The 4th in Four

I finished up so many projects in the past week, but haven't had the time to really photograph them. It's been a full week: Monday was Steinbeck's "Gotcha Day" - one year since we first brought him home, Tuesday was Mr. Cleaver's birthday and we enjoyed stuffed deep dish pizza straight from Giordano's in Chicago. On the fourth, Mother Nature outdid any fireworks with an intense thunderstorm, so we stayed inside and watched the last three episodes of Freaks and Geeks instead.

Yesterday, we took the day off and ran errands, bought a Johnny Cash CD, and checked out a bunch of comic books (the Runaways, where have you been all my life?) and the first season of Arrested Development from the library. In the interim, I've been chugging away at my tour de fleece spinning including the yellow lace-weight, which Mr. Cleaver termed "a lot of yarn." I finished my cookie-monster cardigan and I've been swatching like crazy for new projects. I even managed to sew on the bias binding on my second sorbetto.

I'm back to work today, but it's been a fun few days off. Even better, I'm just hours away from the weekend!

Can I keep it*??

Look what followed me home this weekend:

A nice little Lendrum wheel.

Now, I didn't buy it, it's a rental, but we've already had a very productive relationship in the five days we've known each other.

I think I may be in love.

*As this particular wheel belongs to someone, I can't actually keep it, but I'd happily take another in the same "breed"

The Dr. Faye Lady Suit

I'm a big Mad Men fan, but don't tell me anything about the current season, because I only get to watch it when the dvds come out, so we can chat about it in 4 months or so. In that vein, this post is appropriately a bit overdue. Back in Season 4, I grew very fond of the Dr. Faye character and I also fell in love with this skirted suit from the "Hand and Knees" episode.

In some ways it seems more Banana Republic than 1960s, but then I found Simplicity 2154, a 1960's reproduction pattern and though, it's both!

Recently finding myself in need of a warm-weather appropriate suit for my DC trip, I pulled out the pattern and several yards of heavyweight linen from Z Fabrics and put this together over a weekend.

The coat is a fairly boxy design, which I decided was maybe not the most flattering on me, so it's belted in all these photos. Even if it's not the best cut for me, I believe the fit is spot on. If you wanted to slim it up some, I recommend narrowing the side gusset over choosing an allover smaller size.

The jacket has a fun construction, with the  front/back body and sleeve cut in a single piece, and an underarm gusset panel. Not counting the facings, the pattern in a total of 6 pieces. Attaching the top of the gusset to the underarm of the sleeve was a bit fiddly, but otherwise the jacket was very easy to sew. I actually had more issues with the pencil skirt (fitting ugh!).

Because the jacket is unlined, I finished all the seams with either purchased bias tape (about 2 packages) or by self-hemming after I ran out of bias tape for the facings and underarm.

I don't often need to wear a suit, but with a lady suit like this in my wardrobe, I might find a few more excuses!

Fiber Fun

I just wrapped up a two-week knitting hiatus, but that doesn't mean I didn't have fun with fiber in the interim, in fact you could say I was rather productive:

I spindle spun 6 oz of fiber, which included my hand-dyed fiber from last year's dying workshop, and half a braid I picked up at this year's Fiber Frolic.

I also pulled out a kit I purchased at Fiber Frolic 2011 and made a pair of needle-felted gnomes (though there is some debate as to whether the male gnome is holding a shovel or a spear -the intention was shovel).

I also did a major piece of sewing, but I'll save that for another post.

For now, it's back to working on my long-neglected cookie-monster cardigan.

Ms Cleaver goes to Washington 2012

If you follow me on twitter (@ms_cleaver) you'll know I spent the majority of last week at a work conference in Washington D.C. While I didn't have as much free time as I did on my last D.C. visit, I did manage to find a few times to sneak out and see some sights.

I was traveling light, so here's the trip in iphone/Instagram shots:

The photos above include:

• The National Cathedral
• The National Zoo
• The Art of the Video Game at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art / National Portrait Gallery
• some doodles

And don't worry, I got plenty of work/networking done too!

Maine Fiber Frolic 2012

Last week I shipped off a hefty bit deadline knitting, breathed a big sigh of relief and decided to take a mini-break from knitting for the past week. In the interim, I've been doing a fair bit of spinning, just in time to enable a fresh batch of fiber purchases at the 2012 Maine Fiber Frolic.

While I didn't come home with a full fleece (though Lynn did!), I did pick up two hand-dyed 4 oz braids and sweater kit I regretted not picking up last year.

In addition to checking out the vendors, we chatted with the lady running the great wheel demo and snorgled (or got nibbled on by) some furry creatures.

