... apple. But also for ape and artichoke and aegis and aisle and awl. What a versatile letter. I remember with quite some indignation how in beginners - my first year of primary school - Mrs Baxter refused to include 'a is for Amelia' because it wasn't the 'a' as in cat.
A couple of weeks ago I got Ikea-ed. Anyone who has ever gone in there specifically to buy item X and has come out with half the alphabet knows exactly what I mean. I went there to buy a mattress for baby bear's 'big girl bed' and ended up spending about three times that - an embroidered cushion, an embroidered lampshade, toy cutlery set, toy baking set, etc etc. And a mattress, just as well. So then I dropped in to the nearby Tukwila Goodwill - hooray! - where I bought two Ralph Lauren fitted sheets for said mattress and an Ikea doona cover (one side check, one side floral).
And that's when inspiration struck. I realised that this floral was just the print for binding the edge of the candlewicked bedspread that has been waiting for ... oh, let's just say several months to be finished. I can't actually remember whether I bought it at a thrift store or a garage sale but it is a white candlewicked bedspread that I had to cut down because half of it was very damaged. Which left me with a raw edge on the bedspread. Until this morning, when I decided that the floral was just the right print.
I seem to have inadvertently taken a blogging break. What have I been busy doing? Umm, well ... I'm sure that I've been busy, what else could I have been? Maybe just forgetful. Anyway, I love that phrase, 'make do and mend'.
Problem is, there is a lot of finishing to go - not just seaming and button bands and collar but also two straps for the wrists, the belt and casings for the two sleeves, two fronts and back (which the straps and belt respectively feed through). Good news is that it looks like I am going to have plenty of yarn - whoo hoo.
This has been a great knit so far although the endless stocking stitch is way boring. There is very little shaping - just the armholes, shoulder and neckline - but I'm hoping that all the details with the straps will make it look sophisticated enough. For future garment knitting (yes, I think that there will be more now that I've got the ball rolling) I think that I will have to knit something with a more complex shape or in a pattern stitch to keep the interest up. There are some great jacket patterns around - Darcy, balloon-sleeved jacket - but as if miles of stocking stitch weren't tedious enough, imagine all that in moss stitch. No thank you. I think that I can see the sunrise.
Each volume has its own fabric cover:
Christian Dior, one hundred per cent silk apple green blouse. It's made in Hong Kong so I'm guessing that it was made under license. I love the way that the brand name is embroidered onto the inner yoke. And the cufflinks! I don't know whether they are original to the blouse but they're great (and heavy).
It even came with a bonus crochet hook and a few shirt buttons inside, so it was clearly in use by someone. I love the way the sides open out accordion-fashion.
Today I attended a knit-in for feminist scholarship held at the Phinney Neighborhood Association; all funds raised today are to be donated to the University of Washington Women Studies Department to pay for undergraduate awards for activism, service and academic rigour. Why they needed to have a knit-in to raise this money is all to do with budget cuts and economic downturns and other concepts which really have no place on this blog even though they seem to have saturated the rest of our lives. Anyway, hooray - I won a door prize. A hank of Pagewood Farms Yukon Hand Dyed Sock Yarn, which is a merino/bamboo/nylon blend, in the colourway 'crayon'.
Faux Prussian Stole - I completed one of the five-and-a-half 81-stitch-by-96-row repeats and collapsed from exhaustion. That in itself was such a feat that I have not yet quite recovered enough to start on the next repeat. I did, however, purchase an Addi Nature circular needle (bamboo tips) which I think will hold the yarn better. It was very slippery knitting on the Addi Turbos that I was using.
Hmmm, will I make it? I think so. It won't matter too much if the casings are knit from a different yarn as they are on the inside of the garment and I imagine that even a portion of the wrist straps could be in a different yarn too as that portion will always be concealed inside the casing. The belt is a bit more of a challenge in the potential substitute stakes - where the belt would sit inside the casing depends whether I want to wear it buckled up or tied. This is likely to make it more difficult to conceal a portion knit in a different yarn. Regardless, this is all down the track - I have to complete the garment pieces first before I do the finishing (although I predict that I will be seaming with a different yarn: just. in. case.)
More book love. This is another of the swag that I picked up at Bellevue Library a week or so ago - Quilts of Tennessee: Images of Domestic Life prior to 1930 by Bets Ramsay and Marikay Waldvogel. I've only had time so far to leaf through and look at the photos of the quilts and read a few captions and sidebars but just that experience has been wonderful. The work(wo)manship, the make-do-and-mend mentality, the pride and most of all the incredible amount of time that went into making these quilts. And best of all the reassurance because I tell you, some of them are really lumpy!
Stitch in the ditch, that is. Yes - hooray - much sooner than expected I have gotten around to doing some further sewing on my vintage fabrics quilt. When I consider how much prevaricating there has been around this project, it is actually quite amazing that I am up to the quilting stage - yes, quilting!
