3 Loved Ones, 2 Cats and a Birdbrain

Some Knitting...

Howdy! 

Well, it's nice to see you again!  You look great, by the way. 

How are we?  We're fine.  We were at the lake for a few days, and that was nice.  My Dad turned 76 while we were there, so we had a yummy meal and some ice cream cake.  That was also good.  I did some knitting while we were away.  And I took my sewing machines (both of them - machine and serger) in to get serviced while we were away, and then had another week after we got back before I got them back.  It was disorienting.  I may be obsessed (like you didn't know that).  I got them back though, and they are happy, clean and well-oiled.  They're a little moody though. 

So we have cats.  They came from the SPCA and they are siblings.  One of them  (Houdini)(the black one in the photo below from a few weeks ago) is beautiful and healthy and a frat boy. 
 He loves to be around people and will tolerate being held good naturedly.  The other one (Genie) is a lovely girl who is...very cat-like.  She doesn't like to be picked up, and she had huge digestive issues when she was a kitten.  She spent most of the first six months she was with us on one pill or another, and at one point I was giving her B12 shots once a week.  Needless to say, it was all very expensive.  But she's healthy now, and ornery and we love her to bits.  While we were away, the person who was taking care of them for us was only able to come once a day (they usually get fed twice a day) and since they are on dry food, we thought that was fine.  Apparently it wasn't.  By the time we got back (after five days) Genie was backed up like you wouldn't believe.  Her tail was down, her abdomen was swollen and she was having a hard time getting to her back end to clean herself.  So I took her off to the vet, thinking she had eaten something she shouldn't have, and we would be paying yet again for this ridiculous cat to have surgery.  But they didn't find anything, and they gave her (wait for it!) an enema (I'll pay whatever you want, as long as you do it, and I don't have to) and she's back to normal.     Unbelievable.  So that's part of what I was doing last week when I wasn't sewing. 

I did do some knitting while we were away though.  First up, a cowl:

Project 15 - Honey Cowl

Yarn: my handspun from last week

Thoughts:  This cowl is lovely, and the yarn is lovely, and the knitting was good too.  This pattern is crazy popular (over 5400 projects on Ravelry) and with good reason.  It does interesting things with the slipstitching that are very generous to handpainted or handspun yarns.  Here's the Honey Cowl on my unimpressed model:

All in all, a lovely little knit. 

The next one is a little daunting though:

Project 16:  A Winter Rainbow

Yarn: Kauni Effectgarn EQ and Kauni Effectgarn ES

Pattern : none

When my mom was here for a visit, and we were on our way to Banff (an hour away) I grabbed this ball of rainbow yarn, and a needle and hopped in the car, thinking I would start a shawl.  Usually I would just do a standard triangular shawl where you start at the center back neck and increase every other row until you are almost out of yarn, then cast off.  I decided to do something different with this one though.  I initially knitted a rectangle, then wanted to make it a little longer, so that I could really wrap up in it.  So I picked up a bunch of stitches along each end and added a triangle on each short side.  I was out of the rainbow yarn at that point, so I used a blue in the same yarn.  Then I made a mistake, and made one triangle facing the wrong direction:

Did I mention that it grew a bit when I blocked it?  It's slightly gigantic now.  But that's okay.  I plan to use it primarily when I'm meditating, or snuggled up in bed, so it's blanket-like nature works in it's favour.   So most of the time it will look like this:

Artfully thrown on the bed, where it's rainbow will make me smile.  When it's on, it does this:

which is unfortunate, because you lose the rainbow-ness of the whole thing.  I don't know yet whether it will bother me enough to redo the end bits, but I'm calling it done for now. 

The machines are back, and I think today will be spent finishing some things up - the wow shirt is first in line. 

Thanks for stopping by, and I'll see you later. 

Again with the Sew Weekly...

Who knew (except most of the people who know me - other than me) that I would love the whole idea of a challenge so much?  With my usual "beginner's zeal", I am really enjoying making things according to a theme every week.  I don't know how long this will last, but at the moment, I'm enjoying it.  So.  This week's theme is Red.  Now usually I would make something out of the yards and yards of red fabric that I have, but I'm short on time this week.  I just finished a big project, and we are leaving town for five days tomorrow.  What do you make when you are trying not to make things that you won't wear, and you have hardly any time?  Underwear!

