egg

Still one of my favourites: thin, warm, lightweight, and surprisingly durable.

Can we just take a minute (or two, or three, or maybe sixty) to appreciate literally everything that is egg? The pieces, the styling, the whimsical poses, everything? Even the website itself? Including the fact that this stool - and what a lovely stool it is - has a page of its own but is not for sale? I haven't included any pictures because I don't want to use images without permission, so I urge any and everyone to go take a look. Might I recommend feasting your eyes upon this incredibly lovely coat? Or perhaps this sara lanzi jumper and dress? Those baby gathers (or soft pleats, not sure) tug at my heartstrings like nothing else. And the felted wool makes both of them look as though you'd want to live in them. Or this oversized shirt-dress variation? Also this entire page (as well as this one, also this one, along with all the other pages, not least of all this one)? Did I miss anything? Because if I did, that was an oversight.

There is a sweater in the collection that looks similar to something I've knitted before, which tickles me with delight to no end. It is much more oversized than mine, and has even less shaping (if that's possible) with its dolman sleeve from what it looks like, but I'd just like to point out that my saddle-shoulder funnel-neck lightweight sweater (above) gets plenty of wear during the colder months. Which, by the looks of it, everything from egg would too, all year round.

White Linen Dress

It's winter right now.

I know I don't post my sewing stuff up here very often - at all - but I'm pretty happy with this one, and it's the first thing I've sewn in a while. In addition to that, it's the first time I've used the sewing machine to do all of it! All of the edges have been french-bound, so no more frayed edges (some of my previous garments have frayed edges that have started to fall apart a bit, so I am learning from the past). And of course, there are pockets. And it's kind of a wonder that I can pull it on and off due to the lack of closures - it was a real concern.

The fabric is a linen/rayon blend and the pattern was drafted by yours truly. The original plan was to do 2 layers and make it reversible, but when I tried that on the muslin, it felt a little too thick and stiff. That might have had to do with the fact that the fabric I used for the muslin was completely different from the real thing though. Now that the real thing has been sewn up, I kind of wish I had a white slip or another layer under it, since it is a bit sheer. A long knit tank top has been cut out of a jersey fabric in my stash, but I haven't gotten around to actually sewing it yet, since the bias binding straps are a pain to make (can't iron it down, so there's a million pins holding one in place at the moment).

The fit is lovely (as it should be, since it was drafted to my measurements), and I am thinking of this style of dress in various colours. Maybe make it into a circle skirt instead? Or add in that second layer, as was originally planned, next time? It has started to stretch a little because I put it onto a hanger for a couple of days (the armholes were much more fitted at first). Hopefully it'll shrink back in the washing machine?

Look for the Silver Lining

It's sweltering though, so maybe not all the time...

What? What do you mean it might not be the best idea to wear a 100% wool dress with half sleeves in the dead humid heat of summer? But I just finished this lovely thing!

So I finally finished the silver linings dress!! Remember how I started here and promptly ran into problems here? I absolutely LOVE this dress! I know I say that about most of the stuff I knit, but this dress is really one of those things I can see myself wearing all the time. (Maybe switching between this and the frost flowers dress, actually. They both occupy a large share of my heart.) And it's not even just because I made it and I have some sort of attachment to it as its creator. Nor is it because I ran into so many troubles and had to rip out so many times that I feel like the end product has to justify all that work (... maybe a little. But only the tiniest bit.). Enough of that. I'll just enumerate its qualities:

• A-line dress with body-hugging bodice. Hits a couple inches above the knee, and should actually just hit above the knee after blocking.
• Set-in sleeves that actually fit just right! Look at those pictures - no bagginess! And you'll just have to take my word for it that they aren't tight. (I actually had to reknit it because the armscye was too small the first time around.)
• The button placket at the back! Adorable!
• Those tucks! They aren't loud or obnoxious at all. They could definitely try to speak up a little more, but that's just because the yarn is a bit more outspoken than them.
• No restrictions at all with that skirt (see picture below).
• Did I mention it has POCKETS?

More pictures on ravelry.

