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Since I’ve been dragging a little in the knitting department, I felt like I needed a break. And since I haven’t used my sewing machine all that much (except to stitch up the Ursula Bag), I thought I would see if I could make somethin’.

This is a shirt. It has a ruffle in the front. I think it will have more ruffles, (around the neck and arms). I don’t think it will have sleeves. It will most likely have some kind of embroidery on it, but that surprise I will save for later. There were a few things running through my mind as I worked on this shirt at 1:00 in the morning:

1. Sewing is so much faster than knitting! I could have a whole top done in just a few hours. This is like, way better - I may never knit again.

2. Sewing with jersey fabric is such a bitch. D*mn! It got stuck in the machine again. I hate sewing, I’m never doing it again in my life.

3. Maybe this whole thing would have been easier if I had measured and made some sort of pattern first. Or made more of an attempt to cut straight lines in the fabric. I hear my Home Ec. teacher, Mrs. Halllmark, yelling at me in my head. OK, she never really yelled, she was actually very nice. She was just a stickler for details, and it made her a great teacher. I just don’t have the patience right now to do things like, you know, measuring, pinning, buying scissors that aren’t blunt or sticky from cutting tape. Yes, I know, those aren’t exactly minute details. They’re actually kind of basic and important butwhatevershutupI’mnotgoingtothinkaboutitI’mjustdoingit.

4. Dude. My ruffle actually turned out pretty cool. I’m shocked and flabbergasted. Amazed. Suprised. Incredulous. My sewing machine must be magic, because logically there is no way this shirt should actually look good right now. Well, good job, little magic sewing machine. I’ll keep feeding you special magic beans or whatever, and you keep sewing those straight lines.

By the way, the shirt is black - just lightened up in the pics so you can see it and stuff.

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Next time… The Return of the Knitting

I’ve never knit sleeves before. It shouldn’t take too long to crank these suckers out (although like I said I haven’t been spending too much time with the needles lately).

Just wanted to show off my seaming - I’m very happy with the way it turned out. I was a little worried about seaming this lace (and I’m not very patient with the sewing of the knitting together). But it worked out okay. I used whatever stitch that is that you use to sew stockinette stitch together (is that the mattress stitch?!). When you pull it flat, you can’t tell there is a seam there.

Little sneak peek. I’ve tried it on and it fits! Oh yay.

Here’s a little hint of what’s happening with the lace blouse. Short rows are fun.

That’s all I have to report. My interest in knitting waxes and wanes, and when it’s 85 degrees and humid I usually find other things to do. I did buy some fabric the other day, though, so there could be some sewing in the near future. Could be some totally awesome sewing in the near future. With embroidery.

(Oh, and don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about Season. She’s being very patient…)

Stay cool!

Pattern by: me*

Yarn: Knit Picks Merino Style in Fog and Coal

Needles: Size US3

Finished Size: About 11.5″ X 11.5″

Man, how long did it take me to do this? It’s been hanging around for months. And I had already done all the harder stuff (i.e. figuring out the intarsia pattern), so I don’t know what took me so long. But now that it’s done, I’ll take her everywhere. I can bring knitting with me and show off my kitty at the same time. Even on top of tall tall buildings.

Here’s a pic of the finished lining. I turned over a bit of the knitting and sewed it over the lining to make a nice edge. Yay!

OK, in the interest of fairness, I should post a picture of my other kitty, Chiquita. This is not going to turn into a catblog, but I don’t want to seem like I’m playing favorites.

This is what she did when she found out her picture was not on my site, and she refused to move until I posted. (That’s my laptop her head is on). I’m serious. Of course, it makes it quite difficult to type and use the mouse pad. And she gets copious amounts of fur underneath the keys. My friend has suggested looking into spinning cat fur - I see that some people have done it, but it looks like it might be hard. But if I could figure it out, I would have a free source of yarn on my hands that would last me years and years…

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(Blue was made lighter in the pic to show off the pattern better…)

First off, there has been little to no work done on Season, since I’m using most of my time to get the lace blouse done. This jacket is going to be a long haul for me, anyway.

Sharon should be posting a new pic of her progress on Season soon - if you haven’t already checked out her site, she has quite a bit more done than me and it’s rockin’!