Project 14 - Underwear from Ottobre Magazine

Fabric - cotton/lycra from the stash - two pairs out of about 30 cm of 60" wide fabric (next time will be less though, since I cut 2" off the top of these.

Foldover elastic - from the stash - purchased last year. 

Cost - ? 

Wear again - hopefully.

First of all, let's get this out of the way - why would you make your own underwear when you can buy perfectly good underwear for hardly any money?  Well, there are a couple of reasons.  (Yay, a list!)

1.  The underwear that I really like is at least $20 /pair.  So this really is cheaper.

2.  Unless you are my husband (who actually rotates his underwear so that it all gets evenly used - I kid you not.  He was like that when I got here, I swear.), the first underwear out of the drawer on laundry day is your favorite.  Right now, those are a pair that I made a few years ago and are still going long past all the ones that I have purchased. 

3.  I'm becoming very conscious of using my buying power in a responsible way.  For me, that means not supporting sweatshops.  If the underwear I'm buying from a big box store is costing me $8 for 6 pairs, and they were made on the other side of the world, the person who made them (who does what I do for a living) could not be making a reasonable living doing it. 

4.  It's a quick task that uses hardly any fabric and yields huge satisfaction.  A drawer full of comfy underwear that fits how I like it to fit - a good reason to me!

5.  It's hard to find underwear that I like.  I find a lot of store-bought underwear is too long in the rise for me, and since my pants never stay up, the bunching that happens when you pull your pants up repeatedly is just not comfortable  or attractive.  Seriously.   When you have a flattish behind, it doesn't matter how well your pants fit, or how tight your belt is, your pants work their way down.  There's just no way around it. 

So that's why I like to make underwear.  This is a new pattern for me, and I've already made a few changes - starting with the removal of 2" of fabric in the back, working it's way around to 1" in the front.  They were just too high.  I made one pair with the leg holes just turned and stitched (like the ones that I really like) but I have a feeling this fabric won't lie flat on it's own.  On the second pair I used foldover elastic on the leg holes as well, and I think these ones  will be better. 

They aren't very sexy, but they're comfy, and I'm sexier when I'm comfy!

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Sew Weekly Challenge - UFO

The Sew Weekly Challenge last week was to finish a UFO (unfinished object).  As has been documented rather extensively  here, I am unafraid of the aliens and their UFOs.  So I started the week off with grand plans of finishing a boatload of things, but ended  up finishing one.  Go figure!

Project 12 - Blouse from Burda 1 - 2009

Fabric - japanese linen/cotton with interesting "waffles" woven in

Cost - it was three years ago - no idea. 

Wear again? - maybe if I'm a little smaller. 

So here we come to the crux of the matter when you are someone whose weight fluctuates - it doesn't fit.  It isn't small by much, but it is too small. 

You can see the lines above the waist where it looks like it needs a swayback adjustment - really just needs me to lose 10 pounds.  Which I usually do by the summer, so it should be fine.  It doesn't feel very good though.  The fabric is a little scratchy - and it's kinda stiff, so I don't know if I washed it before I cut it out.  I can't believe that I wouldn't, but you never know.  I do love the details on the yoke, and how that fabric looks:

The whole thing has a lovely vintage vibe to it.  It's from before I discovered the joy of a full bust adjustment, so that explains the small-ness in the front.  The side view shows that the front is pulling up a little, which would be remedied by the FBA:

All in all, I'm glad I finished it, but it isn't one that I will be wearing and washing every week right away.  Maybe by the summer.  Or maybe it will go and live with someone else. 

In other news, I also did some spinning this week:

Project 13 - Merino/Silk from Spunky Eclectic

I didn't really like this fibre when I started out.  And I'm not sure that I love it now, but it's spun.  I joined the Spunky Club for a couple of years - you receive fibre in the mail every month, and the colour and fibre content are dependent upon the whims of the designer.  It's a great way to learn about different fibres, and what you like spinning, but I found that I got way behind after a while, so I stopped.  And I'm working my way through them now.  So there we are. 