It's even more surprising that I have gotten around to doing this when you consider what I had to come to terms with in order to do the quilting - a walking foot. What is that big white appendage that all too closely resembles the distended belly of some particularly scary insect? And that needle-sharp proboscis; oh wait, that is the needle. But you get the picture - I found the walking foot to be very daunting. What it, apparently, does is help to feed the upper and lower fabrics through at the same speed, thereby reducing the chances of the fabrics becoming misaligned. There are actually a couple more parts to the foot that aren't even shown here. Please believe me that it was scary.
We visited the Bellevue branch of the King County Library Service on the weekend. I could hardly carry the pile of books that I found there - books on knitting, on quilting, on trapunto and Period Needlepoint for Antique Furniture by Madeleine Jarry and Maryvonne Dobry. Translated from the French - who in 1976 thought that this book was worth translating from the French? I love them too.
I like J Crew. Particularly, I like J Crew woollen knits - 100 per cent lambswool, lovely colours. I also love the fact that 100 per cent lambswool J Crew knits in lovely colours are very easy to find at the thrift store. And they unravel really well.
So the J Crew sweaters - I have decided to start a collection of them. Eventually, surely, I will find some duplicates that will allow me to cast on for the Sunrise Circle Jacket or Wallington without any niggling fears. Surely. Or else I'll just have to keep knitting children's garments, but that's ok too. I think that the benefit of restricting myself to a particular brand is that I can be more confident about finding the same colours and weights. Also, it will prevent the closet from overflowing too much.
And because it reminds me so of a skirt that my dear friend Reneé wears. I could get the zipper done up but the waistband was too small, so off with the waistband and in with some darts in that top tier. A lovely bright blue grosgrain ribbon as the waist facing and it is springtime at my house, whatever the weather.
Yes, I have been working on my vintage fabrics quilt, which has actually been a lot of fun. I like to sew, I do, I really do ... really ... truly. Heaven knows then why I spend so much time procrastinating and putting it off. When I get around to it, I do actually enjoy it. Really I do.
Then of course I was on a roll and decided that I absolutely had to get the quilt layered together and pinned. Wow, what a chore. I had no idea and it took me two pinning sessions because I ran out of pins. the next day I went and bought three more packets (65 pins per packet - that's 190 more pins) and still I didn't have enough. Those things are pricey too so I have decided that instead of buying more I am going to quilt some of the inner squares and the pins that I take off then I can use on the edges.
So what I have now is a punk quilt. The packaging for the quilters safety pins reads 'will not rust or tarnish and can safely be left in your quilt'. It doesn't specify for how long. Because the only problem with completing one step of a project is that you then have no excuse for not getting on with the next step - yes, now of course I actually have to quilt it. After all that pinning effort I'm kind of tempted to just leave them there. At least for a while (ha ha, like that wasn't going to happen anyway).
I figured that it was laceweight but after recently inspecting some 2 ply at a yarn store I am leaning more towards calling it cobweb weight.
Verdict: While I hesitate to say that the shawl is perfect, I am very proud to say that the shawl is mistake free. There are no sneaky knit-2-togethers to deal with an extra stitch, or surreptitious make-ones when I fell a stitch short. I am absolutely delighted to have achieved one of my knitting aspirations. To knit lace is why I started knitting in the first place. So while the shawl itself only took me four months to knit, it has been about six years in the making.
As per a) above, this kind of clothes shopping gives you a chance to become a you that suits the clothes you find, rather than endless searching for clothes that suit you. But as I've realised lately, you don't have to become all of the clothes that you find. In recent thrift shopping, I have come across a couple of pairs of black suede jeans - excellent quality, great condition, my size, $20. I even went so far as to try one of those pairs on and they were a good fit. But still, no, I couldn't become those jeans. I don't like leather clothing. I did buy a leather skirt once from the Salvation Army store in Abbotsford but never was comfortable in it. I only wore it a couple of times and gave it back. It just wasn't me, or I wasn't it.
Why knit? Is it always to achieve a particular finished object that you want, or is it for the process of knitting something, of bringing something into being? (Something that is not necessarily destined to be a functional part of your life which is perhaps is why so many handknits are given away).
The particular feature that I take issue with is the little status bar that indicates your progress through a project. Here's a quick screen shot:
I made a very simple cushion insert from a decorator fabric sample - just tore out a square twice the size of the needlepoint cover, folded it in half and sewed up three of the sides. The fabric came in a grab bag of decorator fabric samples that I bought some time ago at Value Village. I bought that bag for only one of the fabrics (which I haven't yet used!) but I did use another piece to make some covered buttons. The stuffing came from a small cushion also purchased at Value Village. I bought it because it was covered in dozens of shell buttons which I promptly removed and have used since on a couple of projects that needed buttons. Today I actually cut it open and used the stuffing in my cushion insert. Total cost? Umm, the needlepoint was $4.99 and the rest really came from stash, so yes, cheap cherries!
