Mattress seaming is magical

About a month ago, I started making this dress. I thought about trying to knit it in the round so that I wouldn't have to do any seaming. In hindsight I probably could have figured it out, but I haven't made a ton of garments, so it made me nervous and I just knit it in pieces as it had been written. When it came to putting together the front to the back, I tried a couple of different things (while at knitting group so I didn't take pictures because that would make me look ridiculous). 

First I tried crocheting the edges together. This was nice and sturdy, but I'd run out of the turquoise yarn, and I didn't like that you could see peeks of gray coming through on the right side. I tried a bunch of non-specific ways of sewing , but again, I could still see the gray coming through the turquoise, so I just put it in my bag and gave up.

The next day, I looked up tutorials for mattress seaming because they always say it's invisible. If you do it right. Which I'm usually too lazy to do, but I would just turn a blind eye to the imperfections of my made up mattress seaming because it's in the same solid color as the rest of the work. So if it popped through to the front, no big deal as it wasn't super noticeable. This time though, I turned to youtube. Nothing specific, I just did a search and watched the first couple that came up. I followed along with my gray cotton yarn, and it was working! It was magical! I'd pull it taught and it disappeared! And then it snapped!

 

Swear words. I had a vague memory of hearing about sock yarn being really strong on a podcast, which makes sense given it's intended home. I had some in my bag, so I thought, well, if this is REALLY invisible, it shouldn't matter what color I use, right? And it was! Magical! Here it is from the wrong side:

 

And the right side.

 

Give it a tug to tighten it up.....

 

And it's gone! Ta dah!

 

Oh you old basics. I don't know why I bother trying to reinvent the wheel when we already have a perfectly good one.

I'm all finished now, but I haven't gotten around to taking a fully assembled picture. I've been mostly busy working on the basement - it will be SO nice someday to think, ok, I've got a finished object I'd like to document, and a nicely set up space to do that! Right now if I want anything more than an iPhone snap, it would involve clearing off a space, trying to do it in daylight, hanging it up or something. Surely it's much easier to build an entire room than clear off a surface....

Crazy bag lady

So on Fridays, I go to yoga at lunch. I love the class, but there really isn't a great place to change before and after, so the goal for my outfit on Fridays is to somehow dress both for yoga and for casual Friday. This was easy in the winter, because it was so cold I would just wear leggings under my jeans, and I was both warm and ready for class. Yay!

Now that it's warming up eeeever so slightly, I have to get more creative. Today I decided that I would wear leggings under a maxi dress, theorizing that might be a good combo of layers and breeziness for a spring day. I paired the short sleeved maxi dress with a long sweater that could skew either boho or granny, but maybe works ok, and flats. Only to get fully dressed and downstairs and see....it's raining. I hate when the bottom of my pants, or in this case dress, get wet. There was no time to change, so I tossed my shoes in my purse and opted for rainboots. They were adorable a few years ago, black with white polka dots. Over the years, these target boots have aged to black with....I don't know, tan? polka dots and are slightly less adorable, but still serve the purpose. I haphazardly tucked my dress into the top of the boots, which I'm sure looked quite fetching.

As for jacket, I grabbed my raincoat because, duh, raining. It's navy blue, a trench style, quite cute actually. There was a green scarf on its hanger, so without thinking about how it didn't match, I put that on. It's still a little chilly, so I grabbed this headband earwarmer thing.

I got outside. Long black dress tucked into somewhat discolored rainboots. Long multicolored striped (let's face it) granny sweater peeking out from too lazy to button up blue raincoat. Green scarf. Oatmeal earwarmer.

And then I realized that I must look completely insane.

Making and unmaking

We had some free time this weekend, so we were able to start the basement remodel in earnest! I'd taken down the drop ceiling tiles a few weeks back, but this was way more fun!

It took me a while to switch gears from gentle touches to tearing a wall down with my bare (gloved) hands, but I got there! I took this one down with a few kicks! I won for biggest single chunk of drywall. :) 

This is the dividing wall that is now gone!