It's Monday morning, and no-one wants to get up, so I'm getting cranky.  I'll leave you before things get ugly!

Have a good one. 

A Slow Sunday

Hello!  I hope your Sunday was calm and relaxing.  Our certainly was.  It helps that we went out for dinner last night and came home really late - everyone slept in a bit.  I hate that I find it hard to sleep in as I get older.  It doesn't seem to matter what time I go to bed - I'm up by eight at the latest on the weekends.  I do love an afternoon nap though!

I have two quick things that I wanted to show you!  One is my new measurement charts.  I take clients' measurements when they first come to see me.  Through the last few computer shifts, my "professional" ones have gone the way of the dodo (disappeared), so I've just been writing them out by hand when I have new clients come in.  I had four coming in on Saturday though, so I wanted to be able to print them off quickly, but I was also in the mood for something a little cooler than just a sheet of paper with some writing on them.  So I looked online for something a little more interesting, but didn't find anything that was quite right.  Instead, I went looking in my stash of paper (I have a  slightly unhealthy love for stationery supplies) and found some scrapbooking paper that was really pretty.  I was going to write out what I needed on the nicest one, then photocopy it, but then it occurred to me that that was a colossal waste of ink when I have a whole stack of pretty paper sitting in front of me.  Doh!  Just photocopy the info onto the pretty paper and all you use is black ink...  that's why I get paid the big bucks, by the way. 

So this:

Became these:

Aren't they pretty?  I love them.  They look suitably handmade and I didn't spend all morning writing all that out. 

Today, I didn't do much, which was wonderful.  I did spend some time in the sewing room though, putting this together for my husband:

Project 11 - Charging Station-ish Organizer

Fabric: leftovers from his Christmas sleepshorts, as well as various and sundry bits of interfacing.

Pattern: From One Yard Wonders - a book full of interesting little projects to make from your leftovers. 

Thoughts:  This thing is pretty substantial - more than it looks in the pictures - both in the book and above.  It's quilted and interfaced within an inch of it's life.  I'm not really sure how useful it is for him, but he seemed happy with it.   It has the little hole in the back for the cords to go through.

And it's made from Superman fabric!  Cause he's just super. (We both said that within 30 seconds of eachother this afternoon.  A little sad, but amusing).

So that's what happened here this weekend - lots of clients yesterday and a whole lotta nothing today.  Pretty nice!

 

Make This Look

So I joined The Sew Weekly Sewing Community last spring, hot on the heels of Me-Made-March.  One of the things that I loved about that project was the sense of community that I found there.  Sewing can be a rather solitary pursuit, and it was great to see people who liked to sew as much as I did.  So I joined up, and totally ignored it.  So I decided this year to take part in some of the challenges, just to get my creative juices flowing.  Last week, the topic was to copy something from ready to wear.  One of the features of the website is a regular column where the founder takes a garment from ready-to-wear and finds a pattern that will work, as well as some fabric.  It's called Make This Look:

This is the one that I chose to make last week.  It's supposed to be done and posted within the week, but I chose a rather busy week to give this a shot - so it's a Make This Look A Week Late dress.  I really liked the easy, prairie style of the dress in the picture, and I'm a sucker for a peasant neckline, even though it isn't the most flattering to the girls:

Project 10 - Hillside Prairie Belted Dress

Pattern:  New Look 6091 - $5

Fabric:  quilting cotton from Fabricland - $5/m x 2 m

Total Cost: $15

Thoughts:  I really like this pattern, after a few adjustments.  I made it up as it came, with the gathers around the neckline, but it was too poofy and too wide at the neckline.  So I took that out and replaced it with pleats, which lay a little flatter at the neck, with the stiffer fabric.  It's still pretty poofy at the back:

which you can see here, as it poofs out over my belt.  But  that's the back (I can't see it!), and is partly a result of my tilted waist (higher in the back than it is in the front).

All in all, I like this dress more than I thought I would.  It sounds weird to say it, but I wasn't really sure how flattering it would be.  It isn't my usual sort of thing, but it's growing on me.  I styled it for winter in the above pictures and I don't think it looks too much like I'm trying to get away with a summer dress in February.  And it will be great for when it actually warms up here. 

Thumbs up all around!