awayuq

I'll take half a dozen, please

My new house apron. I love it. I'll have one for each day of the week. With age, I seem to be getting sloppier and I finally (finally!) have realized the usefulness of an apron to protect clothing from cooking spills. I saw this pattern in a catalog months ago and though I almost never buy clothing patterns, it stuck in my mind. Isn't it cute? Here's the back

There are no ties, the backs cross each other to make a sort of pinafore. It reminds me in ways of a Beatrix Potter drawing. It is fully reversible

and I made the whole thing from fabrics I had on hand. Because I didn't have quite the right shapes of stash fabric I had to piece the flowered side in the back but I don't think it is all that noticeable.

Besides it gave me a feeling of thrift and good stewardship to figure out how to use the fabric anyway, even though the pattern as given didn't fit. I love the play of stripes and flowers, and it is a comfortable cover-all kind of garment that could be used for cooking, cleaning, painting, spinning (catch all that fluff), or harvesting things in the garden. It's not really a beginner pattern because of the scallops, but they could easily be rounded into a continuous curve. I'd like one in pink polka dots with a contrasting print. Also one in duck with binding for heavy duty chores, and one in red corduroy for winter. I could even see wearing an apron like this over an eyelet petticoat out into the Real World. The shape would also be lovely embellished with lace insertion or eyelet embroidery--if you were a fine needleperson, you could create the whole thing in broderie anglaise on linen. And right there, that's already half a dozen.

pink thistle progress

I finished the fronts and back of the cardigan. What is the actual ratio of the amount of knitting in sleeves vs. body in a typical sweater? Now that the body is done, I have hope that this sweater may one day be completed, because the sleeve part always seems smaller to me. I wonder though if that is in fact true.

last hurrah

The immunizations turned out to be effective. I got waves of fever alternating with chills, aches all over my body, and a stuffed head. I took a hot bath, buried myself beneath the covers, and hibernated. For two days I barely went out of the house. While in, meditating sadly on the coming start of classes and my vanishing free time, I pulled out pieces I had cut out at the beginning of the summer. One was this turquoise twill skirt.

Among the pieces were the small patch pockets--I guess I was planning to attach them, but I couldn't remember where. Prompted by a glimpse of a cheerful print in one of my piles, and various retro-ish images such as this page from an old sewing pamphlet

I decided to dress the skirt up with the contrasting bands. It is so cheery, I love it! The print bands give it that little extra that make it truly my skirt, and not merely another utility garment. Utility garments were made too

Very plain, useful tan cotton twill skirt, with small watch pocket at upper right front. (For office keys). Also completed, an A-line red knit skirt, elastic waist. So plain a picture doesn't even make sense. Two days, three complete skirts ready to wear--not bad. Yet there are still so many more things I want to do...

what I'm working on

This picture is already out of date. I took it this noontime and then spent three hours in lines waiting to get immunizations so that I can register for classes this week. Oh joy. At least, as several fellow waiters said to me, at least I had knitting. I got something done, while everyone else just stood around and got irritated. I'm following the pattern for the thistle lace cardigan in the Summer IW. The yarn is Katia Pisco, an Elann purchase. The color is a little too bubblegum for my taste in some lights, so I may try to overdye it when done just to tone it down a little. Or not, we'll see. It is cotton, linen and acrylic and I like the yarn very much. It's soft and the washed swatch I did firms up nicely. If you are freaky about splitting you might not like it, because it has 10 or 12 plies which you can at times separate from each other with the wrong needle move, but I'd work with it again for sure. After this afternoon I may be almost up to the armholes.

This is the shawl I started in Peru when I stalled on the lavender blue baby. The pattern is the Oregon Shawl, you can see an example here. I'm adding some extra row repeats to the center, because my gauge is more nearly square than what the pattern calls for. The yarn is some fine wool that I hand-dyed on my spree in the spring. There are slight variations in the color (note to self--dissovle better, make sure to stir) but not enough to detract from the pattern. The needles by the way are the new (to me) Addi Naturals--I like them.

And a note from last week--surely everyone by now has seen this picture of the knitblogosphere? I love this kind of stuff.

misplaced, I hope

Everyone I know in the northern hemisphere has too much stuff. Things. Accumulation of objects. When I travel for months with one suitcase I realize how relative "need" is. I forget about most of the things I have at home and am pleasantly surprised to re-discover wealth each time I return. Even though I recognize that most of my stuff is irrelevant, there are a few objects I treasure.

