slouchy hat

One of the purposes of fall is to wear hats. Soft, warm, textured hats that makes your cheeks feel even rosier. And if you make the hat yourself, and the yarn is lovely and delicate, and the color is perfect, and the leafy lace pattern is the most enjoyable pattern you’ve knit in a long time, well – that’s a fall hat.

The yarn came from a sweater I took apart last winter. It really was a thin yarn, so I ended up knitting with it double, so the hat wouldn’t end up too thin or fall apart if you looked at it the wrong way. The lace pattern is from last winters Vogue knitting magazine, originally on a cardigan.

To use the pattern on the hat, I first figured out about how many stitches I needed for the circumference of the hat (I think about 150 – found out by trial and error, knitting the ribbing). Then, knowing how many stitches the repeat of the lace pattern was (10 stitches), I got 15 repeats of the pattern, and exactly 150 stitches. I might have increased or decreased after the ribbing was done – I don’t remember. But! It’s not hard to apply repeat patterns from other types of garments to a hat. The best thing is that the yarn-weight doesn’t matter; you’ve already figured out how many stitches you need to get the right size hat, and so the number of repeats will just be what it is. Decreasing towards the crown was the hardest part – especially with a lace pattern to consider. I made it all up as I went, but it was the only time I wished I had instructions to refer to.

Not quite fall yet in this picture – I finished it during the summer, before sending it off to Berlin.

Knitting this, it was lovely to feel something else than stockinette under my fingers, just yummy textured softness. There is more left of this yarn, so don’t be surprised to see something similar to the hat in the future! This particular one is already at its new home in Berlin, where fall has begun, and the hat is in use. Just like it was meant to.

http://indigorchid.wordpress.com/2008/12/13/yarnfest/

sweater refashioned

Always a sucker for a good thriftstore find, I picked up a grey, slightly boxy sweater a while back. The label read 75 % silk and 15 % cashmere, so I just couldn’t leave it behind!

Buttoning isn’t always easy.

First up, I sewed two parallel seams down the front, and cut in the middle of them. I wanted to prevent any potential fraying, but the sweater-fabric was very well behaved. I positioned the seams slightly to the left of the center, so that the opening would remain centered after overlapping the two edges. I also took in the sides a couple of centimetres at the waist, to get a better fit.

Next I sewed on some dark blue linen lace at the edge of the side that would be covered when the cardigan is buttoned. I thought it would look sweet with a bit of lace peeking out, but it was more drab than anything. The dark color didn’t help, and neither did the fact that there was no embellishment really visible when it was all buttoned up. It needed something more bold!

I thought about some sunny, yellow, machine embroidered swirls, but I was worried it might turn out a little too bright and almost pastel-like for my taste. Fortunately, I found a scrap of  lovely, moodier yellow fabric in my stash, which worked perfectly with the grey. I love freehand machine embroidery, so I found a thread to match the color of the sweater, and set to it.

Terrible mixed incandescent and natural lighting.

On my trusty Bernina, all I have to do is switch to the embroidery foot (It’s more or less just a circle, like a tiny embroidery hoop), set the stitch length and width to zero, and lower the transporter. This allows the needle to just go up and down, while I’m creating the pattern by moving the fabric. Lots of fun!

We’re still getting some half-chilly days here, so while I’m waiting for the summer heat, I have something to cover up with!

thrift score

I went thrifting today with a friend, and man, was it successful! Between the thriftstore and the yard sale we went to, I got two dresses, a couple of sweaters, a couple of belts, a bag and a pair of shoes. I was very impressed with the selection, and with gorgeous weather to boot, it was one nice day. A couple of things need a little tender loving mending-care before they are ready to be worn, but in the meanwhile, I’m ready to step in as an extra on Mad Men in my wholly thrifted outfit:

Even the chair in the picture is thrifted (but not today, I got it many months ago. It’s waiting for new upholstery), and the glasses once belonged to my mom, back when she had barely turned twenty. I had new glass lenses set into the frames, and I keep them around to use when the fancy strikes. I realized the dress must be fairly old. I found several labels inside with old fashioned fonts,  one reading Int’l Ladies Garment Workers Union. I also found a couple of cotton armpit-patches, safety-pinned in! The dress unfortunately has a couple of spots with moth damage, but otherwise it fits like a glove.

