everybody's doing it

Ah, making new cushion covers that is. My newly-returned-home burst of inspiration continues, predominantly with sewing projects because it's too hot to knit much (but not too hot to sew a woollen blanket ... yeah, anyway). I bought this fabric at a thrift store some time ago while out shopping with my friend Melissa from Owl and Acorn and, needless to say, have been intending to use it ever since. I really love botanical drawings and prints.

So finally, a cushion cover for one of the couches. It's a very simple envelope style, the same as the ones that I made for baby bear's bedroom some time back.

percolator

I keep lists. I love lists. I love ticking things off on my lists. in fact, I have so many lists that I could well keep a list of all of my lists. As Di wrote recently, "... it's interesting to see which projects percolate to the top of the list and come into being." I am fully convinced that creative endeavours do not follow the usual to-the-top-of-the-list logic; my creative mind is not so much an incubator as a percolator. They buzz and simmer and percolate until they reach their own critical mass and suddenly, they need to be done, have to be done, must be done.

So, despite all my lists, that is what it was like today. I had to sew up a woollen blanket that I have had in mind for years. You'll understand the strength of the imperative on this one if you note that it was about 34 degrees centigrade (94 degrees Fahrenheit) in Seattle today, and humid to boot. Just sweltering. And I was sewing up a woollen blanket.

I have had this blanket, or at least a version of it, in mind since baby bear was about eight months old, so let's just say for a couple of years. I have been slowly but surely collecting and preparing the materials for it ever since. And here is the result, a patchwork blanket of fulled woollen squares:

It's not completely sewn up yet, that will have to wait until the temperature drops a bit.

I have previously mentioned the exhibition "And so to bed" that I once saw at Elizabeth Bay House in Sydney. That was a really significant day for me; I attribute it with rekindling my interest in needlecrafts. An item on display that day was a wagga, is a traditional Australian quilt/rug, often made from suiting samples, hessian and flour sacks. That was the inspiration behind making a blanket like this and I have some other Australian(a) touches that I intend to add at a later date.

s l o w

Slow food, slow day, slow sewing - we are having a take-it-easy Sunday in Seattle.

I said that I would show some of the craft-related stuff that I brought back with me from Australia. One of them was a lovely piece of polished cotton with a floral print that has been floating around my life for goodness knows how long. I actually do not know how long I have had it for or where it came from.


















Seattle has a wonderful recycling programme, including a weekly yard waste collection into which we put all of our food waste, including meat and fish scraps (they heat treat it apparently). After recycling the tins, glass and paper, we end up with only a couple of supermarket plastic bags of rubbish each week. These click-clack style containers are great for keeping your kitchen scraps in - airtight, a range of sizes, easy to clean. Only drawback compost-wise is that they are see through and all those layers of food scraps - ick.

Lo and behold, the advent of the compost cosy. The fabric is is just the right colour scheme to go in our kitchen, so I used some cotton twill that I had lying around to give it some stability, quilting the layers together roughly around the outline of the floral print. Then I made a cylinder from the double layer and applied some binding at both top and bottom. The fabric I used for the binding was leftover from the roses quilt - yes, the one that I did use.

And what is slow sewing about this? Well, I sewed it all by hand. I just felt like it. We were just back from Melbourne, I was too tired to get the sewing machine out, it was too hot to knit at knit night so I took along some hand sewing and it just continued from there. I really enjoyed making it.

Currently in there are the stalks from these beautiful tomatoes, grown here in our very own garden (although I do not hesitate to admit not by us). We have tenant farmers, also known as lovely friends who live in a flat and wanted a veggie patch so they use our garden and share the bounty with us.

I have also finished the koharu top and it has had a test wear. Hence it is in the wash after being covered in dust and cherry dribble. Next time.

a thousand words

I have heard it said by many that with the Japanese craft books you don't need to be able to read the Japanese because the pictures are clear enough and easy to follow. I concur but strongly recommend actually looking at the pictures. I just looked at the paper pattern, rued that it was unclear whether the seam allowance was included or not, sewed two very tight narrow seams (in white thread on white linen) and then looked at the pictures. Seam allowance of 15mm was included. Quick-unpick!

