Christmas is coming...

I have half a million Christmas projects, as usual, but I hope I can find some time to embroider some of these designs I have from one of my favorite TV Christmas specials:



I don't know what I will embroider them on, but they just make me smile! Embroidering a bunch on a sweatshirt would be too cutesy and I wouldn't wear it. Would embroidering one on a shirt still be too much? But which one? I love the abominable snow man. Polka dotted elephant is cute and so is the doll. Or Yukon Cornelius. Or Herbie. Maybe I'll just do ornaments.

Beautiful fabric

I love the fabric at Textile Arts. It's a bit too pricey for me, but I still can drool over it. These are some that I really like:







They also sell goods made in their wonderful fabrics, like these umbrellas:

Knitting and keeping busy

Knitting with others is awesome! Who knew? Lots of people, I know, but I just haven't been one of them. I went to my first knitting get together, "Stitch 'n Bitch", meetup ...or whatever you call it, on Wednesday. I met some fellow knitters and learned some great stuff and just enjoyed sitting, knitting, and chatting.

I was working on Liv but put it aside for two reasons: 1) I goofed and forgot to start increasing and 2) I started working on a gift for someone

#1 was easily remedied by a wonderful knitter at the meetup Wednesday night. I was two or three rows beyond where I was supposed to increase and rather than rip it back I was going to just increase too late and make up for it by increasing 7 rows later instead of 10. Well, Mary showed me how to go back to the row I was supposed to increase in, pick up a stitch and carry it up through the rows. Perfect! Plus, I was listening (imagine that!) when she mentioned that you have to carry the stitch through the rows correctly depending on whether it's a knit or a purl row. Well, good thing I was listening. Later on, while working on the gift I'm making, I found that I'd goofed up my seed stitch on the previous row. Just a small section at the end of the row where I put two knits together instead of a knit and a purl, so about 10 stitches were off pattern. Now I'm knitting something with 180 stitches per row. I was not going to undo nearly 360 stitches. I stopped and thought: can I take a knit stitch off and make it into a purl and vice versa? Yes! Happy dance. Problem fixed.

#2 reason for not knitting Liv is the 180 stitches per row gift I'm making. It's going to take a while to finish it but thankfully it's just seed stitch and if I goof up again I know how to fix it!

My husband asked if I'm into knitting more right now than sewing. Sort of. It's interesting that this time last year I dropped my sewing for knitting. It could be because winter is approaching and it's nice to curl up on the couch with some fiber. Although it doesn't get below freezing here in Northern California for more than a day or two, it does get chilly. We hit a low of 43 the other night! Brrr! :-) I still have a lot of sewing projects to do and somehow I'll fit them in around knitting. But with the high price of natural gas, the choice between sitting at my sewing machine in a fairly chilly room vs. sitting under a blanket on the couch will be fairly obvious, don't you think?

So my busy weekend is about to begin. Trunk show tonight. All-day seminar tomorrow. Sewing get together on Sunday. Whew!

Happy Halloween!

This is my latest creation: Spooky the Sock Cat. Spooky is snoozing by the pumpkin and bag of treats for the trick or treaters. When he closes his eyes he thinks he disappears, as black cats with black whiskers, seem to do.



Today I wore my yearly Halloween costume. It's a cut-out-and-sew-up vest I made a number of years ago when I was just getting back into sewing. Definitely something that's only worn on Halloween, or to a sewing convention if it happens to fall in late October.




Taking a cue from a vest my mom made (or rather ripping off her idea), I underlined the fabric with flannel and then "quilted" the vest by sewing around some of the characters. Even though the flannel wasn't thick enough to really give a quilted effect, it does make the vest feel a little more substantial than two pieces of thin cotton. Also mom's idea, I stuffed the witch's pot, the moon, and the scarecrow's hat and pumpkins with fiberfill.

I remember that I had fun making the vest. It was before my project list (and stash) overflowed. I made this when I was still learning to use my Pfaff and enjoyed using the embroidery stitches to write my name on the decorative tag and the blanket stitch to attach two more decorative patches to the inside of the vest.

My vest got a couple of notices at work, where no one else seemed to join in the Halloween spirit. One co-worker, who also sews and machine embroiders, gave me a nice compliment. She recognized the fabric and had made one herself, but mine was much nicer, she told me.

And now Halloween is nearly over and the vest will be put away for another year. We had more trick or treaters than last year...four! Last year we had none at all and it was a weekend and we were home. I can't explain it! We live in a typical suburban neighborhood so it's not like we don't have neighbors or kids around. Last year we hung blinky-light skeletons in the window and put out little lighted plastic jack o'lanterns. This year we didn't get around to it. There may have been some kids who came around earlier but we got stuck in traffic coming home from work. What is it about Halloween traffic? It's always bad. I suspect it's the recent time change and people "forget" how to drive in the dark. There also may be many parents trying to get home so their kids can trick or treat. Oh well, now I have to show restraint from eating the leftover candy, including the candy my co-workers will be sure to bring in tomorrow.

Frogging

I picked up Liv again after spending time finishing a UFO scarf and good grief, I've frogged the first inch or so 4 times. Four! I'm terrible at frogging back only a few rows. If it's one row I'll unknit (or unpurl) the stitches but in this case I'd only started so I just unraveled the whole darn thing. Four times. I learned in a Stitches class that when working a complicated pattern, include a strand of another color yarn a set number of rows apart. That way you can just unravel back to the colored yarn and slip your needles back on. Sure I'm working cables but I didn't think this was so complicated to warrant this approach. Now I'm not so sure. I seem to have a problem following the chart. I understand the chart, it's just that I think I know what it says without really looking at it and I keep messing up. And perfectionist me won't let that happen because I'm knitting the very visible, very eye-catching front cables. I want them to be correct, even if it means spending all evening to complete an inch four times over. Fortunately the yarn is holding up just fine and not splitting. Hooray for good yarn!

