A Little Yarn On The Side

It's 9:30 AM on the last day of the month and it's possible that the February Project of the Month could be finished tonight.  I woke up early today and got the yoke facing and one sleeve attached, and I hope to be able to get back to sewing fairly early tonight. There are cuff facings, but nothing too hideous and only two buttonholes to be made, so there's hope! Saturday I dropped Jeeves off at the repair shop, then yesterday I finished this: The fact that my "Mark-Be-Gone" marker hasn't "be gone" yet makes me a bit nervous as the other pen disappears in less than 24 hours, but maybe this one disappears with washing?  I made the embroidery stitch a bit heavier by using 3 embroidery threads.  I wanted it to look slightly cartoon-like.  Not in a silly sense, just in a light-hearted sense.  I'm actually rather proud of myself for doing this, as I'm not good at drawing, I haven't actually embroidered anything since I was a child and...

..and there are BAD Finishing Fridays.  Let's see if we can guess which one this one was. I jumped out of bed bright and early because I had an entire day of sewing ahead of me.  It turns out that one can actually jump into sewing just a bit too early on a Friday.  This is what can happen when one changes a needle before having coffee. Seriously--the needle (still threaded) just fell out.  Oops.  Today is February 25 and the February Project of the Month, had progressed no farther than washing of the material.  With 3 days to go, it was time to get cracking! At first I thought I might make the pants as well, but when laid out the material that had started out at 61 inches wide, according to the tag I had attached to it, had shrunk to 51 inches wide after washing.  Apparently when they say "line dry," "no heat fluff" in the dryer still doesn't cut it.  Or, I was having a seriously measurement-challenged day when I wrote up the tag. ...

Tonight I am no longer in hand-stitching hell: The robe is done!!!!!  And before it was TWO weeks late!  Of course, in the perverse nature of my crafting, the doll clothes I cut out of the same material: also required hand-stitching, but at least it was much less.  The odd circle is a little doll beret, which has a little 2-inch piece of elastic in it to give it a little stretchiness to help hold it on, which is probably why most berets I have ever owned are knitted and have a built-in stretchiness.  Yarn is MUCH easier to work with than a 2-inch piece of elastic.  Since these are a gift for my niece's 6th birthday, I did try to keep the swearing down to a minimum, but I might not have made it if there had been any more hand stitching to contend with. Projects 22 and 23 DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

There are 5 days left in February, and in order to stay on track with my goals I need to: 1.  Finished the February Project of the Month, which technically hasn't been started 2.  Knit up 1,256 yards of yarn 3.  Use up 6.4 yards of fabric Isn't sleep highly overrated anyway???

I have been working and working and working to get Andy's robe done today so it would only be a week late, but I am still firmly lodged in hand-stitching hell.  The hem is all hand-stitched (which, to be fair, doesn't show up at all on this fabric and does look very nice), the cuff facings were hand-stitched, and the facing that goes all the way around the front is hand-stitched down on the inside.  That's where I'm stuck now.  I now understand why people had about 2 sets of clothing when it all had to be hand sewn.  If I had to hand-stitch all of our clothes, we'd be naked.  I did start the Lotus Blossom tank with my oldest stash: but set it aside in favor of this: because I thought I might try finishing a project before getting side-tracked by a new one.  Hey, it could happen.  Theo found a new love this weekend: A sweater dryer!  I haven't ever used them since we've had him, and he was so excited by the new kitty hammock that he didn'...

Yesterday, Carolyn asked how long the yarn for the new lace shawl ( Lotus Blossom Lace ) had been in the stash, and whether it was "old" stash or "new" stash, which made me curious about the stash in general.  The yarn I'm using was one of my exceptions in 2009.  I had promised my mother a shawl for her retirement gift, and for unknown reasons, ordered THREE 880-yard hanks of Knitpicks Bare Laceweight.  I ended up using just a little over one hank, so the second hank was justifiable, but that third one really smacks of abuse of a yarn-purchase-exception.  Which is sort of why I want to use it up. However, the oldest yarn in my stash might be this one: which I believe I bought before I bought my first house, which I think was 2003.  I also have 11 skeins of it in bright pink, and the only reason it hasn't been knit up in the past is that some rocket scientist at Jaeger yarn company thought it was completely unnecessary to list such useless details as yar...

Google has been updating and changing Blogger pretty regularly, which usually means that I have trouble uploading or moving pictures. Today, however, it has outdone itself: Nothing I type is showing up. I am hoping that even though I can't see the words, they make it onto the blog--with or without typos and errors and misspellings. ---- time passes, lots of swearing at Blogger, Google,  and the idiot who ever thought up computers in the first place-- Aha!  I can upload pictures on one computer, but have to change to my Unix-based computer to get anything else to work.  Thank you sadistic bastards at Microsoft. ANYWAY, I was able to find two buttons that reasonably matched the pinkish buttons I wanted to use for the jacket, so it now has buttons and has even been worn, but I managed to forget to take a finished picture.  I'll try for that tomorrow, depending on what Blogger has in store for me tomorrow. Theo is helping me with cutting out the remaining piece...

