Me-Made-May 2018

My Me-Made May pledge this year was to sew for myself every day until the baby was born - and I succeeded! (Technically, I didn't sew the day before he was born, but I was admitted to the hospital that afternoon, so I'm giving myself a pass.)  The baby was born closer to mid-May than late May, and most days I sewed for less than an hour, but I still got a fair amount done.  I started with this Washi dress.  I lined the bodice and made it snap up the front so it's breast-feeding friendly.  I almost finished it - at the end of my challenge I was just waiting for the hot pink snaps I ordered to arrive in the mail.

Next, I moved on to a knit dress.  I cut out all of the pieces for a Turn About the Room dress from the DIY Maternity blog.  I made the front skirt panels a bit narrower than the pattern specifies, because I intend it to be a nursing dress, not a maternity dress - I think it will be great with a nursing camisole under it.  It should be pretty quick to sew up on the serger once I get around to it.

And last but not least, the best thing I made this May:

(This will be the only baby photo I post on this blog - we have a no photos on social media or the public internet policy.)

Knitting this Summer

I didn't post much this summer, but I did knit!  I've been working intermittently on my navy shawl, and I knit almost a whole sweater:

I'm excited to have another (hopefully) presentable sweater to wear to work and church.  And I'm worried about running out of yarn.  I started with eight balls of yarn, and I have just under two left.  All I have left to do is the second sleeve and the i-cord edging around the front edges and neckline.  I'm steeling myself for the possibility that I may need to unravel my (machine washed and dried) swatch to finish.  We'll see how it goes.

The first CMS/Colloquium of the school year

With Robert's dress socks done, I dug out one of my longterm (very longterm ... the last time I worked on it was in college, so at least 4 years ago) UFOs.  It's a mitered square blanket using Tofutsies sock yarn left over from the sock war in Summer 2008.  I'm using this strategy to make the squares by knitting them onto one another.

I knitted 2 or so squares in my two seminars on Thursday afternoon (but the first seminar was short, it was just a planning meeting).

If I remember right, the reason I stopped working on this was that I don't really have enough yarn to make it any sort of reasonable size.  I weighed it the other night, and the knitted parts are 90 grams and the yarn I've got is 74 grams.  It is currently 17.5" by 18.25".

At this point I just want to finish things and get them off my UFO list, so I'm going to unravel the one square (I was going to make it one square wider than it currently is) and re-knit it on a higher row, and then knit until I run out of yarn.  At that point, it will be however big it will be and I will figure out what that size can be useful for.

That said, if anyone out there reading has Tofutsies yarn that you would be willing to give me, I would gladly take it.

What I've been working on lately

I've been spinning a lot more often lately, and I'm really enjoying it!  It's very relaxing to sit and spin while Robert reads aloud in the evenings.  We've both been impressed by how "productive" wheel-spinning is.  It's really gratifying to see the singles accumulate on the bobbin at what seems like an incredible rate.  I've been spinning some undyed white BFL (I bought a whole pound to practice with after I got back from yarn school 18 months ago!) but recently I've started reading a few spinning blogs and have really wanted to spin some of the gorgeous colored fiber I have.  So I started spinning a lovely custom carded alpaca and tussah silk batt that I bought two (I think? maybe it was three) years ago.  It's a lot of fun to spin - pretty easy, and it's fun to see the interplay of the different colors.  Here's the rest of the batt:

My plan is to ply this with some of the white BFL singles I've been spinning.  I only have two ounces of the alpaca, and I want to stretch it into more yardage - also I think I will like the candy-cane stripe effect.

My other new project is these toadstool socks in fancy self-patterning yarn.  This yarn was given to me at yarn school, and it is a pain to work with!  You have to get the tension EXACTLY right or the mushrooms will be all messy and ugly.  Also, the pattern is written pretty terribly (and apparently not tech-edited?), which is a shame since the kits are so incredibly expensive.  The pattern calls for casting on 56 stitches, and says that if your yellow and green stripes work out to almost exactly two rounds, you'll be good to go.  I did not find this to be the case.  After starting over on the toadstools about 5 times, I finally looked at the chart and realized that the pattern is for 52 stitches!

