A bunny for Easter

If you've never read Posie Gets Cozy, the blog by Alicia Paulson, I won't be at all insulted if you click over to her blog, get lost, and never come back here. Her life seems like the perfect weekend day I can never quite manage to have, AND they've been having dress and sweater weather in Seattle for a while now, which I'm jealous of as I contemplate between heavy spring coat and down jacket on the daily. She does beautiful sewing and embroidery projects and sells patterns and kits on her website. About 6 months or so ago, I purchased the pattern for Miss Maggie Rabbit and have been not patiently waiting to have enough time to dig in and make her up. I'd actually hoped to do it for Christmas but ran out of time. That's ok, because Easter is a perfect, if not obvious, time to gift a little bunny.

(I also finally discovered the magic of freezer paper. So much better than pinning it all out!!)

You guys, I loved making this little softie so much. Everything but her dress was sewn by hand, and it falls right into my recent love for hand stitching. I've made a few machine sewn softies in the past year with the felt you buy in sheets from Joann's, but this time I sprung for the recommended National Nonwovens wool blend felt from Prairie Point Junction, and I don't think I'll ever go back! Other than shipping, it's not that much more than the polyester stuff, and it was a joy to work with. It's much thicker and smoother than the craft store stuff, and I'm hopeful that it won't pill as much as the bunny gets loved.

I'm normally a modern, graphic print kind of gal, but the pattern pictures for this sweet bunny had me pushing myself to go for softer, more vintage looking prints like this one for the lining of the little bunny ears.

She has little boots. I mean, come on. Seriously, so cute. One addition I made was a fuzzy little pompom on her tush for a tail. Some of us are really into tushies and puffballs recently, so I had to. Of course, I didn't photograph this, but trust me, it's cute and worth it. I contemplated waiting to write up this post until I took some fancy finished object photos of Miss Maggie, but the reality is that I'll probably never get around to it. I've been finding that I'm more busy with life than with the documenting of it at the moment, and I think that's ok.

I got this one nighttime shot of Maggie all ready to go in her basket, with bunny jammies as a blanket on a bed of seriously messy paper grass. I went back and forth about knitting her cape, but I'm glad I did. The little dress looked a bit too much like jammies without it. Of course, Maggie is currently nakie other than her boots, which I intentionally sewed on because I was not about to tie and re-tie embroidery floss laces. The best news is that Miss Maggie Rabbit is currently quite loved, and that's the best part of any handmade gift. I won't even mind if she pills, because it's a sign of having been snuggled. I have the itch now to make more felt softies!!

One final Easter note. I tried the Pinterest recipes for natural dyes 2 years ago, and had a total fail. Either they did nothing at all to the eggs, or in the case of the no fail turmeric dye, they just peeled right off the shell! Last year I went traditional and got actual color from a Paas kit, which was fun and no-fail. This year, I found a crazy expensive natural dye kit ($10, for those wondering what crazy expensive in terms of egg dye is), and gave it a shot. Fortunately/unfortunately, it worked great! The dozen eggs we got were a mix of brown and white, and this kit even colored the brown eggs on the right of the carton above. It took much longer than a Paas kit, as the eggs soaked for 15-20 min rather than 3 or so, but we just did some coloring in between and set the timer to check on them. I might try this again next year....or maybe I'll try the food coloring version that's floating around Pinterest this year. :)

When you don't love it

In my last post I mentioned cutting out some fabric for a dress I planned to make. I also mentioned that I've been avoiding this particular project because I wasn't sure I was going to like the pattern. Obviously, I like the look of the end product because I had decided to make it, and purchased all the trim and lace for it....but I have made another dress out of this book and I did NOT enjoy the process. The directions were ok, but I had to do a lot of adjustment on the fit. I brought the shoulders of that particular dress in, did sort of an improvised dart so they didn't gape in the back, and left an entire tier of ruffles off the dress, as it was plenty long enough for its above average height recipient.

The only reason I didn't entirely scrap my plans to make another dress by this designer is because dress number two is much less fitted, and I decided that oversized would be fine for now and it could be worn as a tunic over leggings in the future. Something grabbed me this weekend, and I decided to make the second dress.

I like the dress. But I was right. I did NOT love the pattern.

