Knitting (mostly) blog

Wednesday June 7th 2006

I enjoyed the construction of Rose's Monaco t-shirt, but I didn't think it could be for me. Clearly, it'd take massive bust adjustment for me to be able to fit into something which is very close-fitting for her :-(. But I did like the idea of a little sleeveless something for summer, I'm slowly beginning the shed the San Francisco ethic of never going out without a sweater and leaving sleeveless items to the tourists. I've also been looking at the current patterns with some sort of center ruching with interest, thinking they might work for my body. But there's so much of them out there already that I'm already kind of bored. On the other hand, I've been admiring the clothes of KA, Karine Turro, a great young local designer. I noticed that she often copes with the center ruching by doing 3 neat little horizontal pleats. Ha ha!

So I pulled out my large collection of nearly-unused patternmaking books, and set to work. The result is this very simple pattern piece, sweat not included :-). I first corrected my sloper a bit, adjusting for the straighter shoulders that have emerged with more assiduous yoga. And then I threw all the darts to the center front. Gives the impression that the thing's going to fly off over the shoulder, doesn't it? Then I copied the neck only of the Monaco shell (and next time I'll make the shoulder parts a bit wider). Very convoluted, but you know, once you make it up it really works :-)!

I'm totally thrilled with my new-found patternmaking. But the execution leaves a lot to be desired in this case. I hadn't been able to resist a piece of this light knit (onionskin?) at the Spring sales, and plonked down my 3€. It's so sheer I couldn't possibly wear it without lining it, so I cut the front double, fine since I had enough fabric (for once). But then I went at it all wrong. I cut off the facings and sewed the 2 front tops together, which made a stiff seam to contrast with the back, and curls out no matter what I do - I should have chopped the inside facing off and folded the outside over it. I hemmed the armholes and bottom together, I should just have lettuce-hemmed both. And I faced the white side of the lining to the outside to reduce print moiré interference, I should have put the fronts in the same direction so I could have had an obvious play on layers without white peeking out. And lastly I really should have done this on the serger, but I was too lazy to rethread.

But hey, even though I gave in to fabric temptation I sewed it the very same year, so I'll declare it a success :-). As long as I remember not to wear a black bra under it...

Saturday May 27th 2006

Eeck!! 30o in the shade already, and I have nothing to wear... To be exact, that'd be 86oF (or 303 Kelvin!!). And I do have a few things left, but mostly ill-fitting rags, not made by me, myself or I. And when you've gotten accustomed to custom again, off the rack just doesn't cut it...

So I made a couple pairs of quick pants from Burda 3216. A shoe print, and a pun: 'China dolls' with cutout Chinese paper dolls. Compatible, but not exactly the same colors. OK, they do look like pajamas, especially in France. But they take themselves too seriously here, and I love pajamas, so there. More to the point, I already have tops to go with both, and even a pair of Birkenstocks that I got at the outlet precisely because they matched these fabrics which I'd already bought at Far Out Fabrics. So I'm being unusually grown-up all the same, even though I won't get a bit of credit for it.

Thursday May 18th 2006

With the coming of Spring, Rose has been wearing a little black double-breasted jacket which is just the thing of the moment. Unfortunately, what with all this double-breasting, it has something like a dozen buttons, so one can't really help notice how ugly they are. Maybe she's right, not really ugly - can we just call them the dullest thing you've ever seen?? Every time I see the poor jacket, I just want to rip them off her chest. Kind of dulls the enjoyment of spring walks.

So I made a project of trawling all the button shops in town, thinking pleasant anticipatory thoughts. I went to every fabric store, and every notions store. I even went in to 'the King of Buttons', without letting myself be repelled by the pope needlepoint canvas in the window. And nada! Very few buttons, fewer still in plain black (the Chanel tacky gold is abundant though). The couple I found that I could live with had only at most 3 buttons left in the box. The catholics sneered at my mild suggestion that if I wanted to blow 40€ on buttons maybe they could bring themselve to special order them for me? I was totally at a loss.

