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because obviously everyone was dying for an update on this

Whoever told me not to make a scarf as my first knitting project was totally right.

My friend Lisa decided to take up knitting and since receiving her supplies by mail last week has already knit about four thousand different awesome things. I, on the other hand, am slowly slogging through this terrible monstrosity of a scarf.

Like with most things I don’t know how to do, I started out more ambitious than my skills would allow when my class started three weeks ago. I decided that since I could read a pattern, obviously I should attempt a pattern. I chose this one from the Martha Stewart website because it looked fairly straightforward. Naturally, I managed to screw it up by adding a zillion extra loops as I went row by row; you cast on thirty-two stitches at the start and after I had done about ten inches worth of knitting, I had something like fifty-eight stitches. Whoops! Ripped the whole thing out, started fresh.

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in other news, I have a nauseating migraine that will not die

Guess who had her first knitting class tonight?

These are the fruits of my labours thus far. Those of you who are experienced knitters are probably deeply ashamed of my horrific attempts at casting on; the photo does not do justice to the random holes that appear in the first few rows, but I got the hang of it eventually.

Can we talk about how fun it is to pick out wool? I had to fight the urge to pick something too out there as if I make something that ends up being wearable from a are-these-competent-stitches point of view, I would also like it to not be a deeply terrifying fashion statement. I played it safe and went with what Amelia calls “fashion grey”, i.e. a darker shade of grey (hexadecimal colour #555555!) that you can wear and still look fashionable, which is often defined in opposition to “Dad grey” which is a much lighter shade of grey (#CCCCCC!) and rarely looks chic. Not to say you can’t find a way to make Dad Grey work, I’m just saying it might take a special talent and a keen eye for design.

I have successfully been in my pyjamas for three days

There are a zillion and a half tantalizing fabric sales online right now but I am trying to regroup and remember that I still have a mountain of scraps I should use up before doing anything else (because Theresa’s quilt didn’t use up nearly enough).

Yesterday morning I pulled out all my scrap fabric and piled it into groups by colour all over the living room floor. Then I let it sit there while I got lost in various Flickr groups looking for quilt inspiration, as you do. I’ve settled on the wonky star as it’s out of my comfort zone on account of being a little too whimsical for my usual tastes. (I like straight lines, right angles, and symmetry, damnit.)

At this stage, I’ve done all my cutting using yellow and green scraps (Blackberry present for scale purposes) and I still have to jump into my pile of blue scraps. I managed to reduce the number of scraps I have to one ziploc bag each of green and yellow, which I think is a decent accomplishment. All of this requires lots of ironing in addition to all the cutting and measuring so it’s tedious but has gone by relatively quickly. I managed to do the bulk of this while watching Chelsea beat Wolves this morning (boo) and Fulham beat Arsenal this afternoon (yay), followed by Stand By Me which I haven’t watched in eight million years.

Why am I such a misfit? I am not just a knit whit.

So, what’s the best way to teach yourself to knit? Knitting is to my crafting hobbies as The Godfather was to my movie going for the longest time: something I’d tried multiple times for about half an hour before getting bored, constantly putting it off time and time again but knowing that it would be something I’d have to follow through on eventually.

I have a long standing love affair with hand knitted socks* and, sadly, the frequency with which my mom finds them at Christmas bazaars (the only place to get them) for me is diminishing with great speed as their old lady creators shuffle off this mortal coil. Eventually I will have to start making them myself if I want to keep wearing them.

*I, of course, do not think I would be able to knit socks right out of the gate. Scarves are the starting point for a reason.

At any rate, I am on vacation! I haven’t had a full week off since last May so this has rather been a long time coming. My only definitive plans are watching the three Liverpool matches taking place in the next ten days and beyond that I’m going to try to get some sewing in as I haven’t touched my sewing machine in ages, aside from making Amelia a rollable paintbrush holder (à la Martha).