I just lost one of them.

I hope, desperately, that I simply don't know where it is. That it is hiding in some nook or cranny and will resurface in the next few days or weeks and reassure me. That it will once more become a part of my habit of stitching. It is my favorite thimble. Yes, a thimble--how quaint, you say, how odd, I didn't know anyone used thimbles anymore! It suits me for handsewing. My thimble is silver, real silver, and has a key design engraved around the bottom of it. It has a tiny "9" on a plain band--I think this might be a sizing, but I always thought it was because I got it when I was 9 years old. As a present, from one of my most beloved people on earth. If you can imagine a combination of favorite aunt, inspired mentor, and patient listener you'll have a hint of the kind of person I am talking about. She's a quilter and a reader and oh so very smart, and she took me to England the summer I was 9. Just the two of us, in a small blue car visiting the Great Houses of the British Isles. It was incredible. I don't remember if the thimble was connected with our trip or not, but I recall being awed by it when I opened it and keeping it safely in my sewing box ever since. The thimble helped me sew doll clothes and then my clothes, everything from my prom dress to my first handwoven coat. I've pieced scraps with it for quilt blocks (still unfinished) and hemmed innumerable pants and skirts. Truth to tell, it is now a little small for my finger. But I don't want another. It fits me better than any other thimble could, and after 25 + years, we were getting quite comfortable together.

Perhaps you can understand why I find its absence so upsetting.

Just goes to show you what kind of troubles can be had when you insist on cleaning up too much. For years my sewing basket has looked like this:

It's a plain black plastic tin with a tight fitting lid. The lid is rarely closed, because of all the other stuff spilling out of it. Periodically I go through and clean up all the odd lengths of thread and stick all the pins back in the pincushion and discard the old scraps of fabric. You can see one of the little faces of the pincushion, and the center spilling sawdust. Earlier this summer I found a lovely round box at IKEA and decided I would remake my sewing accessories and discard the old sewing box. Especially that sagging pincushion. I made a new one from scraps of cotton.

This is a photo I took months ago, and there is my sweet darling thimble... my precious thimble... four days ago I tossed stuff out of the old sewing basket. Scraps, thread too short to use, old empty spools, broken buttons. I threw it all away and put my brand new pincushion in my new clean wooden box. It wasn't until the next day that I realized that nowhere in that fit of organization had I come across my thimble. It wasn't in the old box, it wasn't in the new box.

So far I've looked on the floor, in the drawers, in the sewing machine, in piles of fabric, in plastic folders with embroidery projects, in miscellaneous boxes on the sewing table... my studio is a haven of hiding places, I haven't convinced myself that it's not there, but it's not near the top of things and that worries me. I am so worried that this morning I went through a week's worth of trash. I actually got out my kitchen garbage bags and put on rubber gloves and went through all the rotting fruit rinds and corn cobs piece by piece to make sure it hadn't gotten thrown away by mistake. I didn't find it and I hope to God it isn't there because the trash is to be picked up tomorrow. I wondered if I might have taken it on my recent voyage, and left it somewhere, because I was doing embroidery and sewing... but I specifically remember deciding not to take it, precisely because it is too precious to lose.

Please, thimble, please come back... I miss you... I am looking forward to our next 25 years...

labor day

Some progress. Band is pinned around a short dowel with a large diaper pin. The dowel is tucked into a wide sash tied around the waist. Dowel and pin moved as weaving progresses. I like this pattern.

remembering

Today was a lovely rainy day. Chilly and grey, prompting thoughts of wool and sweaters and russet colors. For me it also had the feeling of "calm before the storm", since as of Tuesday I really can no longer pretend that it's summertime and that the start of another school year is far away. One of the things I am least happy with in my life right now is how seldom I weave, and how I've lost touch with weaving and weavers and weaverly things. I wanted to remind myself that I know how to weave. I found my small balls of handspun in the little coca bag where they've been since I wound them off the spindle and wound a warp for a wide band. Everything went fine: cross, counting, heddles, shed loop--all seems in order. It's working. As of the last picture the pattern was still in the early stages

but it's developing. It's one I haven't woven before and I like the feeling of learning something new while at the same time remembering an old skill. If only I had a month of rainy days like this.