some finished projects

I took these photos over a month ago but am finally posting to prove that yes, I do occasionally finish and even wear dresses that I make! Here is a duro dress, and a knitted dress.

I especially like the Duro, which I usually wear now with some tan western style boots. It's proven very versatile for going from work to various after-work events, like a fundraiser we had with the Social Justice Council for a Guatamalan mission. The dress is festive and stylish enough for a cocktail reception like that, but business-like enough for the office.

The knitted dress has proven slightly less useful because it's a little bit low-cut and I can't really decide on what shoes are good to wear with it. I don't mind lowcut dresses or tops, in fact I wear them frequently, but I do have to pay more attention when I'm wearing something as plunging as this!

I haven't been sewing quite as much lately, but I'm getting very far along on a nice knitted dress with a cable down the front. It's purple, which I know a lot of people don't like, but I think it will look fab with my red hair and some black boots and denim jacket. Right now it's covered in dog hair unfortunately so I don't really want to take any WIP pictures until I can make it more presentable.

I'm working away at it furiously precisly because I am so tempted to stop. I'm terrible at finishing things before starting other things, and I have an idea for a grey cabled cardigan that I want to use to learn how to use steeks, but if I start that I will have more unfinished projects that will fit in my knitting basket and I promised myself not to do that anymore.

Happy discovery, and breaking a vow

Last night I was going through all of my fabric to see what I can actually match up with some patterns and what I really want to make sooner rather than later. I have one basket full of fabric in the corner by the sewing machine, and two large plastic bins on top of the big bookshelf. Which by the way is an extremely un-earthquake-safe placement for them. I need to quake proof the house sometime. But not yet. Too much sewing to do.

So anyway at the very bottom of one of the un-earthquake-safe plastic bins I found a knitted purse project I had been working on a couple months back and hadn't seen since then! I'd looked, I thought, everywhere, with no luck and even started a new version of it, grumbling all the while because this one was about half done, but I didn't think to look under fabric because I keep yarn and fabric basically separate. Usually.

I remembered how it got there. I used to keep a few small knitting projects, each in its own freezer bag, under the couch for easy access until the day we left Sparky out in the house on his own with Scout to see how he would behave. He behaved by dragging out all of those knitting projects and chomping away. fortunately he didn't destroy anything I really cared about but the freezer bag for the purse project was all tattered and the yarn was all tangled and I was too annoyed to deal with any of it so I threw all the gnawed on knitting stuff into this bin, and proceeded to pile fabric on top to put all my misbehaving dog troubles out of sight and out of mind.

Anyhow here are some pics of the purse in progress. And my foot. And a doggy toy. Those components were unintentional.

I'm using some yarn I got on eBay, very cheap, and now I know why because it is super-old and kind of brittle so I have to use two strands together and break off at weak spots in the yarn and start again, hence all the ends hanging out all over the pictured finished piece.

It is just a plain basketweave sort of stitch, 8 knits, 8 purls, repeated with a single knit stitch on every row at beginning and end for selvedge. You can see the unblocked finished piece as well as the other piece in progress. I'll next knit or crochet a strip about 2 inches wide or so to single crochet both pieces to as the sides and bottom. I'm undecided about the strap. I don't want too long a handle or strap, just big enough to go snugly over my shoulder and under my arm when I'm wearing a jacket. I made some I cord to test for this, but now I'm leaning toward using some large rectangular plastic handles that I will cover with the same yarn in a sort of single crochet to make them match.

I will definitely do a lining out of whatever decent matching fabric I have on hand, and put in a magnetic snap for the closure. Hopefully I can finish it very soon to take to NYC, but I'm not sure because I have lots of sewing to do for the trip also.

I basically decided to break my vow not to buy more fabric and to go get some black denim or suiting to make a jacket out of to take on the trip, because I don't have any decent black blazers or cardigans right now. I will probably also look at some other patterns for tops, and if I see some red/black/white plaid cheap I'm getting it to make a simple little button down shirt from. Because yes, I plan to learn buttonholes tonight or tomorrow. Seriously! And, if I find suitable red and/or black cottony fabric I will make the duro dress to take also because I'm tired of waiting till it's close enough to October to use the Dia De Los Muertos fabric for it instead. I can have more than one duro dress, can't I?

As you can probably tell I'm using red black and white as a theme so that everything I make and pack will match and so that I can wear red lipstick all weekend because I want to and that's all there is to it. Does anyone else in the world plan to sew a whole wardrobe simply to match a lipstick shade? I doubt it but I don't care, I'm doing it.

The hair always wins

I bought a pattern to go with the red stretchy fabric I posted about buying the other day: Butterick 4789. It got decent feedback on Sewing Pattern Reviews, and it was pretty cheap at Joann's so I went for it. I'll work on it after I finish the approximately 30 million other things I've got going on right now.

I'm also bidding on some honest to goodness vintage patterns on Ebay right now, since I love the vintage look but don't actually own any vintage patterns yet. Since I am cheap I may not win any good ones, but we'll see. I'll post pics if I get any.