I had a search through the fabric stash last night to make the bias tape. I actually had a good idea of what I was searching for, there's only a sliver shown here because the rest is in the wash. Originally purchased to be the binding on my roses quilt I got the fabric home and realised that it was the wrong colour (or rather, not the colour I had intended to purchase). I did subsequently buy the intended colourway online and have had this slightly darker green ever since waiting for a purpose. It's just about the same green as the leaves in the screenprint - excellent. And fabulous thing about making bias tape with fabric that has a grid of small spots is that you have ready-made markers for where to cut on the diagonal. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to go shopping for a matching blue fabric to make the bias tape but it is better to use from the stash. And I did get to buy a new spool of matching sewing thread - hooray!

This little top is a bit of a leap of faith (like most of my sewing!). As I have limited fabric I narrowed the hem width by a couple of centimetres and have no hem allowance (so that will need to be bound with bias tape as well). The front neckline is conveniently the selvedge of the fabric but I'm going to need to dream something up for the back neckline (where I also have no seam allowance). The pattern calls for putting in elastic but I'm wondering if a casing with ties would be sweeter?

blue wren

Finally, we seem to be back on track here in Seattle. Settled back in, sleeping well and the new charger for my camera battery arrived. Yes, somehow I managed to leave the charger for the camera battery behind (sound familiar?).

The blue wren is my very favourite Australian bird and this is an image from my very favourite tea towel. Which unfortunately will no longer be used as a tea towel because of a small singeing incident in the kitchen (Tim, not me). One thing about being home from Australia is that I have renewed energy to get things done - to replace the ugly blind in the closet, to start on the doily quilt (first contemplated back in November 2007) and to do something with this tea towel.

And so I did - I cut out the pieces for a halter top for baby bear from a Japanese craft book that I have called Koharu no fuku. The pattern calls for binding and I don't have enough tea towel so I'm going to dig through the stash to find something complementary to make the bias tape. Incidentally, while the tea towel is indeed from Australia, I have had it here in Seattle all along. Many craft supplies and books were rediscovered while we were in Melbourne; I'll get around to show and tell eventually.

home

And so we're back home, from home. It has been an exhausting five weeks and I expect that it will take a couple more to recover. The trip was very emotional - sorting through all of our belongings that had been in storage and watching baby bear play with my beautiful friends' beautiful children. There is so much to say that I don't know whether I'll actually be able to - perhaps for the next issue of mixtapeZINE (issue 9 is out now and issue 10 available for pre-order - yippee).

In the meantime I leave you with what makes some 40 hours of plane journeys, delayed flights and airport security with a two-year old in tow all worthwhile:

a is for ...

... 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 is also for Australia. Guess where we are off to tomorrow?

hibernation

Everyone who knits should knit lace. Just for the thrill and satisfaction of blocking it out and seeing the amazing transformation. Nevertheless, I'm still not convinced that I want to continue knitting this. It is lovely, it does look wonderful but as a friend said, life is too short.

I am convinced, however, that I'm not ready to rip it all out so I will be placing this project in hibernation for a while. This may or may not be related to the fact that I cast on for the 'knitted veil in Pyrenees wool' yesterday evening. I just wanted to see what it was like, just wanted to try the yarn out, just ... just ... just ...

qualms

I am having qualms about my faux prussian stole. Back in March when I started it I was filled with misgivings - to quote "do I really want to knit this? do I really want to knit this now? do I really want to knit it from this yarn? what else would I prefer to knit it from? do I have anything else that I would prefer to knit it from?"

And now that I am a quarter of the way through, they are back. While straightforward enough and an enjoyable knit, it is still quite onerous. There is absolutely no memorising the 81-stitch-by-96-row pattern so knitting involves constant attention to the chart. This is quite mind-soothing and completely takes your thoughts away from everything else (which is something that I love about knitting) but there is enough time and effort involved that you need to be certain about what you are making. And I'm not.


I do love the pattern, I'm enjoying the knitting, I'm just not convinced that the finished product is going to be something that I want and it's too big a project to just knit for the sake of it. There are some other things that I would prefer to be working on. I haven't given up yet though - what I have completed so far is currently upstairs blocking so that I can get a better idea of whether it is a project that I want to finish. We'll see tomorrow.

post script

Ok, just need to add that I have now hemmed both sheets. And mended the belt loop on my jeans (and they still fit me). Whoo-hoo!

someday my prints will come

This is what I imagine all the creative projects queued in my head saying, 'someday the right sewing machine needle will come along', 'someday there will be the right fabric to finish me off', 'someday there'll be some time for the hand stitching'. Ok, these projects are in my head so that is exactly what they say. Anyway, today this project got lucky.