This one ended up gone as well. Sigh. This is NOT how you build a wall! Studs so far apart, wires going every which way. Oh well. We'll put them back up right. 

I don't know when we'll get to the reconstruction phase, though I've got a material list going on the Home Depot app. It's pretty handy! I ran a rough calc for drywall quantity, and it saved to my account. Even gave me screw and tape quantity!

Until then, there will be crochet. I'll keep dreaming of the future home of all the yarn! 

Knit your way through?

A few weeks ago I started listening to the Knitmore Girls podcast. (And actually as I wrote that I legitimately thought that it was only a few weeks, only to look back to find that it was at the beginning of the year. My brain is a sieve.) I listened to a few of their recent episodes, and was enjoying it so much that I decided to go back and listen to the archives. All 270+ archive episodes....

Basically the show is a mother and daughter who knit and talk about it. When you say it out loud it sounds a little ridiculous to be so into listening to that, but they are really engaging and knowledgeable, and I've been really happy with a lot of their book or pattern recommendations. I'm sure I've learned a few things as well, but again, brain is a sieve. The mother of the pair, Gigi, has a little bit of a reputation now for knitting her way through entire books or pattern collections. So far she's gone through Rosemary Hill's 7 Small Shawls collections (you'll need a ravelry sign-in for some of these links, which is totally worth having by the way) and the Little Box of Socks. In the latest episodes on my tear through the back catalog, she's starting on all the socks in the Knitter's Curiosity Cabinet, and I just have to say that there is something about working your way through a collection that totally appeals to the more obsessive parts of my nature. There is evidence of this aspect of my personality right in the very act of wanting to listen to the show right from the beginning. Netflix has been a wonderful enabler as well, because I just love tearing through old TV shows, one episode after the other. My preference is actually for shows that have been cancelled, because then I know I can go through right from start to finish! I've been known also to read books I'm not even enjoying that much because I just have to know how the series turns out.

All this to say....I feel like I would love to do that someday. Take a collection of work, and knit my way all the way through. My problem with that, apart from absolutely not having time to dedicate to such a project right now, is that I haven't found that soulmate designer or collection just yet. It seems to work out for Gigi because she knits a ton of socks. Personally, I don't really see the appeal of some of the more complicated socks. If it's warm enough for lacy socks, I'm more likely to just not wear any at all. I could maybe see a shawl collection....now that I've been knitting awhile, I'm being brainwashed into thinking of shawls less like something Magda (Miranda's housekeeper/nanny from Sex and the City? Anyone?) would wear and more like a large scarf. Maybe that's just what "they" want me to think? Shawl knitting seems to be an inevitability of knitters! A sweater book would be cool, because it would be cool to have that many handknit sweaters, but #1, whoa expensive. #2, whoa, that would take a lifetime. and #3, my tastes tend to run to the simplistic and classic in my own wardrobe. I'd love to be one of those people who just has those classic pieces that never go out of style, and I feel like many of the pattern books out there tend toward the fussy or the trendy. Does anyone have any suggestions for pattern collections to knit through?

In the meantime, I had to put a halt to all the projects I wrote about in the last post to get 2 pairs of mittens out to a customer. My hope is that she's planning ahead for next winter, but I think we all know that this winter just isn't going to actually end. Yes, I know it's the first day of spring, but to that I say....prove it.

Once those went out, I went back to the Solar Sweetie dress I've been working on. I'm making good progress I think! I'm almost done with one of the sides. I'm all the way down to the last 5 rows. The pattern calls for a garter stitch edging. I can't decide if I should just do that, or if I'd rather do some sort of pretty lace edge. I'm going to mull it over this morning and maybe figure it out over my lunch break. I'd love to bind that half off, and then finish up the first of my pair of socks.

