My football team did not win, we shall not talk about that.  What did happen and we can discuss is that I ripped out the beginning of my Paulie sweater because I flucked it up, majorly.

Even a casual glance at the beginning of my top down raglan cardigan would show that those raglan lines are too short.  Did I mention this is supposed to be the point where I take the sleeve stitches off and work only body?  Wha?!  I knew my gauge wasn’t that off so I reread the pattern that I was SURE I understood.  Guess who forgot 2 rows out of every 6.  Yes, I left out 1/3 of the rows and did not notice.  Argh!  Plus I don’t think raglan lines should be pointing straight at  my triceps.  Not really the fit I was hoping for.

Of course that horror was ripped and I began again adding in the rows that should be there.  So far so good but I’m getting a bit over garter stitch.  Plus I want to start the stripes!  Sadly this won’t be a travel project so it’s gotta chill for a week while I’m out shaking my money maker.  Don’t they look sad?

Lest you think I’m a football watching yahoo, I like to craft while watching football, though crafting was nigh impossible during the aforementioned BEST GAME EVER.  But I did make a tunic – there were 3 other (boring) games this weekend.  I saw Mariko’s tunic last week and knew I wanted one too.  I chose Burda Style 08-2008-118 as my tunic.  Mariko made her own pattern to copy one she’d seen in Japan.  I am lazy so I used a pattern I already had.  The only change I made to the tunic pattern was to make it A-line (I added 2 cm to the front and 4 cm to the back side seams – blended to nothing at the waist).  I sewed the seams with a narrow zigzag first then serged.  Hems are finished with serger then twin needle.  It took an hour to make the pattern and half a boring football game to sew it up.

The fabric used here is ponte di roma in a lace pattern.  I’ve never used ponte di roma before and I love love love it.  I want a whole wardrobe from it.  I overstate, but that’s how I am.  I’d used ponte before, that is kinda nasty double knit that you get in cheerleading outfits and pants with a sewn in front fold and elastic waist.  No thanks.  Ponte di roma is still poly but has one way stretch and is magically made soft, has a warm hand and doesn’t look like poly.  Though I could park my car on top of this tunic and it still wouldn’t wrinkle.

But why am I looking like a dork in the photo above.  It’s because of ponte di roma.  When cutting this tunic, my scissors really felt dull.  Mind you these are the very same scissors from when I was an FIT student one billion years ago (well the mid 90s but whatev).  Gingher G-8 8-inch Knife-Edge Dressmaker Shears.  I had to get them sharpened asap, like you do.  The sharpening guy was at the Marin Farmer’s Market that very morning.  I had him sharpen my scissors, which he complimented on their superior scissor-ness-itude, not like that cheap crap some folks bring in I’ll bet.  I wandered the market while I waited and bought organic butternut squash and beets.  While taking these very photos of dork-facedness, I was actually wondering if my roasting squash needed turning.  It is a very superior squash I purchased.  Hence ponte di roma caused me to buy a squash and cook it during my photo shoot and I am making a dork face into the kitchen window.  Clear, that.

I shall leave you with a closeup of the tunic that so very clearly looks like an homage to Muench’s The Scream.  Too bad I didn’t do it on purpose.

More info in my pattern review here.

Me, I finished my red cowl which coordinates nicely with the team colors.  It’s still way too warm to wear a cowl, unless you get up at 3am and go to work.  I’m not doing that today since it’s football day.  Pay attention.  I just made up this cowl figuring I wanted it about 40″ around to fit over my head doubled and be snug and warm.  I knit up a gauge swatch and then did the math.  180 stitches for ribbing (3×1), decrease 4 stitches after 2″ of ribbing.  Knit stockinette for 3/4″ and begin the very simple Latin Star motif from Walker’s Third Treasury.  Then do the other stuff in reverse and voila!  Cowl.

In hindsight, I could have just done 2×2 rib for the whole shebang since you really don’t see the motif when scrunched up on the neck.  I shall have to remember that when next I want a cowl.  Sizewise I’m pleased with the 40″ circumference and the 9.75″ width works too.  My fabric is rather scrunchable and drapey which helps the overall wearability.  There’s more info on my rav page if you really want to know.

Next up will be a pot of tomato soup for football watching enjoyment.  Red soup will coordinate nicely with the team uniforms…Me, I plan to be in my pajamas all day.  Fingers crossed!

That wheat toast energized me to make two pairs of pj bottoms, sweatshop style.  It really is much faster making them simultaneously and not one by one.  I’ve got scads of new flannel since Joann was practically giving it away before xmas.  Each piece cost me about 5 bucks for 2.5 yards.  I know!  How could I not buy way too much?

The pj pattern was taken off a pair of perfect pj bottoms that bit the dust years ago.  I’ve knocked these off for years now.  I love them and you really need to wear pjs in hotels in case of midnight fire alarms (more common than you think) or lax cleaners.  Shexy they’re not, but whatev.