Simplicity 2246: Liberty of London redux

Liberty-Dress-2-001small.jpgBecause of you like the outcome once, why not make it again! This is quite literally the exact same dress that I made in June, except in the Mitsi Fuchsia Liberty tana lawn. The intensity of the colour on this fabric really does not come across on screen because when it came in the mail in July I was rather taken aback.

Of note (for me):

  • I lowered the waistline by about a half inch because on the green version of this dress it sometimes sits a little high in the back, but now that it’s lower I feel like the regular length actually works better.
  • I’m getting really good at sewing button plackets, not that this is hard.
  • The collar construction still annoys me; it really shouldn’t be a single pattern piece!!!

Luckily we are now experiencing some nice early fall weather which means the return of being able to wear the fantastic boots I bought in the spring. Now if only all my tights weren’t riddled with holes…

modified Simplicity 2444: Wendy Darling

blue-dress-001small.jpg I collect a lot of pictures of inspiration dresses from around the interwebz, in part to get ideas for things I could make and in part because I like to be aghast at how much one must pay for a dress and subsequent shipping and duty fees only to have it be constructed with questionable craftsmanship. If I am going to endure questionable craftsmanship, it will be my own!

And I so I found the Writing Letters Dress which was cute but not entirely me since I tend not to keep black in my wardrobe (I think I have a single black cardigan and that’s it). I liked the buttons and the Peter Pan collar but went with a blue polka dotted rayon*, using Simplicity 2444 as my base.

* I feel like my favourite fabric store sorts fabrics into cottons, silks, polyesters, and that’s it, so in my mind rayon was always this disgusting acetate-y type polyester monstrosity. Turns out it isn’t!

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Simplicity 2246: Liberty of London

Liberty-Dress-003.jpgI’m not much of a shopper but one of the things I definitely wanted to do while in London was go to the bricks-and-mortar Liberty of London shop to buy some fabric yardage because it’s prohibitively expensive to buy it in Canada or to have it shipped to Canada from London. Let’s not have any illusions: even buying the fabric directly from the store is expensive as it’s £20/m, which is about three times more than I ever like to spend on fabric.

But oh, this fabric! This is Liberty Tana Lawn which is lightweight and beautiful and totally worth the price, even after you see the exchange rate dollar value on your credit card statement. This print is “Mitsi – Green 1033C”, which I haven’t been able to find online anywhere except Purl Soho.

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apartment refresh

Made some new couch cushions! I’ve been in this apartment for three years now and felt like I needed a bit of a change in the living room, the smallest of which would be the cushions that the new couch slipcover demanded.

They’re simple envelope style covers and I used some Echino fabric that I ordered probably two years ago and never used for anything. (The green/white covers are from Ikea three years ago.)

I have a love for intense colours, clearly. Wait until I post pictures of my new paint colour, haha!

Simplicity 2246: Traveler Dress

I’ve been looking for a good shirt dress pattern for approximately six eons and haven’t been able to find one that I actually liked until now (Simplicity 2246).

I don’t have too much to say about this. I was feeling uninspired by fabric choices so ended up going with a pale blue cotton similar to what was on the pattern package (my sister was like “Seriously?”). The only change I made was to remove the chest pockets because I feel like no one needs random extra emphasis of their boobs like that. The skirt pockets are kind of useless because of the sewing detail that narrows the opening in lieu of tacking the corners; if I make this again, I’m definitely inserting regular pockets and leaving these as purely decorative elements. The collar feels a little on the large side, or maybe the size is fine but it’s just a little unstructured? I’m not sure.

One new thing I tried on this was to actually finish my seams properly. I usually don’t bother finishing my seams and then I curse this choice every time I do laundry and random threads from the fabric start pulling away and tangling. I don’t have a serger so I make sad attempts at using a zigzag stitch when I’m feeling like I should put more effort into this process, but I don’t love that either. On this dress I pressed the seams open and then folded each half of the seam under and stitched it again. I don’t know if this finish has a name, so I am calling it “Lazy”.

Not sure if I’ll wear this with these boots, though; it feels a little country to me.