Yarn Along: Shawls and Doocots and Puddle Ducks, Oh My!

~knitting~

I'm finally showing off my Seafoam Textured Shawl (after teasing it in multiple pics last week).  This is the shawl I finished over the summer and put away for cooler weather.  

 

I wasn't sure how well it was going to play with the other clothes in my closet, given the shade, but it actually is kind of my favorite thing right now.  

 

It goes with so much, and some stuff that is maybe iffy, I'm like, it goes because I say it goes.  Ha!  I love the texture and the size, and the way it drapes--it's just right.

The Doocot is also coming along nicely.  I've finished the body and am working on the sleeves.  I'm through the decreases on the one side and now just adding length until the ribbing.  The color is really off on the photo; it is a lovely shade of heathered blue.  I am playing a bit of yarn chicken, though.  I was short to start with, and bought two additional skeins to get up to the recommended yardage, but I just added the second to last skein and I still have a whole sleeve + neck ribbing to go, plus finishing the current sleeve.  Might have to bite it and get another skein.

Next on needles is a Puddle Duck for Ponchik (stashed yarn to be determined), a raglan cardigan for Birdie (yarn also to be determined), and a raglan pullover for Boo from some stashed black-gray wool.

~reading~

Now that Scruton is off my stack, I'm on to When Breath Becomes Air, after a friend loaned me her copy and raved about it.  So far it has been a gripping read.  

Not much else to report this month.  Made a few skirts, watched way too much CSI: NY and ignored my watchlist all together.  I hope to get back to intelligent watching soon.

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!

Corduroy Madness (part the third)

Last one, I promise.  This is the final corduroy skirt I made, and I'm really happy with all three additions to my closet.  I did take some time yesterday to take in the blue skirt, as I realized it was too big in the waist and was droopy. 

To fix it, I pulled off the back part of the waistband only, and took in the larger of the two darts about 1/4" each, and then reattached the waistband and sewed on the button.  I had to trim quite a bit off the waistband to make the edge nice, but after that it was easy to sew on the button and add a snap.  (I had added a snap to my rust skirt and liked the fit better). 

But about this skirt.  It is the Kaufman 14 wale corduroy in the oregano colorway, and it is a lovely cool green-gray color.  The color looks different depending on the light.  Sometimes it looks more spruce colored and other times more charcoal colored.  I did sew it with dark green thread, but it is a nice neutral color, I think.  The hardest part was finding a zip to match.  I ended up using a spinach one in my box, which is close enough.  The button is a random one from my box that probably was an extra from a garment somewhere along the line, but is an indeterminate color of greenish-brownish-gray.  In other words, perfect for this skirt. 

The construction details are pretty much the same as the rust skirt, including the pocket facing (which I neglected to mention in the post on that skirt).  I just cut a 1" wide strip the same length as the pocket opening and applied as with bias (even though the strip isn't cut on the bias).  It worked a treat. 

Another handworked buttonhole, which was kind of a pain because of the thickness of the material, but it looks nice.  I also tried to center the button over the top of the zip this time, which I think worked.  

I did not interface the waistband on this one, in part because I ran out of petersham and didn't want to wait for more to arrive in the mail.  I suppose if the waistband behaves badly, I can open it up and add it in later, but for now it seems okay.  This corduroy is really heavy, so the petersham doesn't really stabilize the waistband so much as add bulk.

That's all I have for today!  I just got off the phone with my final beta reader and I think I'm about ready to resubmit the manuscript.  I'd appreciate your prayers for this next stage of the process.

Talking Tuesday: Notes from Underground

Ancient church of St. Catherine, Athens, Greece

 I finally finished Roger Scruton's Notes from Underground and wanted to share a passage from the book.  It's not a long book, but I will say that while the book starts out engaging and page-turning, the middle sags a bit, and then the ending is stunningly good.  That's probably why it took me so long to get through it.  I got bogged down in the middle.  (In interests of honesty, I did "grad school read" the middle once I realized I was in danger of not finishing the book, but I have no regrets because if I'd given up, I'd have missed the great bits in the last quarter of the book).  The book is set toward the end of the Cold War in Czechoslovakia, and follows a samizdat writer on a journey of discovery.

In the last quarter of the book, the narrator, Jan, has a number of conversations with a priest, Father Pavel.  It is through these conversations that Jan moves toward a spiritual awareness.  I wouldn't call his experience a conversion, necessarily, but he asks a lot of good questions, and becomes aware of the state of his soul.  The following is a conversation between Fr. Pavel and Jan.

"'There is another person inside you, Jan, one who lives in imagination, who rejects reality as second best.'

'Is that how you read my life?'

'Your life is a fiction.  You decided to love fictions, since they couldn't harm you.  I am not referring to the girl from Divoká Šárka only, though it is important to learn that you imagined her.  Nor are you the only person who lives this way.  This is their greatest achievement, to divide our country in two, on the one hand the cynics who live without moral and who know the price of everything, and on the other hand the pure souls who know the price of nothing and who therefore recoil into the world of imagination to pursue their beautiful dreams.'

'And you,' I asked. 'Which are you?'

As suddenly as it had vanished, his old face returned, and he looked at me with that indescribable softness, brushing the lock of hair from his forehead and nodding as though in receipt of some undeniable truth.