Many parts of it felt incredibly fiddly, and sometimes I would go ahead with the directions as written, hoping that it would work out but knowing that I was going to be ripping a seam and doing it again. You can see from the back image that there are ties at the waistband. I know for sure that there were directions on how to make those ties, but I am less certain that there was ever a direction to actually attach them to the dress! Luckily this is not my first dress with ties like this, so I was sure to attach them before I sewed the final side seams. I imagine I would have been quite frustrated if I hadn't noticed that, finished the dress....and ended up with spare parts!

The directions for the button band on the back were rather mystifying as well. This is one feature I haven't done much in the past, so I was really relying on the pattern instructions. The band is cut out as a single strip. All of the times I read through the directions, I really felt like it should have been two separate pieces, but I didn't want to slice it in half only to find out I was wrong. I checked and double checked the pattern piece to make SURE there wasn't another cut line, and there wasn't. I went ahead and installed it as best I could....got down to the bottom of the band, had no idea how I was to navigate the transition between left and right side, and out of the lateness of the hour and just wanting to be done, I folded and mashed it as best I could to look decent and called it a day.

It looks fine for a toddler/kid dress I suppose, but I know it's not the proper way to do it and it bugs me. Not enough to rip out, but enough to want to research it for next time. On the other hand, how pretty are my buttonholes! Score one point for practicing it five times before doing it on the garment!

So here is my dilemma. I've now made two patterns from this book, and I disliked them both. I was surprised at many of my issues because, well, they came from a BOOK. In my mind, you should be able to trust what you get out of a book from a real live publishing house. There should have been multiple sets of eyes on it, patterns should be tested, fits should be reasonably accurate. This wasn't a freebie pattern (though, disclosure, I got this from my library so I didn't technically pay for it), so I just expected more. The dilemma is....to name names, or just make a mental note to myself and move on?

I have no problem posting names and links and such when I have a good experience, but I somehow feel bad pointing a finger when I had a less than good experience. I know I don't have a large following, but I guess I feel like I should prevent others from having the same problems. On the other hand, I'm not the world's most experienced sewist, and I don't always read directions carefully, and I'd hate to paint someone else in a bad light if it was really just errors on my part.

What are your thoughts?

Hand Sewing and Making Scraps

I have so been so enjoying hand sewing this quilt top lately! All those tiny stitches are so soothing to me right now. I'd say I'm....about 1/3 of the way through. I measured out my kitchen rug, and it's roughly the size of a twin bed, so I'm using that as my reference point.

I ran out of hexagons that I'd pre-cut at the beginning of this project, so I needed to get more. (Oh, I've been informed that it wasn't actually my dad who spilled the wine, but I'm fairly certain that it was his glass, which must be why I remembered it that way.) I don't actually have any kind of color plan for this quilt! I'm mostly using stuff I have around, or leftovers from other projects so far. My only method is that each flower has a white center and some kind of print on the petals. I'm trying to spread around the colors, and find a mix of fabrics that I like and those that a toddler might like, because that's the intended recipient. The room that it will live in is orange, gray and green, so those are present, and pink is a favorite color so that's there as well.

But as I said, I ran out of cut hex's. So...what to do? Well, I made more! These are from a quilt (my first) from my bed, and the apple print was a remnant that is both a doll dress, and what was going to be a knitting project bag for me, but was quickly appropriated by the owner of the doll dress because of how it matched.

Then....I was sort of out of leftover cotton fabric. I had some more sitting around though that was earmarked for projects, so I decided to cut out those projects now so that I could scavenge my made leftovers.

The cutting table still needs trim and stain, and the drawers are wonky....but I LOVE it. It made the cutting and piecing of a pdf pattern so much easier than chasing it around on the floor, or hunching over my dining table. I'm so pleased with a large work surface at standing height that I can't even believe it. 

This crazy blue is intended to be a probably crazy toddler dress. I've made one other dress from this book (I can't recall if I blogged it) and honestly I didn't love that pattern. I had to make a lot of fit adjustments, but the end product is quite well loved. And yes, its scraps are already in the blanket. And also in this hat actually! I tend to overbuy yardage. This dress is a much less fitted design than the first one I did, so I'm hopeful that I won't have to make any adjustments.