I'm all signed up for Stitches West. I registered for 12 hours of knitting classes on Saturday and Sunday and the banquet on Saturday night. I'm going by myself but hope to meet people, knit a lot, shop, and learn some more knitting skills.

I haven't been doing any sewing lately. I find it difficult to sew during the week because after we get home (late) from work and eat dinner, sometimes after stopping at the grocery store, we find ourselves on the couch with the TV on for the remaining few hours before we go to bed. We did manage to pry ourselves off the couch one night this week to get to the gym, but I overdid it and now I am very sore.

This weekend will probably be dedicated to packing up the living room (so we can start the room redo) and getting stuff together to donate. I'd like to do some sewing but if I don't , it's ok because the following weekend will be all sewing, all the time. My sewing guild is hosting Lyla Messinger for a trunk show on Friday and an all-day seminar on Saturday. Sunday is a get-together with my sewing friends I met on the internet. Busy weekend!

Lists

So many projects. So many projects.

These are just the home dec things I want to get done...someday.

1. Hem and join (via velcro so I can wash them later) blue velvet IKEA drapes for family room sliding door
2. Pillows using these fun low pile fabrics:



3. Valence for family room sliding door
4. Dining room drapes
5. Storage ottoman - Butterick 4677, the cube style one, covered in this ostrich skin pleather:



6. Finish faux fur throw - will definitely want this when we have the heat turned way down this winter to avoid monstrous natural gas bills.
7. Guest room drapes
8. Living room drapes - but first we have to redo the living room walls, floor and lighting.

Hmmm...one would think our house is quite drape-less due to my procrastination in getting these home dec projects done. Well, at least there are shades on the windows. So when are these going to get done with Christmas around the corner? Yes, I have a Christmas gift project list but for obvious reasons I can't post it here!

I'm still here

I'm here...just not blogging. I haven't been sewing but I have been knitting.

I finished the back of Liv and last night I finished the cabling at the bottom of the left side. I'm contemplating working the right side up to the same spot and then joining the two and knitting the rest of the front as one piece instead of knitting each separately and then stitching the two together down the center front. It just seems easier to me to knit it as one piece and I'm afraid of having different tensions by the time I stitch the right side. Of course I would have to interpret the pattern a little differently at the neck edge but then I'm already having to do a lot of interpreting due to being a lefty knitter. The back was easy since it was just reverse stockinette and when I got to the decreases I just had to swap the SSKs for the K2TOGs. The increases were a bit trickier. The author uses lifted increases, which I'd never done before. I thought the example in Viking Knits Collection didn't tell me everything so I looked in the other book I have by her, which helped but also was confusing. I sort of followed the instructions and sort of improvised and somehow got it to look just fine.

The cable pattern is knitted from a chart with one chart for the left side and one for the right. I knitted up a sample first and quickly realized that rather than read the chart backwards, as a lefty would normally have to do, I needed to knit the right side as the left and vice versa. And no swapping of SSKs and K2TOGs - just follow the chart. It worked. Though I'm sure glad this pattern doesn't continue for the whole sweater! I've knitted from charts before and after a while the pattern becomes a rhythm. This pattern requires a bit more concentration. The WS row was easy - it made sense when I needed to knit and when I needed to purl, but each RS row was different and it was very easy to confuse the cabling until I got the feel for where the cables were going. This was my very first time doing cables and I only frogged two entire rows twice, so I think that's pretty good. Of course I have three more visits with these charts.

Another thing I learned is that it's nice to knit with nice yarn and not so nice to knit with cheap stuff. If you're going to spend a long time handling the yarn, as you do when you knit a sweater, then I think the yarn should feel really good. Also, if it doesn't feel good to knit then it's probably not going to feel good to wear. I've decided that the acrylic/wool stuff I used for the sample will never be used for anything except samples. I couldn't wait to pick up the Cashcotton again. Very nice stuff.

Just because I've been knitting (while watching TV) doesn't mean I've forgotten about sewing. My Fall/Winter 2005 Marfy catalog arrived and I'm drooling over every page. Gorgeous clothes. I'm anxious to make the free patterns too: a short cape, a loose blouse, and a straight skirt for anyone curious about the free patterns. This is the first time I've ordered any Marfy but since Vogue is now selling some of the patterns, I thought I'd give them a try. I'd heard they were excellent patterns but not for the faint of heart. This is true as they don't provide instructions and the patterns have a lot of detail like darts, pleats, pockets, and ruffles...and the details are often used very creatively. But as I sew more and more, often using the very sparse instructions in the Burda magazines, I'm getting more confident and knowledgeable in my sewing. So why not? At the very least I have a cool catalog of Italian fashion to browse.

On my sewing table are the beginnings of my Month of Softies entry. The very beginnings. Not a stitch has been stitched and scissors have not yet been applied, but hopefully I'll get there.

Tonight I'm going to a sewing guild neighborhood meeting. One just started up in the evening for all of us sewers who have to work to support our fabric habits and can't attend during one of the many daytime meetings. Should be fun.