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).

I liked the print and figured that I could make a couple of sheets out of it which is precisely what I have done (well, half done). I ripped the two fabrics apart and this morning was finally grabbed by the desire to hem the edges of one of the sheets.

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.

make do

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'.

Do you notice a small colour variation in the belt at left? That's the 'make do' bit - making do with what I have. Given that I am knitting Wallingford from recycled yarn, there was really no choice in the matter. I always had anxieties about whether or not I would have enough yarn and always had a contingency plan in place. The centre of the belt will never be on display as it will be contained within the belt casing, hence the portion knit in another colour to save on my main red yarn. Likewise the casings have all been knit from the burgundy as they are on the inside of the garment and will rarely be seen.

All the knitting is finished on this now - hooray - there is just the seaming, finishing to go and the matter of finding three identical, preferably vintage, buckles for the belt and wrist straps. Could be a while yet!

Further, when you can't be bothered mending you have to make do with what you've got in your wardrobe. I was very pleasantly surprised when I went to said wardrobe a few days ago to find that my mending had been taken care of. Yes, the trousers in question no longer actually fit me so there is no longer any need to take them in at the waist. I might spend the time exercising instead ... ha ha, or knitting.

ps - I've been pipped at the post in the Ravelry stakes. Someone recently put up their fully finished garment - no warning whatsoever.

1 project, in 5 queues

Can I do it? Can I possibly be the first person on Ravelry to complete Walling(ton/ford)? So exciting.

Today I completed the right front which was the last of the the main pattern pieces and now it's all blocking.


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.

gold rush

Amazing! We went to the second-hand book sale at a church in the University District today. It was a fantastic outing - there was live music, traditional food from Cameroon and an excellent selection of books. I now have more Golden Hands than I know what to do with:













There appears to be every single volume there, kept pristine in the binders plus the fourteen sequel issues. Thank you someone for being so careful and for donating them!


Not to mention the entire sixteen-volume set of Time-Life The Art of Sewing series with volumes like 'Basic Tailoring', 'The Sporting Scene' and 'Restyling Your Wardrobe'.

Each volume has its own fabric cover:












And a book about creativity:


And children's books with wonderful illustrations:












And an absolute deluge of inspiration to boot. Photos of that to come after I make it to the church spare-time fête.

apples

So I never quite understood the apples reference from Good Will Hunting:

Will Hunting: Do you like apples?
Clark: Yeah.
Will Hunting: Well, I got her number. How do you like them apples?

But guess what I got at Goodwill last week?

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).

And another treasure - this wooden sewing box, made in Poland, complete with dove-tail joinery, which so reminds me of one that my grandmother had.

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.

door prize

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'.

Alas, attending a knit-in and winning doorprizes is about as much as I feel I can do for feminist scholarship at the moment, or scholarship in general. I used to think that I would be a uni student forever; whenever I became interested in something my first thought was to do a degree in it. I used to feel that the structure of formal study was what was necessary to make my learning real, to validate it. Key words there are 'used to'. That structure of reading lists, essays, exercises, due dates, exams - I'm afraid that I have passed that phase in my life.

Where does this leave my health economics study? In limbo, until I finally get around to writing a letter asking to be officially discontinued. Sigh. More time to knit I guess.

i still knit

Truly I do. Every day in fact, which is probably why I don't have time to read quilting books but anyway ...
this is a random knitting update post:

Baudelaire socks - I cannot remember the last time that I didn't look at these. I know that I got over the trauma of the dropped stitches and started on the leg. Ah, that's right - the dilemma of how do I know when I have enough yarn left to complete twelve rows of ribbing (and a bind-off)? My good friend Heidi (who is merchgirl on Ravelry - check out her astounding Laminaria) suggested test knitting a row of ribbing, then frogging it and measuring how much yarn it required. Measure out twelve times as much yarn from the wrong end of the ball (and some more for the bind-off I imagine) and then just knit to that point. Such a good idea, I'll try it someday.

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.

