Livin' the Print Life

Well not really. I mean, much less than I had expected at the beginning of the (school) year. I also have no photographic evidence to show for it, so I suppose it never happened. Or at least, it has yet to have happened until I get the project back come the new year and I get to take a million pictures of the book & quilt I made. Did I mention how that was the first time I had ever made a quilt? And that I hand-dyed some Saldahna, hand-wove, and hand-sewed (or at least hand-quilted all the layers & hand-sewed the borders because it just wouldn't go through the machine properly) the entire thing? Oh, and by the way, I made the loom I used to weave the fabric while I was at it. I also pulled an all-nighter for the first time in my academic career to finish hand-quilting. Three of those, actually. In a row. Then proceeded to attend the crit. First time for everything, my friends.

Miss Babs Heartland in Beachglass, all these skeins have been knitted up & 2 new ones are continuing their cause

On the above note, none of my WIPs exist either, unfortunately. One Timberline is almost done (I ended up purchasing 2 more skeins of Heartland in Beachglass because I had at least 2 underweight skeins in my stash, although now I think one skein might have been enough. I really have to commend them on their consistency with dyeing! The two skeins match pretty well. I forgot to alternate for the fronts and I mean, it's kind of noticeable since the green is just slightly different, but it's pretty darn close.) and I've started knitting a pair of kitten mittens (Moggies - can we talk about how adorable these are?) for my Secret Child (see last year's).

I also went shopping a couple of days ago and saw a couple of things that I really liked but didn't want to buy for reasons (below)! I sketched these out to see how they might look from what I remember:

Quilted yoke salopette/shirt-dress?

So I saw this really adorable dress shirt at Kind Exchange, but it was kind of ratty-looking and I knew I wouldn't wear it for sure even if I had gotten it, so I put it down and tucked the image of it in my mind. The yoke was a contrasting colour, I think subtly patterned, and it looked as though it was quilted? It had matching quilted/contrasting pockets, and white contrasting cuffs (and I think collar & buttonband, since that would only make sense). It was really cute. And definitely not my style. (I don't think I have any pants that go with it.) But I would totally make it and wear it around everywhere as a dress!

And O-Wool went and put Legacy DK on sale, so I've been eyeing the Lake Erie (all 13 skeins of it that are left!), either Pomegranate or Bee Balm, and the Natural or Oyster Mushroom for the contrasting colours. My self-restraint is collapsing in on itself big time. I already let 16 skeins of Coal slip through my fingers (I was debating it while they were in my cart, and by the time I went back to look, they were gone, gone, and gone). Someone please take the decision out of my faltering hands and just buy up all those colours please. Or at least all the Lake Erie. And the Oyster Mushroom. And maybe the Natural. And the remainder of the Pomegranate. I don't have the guts to wear something solely Bee Balm, so that one's fine. But honestly, O-Wool's one of those companies I really want to try out, so this has been straining my self-control so much these past weeks (or week, I don't really know anymore).

Club Monaco dress - new collection I think?

Then there was this dress at Club Monaco that I thought was too shapeless, but couldn't get out of my mind after I left with another really cute white dress. (The moment I put it on, I was so smitten I knew I was going to get it, so. It felt good to buy something I thought I could make, but decided it was more worth it to simply get what was in front of me.) This grey one is such a classic silhouette though - I mean, long-sleeved turtleneck dress? - that I probably can't go wrong with it. And I think I could make it with the same yarn I used for my funnel-neck sweater.

Then there's this adorable children's dress (why do the cutest dresses have to be for children?) and decided I absolutely must have one in my size:

Which one do I cast on?

Not sure which style I'd like to make, yet, but I'm very much veering towards number 1 there on the left side. And I like the thought of using my Einband to make it, so that's probably what's going to happen. I'm just not sure whether I have enough of the grey.

The only take-away from this post, really, is that I have too many things I want to make for the timeline within which I want all those things.

And those are the reasons for which there have been no posts here since forever ago.

Twirl

Experimenting with lace

So I've been swatching, playing around with a combination of a couple of lace patterns from Knittingfool, a free online lace directory. Thinking of twirly skirts, but I'm not sure whether lace-weight is a touch too sheer. If there's enough volume, it should be fine, though, so it'll just have to be the twirliest of twirly skirts. I don't think anyone will mind.

Frost Flowers Bloom!

I've released my first pattern! Fully written up and available in my ravelry store with a 20% discount from now until August 8 23:59 EST to celebrate the release!

With this, I have at last completed one of my new year's resolutions for 2014! Hurrah! I've already strayed completely off the road for another one of those resolutions (it was bound to happen, really...), so I'm pretty excited that I have kept to something.

I have also finished my disastrous blanket, so just need to get that photographed along with the first scarf I have been neglecting to document. I have worn it out and about though, and the colour has - rather magically - fit with everything so far! It crinkles pretty easily, but I think that just gives it character.

The blanket is actually now not quite so disastrous as it seemed to me then (mostly because I'm finished with it and will no longer need to work another one of them again), and I quite like the end result. I couldn't stuff one last thin clasped-weft section at the end, but that's fine. It looks fine as is, and I'm happy with the results, especially considering all the trials I had to pass to get to it! I counted all the broken warp threads afterwards and they totalled 23. 5 of which were all within centimetres of each other. So I wove them all in, and now it's done! I've given it to my father, and it's lying across the couch now, waiting for winter to settle in...

