kakomu

i finally finished it! look, i'm so happy.

this is kakomu by kirsten johnstone (this is my second knit of hers, i made tetsubou back in february). i knit mine with plymouth earth hillside linen which has such a nice drape to it.

this was a labor of love. i knit the back in one week in april... and i just finished seaming this week. funny story, i've been sitting on about two INCHES of seaming for a couple weeks, and then, this morning i wanted to wear this to work. i grabbed it, a tapestry needle, and some yarn, and finished it up in a meeting this morning and wore it the rest of the day. i guess i needed a little extra push.

i ran out of yarn for the ties, so i switched to the light grey schoppel-wolle i used for these mitts for the tips and i really love the two-toned color combination. other modifications? here:

• i knit the armhole decreases in such a way to make the armholes smaller (let me know if you want to know what i did and i will give you more detail).
• i knit the neckband much shorter (about 4 inches between the last armhole decrease of the first side and the first armhole decrease of the second side). i probably should have added another inch or so, because it didn't sit quite right when seaming, but fortunately i have no problem doing a hack job in the eleventh hour.
• i didn't understand the length of the front, so since i knit my front longer, i made this funny little gather on the bottom edges (see below). i kind of like, it although it does give the silhouette more hips. i guess the "silhouette" would be me.
  

as you can see from above i've given up on my attempts to a be a brooding, pensive model like other bloggers and i tried smiling. i'm gonna go with it. in no small way influenced by the picture below which makes me laugh out loud every time i look at it.

apparently i'm just a grouchy little girl.

p.s. i apologize in advance if this post comes out jammed together with no lines between paragraphs and many spelling errors. lately blogger will not allow me to go back and edit, if i even get to publish the post at all. blogger really is a &#$*# of @*&$.

kitcheny apron

i guess most aprons are kitcheny? that is the word this pattern makes me think of (maybe more like kitsch-eny). i LOVE it and have a ton of it, that i already made a tablecloth out of. why not match your tablecloth?

i basically made a 2" wide band and unfortunately had to sew two lengths together because i didn't have enough yardage. mental note for next time. the square of fabric for the apron was something like 25"x 18" and i gathered the top middle, leaving 4" on each side flat. the ruffles were cut on the bias so i could keep the edges raw. i sewed them a little crooked but i kinda like it.

i like it! it is now 5th in my apron collection. i may make a little change though - because the top edges sort of angle up because of the gathers in the middle, i sewed them into the band that way, and i think it wraps around me too much. i may re-sew them not at an angle. does that make any sense?

vintage fabric from rocket to mars, one of my favorite places.

p.s. re: the post below - i tried to add an addendum but blogger wasn't having it. like most things blogger won't let me do. i fully realize that gauge is more important to sizing than making your sock yarn pattern in a pretty way. :) and i found out that 48 st works for both reasons... more to come...

colors

the closest to red, white, and blue you'll get from me...

i love these colors!! but they're pooling and even though it's in this cool swirly-kind of pattern, the swatch had such a nice variegated pattern, that's what i expected for my sock. this is sock yarn. this should work, right? i CO 60 stitches initially and then, because of the pooling, thought i'd try 56. maybe i should try 64? the swatch was 34 or 36, i can't remember.

non-knitters just went to a happier place about a minute ago. i have a ton of stuff i've been working on lately, so more to post. the biggest obstacle to blog posts is certainly not a lack of projects, but taking the photos. i hate doing it because they never look good or come out the way i want, which i can partially blame on my cheap point-and-shoot camera with peach juice on the lens. since there's no expensive camera in my near future, i have to just keep plugging away and exerting patience. my deepest flaw.

geez, enough bitching now, huh?

out of order skirt

i made a skirt using this tutorial from out of order. i absolutely love this vintage fabric (i also used it last year for this bag) and it is exactly what i wanted for a skirt. it doesn't have the same fullness as the skirt in the tutorial (because it is a jersey knit, and drapes just like she mentions in the tutorial), but i'm ok with that.

when i was almost done sewing it and tried it on, it felt like it should have pockets. one modification, if you can even call it that, is that i used french seams, so, i ripped out enough of the seams, traced pockets from another skirt, and stitched the pockets sort of into the fold of the seams. if that makes any sense.

ugh. my photos aren't great, as usual. but the skirt's not bad!

reversible bag

the inspiration for this bag was the bag i purchased from //between the lines//, along with this tutorial from her, which helped a lot wit the clever way to attach the straps. in fact, i traced my own //between the lines// bag because it is such a good shape and size.



another simple good one.

i just can't quit it with the wiksten tanks.

i love this freakin' pattern.

i made this one in one night! (i stayed up late). i was really happy to finally use this fabric i bought last year at what cheer? and i like how it came out.
no modifications here.

short and sweet.

kimono tank

my lack of blogging has nothing to do with a lack of sewing. i've got the sewing bug lately, and have a lot of projects to catch up on posting.

this is a tank top pattern from twinkle sews and i used a kimono that i bought at a yard sale (for $1 or $5 i can't remember). the fabric is not at all what is recommended by the pattern, but i really wanted a tank top with this fabric.

i'm happy with the straps and how this looks with aidez but i'm not entirely happy with the pattern writing and the fact that several times my iron burned a nice yellowish stain, including on the top right front. mmhmm.

the fabric is quite stiff and i need to take the straps in more, so the top sits a little funny, but for some reason i love it with this sweater, so it works for me.

more to come.


** update** i always forget to post modifications.

1. when i traced the pattern, i added 1/8" so i could make french seams.
2. after sewing it together, i chopped a bunch of fabric off the back because it was too full/baby doll in the back for my taste.
3. i added that little horizontal piece in the middle of the bust because i liked the contrasting stripes.
4. i only lined the top (lined with the same fabric).

ok i think that's it. duh. kind of the point of posting is to learn something.