The patent leather belt set me back a mere dollar. I’ll take that.

The yard sale we went to was more of a closing sale, I guess, than anything else. A couple of women who did styling/costuming was closing their warehouse space, and held a sale in the backyard of a coffee-shop. It was lovely, and jam-packed with cheap goodies, among them, the handbag and these shoes. I loved my new shoes so much I changed into them at once. The heel-shape is so nice, and the detail on the front really makes the whole shoe.

More thrifted goodness to be shown later! And real April weather – welcome.

thrifted jacket

Last weekend, the boy and out went out for a walk in the neighbourhood, and quite randomly stopped by the local thriftstore. I found this jacket, and at $7 it was quite a steal!

The tag says it’s from a 2004 season, and it’s in excellent condition. Now – I actually already have another couple of double-breasted trench-looking jackets in different lengths – but in black. I guess I’ll have myself quite a collection if I keep this up! The hat, scarf, mittens and skirt is made/remade by me, and the shoes are thrifted.

The appearance of this skirt in two consecutive posts is purely random – this is the first time since last post I’ve worn it. And, I think this door might be my new photoshoot spot – I seem to gravitate towards this place for outfit pictures.

I haven’t had a finished project to show off in quite a while now. I have been happily crafting, I just seem to be at the same stage of all of my projects; the middle. Haha! I think I will have some finished this soon though, especially with the anticipated Spring Break currently upon me.

yarnfest

I’m making myself some mittens, matching these ones that I made the boy a year ago. The colors and yarn are a bit different this time around – most notably the yarn is a little thicker and loftier, so the mittens might turn out a different size than the original pair! The yarn is from Stonehedge Fiber Mills in Michigan, and wow! It is unbelievably soft! I can’t wait to get my hands toasty in this pile of softness when I’m all done.

The pattern will be about the same as the finished mittens, but with darker gray on the lighter gray background.

I’m also quite smitten with my first attempts at frogging, or recycling yarn. I came across this concept on several blogs some months ago, so I thrifted a couple of sweaters with the intention of taking them apart, unravelling, and knitting them up into something new, recycled, and lovely. This link gives a great and detailed tutorial on how to do just that. As it turns out, one of the sweaters I got had “bad seams”, or overlocked seams, meaning the yarn would be cut, and not be in one continuous thread. Fortunately, it was an all wool sweater, so it can be felted, and then turned into something lovely.

Two sweaters in various stages of deconstruction, and our bike-wheel fireplace centerpiece (the fireplace is nonfunctional).

I also went about my unravelling attempts all wrong, according to the online tutorials – starting at the bottom. Every step should be done (or undone I guess) in the reverse order, so this explains why I had such a hard time getting the sweater apart! The first one is a cotton/wool blend in a tweedy black, begging to be turned into a more shapely sweater than its ultra-baggy XL original self. The second one is a denim blue, soft wool/nylon/angora blend. The yarn is quite thin, and breaks a little too easily, and from some unpicking accidents a lot of the yarn is coming out in shorter lengths (ops!). I’ve scrapped the idea of turning it into a new sweater – I don’t think there is enough yarn left at this point, but all of a sudden it became obvious what I should make, and for whom. I adore when projects just pop up fully fashioned like that! Well, in my mind, at least.

Now that the semester is at an end,  and more time is on my hands, I feel some creativity urges coming back in time for the holiday season. Still, this will be a very low key Christmas when it comes to gifting. I might take my tendency to send off gifts a little late a step further, and just send out handmade things randomly whenever the ideas are conceived and realized. Perhaps that’s the way things should be.