7 Months Along...

It's getting close. Really close.

And it's looking good!

There's still a bit left to do before I let it out into the world, but it's coming along, and I'm so incredibly excited! This is my first one, and I've already learned so much from the experience (and it hasn't even come out yet!), but I really hope the future is bright for this one. And any others to come, of course! But let's focus on this one first. I'll get to the others when I get to them.

Recipe for Silver Linings

So I recently received a message on ravelry asking me for help regarding the Tucked Woollen Dress pattern from Vogue. Now, even if you have a copy of the pattern it probably wouldn't do you much good. It's only sized up to ages 4-5, after all. So I decided to write up a basic outline for anyone who wants to try to recreate my dress!

Seeing that my written notes are kind of a disaster, especially for this dress since so many things had to be ripped back and re-knit, I decided to type up a really rough recipe complete with diagram to try to help out anyone who might want to knit up my version of this dress!

Follow these links for the outline and the full-sized diagram respectively (since the diagram in the word document may be a bit small). Enjoy (or suffer endlessly trying to figure it out)! And feel free to ask me if you don't understand what's going on: I will do my best to help you out.

Silver Lining

Quite a while ago, I borrowed Knitting in Vogue No.3 from the public library and was really taken by the Tucked Woollen Dress. Understandably, I was also quite dismayed when I realized the largest size offered was a 24" chest. (Which, in hindsight, may actually have been for the best, seeing as how the pattern would probably not have translated well into adult sizes.) So I resolved at the time - I queued the pattern May 2012, so it's been almost a whole 2 years now! - to size it up and make my own. I would plug in different measurements, work out the gauge I'm going to work at, and recalculate everything. (This isn't actually that difficult. At all. Simple multiplication and division.)
2 years down the road (present day), I've realized that this pattern would probably not look quite as adorable on me as it does on the toddler in the picture. The tucks on the skirt would have to be huge to keep the proportions on me, and puff sleeves aren't the most flattering look I could ask for. But I still adored those tucks and that button-up back, so I decided that I could just take those two design elements and run with it! So now, armed with simple math skills, a calculator, sketches, a tape measure, and what knitting know-how I've accumulated, I finally sat down to finish some final sketches, make a gauge swatch (blocked and measured!), and did some math. I'm using the madtosh lace in charcoal and hoping that I'll have enough! I should - it's almost 3000 yards I've got right now, so I'd be really worried if that wasn't enough. But I still bought another skein at the Knitter's Frolic, just in case. It's a lot darker and a different tone compared to my other 3 skeins, but it's a last resort thing, so it'll be fine. I'll use it for the sleeves if anything.

Speaking of which, although I thought to myself, "This madtosh stuff isn't anything special, apart from the gorgeous colour, maybe, but even that other yarn companies have... it's a little overrated" while I was knitting up the swatch, my opinion took a 180 after I washed it and blocked it out! It's so ridiculously soft after washing and blocking and just beautiful! While I'm sure other yarns have that going for them as well (Araucania, my love), madelinetosh has made my favourites list.

Designing Knitwear

Oh dear. What was I thinking?

What's that up there, you may ask? Why, it's my first attempt ever at making a pattern! It's the Frost Flowers Dress from the beginning of this year, in fact. While I took a copious number of notes while I knitted this up and did all the math on paper so that I could reference it again later when I wanted to finally type up the pattern, I don't think I realized what a huge chore this was going to be! Not that that makes me want to stop, of course. I'm about halfway done plugging in all the numbers and figuring out all the increases and decreases, although all of it is based off of standard numbers, so I'm afraid it might not actually translate into the larger sizes especially. I have little to no knowledge of short rows besides in theory (I've never had to use them for full bust adjustments and the like), so I can't really add those in, but I'm afraid the dress won't fit bustier ladies too well if they just do the increases I laid out. Anyway, I'll be offering this pattern in sizes 30 - 54.

Remember to take your measurements!

And because of course just plugging numbers into equations that I have to figure out how to do in excel isn't enough work for me (why would it be? Totally easy and didn't take me a couple hours just to realize it wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be let alone format everything correctly!), I decided to make a little compressed miniature me to be the mascot character that guides you through the entire thing! Or at least that's the plan. I don't know if I'll have enough energy left to implement it by the end of all this. I'm only halfway through the numbers - I have yet to even start laying out the actual pages or planning a format I'll want to stick to for the rest of my self-published patterns (if I decide to make any more in the future).

So what I've actually been trying to get around to saying is: I've really been rethinking my attitude towards purchasing patterns. I love to try to figure things out and reverse-engineer patterns just by looking at them, so of course I'm not very given to purchasing patterns so that someone else can tell me how to do something - something that I want to try to figure out myself first before I go and look at the answer, gosh! But now that I'm on the other side of the pattern designing table, I'm starting to think that even if I can just recreate the pattern I want to knit (even if it is a pattern for sale), especially considering the fact that I'll probably have to recalculate numbers anyway since I rarely get gauge (different yarns and all), I should maybe just fork over the $7~$10 for the pattern anyway, just to show a bit of gratitude towards the designer for all that they've done. But that also means a lot of stuff in my queue is going to get shoved down, since I haven't actually bought any of the patterns yet.