I Figured Out Something Everyone Already Knows!

Time to sew my knitting. The knit fabric was curling, so I wet-blocked it and started to pin it out. The yarn bloomed and grew, something I've read about, but it was a first for me. Fortunately I had the schematic, so I patted it into place as close to the size I wanted as possible. After it dried, I pinned the knitted fabric to the woven fabric as specified, and sewed. The result was... uninspiring.

Halfway through the second one, it occurred to me that hand-basting it first would solve all the problems I was having with the knit fabric shifting around. As an added bonus, I stopped sticking myself on pins! It was tremendously easier to ease in the extra fullness as well.

I realize all the sewers already know about hand-basting, but for a while today I felt like I'd invented anti-gravity. It was completely worth the tedious time it took to pick out the first seam and a half.

 

 After hand-basting, machine-sewing the seams was a snap, and I am very pleased with the result.

Next up, embroidery!

Crayons

Finished my colorful project. Every time I picked it up, it was like opening a new box of crayons. When I started looking for a pattern for this yarn, which was a bit of an impulse buy, I was astonished at the number of people who paired it with something else to "tone it down." I bought it for the colors, I had no intention of toning it down. This person did I really nice shawl out of a single skein of this yarn, but I avoid triangle shapes when I can. I found a better shape from the same designer, but swapped out freely to get what I wanted - yarn-over instead of knit-into-front-and-back increases, stockinette sections instead of garter. I did about an inch of a picot bind off before deciding I wasn't loving it, and used the double-chain bind off instead, for maximum stretch.

I then lost nearly all my love for it when it came to blocking. It was my brain, not the knitting. I pulled out all the pins and walked away for a few hours. When I came back it took me no time at all to block out the shape I wanted. The wait made the garter tab stick up more, but it will settle down with wear.

It's pretty clear that this is going to look fabulous over a black clergy shirt, so I have gifted it to KD.

Needles: US 6 (4.00 mm)
Yarn: the utterly wonderful Cascade Yarns Heritage Paints in Rainbow Mix, which I bought from the Simply Socks Yarn Company entirely so that I could get the free project bag on offer. In fact, I've just bought another skein to obtain a different bag; this could become a problem.
Pattern: improvised well past the point of just calling it modifications

Knitting plus Sewing, Because Life Is Strange Now

The next legacy project is going to be... interesting. I think it was a kit. I have the pattern - and thank goodness, because it's not on Ravelry. There was no yarn with the project. Fortunately, the knitting is nearly complete. I couldn't match the  beautiful shade of blue that was used, so I bought some navy blue that at least doesn't swear with it. I also bought some matching DMC floss. Floss? Well.

There are two sleeves with side pieces -

- which get attached to the central fabric piece using a (gasp!) sewing machine, and then seamed up like any side and sleeve. Since mattress stitch is invisible, my navy yarn won't show.

At that point all that is left is the knit border around the bottom, neck, and front edges of the fabric. So how do you knit on to fabric? According to the instructions, it involves -  brace yourself - embroidery. That's right. You take the above-mentioned embroidery floss and a needle and make a line of chain stitch around the edges of the fabric, just inside the selvedge.  In case that's not enough mixed fabric arts for your day, you then take a crochet hook and yarn and work a row of single crochet into the chain stitch. Then, and only then, do you whip out your knitting needle, knit into the top of the single crochet stitches, and knit the rest of the border. (Wait. What if I used an afghan needle and Tunisian crochet? Then the stitches would already be on a needle for knitting.)

Head spinning yet? My sister chose to work regular twisted rib cuffs on the sleeves rather than the odd-but-interesting border pattern called for. I just worked up a little of it to be sure it didn't somehow magically look like twisted rib. Nope. So at least once I get through all the mixed fabric arts I can just work some soothing twisted rib for the border.

I might miter the corners. Can one do that in ribbing? It's tempting. It will eventually need buttons. Unless I sew on clasps. What's a little hand-sewing at that point? I draw the line at installing a zipper. That's in my future, along with learning to steek.

The Current Rotation

I'm working on some socks, which I originally intended for DH, but there wasn't enough yarn, so I'm remaking them for me (love the yarn, love the pattern, love the result).

