Category: finished object

  • one of those days

    This morning, I dreamt that I was in a collapsing building. It was really vivid at the time, although of course I can’t recall now. I hurt my knee in the dream (more of a nightmare) and when I was in that space between actually sleeping and aware wakefulness, I felt that my knee really did hurt, there in my bed. Not that I really felt pain, but I just felt that my knee hurt. I got past the dream for a bit more dozing before I had to get up, but…that was not the greatest way to start the day.

    The school thing, is taking up a lot of my time! No photos again today, because I am not home during the day – I do promise some for the weekend, though! The classes I’m taking are pretty intense, especially BIO323 – Evolution. Much more math than I was expecting, mainly stats – probabilities, figuring out expressions for genetic drift and such. We’ve so far spent three hours on probability. Aaaaand….I have two big tests and assignment due the week after Rhinebeck. Not happy about that. The assignment I can do in advance, and hopefully most of the studying, but the books? They’ll be coming with.

    Things are going a wee bit sideways with my two commission projects – one is due this weekend, and I ran out of yarn last week, so ordered some more…and it isn’t here yet. I did get a notice for the post office for TWENTY DOLLARS. On four balls of Kidsilk Haze at $11 US each. Ridiculous! I will have to go pick it up before I go to work tomorrow, which sucks.

    The other project is a shrug-sweater thing, and I think I’m running out of yarn. I’ll be fine on the body, but it’s the length of the sleeves I’m worried about. I’ll cast on provisionally, and do both caps, then knit down. I guess. This one’s due Monday…

    And then there’s the oh, two hundred or so pages I have to read for next week! Argh!

    One good thing – the pattern for the cabled alpaca sweater for lettuce knit is now done and shall be printed off tonight. It’s nice to cross something off the list. If you want one, we do lots of mail order! I’m calling it C4 – Cozy Chunky Cabled Cardi, and it uses Misti Alpaca Chunky (yummy).

    ETA: Well, my photo printer’s being sucky so there won’t be any copies tomorrow. I guess I’ll just have to get to Kinko’s on the weekend. Booooo, I really wanted this to be done.

  • an afternoon with denny

    Denny came over today for some fibrey fun! She brought her warping mill for me to borrow/keep, and showed me how to use it:

    And I gave her an email tutorial.

    I wove! It’s a looong way from perfect, but whatever. Fun!

    It’s…I dunno, a scarf or something. Long. All cotton, white with pink stripes. We wound two more warps, much wider ones, so those will be the next couple projects.

    And Denny took some photos of my latest finished dress – don’t mind the blurry, you get the idea, right?

    Pattern is McCall’s 5137.
    Fabric: “Carmen Paisley” in brown from Reprodepot; brown cotton twill from Fabricland. The paisley is really light and gauzey, and has a ripple texture. I thought the twill might be too heavy (especially doubled for the neckband and waist) but it gives the garment some good weight.

    Thoughts on the pattern – well, I think there are some unnecessary seams. You could cut the back bodice and centre back skirt panel on the fold and eliminate those seams. And it’s very low cut! I made the size 8 on the recommendation of Erin from A Dress a Day, and it fits fine. Very comfy.

    I decided not to do doubled sleeve ends and just did a normal hem around the sleeve. There’s supposed to be an extra panel at the bottom of the skirt, but I nixed that too and just hemmed. All in all the pattern was fairly straightforward.

    Now I’m all tempted to buy more of that paisley!

  • hey, she can (kinda) sew

    Finally, here is my first successful dress (I’ve attempted before, but that didn’t get too far). Photo taken in my sister’s room, which we painted this week. Did the trim today, so it’s still drying.


    (very difficult to get a decent photo of this, on my own anyway. looks better, and slimmer, in person.)

    Pattern is Butterick 4443, view C (the yellow) without the bow, obviously. Size 14. Fabric was cotton/linen blend from Fabricland for $5 a metre! Quite a nice fabric.

    The pattern was…well, challenging for me, queen of skirts and bags. I liked the princess shaping rather than darts, and once I figured out where to clip, they were easy to put together. I didn’t understitch the lining, which was good, because I ran out of thread…not till after I finished, but then there were alterations to be made.

    The pattern really was fairly straightforward, though. The skirt is a really nice shape. I bought this pattern awhile back, so I’d gotten the 8-14 size – I made the 14, but it’s a bit snug in the waist despite reducing the seam allowances on the sides to less than 3/8″. Wearable, though.

    Once I finished slip-stitching in the bodice lining (very tedious), I put it on, zipped it up, and….it was too big in the bodice. The back was gaping madly. So I had to make some modifications:

    Two back darts.

    Plus, I had to go and wreck my nice lined bodice by taking it in at the shoulder – with a different colour thread, too! Ah, well. I wore it out to SnB on Wednesday and got quite a few compliments.

    And since the sewing bug’s got me, I finished another dress today! Okay, it’s not totally totally done, but it will be tomorrow. I even cut yet another dress tonight, and it should be fairly easy to sew up tomorrow.

    Quick knitting update: Unfortunately, I had to rip what I’d done of the Blueberry Greek Pullover that I showed the other day! I went to count the stitches to figure out how many more increases to do, and realized I’d just cast on the wrong number of stitches. Not the smaller size or anything, just kind of a random number inbetween. I think I’m finally, finally back on track.