I started over a sixth time with the right number of stitches, and I've been following the chart religiously, adjusting my tension stitch by stitch to make sure I have the correct number of red and white stitches in each section.

I'm glad I kept working on these - I'm finally getting the hang of it (I've knitted another one and a half repeats of the toadstools since this picture was taken) and the socks are going to be really cool when I'm finished, but I'm also glad that I'm not the one who paid for this yarn.

Both the purple yarn and the socks count as new starts.  I've also finished a quilt that I haven't blogged yet, so I'm at six finishes and three starts since I started counting in February.  I want to finish some more things so I can sew myself some clothes!

Colloquium knitting

I gave the talk in CMS on Thursday, so I only knitted in colloquium.  I finished and grafted together the first cuff (but didn't weave in any ends).  Then I just barely got started on the second cuff.  I think it looks good, but those cuffs are definitely going to need blocking!

CMS/Colloquium knitting

I had the right supplies with me on Thursday to do a crochet provisional cast-on, so I started the edging on one sleeve of my shrug.  It took me a little while to figure out how to position my work to get it "knitted on" to the edge of the sleeve correctly - I really wanted to do it without breaking thread, but in the end I concluded that I couldn't.

I got about 2/3 of the way around one sleeve on Thursday, and worked on it a bit more between services at church this morning (the picture above is from before church).  I think it will take me about two more weeks to finish the shrug, and then I'll have to figure out what to knit next!

CMS knitting

I finished everything except the sleeve edging and weaving in ends in CMS on Thursday.  I forgot that the edging requires a crochet provisional cast-on, so I didn't bring waste yarn or a crochet hook and couldn't start the edging. 

I tried it on on Thursday morning.  The sleeves are just past my elbows, so with a 3-3.5" edging on them, I think they will come out to be a perfect 3/4 length.  The only problem is that the opening between the two sleeves is a little bit short.  I needed help getting it off after I tried it on.  Hopefully it will be easier to get on after everything is finished and I feel a bit better about pulling on the ends of the sleeves (and with practice I will figure out how to get it off on my own).  I'm sort of tempted to put a crochet edging around the opening, to make it a bit sturdier, since it being a bit too small will put more stress on the edge when I put in on/wear it/take it off, but I'm a bit worried about making the opening even smaller.  I'll have ot see how it fits when it's done (maybe even after blocking) before I decide.

This is my only active knitting project right now.  I also have my mitered square blanket with tofutsies leftovers, but that one is on the long-term back burner.  I'm looking forward to starting another knitting project when the shrug is done.

CMS & Colloquium in the new semester!

Today was the first CMS and Colloquium of the Fall semester.  I finished the baby blanket pieces while Robert and I were traveling this summer (but never managed to take and post a picture), so I'm back to working on my blue leaf socks.  I did work on this (the second sock) some this summer, but the most recent photo I can find is from all the way back in January.

Next week for sure I'll finish this sock, and since it's the second one, I'll have to decide whether to start a new pair of socks or work on my lace shrug ...

A visit from Mom

 My mom visited this past weekend.  We went on a nature walk ...
... and we carried on our little tradition of each piecing a quilt top when she visits.  We each started a half square triangle quilt inspired by one we saw in a shop at the International Quilt Festival last November.  Each quilt is made from two charm packs and some grey solid yardage.  The trimming of all of the HSTs took FOREVER.

 But we eventually finished and laid out my quilt ...

 ... and my mom's.

I think they both look better in person than in the photos.  We ran out of time to sew the tops together, but I'm so excited about my quilt!  I admired the Half Moon Modern fabric for a long time online before I snatched up my two charm packs at the quilt festival, and I've been anticipating making the quilt ever since.  I got the first five (of fifteen) rows sewn together, and it looks great!

Embossed Leaf Socks

According to my UFO list, I started these socks in April, but I don't think I've blogged about them yet.  The pattern is from Interweave's Favorite Socks book, but so far I've made a few modifications.  The pattern says to break the yarn at the end of the heel turn, but that didn't seem very sensible to me, so I just continued in the normal sock-knitting way.  Also, the toe pattern is pretty strange.  I think it's a round toe, but it's got some purl stitches in it, which is very non-standard.  So far I'm going with what it says, but I'm a little apprehensive that I won't like it and I'll have to pick it all out and do a more normal toe. 