So of course I have cast on another sock, trying out basketweave socks with separate colors, using leftover yarn, instead of the (to me) muddied result of using a variegated yarn.

I'm also working on something colorful -

- and something with barely any color changes at all.

So of course, I'm about to start something new.

Someone Else's Turn to Sew

Once the waistband was finished, everything else was a breeze. Sewed the side seams, finished the strap edges, hemmed it, sewed on the pocket. I hate hems when the fabric gets wider as it gets longer. The solution seems to be small hems, cutting off the excess. I can see that wouldn't work for a child's garment, though.

The pocket turned out to be easier than I had thought because I had misunderstood the directions.

I wonder if one is supposed to remove the basting stitches?

All done.

Legacy Project: Woven Front Sweater

We left our readers with live stitches at an unfinished hem, one sleeve cap, and no sleeves. Finishing the last few inches of the hem went so fast I have no record of it. Attaching the sleeve cap was a matter of matching up stripes on the front and employing mattress stitch.

The seaming fell, by brilliant design, at a place in the color work that made it absolutely disappear.

I initially thought that the ends of the sleeve cap ended at the start of the underarm gusset, but when I realized I had exactly the same number of stitches for both, I attached them straight across.

Time for the sleeves. I began by marking the top center of the cap and then picking up every loop in sight at the edge of the cap, making sure I had the same amount front and back. I started knitting, and within an inch I knew it was too many stitches, because the fabric was puckering around the picked-up seam. I compared my stitch total to other worsted weight sweaters in the same size range. That was interesting because I was comparing my sleeve to cuff-up sleeves and had to decide that I wanted the number of stitches just before any shoulder/cap shaping. Yep, definitely too many. So I picked up every other stitch, and then knit, adding the missing stitch after every 3rd stitch, which resulted in the 4 out of 5 stitches that is so often recommended, and that worked out fine.  Another inch along and I realized I needed to go down a needle size.

Then it was time to decide on length. I looked at the average length of my comparison sleeves to decide what length I wanted. I looked at my row gauge. I did math. I wound up wanting to decrease 20 stitches, and halfway through decreasing every 6th row I realized my math was off. Before I could rip back, KD suggested just decreasing the second half every 4th row, and that worked out perfectly. I added a stripe of color to tie in with the color work in the pattern, matching the reverse stockinette used. I worked 2 inches of 1x1 purl in the next smaller size needle, and then tried several bind offs before realizing the one I wanted.

I love this bind off. It goes by so many names - tubular, invisible, 1x1, Italian. I think of it as the cuff bind off I could never figure out on store-bought sweaters. How do they DO that? Well, I’m doing it, but I still don’t know how. Unlike Kitchener Stitch, which I’m an old hand at, I don’t really understand how what I’m doing is creating the result. Just like my beginner days with Kitchener, I have to follow the instructions by rote, trusting that someone out there knows what they’re doing. Also like my early years of Kitchener, I have to be careful: it matters that the loose loop of yarn being drawn through the needles stays in front of and below the knitting needles.

Needles: US 7, US 6, US 5
Yarn: Berroco Vintage in Cracked Pepper and Dried Plum
Pattern: who knows
Destination: the box, unless someone knows who it would fit. It's a 40" chest and 18" sleeves, meant for 2-3" of positive ease. It's got a turtleneck-small neck. And I still have some ends to weave in.

That's Better

So much going on at waistbands! Finally this half has everything going off in the right direction and facing the right way. Now I just have to do it again on the other half. And I'm running out of time, someone else has put in a request for the table.

Legacy: Four-Color Socks

For this project, I had the yarn in a bag marked "socks for" the recipient. But no pattern. Four skeins of gorgeous color, fingering weight, washable wool. I searched on four-color socks in Ravelry and came up with a pattern in a book that I own, and that I know my sister owned a copy of. So it's possible she had this pattern in mind.

A lot of Ravelry commenters give this pattern grief, which is only half-deserved. Corrugated ribbing, as we have learned, can be worked in 2-row sets, working color A stitches and slipping color B, then reversing it on the next row. In practice, two such rows equal one row of knitting. So people reading through the pattern who have never done 2-color ribbing thought that the heel and toe would be comically long, when in fact they were just fine as written. That my heel flaps are a skosh long is my own fault, since I was off on the first sock by two rows and decided it was better to make them match than to rip out half a sock to fix it.

