Tag: Grey and white

Stormy Sky Shawl

A collection of wearable holes.

A while ago, I was going to be in the train for a few hours and needed a project to take along. I decided to use one of the new-years dying skeins of sock weight wool for a scarf. After searching through Ravelry, a few good options were identified and I settled on the Stormy Sky Shawl by Ksenia Naidyon. It’s a shawl made with four different stripes with an increase in every right side row. With stripes a maximum of 8 rows it makes it quite easy to keep track off and with sock weight yarn, it stays portable.

Counting is still difficult though, so I resorted to putting in lifelines after every stripe, so that I could easily rip back when I made a mistake or forgot to do the right increase etc. This easy solution prevented a lot of irritation, so that was a win. I think my dropped stitch stripe is different from what they show in the pattern, but it still looks good to me, so there’s that.

This was the first time that I’ve ever blocked a knit. I was first intending to actually buy proper things for it, but then the scrooge in me decided to take some shortcuts. The dollar store nearby was selling ‘pool floor mats’ for about 8 euro for 9 mats, and they look very close to lace blocking mats. Then I started nosing around my stash of supplies and found some stiff floral wire. That seemed to be fairly similar to blocking wires from the few videos I watched on the process. So I chucked the shawl in the washing machine, then threaded the wire through the edges and pinned it down on the mats. It started being much longer than wide, but the blocking made it actually turn into a neat triangle. Such a nice transformation!

I’ve yet to wear it out, but aim to do that fairly soon. I really do hope that the shape holds up, it would be a little bit sad if it started to droop. Knitting a project with the one skein like this is really quite enjoyable and because of the lace design, you can actually get a full project from that one skein. I might now make a scarf from the second skein too…

Three-Piece Suit (part 3 – Jacket)

So, it’s been a while, but I finally got myself into gear and finished the jacket for my suit. I’d put on the new front a while back, and I had sewn the lining, but getting the lining in the jacket.. a whole other story. It wasn’t actually hard, took me a couple of hours over two days after I set my mind to it. The scariest thing was to make the buttonholes. I’ve had buttonholes completely fail before and it was the very last step, also one of the more crucial ones. Luckily it all went reasonably well and the button holes function fine.

The introduction to this jacket was written up in Three-Piece Suit (part 0.5 – Failed Jacket). The jacket was based on Burda 5/2009 jacket 102 A, changes included shortening the body length, reducing the length of the arms and making the front pointy. I also added facings to the lower back edge and the sleeves. I reduced the width of the front, because Initially I only wanted one button. In the end I decided to make too, to make the jacket hang nicer. I really like that it has pockets and I included a loop for hanging it on a coat rack, in case that is ever necessary.

I should probably have worn real shoes for the full picture, but I was too lazy. At least the picture shows the full finished suit. It’s done! YAY!!

I’m quite proud of myself for actually finishing the project and finishing it to my liking, mostly. Now, I just need to continue to wear it. For the future, I still have a couple of sweater bodies that need to be sleeved. I have finished knitting a hat, poncho-thing and octopus that I’ll let you know about. My holiday cards have already been made, they just need to be personalized. Next plans include another graduation dress for January and that’s about all I’m sure about.

Three-Piece Suit (part 2 – Pants)

After finishing the vest, I went straight into the pants. I chose to use the same base as the plaid pantsuit, with the regular back pockets. The main difference I wanted was to have some form of interesting closure. I’ve been looking at men’s pants on pinterest to find some nice details. I settled for a cross over long strap like this.

After figuring out the pattern, the first thing that happened was that I found out that my fabric is less wide than the fabric I normally use for pants. As such, it was a little more effort to lay out as I couldn’t align the bottoms of front and back with each other. I also cut the front waistband twice as long as it should be, without shaping it. I’d planned to cut it to shape once it was on my pants.

I used the same lining as for the vest and went on to sew the thing together. I used most the same methods as for all the other pants I made, but for some reason, it turned out smaller than normally? Not sure how that happened, so I let the side seams out a little, which fixed most of the problems. I’ve been using a tutorial for the fly front with a separate fly shield, it’s here.

After attaching the waistband, I needed to figure out how to shape it correctly and get the eyelet for the strap worked out. Can’t remember exactly how, but it seems to have worked fairly decently. The only downside of these pants is that there are a few wrinkles below the waistband which pull just a little to the outside. However, I’ve decided that I can live with it and that I’m probably the only one who will see it in real life.

The pants feel comfortable on. I’ve worn the vest and the pants together recently with a button down shirt and the purple plaid jacket and it looks so cool. Fake it till you make it starts with the outfit, right?!

Three-Piece Suit (part 0.5 – Failed Jacket)

So, for some reason I really wanted to have a three-piece suit. I’m not sure why, but I decided that this was a thing that needed to happen. So I started leafing through the pattern magazines and eventually settled on Burda 5/2009 jacket 102 A.

I’d found the last 4 meters of a bolt of grey stuff with a white running stitch at the front and dot-pattern at the back. I hoped that I would be able to make a three-piece suit out of it. So a jacket, a vest and pants. I cut out the jacket in a table cloth and fit it. I needed to take three cm out of the length above the waist, so I had some fun with paper, scissors and a pencil. I also wanted to have one button at the front, so I took the front in a little. I sewed it all up in the new fabric and it fit well. Then I added the lining and everything went wonky.

The lining was too short, so I tried all kinds of fixes apart from cutting out a longer lining. So I chucked it in the corner and started on the vest. After finishing the vest, it turned out that the vest peeped out from underneath the jacket, sneak peek in the picture. Queue plan B! Ripping out the center front pieces and re-drawing the pattern. Update on that in the future.