Project Juggling

Typically, I'm what you might call "project monogamous." I like to focus all my energy on one particular thing until it's DONE. I don't really like cleaning up after this burst of finishing energy, but that is neither here nor there. In fact, I'm usually most motivated to clean up and organize when I'm ready to start the next project, which leads to sort of consistently messy project space. Which is why I need my own space to lock away my mess. :)

So about a month ago, my shop started slowing down as people get tired of buying warm weather knits after the holidays and set their sights on spring. Can't blame em, I'm right there with you! I seized this opportunity to start making things for myself! I whipped out a cowl, and then I started on a pair of fancy convertible gloves for easy phone access. And....well, it was sort of a fail. I usually knit small items in the round on double pointed needles, which look a lot more impressive than they are. However, I also usually knit on thicker yarn than the fingering weight this pattern calls for.

Comparison.


And I ended up with what they call "laddering," which is basically loose spots between where you switch from one needle to the next. Grrrr.

See the stretched out bits between the ribbing? Unacceptable.

I googled for solutions, and while a lot of them suggest which stitches to pull tighter, and alternating where your needles join, those weren't working for me. I saw several message board posts that point to using either 2 circular needles or one super long one in a magic loop configuration as a potential solution. I opted to try 2 circular needles for a few reasons. I've heard that magic loop can be tricky if your cable isn't flexible enough, and I didn't want to deal with experimenting with a bunch of different brands. I also thought that if I got circulars in a few lengths, I'd be able to tell which needle was #1 or #2, so I'd know which was the end of the round. I also thought that I'd have a better shot of having the right length needle for all the sweaters I have queued up in my mind. So I ordered a bunch of needles from Knitpicks, because that was the most cost effective way of getting the quantity I wanted.

In the meantime, I worked on a few other things, which I might someday get around to posting about in more detail. For now, a few photos.

 

When my needles finally arrived, I cast on my gloves for the 3rd time, and it went much better!

I nearly finished the ribbing....and then I discovered something horrible and wonderful. You can buy other people's unwanted yarn on Ravelry for sometimes very, very cheap. And then I started dreaming about wearing nothing but hand knit socks because this winter has been oh so very cold, and so have my feet. I may or may not have had packages of sock yarn....and enough for a few sweaters....arriving at my house every day for about a week and a half. And now I am grounded from Paypal, so says my bank account. In order to make good use of this accidental stash enhancing, I started my odyssey to hand knit socks with some yarn a friend from knitting group de-stashed to me months ago. It's a sport weight, so it's slightly heavier and easier to learn on than true sock yarn. I've done a version of socks before from the top down, but I sort of feel like those don't count because the yarn and needles are so huge! For my first pair of "real" socks, I decided to switch things up and go toe up, so that they could be as tall as possible. I have 2 skeins, so one per sock. I figured that by starting from the toe, I could just knit till I run out of yarn. It's going very well so far!

 

As you can see, I got nearly done with one sock before I got distracted..... I was cleaning out some things, and I came across a pattern I saved YEARS ago. I've always wanted to knit this little dress, but never knew if I'd have the right recipient. It just so happens that I DO have a little lady in mind....and the sizing for this dress only goes up to 24 months! Which means I'm running out of time! I decided to work it up in cotton yarn because that would make a more sensible summer dress. It also gives me 2-5 months to finish, whenever summer decides to arrive. :) In this case, having a few projects going is a good thing, because I'm just noticing what everyone says - cotton is a little hard on the hands. The yarn doesn't have as much give as wool or acrylic, so the loops on the needles sort of dig into my hand. The fabric itself feels nice though, so I just need to work on it in shorter bursts.

I love how it's starting out though!

In the OTHER meantime though....I got an order for a few pairs of mittens, presumably for someone planning ahead for next year, so those jumped right to the top of the list!!

Ah, if only I had all the time in the world. :) We'll see if this project juggling is something I keep doing, or if I go back to my monogamous ways. I could see a logical doubling up of projects coming from trying to have a personal project going alongside Etsy orders. I think I've been a little too shop focused lately, and it's been nice to have some personal gain happening, both for me and little gifts for people. It will be nice to have some finished projects sticking with me instead of heading off to new homes!