The toes, though, were another matter. The pattern is actually written in a very ambiguous way, and despite leaving clever notes for myself after the first sock, I had to figure it out all over again on the second sock.

But all in all, it was worth it. I like them a lot, and if they wind up a tad large for the recipient, they'll make nice slipper socks.

Needles: US 1½ (2.5 mm)
Yarn: a mystery Maryland Sheep and Wool purchase from another year
Pattern: Anna Tillman's Classic Fair Isle from knitted socks (which is out of print)

Nope. Also, Nope.

I knew that the waistband was going to be the fiddly bit of this project, since everything connects there. I just didn't know HOW fiddly.

First attempt at attaching the sash:

Nope. Despite the instruction to sew with right sides together, the sash wound up backwards to the skirt.

Okay, let's try the other side. Possibly they meant the right sight of the fabric sash should face the right side of the skirt, despite the fact that they do not touch.

Also, nope. And much worse, since sealing up the waistband would have meant completely enclosing the sash.

Excuse me while I go pick apart some seams.

Just Right

I finished my Little Something. and it was a joy from start to finish.

Bonus: it holds my little iPod. The bag's a little wide for it, but who know to what other uses I may put this Useful bag For Putting Things In.

Yarn: 30 yards of Koigu KPPPM in 527P
Needles: US 2 (2.75 mm)
Pattern: Marl Hal Cochran Davis, handwritten, unnamed

I already have something equally joy-giving on the needles:

Bumps in the Road

I have learned to make nice, neat narrow hems.

As long as they are straight. A curved narrow hem seems to be beyond my abilities, and I am casting about for alternatives.

Definitive nonsense

I was amusing myself last night while cleaning the kitchen by remembering the words to a nonsense song from my youth. Nonsense was a definite part of my childhood, with plenty of Edward Lear and Lewis Carrol, but also a goodly amount of the kind passed along by word of mouth. There’s a poem that was passed down through at least four generations of my family as an oral treasure that was never written down. The internet put an end to that fancy when we found it in A Nonsense Anthology, edited by Carolyn Wells and published in 1902¹. It was still fun to memorize and pass along to my children.

But back to last night’s song: more lines and verses came back to me each time I ran the song through my mind. Eventually, work done, I googled the lyrics. Unsurprisingly, there were multiple versions. Oral history gets mangled in repetition, and even if YOU remember the words perfectly, who’s to say the person who taught it to you did?

This morning I have been occupied, while doing chores, with thinking through why MY version is the correct one. (Which is not to say that the way you learned/remembered/sing it is not correct - for you.) I realized that the version I preferred, in every case, was the one which made no sense. If it is a thing that could happen, that explains why that version is remembered, but it cannot be authentic to the song.

Here is my preferred version, with variants and explanations in the notes below:

Jeep²

Oh, I was born one night one morn

When the whistle went boom boom.³

You can fry a cake or bake a steak⁴

When the mud pies are in bloom.

Does six and six make nine?⁵

Does ice grow on a vine?

Is Old Black Joe an Eskimo

In the good ol’ summertime?

Oh, loop-de-loop⁶ in the noodle soup

Just to give your socks a shine.

I’m a guilty judge,⁷ I ate the fudge.

Three cheers for auld lang syne!

I cannot tell a lie

I hocked⁸ an apple pie

It’s in a tree beneath the sea,

Above the deep⁹ blue sky!

If Easter eggs don’t wash¹⁰ their legs

Their children will have ducks (quack quack)

I’d rather buy a lemon pie¹¹

For forty-seven bucks (too much!)