Then we had a happy accident. We went for a day trip to Montauban, a nice little town nearby. Enjoyed the old plazas, gawked at everything, had a ball at the 'Museum of Terror' which has a whole lot of antique spinning instruments on display. Even enjoyed the Ingres museum, which had carefully obfuscated on its website the fact that you could see copies of paintings by Ingres, paintings of Ingres, and paintings owned by Ingres, but that every painting actually painted by Ingres himself was currently in a show in Paris... As we were loitering in the old streets, we happened upon a truly wonderful sight - a button shop crammed full almost to the level of Tender Buttons. Lots of rather ancient ones on display, and the talkative and very pleasant owner told us how they'd inherited a lot from the previous owner, who'd had the shop for 30 years before they took it over, and had been a fanatical collector. My kind of woman.

Without much further stress, we found our heart's desire. That is, we managed to find a whole dozen of perfectly acceptable all-black buttons with interesting texture, that even fit into the required buttonholes. And aren't they an improvement? Wouldn't you rather walk around with a dozen of these on your jacket? Nothing makes a garment like good buttons... The shop owner totally agrees :-).

Friday May 12th 2006

Made another t-shirt, this one plain in pattern because there seemed to be plenty going on with the fabric already :-). Whipped it out in a flash, from the sloper-derived pattern I worked out. I know it's precisely the same as the dark 60s flowers, but I also know I'm the only one who'll ever be able to tell.

I did bloop on something: if you look carefully, you can see that the big cream spots that show so much in a photo (and at a distance) aren't centered on the front. I'm pretending that I did it on purpose because I think asymmetry is more interesting. Sigh. It's true, I think that, but in my experience aymmetry works better if you lay it on with a trowel, not just cut something a couple inches off. Anyway, this brings up some wise advice: throw your fabric on the couch and squint at it before you cut, or take a picture, so you can tell what it is exactly that's going to leap to the eye and cut accordingly. Quilters do it, and clothes seamstresses should do it more - we have more to lose ;-).

Tuesday May 2nd 2006

Had a great time at the customisation workshop put on by my local Pretentious Art Establishment, "passe-moi ta manche, je te file mon col" ("slip me your sleeve, I'll hand you my collar"). I changed my mind at the last minute about what to bring, and worked on a dull mud-colored shirt, square boy cut and plaid at that, whose only virtue was its 100% cotton seersucker fabric, perfect for sticky summer hiking. I brought as a fabric contribution a failed t-shirt and some fleece scraps, which were immediately taken up, a gratifying nod to my taste in fabric if not to my sewing skills.

I had pondered bringing my sewing machine, and decided not to. Didn't want to cause a diplomatic incident if someone asked to use it, because I'd totally refuse to lend it to a stranger. Improvisation meets capitalism head on :-) - this machine is too new to be busted by someone else. And if it wasn't, I'd be more attached to it and want to lend it even less. So anyway, there were machines, but way not enough, and I ended up doing this all by hand which is why it's not hardly finished yet. Still, we had tons of great fabrics available, some examples of redone clothes for people who were feeling uninspired (well, that's harder when you deliberately bring something you don't like). And at the end they took pictures of all the work, which was fun although unfortunately they couldn't quite restrain themselves from comments like "see, everyone can be an artist", presuming way too much imho. There's supposed to be a website but I haven't seen a thing yet. The organiser was an artist named Muriel Rodolosse, who came attired in a blond wig and sunglasses, while her assistant whose name I didn't catch was decked-out in a very classic brown glenn plaid wool suit, adorned with bands of cycling-type reflective material in neon yellow, very cool :-).