As in, about blooming time. Yes, I have finished the lily of the valley border on my swallowtail shawl. Hooray!! I did get a bit held up there about halfway through the first repeat and lost some of my motivation but the desire to get on with some other things in my queue and my commitment to the knit list (can't start any other project knitting until this is done) pushed me along.
I can't wait to block this out and see what it looks like when it's all evenly stretched out. And those nupps: I tell you what, I'm nupped.
Baby bear knows that I have a cup of tea in the morning. When she sees me with my white mug, she asks, 'cup of tea?' In the newest issue of Mixtape (that's issue 8, out now!) I have written a bit about how you can't manage to do everything but how important and rewarding it is to do the small things, the things closest to you - like making pyjamas for your little girl. Yes, I did manage them.
Well, a lot and wow, do I have a lot to say this week. It's actually given me pause to stop and look at my recent output and realise that I am being really productive at the moment. What is it - the approach of spring? the coalescence of ideas? heightened sensitivity to buzzing?
This is a common complaint among intelligent women (if you'll excuse the modesty) and it can at times be quite crippling. Take for example this Simplicity 8173 sewing pattern that I bought last December. I have been wanting to make some pyjamas for baby bear since then but have had some trouble with thinking too much. The problem was (or seemed to be) that the pattern is for size 2-3 and I know that you should never actually cut the pattern pieces out froma multi-sized pattern but trace them instead, just in case one day you want to use another of the sizes. And I wasn't sure whether baby bear would be best in size 2 or size 3 and I just couldn't bring myself to do any tracing and just thinking about it made my head hurt.
I actually removed the pattern pieces from the envelope. Good start, eh? And lo and behold - it was not a multi-sized pattern. It's a medium, encompassing sizes 2 to 3.
I have many, many unfinished and unrealised projects on the go, mostly sewing ones because this is what I find most difficult to get around to. There's a bit of a list over in that right hand column labelled 'best intentions' but really, that's only partial. And all of these projects and ideas buzz around in my head as I try to find the time and sort out my priorities. It's not that I don't want to finish these projects (or get around to starting them in the first place), it's just that I have to attend to whatever is buzzing most loudly at any particular moment. Projects can buzz for (many) months until it's too unbearable to not to work on them. Sometimes just a little bit of work quiets them down again, other times they just have to be finished. Like this skirt. Finally.
Yesterday, after eighteen months of buzzing I just could not bear it any longer and voila, I finished it. Well, the sewing part at least - the yoke, the grosgrain waistband facing. I did some finishing today - the buttons, the crochet buttonband, the hook and eye, the press stud.
In the introduction to Glam Knits, Stephanie Japel defines glam as, well, pretty much anything. It's in the yarn, it varies from person to person - whatever. The only thing that I found glam about this book was the styling, which is gorgeous and indeed glamorous - 1940s-style sirens with coiffed hair, porcelain complexions and serious eyeliner.
Well, to be perfectly honest most of them are just dreadful - take the Trapeze Jacket in a bulky variegated thick-and-thin yarn with a lace pattern on the hems and sleeves that all but disappears into the mix. In short, a really unsuccessful pairing of pattern and yarn. Not glamorous. And as for the mustard-coloured dress on the cover ... sorry, ugh.
The vital statistics 
The vital statistics
And because I do always like to include a photo, here is my current practical project. It is Molly from Debbie Bliss' Junior Knits. 
This is something that I have wanted to knit since ... well, before baby bear was born I think and here I am knitting the 3-4 year size. I'm using some yarn that I recycled from a Boden cardigan, it's 60 per cent silk 40 per cent cotton and the project is knitting along at a good pace. It is always a bit of a gamble to substitute yarns, particularly fibre content, so I hope that the pattern will hold up in the silk/cotton blend.
I have some vague recollection of seeing some very mens style shoes in ... what, a magazine? when do I ever read a magazine? but anyway ... let's just say the media just before we left Australia and I put them on my mental shopping list. And then I met Mary Jane here in Seattle, knitter, artist and mother extraordinaire, who wears the best mens shoes and I put a star on my mental shopping list. And then I found these shoes at the Lifelong Thrift Store. $25 (and $50-odd to have a protective sole put on them. Never mind, they'll last forever).
And what's more, here is the, ah, less than delightful scrap of 1980s decorator fabric that I used for the buttons. I had this in the stash - it came in plastic bag of several decorator fabric scraps that I bought at ... Value Village I think ... for another piece that was in there. The colours in that corner were just right for the neckwarmer and abstract enough that the overall pattern wasn't obvious!
The vital statistics
Comments: Ah, the buttons! I shopped around, looking for white ones, clear ones, considered daisy-shaped ones but none of them were right. I first added fabric trim to a knit garment just before baby bear was born. I had knit the Garter Stitch Wrap Top (Ravelry link) by Erika Knight and was just not happy with the edging. So I bought a little bit of Liberty Tana Lawn in a coordinating colour and trimmed the edges. Since then I have experimented a bit with matching up woven fabrics with woollens - Carmine being a case in point. I love the contrast between the smoothness of the weave and the texture of the knit.