'I know only that God has withdrawn from the world, and he makes each person feel this in his own way.  Oh, I have had my share of phantoms.  I have pursued imaginary loves just as you have.  But i have learned to consign my life to what is absent and untouchable.'

'You talk in riddles, Father.'

'No, Jan, it is you who live in riddles.  For a long time now you have wanted to talk to me about the thing that really matters in your life, and you have avoided it, as though all change were to come from outside you--a change in our political system, for instance, another invasion, a strike by the StB.'

'So what really matters in my life?'

Was it part of Father Pavel's duty as a priest to be prying in this way?  I guessed that it was.  For all his sophistication, he believed in that thing call the soul--duše--whose name in Czech evokes the disarming softness of his manner.  He believed in the other Jan inside me, the one who had never belonged to the world of daylight, and whose eternal destiny was Father Pavel's personal concern,  But this too was fiction, and by believing it, Father Pavel put himself beside me, on a precarious ledge above the abyss of nothingness.

'Let me tell you first what matters to them.  It is not only that you must live, as Václav Havel says, within the lie.  It is also that you must create a life in which truth and falsehood are no longer distinguishable, so that the only thing that counts is your own advantage, to be pursued in whatever way you can.  By this means we learn to distrust each other, and every call to love enshrines a summons to betrayal.  The precious element from which the soul itself is built, the element of sacrifice, which caused one person to lay down his life for the rest of us, this precious element is extracted from all our dealings and cast onto the dustheap of history.  When I pray, I pray to that person who is the way, the truth, and the life.'

...

Sitting with Father Pavel in that ruined church, with the broken chairs piled up in one corner, two candles in cracked cups on the rickety altar, and the stained painting of the saint, and the windows smashed and boarded up, I knew that I was in a consecrated space, that all thought and speech had a different meaning here, as music has a different meaning when it is breathed into the silence.  Father Pavel's God had withdrawn from the world, but as the sea withdraws, leaving behind it these little pools of clear water in which the spirit still lives.  And whatever our condition, however tainted we were by those sordid calculations by which we were forced to live, we could bathe in these secret waters and be refreshed" (pp 191-194).

Excerpt:
Scruton, Roger.  Notes from Underground: A Novel.  New York: Beaufort Books, 2014.

Corduroy Madness (part the second)

It will come as a surprise to no one that I have a weakness for the color rust.  It is one of the few "earth" tones that I can wear and not look washed out (jewel tones suit my coloring better) and I find rust to be incredibly versatile, particularly in a skirt.  So much so, that I've had several versions over the years. 

(I looked at those posts again last night as I was thinking about this new make, and realized that my style has changed in the last four or five years, and while I've learned a few more sewing tricks, I'm still kind of tracking in one lane skill-wise.  That's okay, though.  That's my season of life, and I'd rather make stuff that I wear out than stuff that is complicated just for its own sake).  

Over the past year, I've thrifted or bought more than I've sewn, in part because my body has changed faster than I cared to sew, and in part because those changes made me unsure what to wear to feel good in my body.  Thrifting is a relatively easy way to try new things without a lot of time and energy.  That said, skirts remain the bane of my existence, because most ready-to-wear skirts are not drafted for my proportions.  

It's the same problem I have with pants (although worse, because at least with a skirt, I just have to make the hip-to-waist ratio work out.  With pants, I also have to deal with the rise, which on most pants is too short for me and doesn't leave enough room in my seat, but still gapes badly at the waist.  I don't love wearing pants anyway).

 

But I digress.  When I first got back into sewing for myself, I bought a vintage straight skirt pattern, Anne Adams 9481, and have been working with it as a straight skirt block ever since.  The pattern has gone through a number of modifications over the years as my measurements and style preferences have changed. I've basically redrafted the thing at this point, but I have a skirt block that comes out pretty much spot on every time, so that's a win in my book.  

 

 

All that is to say, this rust corduroy skirt is fairly similar to the earlier iterations of it, and uses the same fabric, but it is great for my today body.  I really like the fit and look of it, and while I need to move the button in slightly for a better fit in the waist, the skirt is very comfortable and the length is perfect for my preference right now.  (You might recognize the button from this dress).  I have a pretty deep hem on it, so if I decide to go back to below-the knee skirts again, I can easily let it out.   

I used Kaufman's midweight 14-wale cotton corduroy, finger-pressed everything as I went along, and zig-zagged the seam allowances.  I omitted the back seam again and put the zip on the side for fewer seam allowances.  On this style of skirt, with my figure, it is better not to have a center back seam, as it wears faster than the rest of the skirt over time because of the stress from sitting and moving.  

 

I made the pockets with a diagonal slash rather than a curve, just for something different, and interfaced the waistband with petersham ribbon as usual.  I graded all the darts to make sure the waistband wasn't too bulky.  I sewed it with a jeans needle which made the sewing go like butter.  The buttonholer still did not want to play nice with the cord, so I hand-worked the button hole with some embroidery floss. 

(I'm going to blog the scarf during November's yarn along--sorry to wear it so many days in a row as a tease and not talk about it!  I lurve it).  Today I'm going to work on the spruce cord version of this skirt, so stay tuned!