And romantic that I am, I spent the day at the hospital while my father had hip replacement surgery.  Everything went well, and I have to say that it is a HECK of a lot easier to knit in a hospital when you aren't the ones getting the funny drugs.  So, the knitting mojo is back, and I promise I'll post some pictures later.  Right now it's shower, dress, and drive back over to the hospital for the day.

I had some free time yesterday AND DID NOT FEEL LIKE KNITTING.  Do you think I could possibly have caught some sort of rare jungle fever?  Or maybe it's the cross-stitching gods getting back at me for everything I have been saying about their art form? It was a very  frightening experience, especially since after finishing TWO projects on Friday my normal reaction would be to want to cast on 4-5 sweaters immediately.  Good heavens--you don't think I've been struck by moderation, do you??????

You may wish to sit down, as this might come as quite a shock.  Meet Finished Project number 19: which still needs buttons because I'm still debating about what sort of buttons to use.  I like the pinkish buttons, but I only have 6 of them and I need 8, and while I have enough of the rose-shaped buttons, I want to see if I can find something that matches better, using the roses as back-up if necessary. And.....seriously, are you sitting down yet?  Meet Finished Project number 20: Fleur is finally done!!!!!!  Forgive the lousy picture--three years at the bottom of the knitting basket gives sweaters a LOT of wrinkles, so it still needs to be washed and blocked, but after more than 3 years, the thing is finally done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  See, I told you it would be quite a shock.  Let's be honest here--did you even think I would ever finish Fleur after all this time?  

Today, boys and girls, we're playing a new game called, "What the H*$# Was I Thinking?"  See this? Fourteen pattern pieces!  FOURTEEN just for some lousy jacket.  A jacket that is going to go into a closet that already contains at least 20 sweaters.  I can be warm without this silly thing.  And not just 14 pieces--14 pieces that have to be sewn together with THREE seams every single time, or even MORE seams when I make a mistake and have to redo a seam .  Even if each piece only needed to be joined in 2 places, that's eighty-four separate seams!!! Who has ever been THAT cold?????? Does anyone remember if there was a white chocolate martini or a big dose of Nyquil involved in picking out this project?????

So Valentine's Day is 5 days away, and Andy's robe is only partially cut out.  And what have I been doing? First I thought I'd start working on the pink jacket to get it off the project table and it probably gets the prize for being the slowest project ever.  Because of the edge stitching and top stitching, every seam must be done three times.  And, to make it even more fun, there are tons of them.  I like it so far, though I always struggle with smooth edge-stitching on pockets, and the fact that the stitching is so visible on this jacket doesn't help.  I can't decide whether or not to add some sort of embroidery to this, or just to leave it as-is.  The top-stitching might be enough decoration I suppose, but something in white on the right yoke perhaps? The material for the February Project of the Month has been washed and furred, and because there is nothing like a sewing deadline to make me want to knit,  a little hat for my niece's doll w...

Over the last two-three years, I have been adding my yarn stash to Ravelry in order to manage it a bit easier.  It obviously took quite a bit of time, but when I do get the urge to buy yarn, I can go online and browse my own stash, which does feel quite a bit like online shopping, and of course it helps to remind myself how much yarn I already have to knit with.  This is all good.  And when I use up yarn, I can move it to the "used up" tab, which means my stash is always current. Since I started doing the chemo caps, using one ball of Elann Esprit yarn for each cap, I've been moving a lot of formerly "in stash" yarn to the "all used up" tab.   Each time, it feels like an amazing accomplishment, and I'm now up to 30 items in my "used up" tab.  Being able to see my stash progress every day in such a quick and easy manner is pretty exciting.  Not all the yarn I've knitted up in the last 3 years was even on Ravelry, so it doesn't r...

But there has also been a lot of socializing, complete with still being sick, which explains the amount of knitting and the spectacular lack of blogging.  But I have  been catching up on my craft tv show viewing, and am ready to reenter the crafting world armed with all sorts of new information!  For example... *  When I use stabilizer for machine embroidery and it ends up unexpectedly puckering in the wash, I have added textural elements. *  Next time I snag a thread on a silky piece of material, I am creating an heirloom "pulled thread" look *  When I end up creating some article of clothing that I would not be caught dead wearing, I have created fun, wearable art *  Three months from now, even long after all the winter decorations are put away but somehow everything still has glitter on it no matter HOW much I dust and vacuum, I have added bling to our living space. I don't need to become better at crafting--I just need a better spin d...

If you ever get a wild idea to repair a bedspread or comforter, begin by taking a large, heavy object, then beat yourself on the head repeatedly until the urge passes. I am feeling better, but not 100% back to normal, so it seemed like a good day to tackle the bedspread problem.  After all, why ruin a perfectly good day?  I serged the remaining seams, then because I thought it best to reconstruct the thing in the same manner it had been put together (like a pillowcase around the batting), I sewed the edges together, and it was time to figure out how to attach the batting.  Luckily, I had a helper as usual.  Interestingly enough, the batting is several inches too wide in every direction, which had been dealt with by simply folding the batting over.  Okay.  The problem was that the manufacturer also had some sort of spray adhesive that is much more durable and firm than quilter's basting spray--which was no help whatsoever.  So, I decided the biggest ...