Way down in Barcelonia

I jumped into the phonia¹²

But this is all balonia

Paderewski blow your horn (toot toot)!¹³

-----
¹Available via Project Gutenberg here, and search on “heart” - you’ll know it when you see it, family! For the rest, it’s To Marie by John Bennett.
²This is the perfect title for a song that has nothing whatsoever to do with vehicles, transportation, or the military. It is often found online as The Nonsense Song, or The Lunatic's Lullaby, which are accurate -- and therefore bad -- titles.
³“Toot toot” is a common variant, but in fact that is precisely what steam whistles do in old cartoons, and therefore cannot be correct. Also, “boom boom” preserves the rhyme scheme.
⁴Variations reverse the order of the foods, but it doesn’t matter as long as the method of cooking is ridiculous.
⁵I didn’t remember these four lines at all. “Old man Joe” is sometimes seen, but Old Black Joe, In the Good Old Summertime, and Auld Lang Syne were all well-known songs in the past.
⁶Sometimes seen as “loop the loop,” possibly a dialectal isogloss.
⁷Sometimes “I’m guilty, judge” but the above version is more nonsensical.
⁸Variations include “hooked” and “hawked,” clearly mondegreens.
⁹Also seen as “bright” and “great,” which of course make too much sense.
¹⁰“Shave” is sometimes seen, which is a bit anachronistic given the likely age of this ditty.
¹¹I remembered “lemon drop,” which destroys the internal rhyme and was clearly influenced by Another Song.
¹²I remembered “foamia,” which makes too much sense to be correct.
¹³Paderewski was a famous pianist, so blowing a horn is the proper nonsense. One version had “red rooster” as a lovely mondegreen.

Legacy Project: Mittens

With the recipient known, one nearly-finished mitten, all the remaining yarn, and access to the pattern my sister used, I thought finishing these mittens was going to be a piece of cake. Boy, was I wrong! I am enjoying the challenge of finishing these projects; this one just took longer than I expected.

For one thing, her work didn't match the chart, or number of stitches, in the pattern. And I couldn't just "read" the knitting, because she randomly slipped a stitch or knit two stitches together. I worked up a chart that semi-matched what she'd done. And since neither thumb had been done, I did what I wanted there.

It also turns out that my sister did color work in a way I don't and never have. There's probably a name for it, but I don't know what it's called: she twisted the two colors after every.single.stitch. I wound up adopting her method for the back of the mitten, but not the palm.

It took many, many attempts to match my sister's gauge. By now I have a pretty good idea what the difference between her gauge and mine is, but that color work method threw everything off.

They're not an exact match, but close enough, and the recipient will always know which one my sister made, which is no bad thing.

At Least the Cutting Out Is Done

Aren't you done yet? ask my imaginary readers. How long does it take to sew something together, anyway? Look how fast those masks went!

This vintage sewing pattern is from 1943, and like cooking recipes from that period, assumes you know what you are doing, which I do not. Case in point: no layout is suggested for the pattern pieces. Figuring it out for myself was actually kind of fun, like a jigsaw puzzle.

DH helped with the cutting. I went through four pairs of sewing shears before finally finding my left-handed pair, which at least did not torture my hand. I HATE scissors; it's a wonder I made it through kindergarten.

Carefully clipped and marked pieces, with pattern removed for maximum later confusion!

Then I spent two days adjusting the tension on the sewing machine. The first day, nothing I tried worked, and I walked away. The next day I  discovered that it wasn't the tension that was the problem, it was the bobbin threading into the machine. Got that sorted and inserted a smaller needle, and I was finally ready to go.

Bad

Acceptable

Did I mention that the instructions don't provide detailed guidance? For instance, it tells you how to assemble one half, and assumes you will know enough to go back and do the same for the other half. It has you baste down things that it never tells you to go back and actually sew down, and I don't know if I'm even supposed to.

Time to pin the first seam. I looked at it, and then pinned the seam on the other side. Stop, stop! cry my imaginary readers. You've pinned the wrong sides together on the second seam!

Nope

Yup

Ah. Early on I noticed the options for finishing seams and hated all of them. Pinking shears? See third paragraph above. I disliked the other options, although not as passionately. Fortunately my mom taught me a better option a good forty years ago. So between pinning the first seam and pinning the second - and before sewing anything - I decided French seams were the way to go. Ta-da!

That's right: I can't thread a bobbin but I can manage French seams. Are we having fun yet?

Legacy yarn: Because. Just Because.

A colorway of sock yarn I inherited from my sister spoke to me immediately as needing to be socks for a family member. I can't explain why, and I had no doubts, but it was nice to show them to other people who immediately agreed.

Needles: US 1 (2.25 mm)
Yarn: mystery fingering yarn, plus KnitPicks Essential in Pumpkin for the heels and toes
Pattern: mine own

It's awfully hard to capture an in-focus picture of this yarn. Something about the way the colors change?