Take that, summer heat!

Focus in Knitting

I have a problem. It goes something along the lines of queuing every single pattern I come across that I stop at for more than 2 seconds on Ravelry. In fact, I have 370 patterns in my queue and it's not stopping! It's really getting (if not already) ridiculous, even from my perspective. There are probably enough patterns there to have me knitting for an entire lifetime - at the rate that I knit - and still not be finished by then. So here's the thing: I want to put some more focus on what I choose to knit.

So to start with, what do I want from my knitting? I think, for the most part, I knit because I want the finished product. I want to wear something beautiful that I've created with my own two hands. And, for the most part, I've succeeded so far. I'm pretty satisfied with the projects I churn out, especially as of late (specifically within the last 2 years or so), but when I think about what to knit next, I totally panic! Justifiably, I think, because hey! I've got 370 patterns in my queue! I look through it every so often and cut stuff out that I don't think I'd wear even if I did get to knitting it up (I actually got to 400 queued items and cut it down to 370 already).

On that note, I've been thinking that I should make some basics, sort of like an "ideal wardrobe". The most recent dress I made, the frost flowers one, fits into this category, I think. It's got its little lace details, which makes it that much better for me, since it isn't too boring, and it's long enough that it's appropriate for most things. I want more of that sort of clothing: plain, simple, and most importantly comfortable, but still special enough that I'm going to reach for it over and over again.

So to put in short, maybe wearing something handknit every day, if that's not getting too ahead of myself. I don't mean I'd only wear handknit items, but I'd like for me to be able to incorporate it into my everyday life. Some clothes I already do, some fewer than others because the fit or the style just isn't doing it for me, but for the clothes that I do wear often, I want more of that sort. So over the course of this year, I think I'm going to make some sketches of what I'd like to add to my wardrobe. I've made a few doodles (in class, of course, where else?) that I can probably link to some patterns I've been meaning to knit for well, forever. So that's another one of my little side projects I think I'm going to try to keep up this year. This is just to lay down my thoughts so I know what direction I want to go.

First FO of 2014

First finished object of 2014! Hurrah!

Detail of the side lace insert.

The frost flowers dress I was aiming to finish by the end of 2013 didn't quite get finished in time... but I was close! And so it is now the first finished object of 2014! The details are all more or less on my ravelry page, but in short: I am ecstatic with how this turned out, although there are a few things I'd like to change if I were to knit this dress again or knit something similar (which will probably happen, considering the fact that I purchased 4 more skeins of Botany Lace in a beautiful dusty rose colourway).

So here are the little quibbles I have with this dress so far (I haven't taken it on an outing yet, and it also has not been blocked; I usually don't block my garments, only lace):

• The bottom hem bothers me a bit. I had to knit it a little longer so the garter stitch didn't flip up - I tried doing decreases (which I kept, but also bother me because I did the decreases on the purl row instead of the knit row directly before the garter stitch hem), but the hem still flipped up and out, especially at the back. Next time, I would do the decreases on the knit row, then switch needle sizes (half of this hem is done in 2.5mm needles, since I ripped out the BO and added to it) and do 10 rows of garter stitch before using 3.25mm needles to do the BO loosely, as I have done.
• Pull in the raglans a bit. Do the decreases over fewer rows. It's fine as it is as well, though, but a closer fit around the underarms would be great.
• Do 0.5-1" less of knitting between the last bust increase and starting the AH, in order to pull up the lace a bit. On that same point, only do 1.5 repeats instead of 2 full repeats of lace, and start it as though I were doing 2 repeats (so start the lace a bit later so it ends up a little bit higher).
• The neck could probably look better if I had done a bit better planning, but it's actually fine the way it is. It would be fixed by fixing the raglans.

It looks like a lot, but I'm still really happy with this dress, and hopefully I'll be able to write out a pattern for it, since I'd like to try my hand at pattern-writing and publish one pattern this year. We'll see how that turns out, especially seeing as how I simply fudged the neck while I was knitting this up!

Here's one of the four skeins of Botany Lace I purchased at Romni's Boxing Day Sale.