This is just the first sock, and right now it's taking a back seat to the many other projects I've got going on right now, but I think I'm going to make some progress on it this week.

Starting a new skirt

This past weekend I started a new skirt.  I have an old damask-print skirt that I got my senior year of high school, and it was my very favorite skirt all through college.  Needless to say, by the time I got to grad school it was pretty much worn out.  So I was overjoyed when I was browsing at JoAnn one day many months ago, and I saw a damask print that pretty well approximates the print on my old skirt, and I decided to try to recreate it. 

I'm using another variation of the pattern I used for my first brown skirt, McCall's 5591, but I had to adapt it to make the skirt less full, since the original pattern pieces are too wide to fit across grain, but this print is definitely directional, so that won't work.  Also, my old skirt has a ruffle at the bottom of the lining which I'm planning to re-use, so I want the new skirt to be about the same fullness as the old one so the proportions work out. 

So far, I've cut out the outer skirt pieces, the pockets, and the yoke pieces.  I've Ironed the white fabric for the lining, but I need to adjust the skirt pattern pieces for that and cut them out.  I stopped at JoAnn on my way home today and bought the zipper, but I forgot to get embellishing braid for the seam between the yoke and the skirt.  I still need to cut out the interfacing for the yoke, and, of course, sew it all together!

A new project

I rewarded myself for passing my advanced exam by ordering new yarn for a sweater.  I've been wanting to knit a sweater for several weeks now, but I didn't want to start anything while I needed to devote all of my attention to studying.  I feel like summer is a bit of a strange time to start a big knitting project like a sweater, but it's been a long time since I knit anything bigger than a sock (my cowl doesn't count), and when I was in Denmark in April I found myself slightly envious of my mom's large, simple baby blanket project.  Anyway, we have air conditioning, and I'm not planning to work on this outside, so I don't see why the summer prohibition on large knitting projects should apply.

This sweater is in the Elizabeth Zimmerman style, knitted in the round from the bottom up, with the sleeves joined to the body at underarm level and a yoke (an unpatterned yoke, in this case).  The pattern is in a booklet my Aunt Inge gave me the last time I was in Denmark.  This little booklet has several gorgeous patterns I can picture myself knitting and wearing.  I chose this one because it looks simple (honestly, a bit mindless) but still has something interesting - a deep lace edging on the body and sleeves.  It also has some ruffles on one shoulder, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to leave those off.  I'm reading the pattern side-by-side with EZ's generic sweater pattern in Knitting Without Tears, and making a few modifications along the way.  The first one is to knit the sleeves in the round instead of back and forth.  This also means the sleeves have one less stitch than the pattern calls for, since I won't need the selvedge for seaming. 

I love knitting in the round.  I don't understand why you would knit the sleeves flat when the body is knit in the round.  In my view, it defeats the whole purpose of one-piece construction.

My new tote bag

(somehow the picture got turned sideways when I uploaded it. I'm not sure how to fix this)
I bought exactly one souvenir (not counting a pair of new sandals) in Italy this summer. It was this tote bag, which I bought at the Vatican Museums gift shop. It shows a fresco from my very favorite room in the Vatican - the map room. It's a long narrow room with frescoes of maps of the Church's holdings as of the 16th century, plus one of ancient Italy. It's that one that's on the bag.

The only problem with the bag is that it is unlined. I would like to use it kind of like a purse, so my plan is to put in a lining with some pockets and some sort of closure mechanism at the top. I don't think this will be difficult, but it is not at the top of my priority list right now.

Heirloom tablecloth

My Aunt Inge, who lives in Denmark, is an incredibly accomplished embroiderer. She used to be a sample-embroiderer for a large and well-known Danish embroidery store, and she has made many baby gifts, wall-hangings, and even needle-pointed upholstery for an antique chair that she and my uncle have!

