Not Tour de Fleece

I didn't do the Tour de Fleece this year ... because I was too busy packing up our apartment and moving!  We moved across the country for my new job, as an assistant professor of mathematics at a small liberal arts college in the midwest!

Since we got to our new house about ten days ago, we've been busy unpacking our boxes and getting settled in our new house and new town.   But I have been doing some knitting and spinning.  I'm getting close to done with my Hello Yarn singles: (the picture is from before the move)

We've also been doing some gardening.  Because now we have our very own yard!  There was a strawberry patch already established when we moved in, so I've spent some time weeding that.  The strawberry patch takes up half of a large bed alongside the garage.  Our eventual plan is to put in rhubarb in the other half of that bed, but for now it was too late to plant anything but greens, so we weeded it out and planted some kale and broccoli seeds.  It's so exciting to see the little plants coming up!

Mending

I learned a new skill last week!  This sock (the first pair I made for Robert) has been sitting in my mending pile for several weeks.  I finally sat down and worked my way through the whole pile so I wouldn't have to move un-mended clothing.  I used this tutorial on how to knit on a patch, and I'm happy with how it turned out.  Next time I would pay more attention and make sure to knit the patch in the same direction as the socks - it didn't occur to me that this would be an issue when I was picking up stitches, but I think that would make it easier to graft the live stitches to the sock at the end of the patch.  I wasn't really thinking and knit this patch in the heel-to-cuff direction, even though the socks were knit cuff down.

The leftover black yarn from these socks is long gone, so I used some of the leftover navy blue from Robert's new socks.  Hopefully the patch will be hidden under his pant leg, so he can continue to wear these as dress socks!

Seamwork Adelaide dress

I finished my newest dress - a Seamwork Adelaide!  On the whole, I'm really happy with it, and it's a nice, light, and comfortable casual summer dress.  My 2.5-year-old niece is really into buttons lately (snaps count, too), and when she saw me wearing this dress last weekend she very seriously asked me how many buttons it has.  We counted 15.

The fabric is a drapey polyester I found on sale for about $5/yard at JoAnn at the beginning of the summer.  I used gold bias binding to finish the neckline and armholes.  It was a windy day when we took these pictures, so the skirt looks a little weird in the next picture.

I love the print of this fabric, but it was a little bit slippery to work with.  The belt is not quite flat and there is a little bit of puckering or something going on at the sides.

I made a size 8 at the top graded out to a size 12 at the bottom.  Next time, I would made the grading more gradual (i.e. start at the same place around the bottom of the ribcage but finish lower), since I think the curve out to my hips is too abrupt and finishes too high.  I held up the paper pattern to my body and decided to make two alterations to the pattern:  I changed the angle of the dart, raising the dart point by about 1.5", and I lengthened the skirt by 3.5" at the lengthen/shorten line.  Since I had so much extra length, I ended up using 15 snaps instead of the 13 the pattern calls for - I kept the spacing between snaps the same as marked on the pattern.  I also used the bottom button loop markings for the tops of the button loops.

There were a few things I thought were a bit strange with the pattern:

• the armholes are a little tight on me.  After I printed the pattern but before I cut it out I got an email with a link to an updated version of the pattern, but since all the email said was that they changed the fit of the armhole (it didn't say how) I decided to just make the version I had already printed.  I assume that the change is to make the armhole a little bigger, and I will probably try the new version if I make this again
• the belt seems a lot narrower and bit longer than it looks in the pictures.  Also, it seems kind of strange to me that the pattern piece for the belt is concave rather than convex at the pointy end.  If it were convex the finished belt would be the same shape but it would be easier to sew
• the belt loop marks are only an inch apart, even though the belt loop pieces are 2.5" long.  I think the marks should probably be 2" apart

I bought a pair of KamSnaps pliers and this is the first project I've used them on.  I bought size 14 long snaps in black, and I had to cut off the tips of the prongs, since my test snaps wouldn't close.  The KamSnaps website was very helpful for troubleshooting the snaps.  For the most part they were easy to use and I'm happy with how they worked, but I did have two (out of 15) that I squished the protruding part of when I put them in, so I had to remove them.  Removing them was hard, and it put a lot of wear on the fabric around those snaps.  I put some fraycheck on, but I'm pretty much just hoping it doesn't become  a problem.  Here's what the worn places look like.