Knitting-wise I started a cowl because last week I went to St. Louis where it was 17 degrees.  I was cold and apologize to any passengers who may have been offended by me calling their charming hometown a “frozen hellscape” (even though it is).  I had no idea it was this cold already since California has been blissfully warm and nurturing a drought.  A cowl should take up less valuable space in my bag and it’s red to sneak it by my work dress code nazis.  I’ve calculated 38″ should go around my neck twice AND go over my head with no remainder.  Ravelry had no acceptable cowls to make so I just made one up.  I added the moss stitch snowflake motif to break up the monotony.  Plus I’ll know to wear it if I see said snowflakes “live” as it were.

This week I shall button the lining into my coat and bring a hat and gloves.  Thanks for the heads up St. Louis.

I’ve returned home from that last week and a half of work tired and with a cold.  But it’s OVER!  Back to a normal schedule please.

Despite me thinking that yesterday the holidays were over, every flight out west was jammed to the gills.  I managed to get the very last seat on a flight to LAX which is not SFO but close enough (out of almost 300 seats on the plane – that’s a coup!) and spent a good part of the flight watching Dr. Oz on the TV.  I don’t usually watch daytime TV, but the offerings are pretty darn awful and Dr. Oz was the pick o’ the litter imho.  Unfortunately every time I watch his show I learn too many things and freak out about my lack of fiber/too much salt/lip balm addiction.  Yesterday was about healthy foods.  What could be so bad?  Today I’m waiting for Whole Foods to open to see if they have ground chia seeds.  That’s what can happen!

Yes, chia seeds are the wonder food and I will now hunt them down.  They made muffins with them on the show so I’ll let you know how they turn out.  This morning, in an effort to get back to healthy food eating habits (unlike working in airports where there is no healthy food) I made oatmeal.  I hate oatmeal.  It tastes fine, it’s just wall paper paste and won’t easily go down the old gullet.  But needs must so I found an oatmeal recipe (yes I needed a recipe) and made steel cut oats for the first time.  Voila!  We have a winner.  I added cinnamon, apples and a bit of maple syrup and ate it up.  Tomorrow might be bananas and pecans.  We shall see.  The world of steel cut oats has just opened for me.

Crafty-wise I’ve got nothing.  Maybe some new flannel pj bottoms for you tomorrow?  A bit of knitting?  I’ll see what that good breakfast can do for me.

My current travel project is Persephone from Miriam Felton.  I love all of her stuff and have finally gotten around to this scarf, now that I’ve unblocked my lace clog.  The chart is super easy to follow with the help of a postit note to keep track of my rows, off I went.

This is the kit I stole from my sister’s stash on Thanksgiving.  She won’t mind (I hope).  I think the yarn is the merino/tencel blend called for by the pattern, at least that’s what it feels like.  Purloined yarn doesn’t always have yarn bands on.

Wishing you all a happy and healthy New Year!  Onwards!

There are two bright spots.  First I should be able to snatch a bit of Christmas on Saturday because I’m supposed to lay over in Boston.  I get in late and leave early, but weather permitting, I shall run over to my sister’s for a bit of happiness and yummy leftovers.  My tupperware is empty and I plan on filling it.  I can sleep another day!

The second bright spot is that my Raspberry Coat is done!  I know it took me an age to make even though it really wasn’t a hard pattern.  It is Burda Style magazine 11/2008 model #116.  Sure, you have to trace off one million pattern pieces and make them fit somehow, but that is really the hardest part of the project.  After dragging my heels for a bit with indecision with how to proceed, I decided this was not going to be a couture coat of the century and just made the damn thing.  So with minimal hand stitching planned, I set off.

The Italian wool coating is thick and fuzzy, rather like a stuffed animal.  It is soft and yummy and was 50% off at Stonemountain and Daughter in Berkeley.  Score!  The thick fabric ravelled, but I fused interfacing to pretty much every body part so that helped.  I’d read that you weren’t supposed to overlock seams because they may distort the shape of the seams.  I lined the coat, so hopefully it won’t fall off my body and disintigrate.  All hem areas are interfaced to prevent wear and tear and I used a piece of muslin to make a back stay at the shoulder area to help that area keep its shape.

Tailoring-wise this was pretty easy.  The collar is a stand collar, so that’s not hard.  I used this method I found to construct the collar and minimize bulk.  The buttonholes are regular machine buttonholes.  The fabric is too fuzzy and thick to even think about bound buttonholes.  Maybe next time.  Of course it took every ounce of skill and patience to make the big buttonholes in the front.  My buttonhole foot will only make buttonholes a bit longer than an inch.  I wanted 1 1/8″ and that was NOT possible.  So I made them as long as possible, patiently feeding the material along the foot since it was way to thick for the machine’s automatic feature to cope.  You guessed it, I had four buttonholes to make and and I made about 9.  Each one twice and one bugger 3 times.  The other alternative was to fly to New York and get them done by Jonathan’s like the other pattern reviewer for this pattern. Hey, I fly for free so it was a close call.

Changes I made to the pattern were minimal.  I shortened the coat to a mid-thigh length and I added a triangle at the front.  Why?  You know when you button your coat and the bottom bit separates and pulls a bit – you need a triangle of material there.  My tailoring books all added that little detail to the pattern and I gave it a try.  You go out 1/2″ (in this case) at the waist and draw a line starting from zero at the neck edge through the 1/2″ dot at waist on down at that angle the length of the coat.  That’s all there was to it.  Gap free zone.