I posted my questions about finishing the insides of garments on Craftster and got a lot of useful feedback. Several people DO finish, and a few even say that they would never NOT finish. But, I'm still lazy, and I'm still pretty sure I will never start lining things that don't call for lining, or learn how to do french seams for anything that I don't have to finish. I may however start zig-zagging my seams to finish them, because another craftster made a pretty good case for the fact that things will probably last longer if they're at least marginally finished on the inside. Plus I guess I can use the practice.

Maybe I'll zig zag the edges of pieces before I put them together if that seems workable, because I'm really bad at zig zagging or otherwise neatly finishing seams that are already stitched, since it's such a small space to stitch on and a little hard to work around if it's not just a straight line.

I may be willing to learn flat fell seams, because they look sort of cool on the outside too, but again, I'm too lazy to start doing them all the time.

Anyhow last night I was too tired to stand at the ironing board and turn up hems on the wrap dress and the eyelet dress to finish up, so I started an easy knitting project instead. I wanted something I could do without thinking, while I'm waiting for things or riding in the car or watching TV or whatever.

I'm going to need a white wrap or sweater of some sort to go with the shirt dress that I hope to do next. I always always need a wrap. Mostly because it's always sort of chilly at some point in the day in San Francisco, if not all day every day like lately, and like it will be all summer most liekely. And even if I go somewhere warm, then I freeze indoors from the air conditioning. I used to hate that about going places in Texas during the summer, you could catch pneumonia just from the extreme temperature changes from sweltering outside to teeth-chattering cold inside.

I've been saving Uncommon Threads on the DIY network to my DVR to watch every day and picked up a few good ideas for projects. Recently I saw the episode about making shrugs into other, more complicated garments and really liked the idea of the "shracket." Actually I hate the name because it's hard to say and sounds a little like a combo of shmuck and racket (I imagine some mealy mouthed gangster saying, "That shmuck fell for the numbers racket we ran last year!" or something. Whatever that even means. Can you tell I watch too much film noir and gangster fiction?), but the garment itself seems easy and pretty quick and cool looking. I didn't want to crochet it though because I don't want the stitch to be so open so I'm going to do a knit version instead using some Bernat Baby Boucle yarn in white I got for $2.99 a skein at Joann's yesterday.

Here's how I'll make it. I'm knitting a long rectangle in regular stockinette, long enough to reach from one elbow across my shoulders and back to the other elbow, and wide enough to wrap snugly around my upper arm. I'm using a size 7 or 8 needle (I don't know which it is but I'm pretty sure it's one of them). Then I'll stitch up the sleeves almost to the armpit on each side to make the shrug. I'm thinking of making it so that the purl side faces out, because it looks less directional than the knit side and might make it less obvious that this thing is just a glorified shrug. There's nothing better than a design that's easy as pie to make but looks like you put lots of skill and time into it!

Then I'm going to switch to larger needles, probably around a size 10 since I seem to have about 4 size 10 needles for some unknown reason, and pick up stitches all around the opening in the middle. I'll knit that in 2 by 2 rib, or maybe a fancy twisted or eyelet rib if I'm feeling ambitious, until it's long enough to fold over into a collar on the top edge.

I'll then pick up stitches with the same size needle around the sleeve openings and knit the same rib stitch into cuffs that I'm hoping will sort of bell open to the wrists. I love bell sleeves even though I usually have to be careful not to just drag them through a plateful of BBQ or pasta when I wear them. I hope the sleeves will open out like this without shaping because the needles are bigger, but if not I'll just cast on extra stitches or increase evenly by trial and error until it looks like I'm envisioning or I give up and just let it do what it wants.

This by the way is the same philosophy I use to fix my hair: trial and error to make it look like some gorgeous movie-star idea of a hairstyle I have, ending with my giving up in exasperation and letting it do what it wants to anyway. It's an ongoing battle, and you'd think I'd learn the truth eventually: The hair always wins. Always.

Perfectionism in Picture Posting

I've been putting off posting because I want to put up pictures of a couple of finished projects but haven't had a chance to take any, mostly because I am vain and want to look good in the pictures without having to crop off my head due to a bad hair day or laziness-induced lack of makeup. Last Sunday I actually wore one of my new things over to a friend's house, and got my boyfriend to take some pictures, one of which I erased because I thought I looked fat and the others I asked him to download for me today and email so I could post them (I'm at work today and he's not).



Well, they're not here because he claimed they didn't look good enough because they didn't properly feature the shirt and refused to send them and offered to take new pictures tomorrow night. So tomorrow we'll have a little modeling session and I'll get pics of the sleeveless cowl-neck dress I finished, the blouse I wore in the rejected photos, and hopefully the halter dress that I didn't get done in time to wear out last Saturday and that still needs hemming.



I suppose I should thank him for looking out for me and making sure I don't post crappy-ass photos on my blog, but I do also think he's a bit of a perfectionist. In the meantime here is a picture of me at the park where the Giants play, wearing a scarf I made that you can't see very well but that I love. I tell people that I only had to skin 3 or 4 muppets to spin the yarn for it. Because I'm funny that way.