep - I'm making up new words left and right here). So we gathered together with our roving and our pie - a treat indeed!