Diamond mittens - Going well but haven't picked them up for a while. All I have to go on the left mitten is the individual fingers (which get tucked in underneath the mitten top) and the thumb. On the right mitten I have started the ribbing thereby hoping to avoid second mitten syndrome.

So what have I been knitting everyday?? Wallingford! Which is actually a pattern called Wallington but as I go to a knit night in Wallingford on Mondays it was too much to have two such similar words milling around in my brain. Rather than rename the neighbourhood I thought it easier to rename my project (ah, yeah). Besides, I like the word Wallingford better. This is my first adult-sized garment project and I am knitting it from recycled wool. So far I have completed the two sleeves, the back to just beyond the armhole shaping and one front about as far as the waist. This leaves: the rest of the back, the rest of one front, all of the second front, the collar and front bands, the wrist straps and the belt and the wrist and waist casings.

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.)

tennessee

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!

As I am sure the astute reader will have picked up, I have a few issues with perfectionism, namely with letting go of it. I would say that, apart from time and energy constraints, it is the thing that has held me up the most in the past with my creative endeavours. You know, that it wouldn't be good enough, that it wouldn't work out, that it ... blah blah blah. It is reassuring to see that wonderful works of creativity have a few unique bumps in them. When did it become the case that quilts were supposed to be perfectly smooth and orthogonal? When did idiosyncracy go out the window and machine-made precision became the requirement? Point of all this being that I'm a little anxious about some of the rumples that I expect to see in my quilt as a result of some puckering in the batting. I could just say that I'm going authentic (although I did receive some great advice from millymollymandy about reducing the pressure on the foot - I can see how this would help the fabrics to glide through more easily).

Anyway, a wonderful book, even just to look at. The premise that quilts can tell a story about domestic life is also fascinating and I hope that I manage to read just a bit of it before it's due back.

in the ditch

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!

I don't want the quilting to be too obtrusive because really, it's all about the different colours and patterns so I have opted for the 'stitch in the ditch' quilting method, which is about as un-decorative as you can get. It involves stitching ever so carefully along the actual seam between the two fabrics. I found it fun to do because you have to gently but firmly pull the two fabrics apart to expose the seam and then try to stitch along it. The example on the left shows a line of purple quilting stitches along the 'ditch' between a floral square and a purple patterned square. As is always the case with my illustrations, this one was carefully chosen to reflect only the highest point of my stitching efforts (that is to say, there are other, lower, points).

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.

So what I am up to now is the cross quilting - two diagonal lines from corner to corner on each square. Now that I have the walking foot attached and the tension correctly set, I dare not take it off which means no other sewing until I get all the quilting done. Should push me along a bit (or signal a return to exclusive knitting).

abebooks

Have I mentioned abebooks before? I love abebooks.

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.

Of course, as often happens with fabulous library books, I fell in love immediately and dearly wanted my own copy. I had a quick check on abebooks thinking that if it wasn't too expensive, $5 or so, I would grab my own copy. Could I be so lucky? Yes, even luckier - $1.88. I ordered it about an hour ago and it has already been shipped. I love abebooks.

ps - If you want your own copy, be quick! The next cheapest copy is $1.91!

imagination

Today baby bear told me that this is her telephone.

Love it.

j crew collection

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.

I have an ongoing anxiety about not having enough recycled yarn to complete the project that I'm working on. Sometimes it's ok; yes, one adult sweater will definitely yield a pair of mittens or a child's cardigan. But what about an adult cardigan, an adult cardigan for me? Like the one that I cast on for on the weekend, totally outside the strictures of my knit list. More about that in a moment.

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.

As it is, I have cast on for Wallington in some 8ply/dk claret recycled J Crew lambswool. It comes from a men's extra large but still I'm not sure - differences in gauge between the machine knit and my hand knit?? So I have started on a sleeve - we'll see how it goes.

ps - they also machine wash really well, despite what the tag says!

april is the cruellest month

... breeding,
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Or with spring snow. No joke - it has been snowing today in Seattle.

But I have pretty posies:


This is a black cotton skirt with a lovely floral print that (again) I just grabbed at the op shop (yep, back in Australia) simply for the fabric. 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.

I have also finished adjusting the waist of my autumn leaves black velvet skirt. That was again a too-small waistband with quite a full gathered skirt attached. Again, I took off the waistband and put in some darts (sort of in the form of inverted pleats) and of course, a grosgrain facing inside the waist.