After we got our fill of fiber, and just as the rain starting falling, we headed into Gardiner and stopped for desert and tea at the A-1 Diner.

Friends, fiber, and food - what more could a girl ask for??

Let Them Eat Cake!

Frequent readers are aware that my knitting group celebrates National Pie Day each year in January, and we thought it unfair that cake didn't get it's own special day, so we made one up.

Our original idea was to tie it to an important Marie Antoinette date of some kind, but it got moved around a bit and the first (annual?) Let Them Eat Cake Day was celebrated this past Sunday.

We had meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato "frosting," crab cakes, corn bread cake with chili sauce, pink lemonade cake, lemon blueberry cake, blueberry pound cake, pumpkin whoopie cake, and leftover graduation sheet cake.

After gorging ourselves on a round of savory cakes and a round of sweet cakes, we traipsed outside to a) slip into a food coma or b) burn off some sugar high with a game of croquet.

Maggie demonstrates the proper food coma form.

Afterward we pulled out our Tupperware and divvied up the copious leftovers, and let's just say I'll be celebrating Cake day all week!

The Do Run Run

I'm not what you'd call a sporty person, but after a year and a half off, I took up jogging again about two months ago.

To give myself some motivation, I signed up for the Portland Sea Dogs Mother's Day 5k.

It's the second-largest race in the state, with 3,000 registrants and over 2,600 runners on the actual day.

You don't quite realize how many people that is until you're in the midst of it, but that is a lot of people! But it gave me a lot of options for people to pace myself off of, and I've learned that I seem to run at the approximate pace of a fit 65-80 year old man. (I just squeaked past a 79-year old at the finish line).

One of the reasons I chose this particular race was because the finish line is inside Hadlock Stadium. And I totally felt like a superstar running into the stadium and giving high fives to the kids along the edge of the seating.

I can't say I'm at the point where I enjoy running itself, but I will say that this race was a blast.

Oh and I finished 33 seconds better than last time!

POW! The Comic Book Dress

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this here before, but I'm a bit of a comic book geek. My comic love was rooted in the90's X-Men cartoon, but really got it's start in college, when I would drive my friend James to new comic book day every week. In return for transport, I could read all the comics he brought back, and from then on I was hooked.

So when I saw this LaFrock dress on Pinterest, I quickly decided that I MUST make one of my own. As in I found appropriate fabric and ordered it the next day.

I actually found the fabric used in the dress above (Alexander Henry's "Sewing is Easy Print"), but I wanted to kick up the nerdiness a notch and picked this "Girl Power" print from Camelot Cottons, which features Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and my personal favorite, Batgirl.

The dress is cobbled together from two patterns, the waistband and bodice are from Colette Patterns Parfait, and the skirt and pockets from McCalls 4826. Despite some issues with the front bodice facing, I really liked the way the bodice came together and I have some lengths of linen I'm eyeballing to become a straight up Parfait this summer.

The dress is super comfy and is maybe one of my favorite things ever.

I spent a solid day putting the whole dress together, because I had a deadline to meet...

Free Comic Book Day!

A lovely event that happened this past Saturday (and the first Saturday in March every year, in case your planning your 2013 calendar). And where else to wear your comic book dress than to hang out with cosplayers and get a dozen free comic books??

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some reading to do.

A Bit of Cake

A few weeks ago Tasia had a great post on sewing "frosting" (fun, often patterned, not necessarily everyday items) versus sewing "cake" (basics, everyday wear). Like most sewists, I definitely fall on the side of being drawn to frosting projects over cake projects - personally, I would be happy sewing nothing but pretty dresses, even if I wear a dress maybe once a week. But recently I've been finding a bit more balance between projects like my houndstooth dress, which I enjoyed sewing, think is awesome, but only wear occasionally:

and my slew of School House Tunics that I wear practically every time they're clean enough to wear.

This weekend, I focused on some serious cake.

But that isn't to say cake can't be fun too.

Sure it's a basic black skirt, but have you seen the inside??

In typical Leah fashion, I took a simple project (Colette Patterns Ginger, a total of four pieces), and made it 100% more complicated by adding pockets and finishing all the seams with home-made bias binding.

That said, I'm pretty pleased with the finished product, even if the fabric seems to spontaneously generate lint. If I had to make any changes I would have 1) used a stiffer interfacing in the waistband 2) gone a size down in the waist and 3) done the recommended hem length (I did a bit deeper hem).

(Might still do that last one).

I'm fairly certain this basic will get heaps of wear, especially since it looks so fantastic with my saddle shoes. :)

Oh and I should say that I'm not abandoning the pursuit of frosting, because my next project may very well prove to be the most fantastic, least practical thing I've sewn since my Halloween costume. (Still wondering where I can wear that).