I've also been intending to make some more project bags. This time I gave a zipper a go, using this tutorial. I made the medium size, because I'd picked up two 12" zippers. I was hoping it would be sweater sized, but it's a bit small for that. Maybe it would be good for a kids sweater or a shawl. In either case, I had a good time practicing with it. I'm not great at inserting zippers, and I did a decent job this time. Basting. Sort of key. Yep, my lazy self needs to quit skipping that step!

Such an adorable, springy little pouch! I think for my next one I'll add a little loop or something on the zipper pull side, which will be the same size as this one because as I said, I have a second 12" zipper. Then I'll have to get my hands on some bigger zippers to make larger sizes.

In the meantime, I'm putting the scraps into service already.

Highly Irregular

For a moment, I'm between large knitting projects. I've recently finished my Bleecker Street cardigan and my Prairie Ridge Shawlette (SCARF). In the time since I've last posted I whipped up a bath puff with some cotton scraps and a simple baby blanket to use up one of those pound of love skeins that was taking up space in my stash. (And yes, I DO think that the light gray bits look like brains!)

I've swatched (to check for gauge) for a new sweater, and even washed my swatch, but I haven't gotten around to measuring it yet to cast on. It's a fingering weight cardigan and I just don't know if I have the mojo to start that at the moment. I've matched up my other sweater quantities of yarn with projects they'd like to grow up to be, but the light cardigan is the only one I currently own the pattern for, so it jumped to the top of the list. Use what you've got, right?

So in the meantime, I decided to pick away at that hex quilt I started many moons ago. Oh, this project feels a bit troubled to me! Several months ago, my parents were over and my dad knocked a full glass of red wine over......right into the bag holding my paper templates, finished block or two, and pre-cut fabric. I was a bit in a "throw the baby out with the bathwater" mood already when that happened, but my husband kept a level head and washed all the fabric in an oxyclean soak and laid it out flat to dry. In the end it was all saved, but I was annoyed by the whole thing, not to mention my behavior.

The other kind of irregular thing about it so far is that the hex template I had printed out from a Craftsy tutorial just never seemed quite....symmetrical. I could sometimes find a better fit between pieces by rotating them, which, as sort of a geometry professional, I knew was not right. On my last trip to the fabric store, I was enticed by a sale and picked up one of those fancy rulers shaped like a hexagon. I thought, I'll just cut out some new 5" paper templates and keep going. Sure, the first 3 blocks will not be QUITE the same, but it's ok and it will make the rest of the assembly much more smooth. It seemed like a valid plan.

I cut out a small stack of perfect 5" hexagons and set one in the negative space next to a completed block. In no way were the blocks I already had 5". At best, 4.5". While yes, I'm not exactly far along in this project, I HAVE already cut up a bunch of fabric for more blocks based on that original template. If I went up to a true 5" block, I'd have to really start over and that seemed like a waste. Instead, I painstakingly trimmed a bit at a time until I came up with an ALMOST perfectly symmetrical template the same size as my "5" lying wonky templates that I could use going forward.

It was really annoying.

However, I did manage to piece together the three irregular blocks I had already completed (note the wrinkliness from the wine bath, and further wrinkliness from not being perfect hexagons) - the front three in the photo above. I also took a few deep breaths and put together a fourth block (the orange one in the back), which happily took only about an hour. (For the orange block....not the rest of my whining.) As you can see, even though the fabric itself suffered the same wash as everything else, symmetrical hexagons make the whole thing lay much more nicely. I think I'll make the wonky flowers (that's what I'm calling them) the center of the quilt, and surround them by my now even new blocks.

Here is the whole thing draped over a chair in the dim February morning light for scale:

Slowly but surely, it's growing. Slow yes, but still faster than a fingering weight cardigan. For now I might focus my knitting energy on socks - I have a new two at a time pair going and I've turned the heels, so I'm in the home stretch!

Finally for today, I have to put a brag here. I don't talk a lot about my personal life, and if you are friends with me on facebook, you already know, but I am so damn proud I want to shout it from the rooftops. WE HAVE PAID OFF OUR STUDENT LOANS!!!! We graduated with two bachelor and two masters degrees between us in Dec 2006 and May 2007. We got married in October of 2007, so the majority of that total amount has been paid as a joint effort. Which, just for kicks and for the record, was an original loan amount of, drumroll and scary dun-dun-DUUUUUN music please, was $125,500. One hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. That's a modest house here in the midwest. Luckily we are both gainfully employed in our fields, so these degrees and that money isn't just in the wind, but, ouch.