When my dad and I were visiting with her and my uncle Joergen this past July, I was working on a cross-stitch project, and they started to show me many of the things she had made for their house. Inge showed me this table-cloth she started many many years ago when she was expecting her older daughter (who is now herself a grandmother). It had languished, nearly finished, in her cabinet for at least the last 20 years, and she couldn't finish it because her eyesight is no longer good enough.

Since none of her daughters or granddaughters do much hand-work, Inge gave me the table-cloth and the eight (finished) matching napkins, on the condition that I finish it.

The only part left to finish is the little squares inside the little boxes in the large center motif. Here you can see the ones that are done:
There is also a small stretch of hemming to be done, but that is mostly finished. The hem has a nice little decorative zig-zag.

So on Friday I went and bought some more white thread. Luckily it is DMC thread, so even so many years later I can still get more. As soon as I am finished with my super-secret time-sensitive cross-stitch project, I will finish the table-cloth!

UFO: Tea Cosy

This is a relatively new unfinished object - I started it at the beginning of the summer, before we left on our trip. I've been wanting to make a tea cosy for my lovely china teapot, and I chose the pattern from the One Skein Wonder book. I made a tea cosy from this pattern a few years ago as a gift, and it turned out well. This time, I'm changing the stitch pattern for the sides. The pattern just uses a plain double moss stitch, but I decided that since I drink tea with breakfast, I wanted a breakfast -themed tea cosy, so the the side I've already started is waffle stitch, which I found in the Super Stitches Knitting stitch dictionary. This is currently my at-home knitting project, but I have a few embroidery projects that have higher finishing priority, so I don't know how long it will be before I finish it.

Yellow Rose Fiber Producers Fiesta!

A few weeks ago (okay, the second week of April) my Mom and I met up to go to the Yellow Rose Fiber Producers Fiesta in Seguin, TX. We had an absolutely wonderful time, except for when my gluten-free mom and my vegan self were walking around tiny, economically distressed downtown Seguin looking for lunch on Saturday and they didn't have ANY FOOD. None at all.

We took a few classes: a short morning intro to needle felting and a longer afternoon introduction to rigid heddle weaving.

You can see the finished product of my needle-felted chicken at the top of this post. I think it's absolutely adorable, and my plan is to crop it, frame it, and hang it in my new kitchen when we move (next week!). We took a copy of a page from a coloring book and traced it onto the clear water-soluble "fabric" you can see in this picture:

Then we took a bit of fluffy fiber and poke-poke-poke it into the fabric, with a foam block behind it.

The second class was rigid heddle weaving. I made a small table-runner-ish item:

Here's the almost-finished product. I still need to tie off the ends for fringe.

Here's a close-up so you can see the lovely self-striping color of this bamboo yarn:

And finally, I only made one purchase at the show, but it was a good one. It seemed like most of the exhibitors were alpaca farmers from Texas. So of course I had to buy some alpaca fiber. I got this custom-made batt from a booth where they had a bunch of fiber in different solid colors on display. I got to choose my colors (which were purple, white, and a bit of blue-green silk) and the man ran it through his carding machine to blend it all together in a beautiful way. Here it is:

UFO: Green lace shawl

Welcome to UFOs, a new feature on Will Knit for Math! I'll post pictures of my Un-Finished Objects, so I can keep track of (and not forget about) them, and anyone out there who may or may not be reading this blog can laugh about the huge huge number of unfinished projects I have going.Here is my green lace shawl. I bought the yarn at the Red Rock Knit Shop in Sedona, AZ when I was on summer vacation in 2009. It is now almost summer 2011. The shawl is pretty slow going, and it takes a fair amount of concentration to follow the charted pattern correctly. As you can see, this project is currently living in one of my new tin buckets in my living room. So far, having it in view everyday has been pretty effective as far as remembering to work on it goes.
Here's a picture of the whole thing so far. It's difficult to see the whole thing, since it is now wider than the length of the circular needle I'm using.
Here's a closeup of some of the lace patterns. I had a hard time photographing it well - there wasn't really enough contrast between the shawl and the carpet in my living room. The last picture was taken without flash, and this one with flash, but neither of them looks very good.