I found a few fabrics that worked well with my base mud shirt: a calico print with tiny bikes, very Toulouse, some kick-ass green linen which took all my fortitude not to swipe entirely, and a great tie with 2 useable sides. The part of the shirt that I like best is the tie cuff, with the label showing '100% silk, made in France'. Aaah. I did my best to make the sleeves asymmetrical, but kind of petered out at larger changes, in part due to lack of time. My attempt at a cute little triangular inlay into the front darts looks pathetic - I wasn't thinking originally of making just waist tucks, and with them I don't have the dart length necessary to support this big triangle. Another feature I loved was that we were provided with fabric labels to mark the event, in assorted colors. Some people only sewed a label on their clothes, but that counts as transforming!

The audience was great: some of the young arty types found at all the events of this place of course, but much more of a mix than that. Clearly some way amateur people among the crowd too. A guy who'd never sewed before and was dragged in by a friend. An older woman from Albania who knits and hardly speaks French, and was totally enthralled with the crowd and the concept. Some professional seamstresses exercising their creativity. I cheated, because I brought Karine Turro, a young designer I know and love, but even without her I'd have had a great time :-).

This was very different from the remake exchange that I did last year in Oakland. Then, we'd picked out someone else's clothes and redid them to suit them, which was more objective in a way. Doing things for yourself this time meant that we knew what would please, but there was a lot less exchange among the participants than I'd enjoyed before, so that was a big trade-off. I think in retrospect I enjoyed the exchange more, although of course I'm happy to keep my shirt.

One point of this event made me truly paranoid: I carefully stuffed my new jacket into my bag, scared to death that I'd find it cut up and re-assembled on someone else's body :-).. If you organise one of these, try to have it in the summer when people can come as stripped down as possible!

Thursday April 27th 2006

Tried out another t-shirt pattern. The Monaco shell from Textile Studio Patterns was highly recommended by the patternreview crowd. And yes, it's a hit over here too.

I was very attracted to the thing about how you only need 3/4yd of fafbric for this. Everyone needs a perfect pattern for all those leftovers that accumulate when the stash is acquired haphazardly rather than with specific projects in mind. While I'm trying to be better, I'm a couple boxes of fabric behind on that concept. So I was glad that I'd gotten this nice Indian print at Toto's sale in January, by the pound so the fabric was only $0.75! Not an experimental cost anyone could later cry over, although I'd have regretted wasting the print.

I'd already decided that their Santa Monica tee was perfect for Rose's shoulders. This one is equally good - the neckline is a cross of v-neck and the boatnecks she loves, perfect for her, the armholes are unusually well fitting. I ran into a gaping/drooping problem because of too-wide shoulders on the pattern, and my blood ran cold when she announced she couldn't wear it to go out on a nice lunch because of the hippy look. I hadn't bargained on quite so much hippiedom. So I hacked a fix, and managed not to make it unwearable this time. See technical details at patternreview.

I'm sure getting better at t-shirts. I think I might be getting to the point where making a new one is faster than doing the laundry, which is a very dangerous state to be in :-)...

Thursday April 20th 2006

Rose finished a sweater, which she whipped out in something like a week. When she puts her mind to it, she knits at whiplash speed. We wrote up the pattern for you :-). It was kind of a bear to get the full size range, but if you can't do that for 80s sweaters you might as well stick to scarves. I hear a lot of grumbling about boxy sweaters on the ample knitters' list, but on the other hand anyone could be happy with something easy to knit. And whether something boxy looks good has a lot more to do with the drape of the fabric than with the actual pattern, imho.

We saw this new yarn last time we had the pleasure of trawling through the Crystal Palace warehouse in person, and the colors were so right... She kept getting disappointed because it's not really Merino Frappe, it's a bit denser and heavier, but the same fluffy idea is there. Only instead of solid heathery colors you get those long color repeats that just beg for some interesting construction. I really like their mitered shawl a lot for that reason, but we're very well stocked up in shawls at the moment, so we had to do something else...