A Sewing Project Begins

Some years back I gave my fancy Pfaff sewing machine, which can dance a tarantella on the head of a pin if you speak its language, to the Daughter Who Sews. I picked up a Singer Talent that can just barely do buttonholes and zigzags - much more my level. In the intervening years I can guarantee that my husband has used it more than I have. But that is about to change.

Did you know that nowadays you can buy sewing patterns - especially vintage patterns - as downloadable pdfs? Then you set your printer as instructed, print out the pattern, and put together a jigsaw puzzle.

Once all the piece of paper are butted together with tape, you cut out the pattern pieces.

Once the fabric I bought arrived, I zigzag'd the cut edges, then washed, dried, and ironed it.

Now I have put in a request for Use of the Dining Room Table, which is currently hosting projects associated with a vegetable garden, and carpentry. When my number in the queue comes up, I will pin the fabric layers together, trace the pattern, and cut out the pieces.

(Just checking, O Sewing Mentor, that trying to cut out fabric - using a cutting board - on my bed would be as hard on my back as wrapping Christmas presents there?)

Not the Sewing Project I Was Looking For

I resisted the whole face mask thing for quite a while. Home-made masks don't protect one from this virus, and while they do protect other people if the wearer is infected, I worried that wearing them would lead to a false sense of immunity.

But the people whose expertise I trust now recommend wearing them while out in public - as opposed to just outside - and so I buckled down to providing some for at least the people who do the shopping for this household.

Two fat quarters donated from Sewing Daughter's fabric stash provided enough material for three masks following these guidelines. I was about 15 minutes from finishing the first one when a request came in from a family member required - with no warning - to wear one to work this morning. So I finished that one off last evening, and accomplished a no-contact delivery. I finished the other two this morning.

I turned up some scrap cotton to make a few more, in case of further emergency needs. And then I hope to be done with that kind of sewing. It put me in mind of the time I sewed a flag (guidon) for a cavalry unit to carry into war, long ago and far away. I remember telling my mom that I felt like Betsy Ross, except that I had three small children underfoot while I did it. The unit returned it with thanks afterwards, and I've still got it around somewhere.

New Horizons

I'm still knitting, but I'm also breaking up my days with other crafts.

I'm not sure this counts as sewing, but it's my new favorite thing and I have a terrific sense of accomplishment that has a lot to do with how many years it's taken me to get around to it.

I've been building a space to retreat to when I need some time alone; borrowing a chair, moving in a table and lamp, etc. The gauzy curtains I hung years ago with visions of them floating in a summer breeze still hung at the window, sad and dusty, and hacked off to the approximate length.

First I threw them in the washer, absolutely convinced that between the amount of dust and the unfinished edge they would dissolve into thread. To my astonishment, they barely frayed at all, and cleaned up to their original white without any special additions to the laundry at all.

So I finally broke out the hemming tape that came with them, and has lived a few feet away from them all this time. I fired up the iron, broke out my heirloom yardstick to use as a straight edge, and went to town.

I'm pretty sure every one of my blog readers is a family member, but just in case, the yardstick is from my grandfather's store.

I measured and folded and ironed in a crease, then unfolded and placed the tape and ironed again. Instant gratification! Today I put them back in the window.

 

If only all sewing was this easy!

Nearly There

I've been working on these for months. It's one of the legacy projects, and matching one mitten to an existing mitten was a wild ride. More about that when they're finished. I am So.Close. to being done.

Souvenir Scarf

The yarn that I bought by mistake made a really lovely scarf for KD. I searched on the yarn and yardage in Ravelry and came upon a scarf pattern that was awesome. The original scarf pattern was clever, but didn't appeal to me. However, the someone who worked it in the yarn I had on hand had converted the pattern to brioche, and it was awesome!

I taught myself the Italian cast on, a brioche selvedge stitch, and tubular bind off. And wound up working the woven part twice because I made the strips too long, which made the weave too loose. But now it's done, and pretty as a picture!

Needles: US 8 (5.00 mm)
Yarn: Cascade 220 Heather in Tangerine Heather
Pattern: Patricia Everett's Celtic Knot Looped Scarf
Mods: Worked the scarf in brioche stitch