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Left side started. There is an error in the pattern, for anyone who’s making this - I emailed Teva the other day to make sure. She said she will be adding it to her error page, which you can find at her site, Loop-d-Loop. It’s just a small thing to do with the shoulder shaping, nothing that would keep you up at night - but of course while I was waiting for her to email me back I impatiently and incorrectly guessed what the pattern was supposed to say and now I’ll have to frog four or five rows. Yep. But it won’t be the first time I’ve had to go back and work rows again on this thing. Occasionally I would lose track of the lace pattern and not notice the mistake until I’d knit another couple of inches. I mean, that happened to me like three times. This sweater would have been done by now if it weren’t for me getting distracted by The Daily Show.

This is what my soon-to-be-sweater would look like if she starred in a film noir. I just finished reading The Big Sleep for the second time - I guess I need to put the movie on my Netflix list (never seen it).

Of course, my soon-to-be-sweater is much too sweet and innocent to be the femme fatale. She kind of looks like the murder victim in this picture.

Pity. She was so sweet. And innocent. And unfinished.

I marvel at the knitters who can just crank away with the yarn and produce whole sweaters in a matter of hours and days. It’s not like that for me - I take my sweet time, often stopping for a break after I finish a row or two. Sometimes I do spend quite a bit of time knitting on a weekend, then I’ll get burnt out and just have to put the needles down, g*d*mnit.

So slow going, but progress made on both the lace blouse and Season. Observe:

I’m up to the armhole shaping on the one side. Still lovin it! I feel like a girly girl, making a whole big pink sweater. I forgot to mention before that I tried out “combined knitting” for the first time on the ribbed section here. Any of you who haven’t heard of this style can check out Annie Modesitt’s site for more details. I can’t say it changed my life or anything, but I think that’s because I’m a right-handed knitter. It appears to me (based on my superficial investigation) that this might be a more handy style for a left-handed, Continental knitter, because maybe it makes purling easier?! Anyone out there who uses this style and knows more about it, I’d be curious to hear what you think.

And:

Just a couple inches done on the sleeve. I ripped out the first inch or so that I knit because I realized I was pulling the floats too tight. I’ve done fair isle several times now, but the true art of getting the right tension, consistently, eludes me. Like, no matter what I do, some of my stitches are going to look wonky.

At any rate, I can’t wait to try Season on!! Oh, wait, I have to knit it first.

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I don’t usually post these kinds of pictures, but there are some things you can’t say “no” to:

Ursula doing her famous bunny impersonation.

Contrary to appearances, my life does not, in fact, revolve around knitting. Really. Having said that, however, I am compelled to report that yesterday was spent wandering around yarn stores in Manhattan. I’ve said before that I’m not an impluse buyer of yarn (anymore), so I only bought one ball. Really I just wanted to get some ideas and look at the pretty stuff. My favoritist place of all that I went to yesterday was Habu Textiles. I’ve been wanting to check this place out for a while, and it didn’t disappoint. They have yarn made out of lots of unique materials, including linen paper, fine steel, and fiber from something called a “kenaf” plant. They even have awesome yarn made from actual fishing nets (it’s silk!). Lots of great materials for weaving, although I’m sure anyone interested in weaving probably already knows about the place.

I just got a little ball of yarn to start out with - I wanted to see what it was like knitted up before I went too crazy. This is a cotton yarn, but it feels and looks like paper. They said it will soften up after a little use, but the knitted fabric is actually softer than you would think it would be. I love it! I have a hankering to use this stuff for one of the vintage patterns I’ve picked out - would be an interesting combination of old-fashioned design and modern material. Okay, I just made that up. They might have had paper yarn back then, who knows? In case you’re interested, I used size US0 needles here.

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Here’s the progress on the front. I have never, not even for one second, not loved knitting this blouse. Not even when I realized that my row gauge is totally off from the pattern, and therefore I would have to completely revamp the short row directions. The pattern was written up nicely, and would have been pretty easy to follow if my gauge had been on. But after some serious recalculating, and figuring out how to start the lace pattern at a different point each row, I gotter done. I ended up knitting 8 more short rows than the pattern called for so that the ribbed section would be high enough in the front. I just have to say thanks to Teva for making the instructions clear enough that I could figure out how to make alterations (short rows and lace both being things with which I have little experience).

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Here’s a little preview of Season of Darkness etc. Seriously, this yarn is next to impossible to photograph. I color-corrected the pic (a lot), so that it reads more like the actual yarn, but this picture still does not do it justice. I am so happy and excited to be using this yarn - it’s really wonderful. Still working on my swatches, trying to get gauge. Hopefully I’ll be able to start on the actual jacket sometime this week…