Monday April 10th 2006

I've been working for weeks on this hat... It should be a one-evening project or thereabouts, it's a spiral hat by Elizabeth Zimmerman ("Knitting Without Tears"). The first version I made was in Musique, a yarn that's both color-printed and thick-and-thin. So it looks great, very organic, and the pattern does show in some lights and at some angles, but it's mostly for my own enjoyment. I wanted to do it again with a yarn that'd really show up the stitches.

Judith McKenzie talks about how a 2-ply yarn gives a very handspun look, a 3-ply yarn looks round and even, and best of all a cabled yarn shows every stitch in loving detail. I've seen her samples, I've done some myself, I know she's right. And I had this stash of 2 balls of lovely cabled merino, which seemed like just the candidate. At least a dozen cables, so you can't get smoother than that. I'd bought it because I'd worn for a dozen years a hat of similar yarn, in a dark green that matched the coat that wouldn't wear out, knitting in a crisp gansey cable-and-ladders pattern. I didn't exactly want to reproduce it, but I knew this was yarn too good to be wasted on a pedestrian pattern.

But I started by getting bogged down in technical details. First of course I had to use a yarn that's not what Elizabeth recommends and that doesn't give the same gauge :-). I worked out that part in only a few tries. Then I remembered how fast and easy it was when I made the first one a few weeks ago, and I charged off without re-reading the instructions. So I started up at least another 4 times before I realized I was doing it wrong and it wasn't looking even as good as the first one. And, like some guy barelling through dark suburbs at night in his SUV, running down stray dogs and possums, I somehow just wouldn't stop for a minute and read the instructions. Sigh. So then I got to it again, and finally managed to get almost all the way to the top without mishap. Only a few irregularities in the section sizes due to too much subtitle reading while knitting, but by then I was getting somewhat aggravated and needed some distraction. Of course it was easy in the end, but I know all too well how much work and trial and error it takes to cough up a pattern that's utter simplicity..

Anyway, when I got to the point of completion my mind began to drift again, but in more general grooves. I realized that while I really like this pattern, it's still too simple for such a yarn. A yarn, I might add, that I'm highly unlikely to spin myself, I need to make the most of it. So I took out the Aran and cable books, and started pawing through patterns. Yes, I've wanted a real Aran sweater for a long time. Yes, there are a lot of incredible cables out there. You can't get too cabley as far as I'm concerned. So yes, I should really make something more intricate out of this yarn, and maybe spin up something nice for another snail hat instead...

Sunday April 2nd 2006

Flush with the success of the last small shrug, I embarked on another. This time, I wanted poofy 3/4 sleeves, and I used Poof, thinking it'd keep me warmer for those odd burst of Spring chills.

I really liked the way things looked as I was working, but I keept running into trouble. I think partly it was that I'd put together the last one without half a thought, so I was terribly bothered that this one didn't come right out also, more like a real project for me in other words. Finally, I was looking at a shrug with good sleeve, right length but really wide cuff, almost imperceptibly taken in. The other sleeve had a good cuff, but was something like 4" too long. Sigh. Much ripping later, I managed to get both the right length and the right cuff onto both sides. Yoohoo! More ripping and I got the casting-off to be supple enough that I could get my little shawl collar effect, even better.

I'd have thought, if I'd thought about it in advance, that I'd look terrible in shrugs. My stomach isn't the kind you want to emphasize, so leaving it flapping out wouldn't have seemed like a good idea. But I'm finding that a good shrug gives you something else to look at, and that distraction works better than attemps at covering. I also thought that I wouldn't wear shrugs much because I hate vests, I like uniform warmth in general. But I'm feeling just fine with just the shoulders and back of the neck warm, I guess that catches most of the excess heat production and I have plenty left for the rest of the body. And actually this one is very very nice to wear - very cozy, very warm, and better yet I keep getting petted in public. Now that is yarn that's soft enough.

Previous Next Random List	Previous Next Random List	Previous Next Random List
Previous Next Random List	Previous Next Random List	Previous Next Random List