The lining I chose was a leopard print silk, also from the 50% room at Stonemountain.  Can I say how much I love sewing with silk!  I should have an all silk wardrobe.  I do love an unexpected lining, so leopard on the inside baby!  I bagged the lining so I could insert it mostly by machine.  Yay, hardly any hand sewing.

What would I change if I ever was to make this coat again?  I’d change the collar, either adding a closure there or making it a smaller mandarin style collar.  Otherwise, I’m happy with the result.  Project done and dusted!  A detailed review can be found on PatternReview.com.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!

Today I’m pondering various degree of project fail.  We all know about epic fail, the absolute disaster that even you can no longer squint at and say “it’ll come out with blocking”.  This fail is a mild “it’s just not working” kind of fail.

What’s wrong with said mitt?  Nothing other than it won’t work for intended recipient.  My friend wears dress shirts with french cuffs to work, so putting these mitts on with the long pretty cuffs won’t work without taking out cufflinks.  Considering I’m thinking these mitts are for cold mornings on the long commute, undressing to wear mitts is dumb.

What’s the plan?  I can rip these and make shorter cuffed mitts or use a completely different yarn that’s slightly softer with more elasticity. I’m opting to root around the stash for some softer yarn in a smaller gauge and making shorter  mitts.  Luckily these are NOT Christmas gifts, rather birthday gifts.  We do NOT shortchange the December birthdays around these parts!

What is not a fail in this picture is that I finally put the ornaments on the tree.  I’d set up the wee fake tree (it’s 4.5 feet, so not too wee) and plugged it in and happily left it twinkling sans decorations for a week.  The boxes of decorations were sitting right next to the tree, but it took a week to give it that half hour of attention.  Still, it’s cute and I’m happy.  Except about mitts.

That is a mashup title and maybe I don’t have the hang of it.  Mashed thusly are (left) raspberry coat pinned together for the most part; (middle) super yum cupcakes for old folks; (right) finished Hello 80s Socks!

We shall begin with the raspberry coat, shall we.  What you see here is the body sewn up and the hems pinned in preparation for hemming then lining.  Of course I still need to sew the lining together.  I’ve decided to bag the lining rather than doing a more high brow application by hand.  I finally realized that I’d been dragging my heels on this coat construction because I didn’t want to choose the “wrong” method to construct it.  That meant I didn’t make the darn thing at all.  I resolved to just do it – it’s not going to be the coat of the century but it doesn’t really have to be.  It’ll be (hopefully) a nice warm coat for winter and I’ll have made my first coat.  I can build on my coat making knowledge next time based on this raspberry coat of today.  It’s the Nike “Just Do It” sewing philosophy.

The middle pic of a scrumptious cupcake is one of a batch I made for Mom’s xmas party with her crew.  I opted to make chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  Both recipes are from Paula Deen and are delicious.  The cupcakes are dark and moist and so easy to make it’s embarrassing.  The frosting is this recipe and I added an extra teaspoon of vanilla and a bit more powdered sugar to make piping it easier.  30 cupcakes off the assembly line.  The best part was putting candy canes in a baggie and smashing them up with a meat hammer to make the festive decoration.  Gotta love a meat hammer.

The right picture means it’s official:  The 80s are OVER!  Yup, Hello 80s socks are done!  My first afterthought heel socks turned out well.  They also fit very nicely so I’ll have to add them to the sock knitting rotation.  They look especially nice with the striping sock yarn.  You get a bullseye heel effect with the stripes.  The socks are fraternal twins rather than identical.  They were identical pretty much up until the last heel when I guess I did one more row and ended up with smudge of purple on the last heel bit.  I could have ripped the whole heel out and started over, but NO!  It’s fine.  I do not live in Crazytown.  Vesper Sock Yarn is still yummy in case you were wondering.

Well the 80s are over so I’ll be taking down my Billy Idol and Adam Ant posters and digging out some flannel plaid for the emergence of grunge.  Later I’ll be watching Pretty in Pink on my automobile sized VCR.  Awesome!

We

Doesn’t this colorway just scream 1980s?  Adorable!  Worry not, I’m not pegging my pants and cutting my hair in a bi-level. Didn’t do that then, won’t do it now.

What these socks are is a present for a friend who requested another pair for xmas.  Yes, xmas knitting.  I know, I don’t do that but it is just socks and this friend and I survived the 80s together (yes, we have mutual dirt on each other).  The yarn is Vesper Sock in the sugar plum colorway (or Hello 80s in my house) and is my usual sock of 60 stitches for the ribbing and decrease 4 stitches every inch 4X to 56 stitches.  I thought I’d spice up the formula by trying an afterthought heel.  I see lots of tutorials online and it doesn’t look hard.  If I hate it, I’ll rip it out and do a short row heel instead.  I’m sure it’ll be fine though.

The pic above left is in the past but it shows the colors best.  The pic on the right shows my progress to date (next to my own bit of autumn color).  Knitting a tube goes very quickly!