I'm not entirely sure my husband felt the weight of it the way I did. I'm the money and budgeting half of our relationship. Before me, he had a little credit card debt. When we got engaged, I took away his card and added him as an authorized user on mine so that we could focus on paying his off. I am allergic to having a lot of expenses I can't just write a check to cover. Yes, I do sometimes make payments on 0 or 1% interest plans. I calculate it out to make sure I pay the whole thing off at least a month before that interest kicks in. I'm frugal, sometimes to a fault. If I'd had complete control over paying off our debt, I'd have been so crazy about it that it would have been gone a few years sooner, but likely so would my husband! He's more the type to buy the bar a round, where I'd be sipping water or nursing a single glass of wine to stretch my pennies. Needless to say, we compromised.

I can write more about how we pulled this off if people are interested. We aren't rich, far from it. We started out with pretty modest incomes despite advanced degrees - it's the nature of our field. We've grown over the past 7, almost 8, years of debt repayment to a fairly comfortable income, but still nothing terribly impressive when you put it up against pharmacists or most business majors (I'd guess). As I said, we took on the full load in 2007, but I got really serious about paying this off in 2010. I haven't always been able to stick to my plan exactly - life changes, job loss - but the basic timeline has come out much the way I'd hoped. I'm not sure what we'll do now. Paying bills next month will probably feel like we've gotten a huge raise! I have a couple of ideas, sadly none of which will likely involve a spur of the moment trip to Tahiti. We've got more changes coming up this year that will shake up the budget picture, but I am honestly so happy and so relieved that this burden has been lifted.

To celebrate I bought my knitting group a round of cookies last night. I haven't completely turned over a new leaf though - I waited until after 6 when they were half price!

Capital "K"

Once upon a time, I said that I believed one must have knit adult sized socks and a sweater to be a REAL KNITTER.

Yesterday, as I dressed to go to knitting, I was totally a real Knitter. Capital K. I snapped this spectacularly crappy picture as I was getting ready to go of my first pair of fingering weight toe up socks and my Bleecker Street Cardigan. I've worn the socks several times before, but it was the maiden voyage for the freshly blocked sweater.  The socks are nice and warm, though they have some fit issues that I'm working through as I prepare to turn the heels on my second pair. The toes are a bit too pointy, and they are awfully tight getting over my heel when I put them on. They seem fine once they are on, it's just kind of hard getting them there. I don't know if it's because I didn't do any ribbing on the leg apart from the cuff, which I also wish I'd have done more of but I was just DONE knitting at that point, or if it's because the yarn is a wool-cotton-nylon blend rather than just wool-nylon. In any case, they fit well enough and I've appreciated having them this cold, cold winter.

The sweater, I LOVE. It's so warm without being heavy, and I think the fit came out really nicely. The pattern is written by Melissa Wehrle (affiliate link) and the yarn is Lousia Harding Kashmir Baby. I have yet to buy buttons, and technically I didn't add any buttonholes to the bottom ribbing. I'm undecided if I will, and if I'll do some kind of afterthought buttonhole to accommodate lower buttons. I typically wear cardigans unfastened, so the buttons are really decorative. I may end up putting buttons all the way down on the button side and letting the bottom 3 or so be purely decorative, while the top of the sweater could actually be buttoned. The only modifications I made to the pattern was to increase the length of the fronts between the waist shaping and the neck shaping (the sweater is worked bottom up in pieces) to make them match the backs - I have no idea why the math was coming out different. I didn't check my row gauge which was probably naughty and the culprit, but it all came out well in the end. I also started the whole extravaganza with a provisional cast on. After I seamed the sweater together, I went back and knitted the ribbing, which I did as 3x2 rather than 1x1 as written, as long as I could stand going. The pattern called for just an inch of ribbing, but I like a long cardigan. I went for about 6 inches before calling it done, and I'm really glad I did. I'm glad I did wider ribbing too, not only because I like the more substantial look with such a large length of ribbing, but also because I think 1x1 for that long may have driven me mad. For some reason I had an absurdly hard time keeping the rhythm of the 3x2 as I knit it, and had to drop down every few rows to fix an errant knit or purl. It's always good to practice those rescue knitting techniques, right?!

Someday I may get around to better finished object pictures, but for now I'll wear my sweater as often as possible and be happy that I have it this very cold February.