Yarn Along: November

This is a long post, so grab a cuppa and settle in!  

(I made Russian tea again last week and it has been delightful to have a cup each day)

I usually cover what I'm sewing and watching in these posts, but it got so long, I decided to split them up.  Stop by tomorrow for what the latest off my sewing machine and on my screen!

~knitting~

Lots of finished objects this month!

Garnet Boneyard shawl:

Nothing unusual, just a straightforward knit, my favorite kind. I used two balls of DK Swish and two balls of Worsted Swish in garnet heather, and couldn't tell a lick of difference when the weight changed.  It is a great shawl, and I've worn it quite a bit since I finished it.

Rusty Ribbons Boneyard shawl:

I made this one from a single ball of Chickadee (about 360 yards) that was hand-dyed, although the variation is extremely subtle.  I was hoping it would come out a little bit bigger after blocking (the Garnet Boneyard doubled in size with blocking) but it seems to have felted slightly instead.  Oh well.  It is still wearable at the current size, and matches my new flannel dress (more on the dress tomorrow).

Major John Andre Rivel cardigan (with bonus Hitchhiker scarf):

I finally finished it!  So named in honor of JJ Feild's portrayal of Major John Andre in the brilliant AMC series, TURN: Washington's Spies. I knit the majority of the sweater while watching (and rewatching) seasons 1-3 in May.  

Ah, Johnny, we miss ye so.

I am reasonably pleased with how this sweater turned out!  I think it will look better with a dress instead of separates, but I was happy enough to wear it yesterday in the cold damp rain.  

The sweater is made in pieces and then seamed, with the neck band picked up in one long row around the whole front and knit in rib for 4 inches.  That took a bit, since there were something like 350 stitches on my needles.  I used worsted Swish in Lost Lake Heather, and it is such a pretty olive green with hints of blue in the undertone.  Just right for my complexion.  Most olives tend a little too brown or yellow for my skin tone and wash me out.  This one is perfect.

There are three cables on the sweater, one down the back and one to either side of the fronts.  They were actually quite easy to execute, and I was pleased with how they looked in the end.  I found the pattern easy to read and follow and the shaping is interesting--there is bust shaping on the fronts, but not on the back, and waist shaping on the back, but not in the front.  All in all, a nicely fitted sweater.  

I could see using this pattern as a base for future sweaters and just modify the cable details.  Ravelry notes are here.

I also made the sleeves long, because seriously: what is the point of a worsted weight sweater with elbow length sleeves?  If I'm going to wear a heavy cardigan, I probably need my forearms covered.

The Hitchhiker is growing on me.  I reblocked it and it seems better now.

Triangle cowl:

I posted about this in October, but I don't think I had the buttons on it yet.  I went with the butterscotch buttons, and I like this cowl a lot!  I might make this pattern again.

After all that, I don't have a lot of projects left on needles, but currently in progress: 

boring dark grey legwarmers for Ponchik

Gift knitting (shh!)

Another shawl in hand-dyed Chickadee, this time in a light teal color.  I'm not going to do another Boneyard, but I need to find something that will work with the yardage and not frustrate me.

~reading~

I finished two books last month:

The Awakening of Miss Prim is delightful!  I highly recommend it.  I already wrote about Matt Haig's book, and while I did enjoy it, I had a couple minor quibbles about it.

I immediately picked up a book I've had in my stack for two years, Stasiland.  I bought it when I was doing a lot of research about the gulags, the Communist bloc, and the like, but didn't get to it before I ran out of steam.  I'm enjoying it a lot--it is very interesting, and the author writes in a narrative style that I like.  My interest in this topic never seems to wane, but sometimes I need breaks.  I think I also went back to it because I finished The Americans (finally!) and finished a Russian television series I've been poking through for a while called The Red Queen (more on that tomorrow).  It all seems to be of a piece for me in my mind.

The Jasper Fforde book has been languishing, and I picked up The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society after watching the film of the same on netflix.  My friend Claire has been bugging me to read this book for a couple of years, so I guess I'd better get to it!

Joining Ginny for Yarn Along!

Breakin' Up is Hard to Do

Dear Plaid Flannel,

I know you wanted to get back together.  

I tried, I really did.  

But I really think it just isn't going to work out.  

xoxo

I ended up fixing the fit on the plaid flannel Frankenwashi today.  I'm glad I did it, because the fixes were relatively easy, and I did think, briefly, that they might have saved the dress.

Actually, I think they *did* save the dress, but I'm still not sure I want to wear it.  For the record, my alterations were: cinch in the back elastic about 1.5", take in the underarm seam of the sleeves about 1/4" (tapered out a bit more at the wrist), and bring up the hem 2".  

Nothing especially time consuming, and it does look pretty good with my L'Enveloppe from last year (which warms up the dress considerably as well).  Still pretty thin flannel, though.  The drape on the skirt isn't fabulous--I think this is probably shirting flannel, which would account for some of the problems I've had with it.

I look at the pics of the dress without anything over the top, and I'm like: meh.  Not so much.  (I'm wearing gauntlets that are really Birdie's legwarmers; I made them for her last year.  I'd probably wear my lava heather ones with this dress in the future).  That's actually one of my issues with this dress: I don't really have the right cardigan to wear over the top and I still think that the plaid is too much near my face.  I do, however, have a cream cotton pullover in my winter bin that might work.  Decisions, decisions.

It's not frumpy like it was, but it's not fabulous either.  But! I now think that the Frankenwashi might be a better choice for my printed flannels, because I do really like having the longer sleeves under a cardigan.  I suppose the question is: if I wear the other flannel dresses all winter with a cardigan over the top, does it matter what is under it?  I don't know.

Well, things to ponder.  In the meantime, I might throw this dress into my fall rotation...or I might not.

Oh, plaid flannel.  How I wanted this to work.

Update: I put a long sleeve shirt underneath and wore it out to get the kids from school and I think I like it!  Jury's still out, though.  Ask me again in December.

Dear Plaid Flannel...

Dear Plaid Flannel,

We need to break up.  We've had a good run, but it's over.  

It's not you, it's me.

xoxo

Sometimes a Frankenpattern works, sometimes it doesn't.  In point of fact, the actual Frankenpattern *did* work, it just doesn't look good on me.  Win some, lose some.

So, details: in late summer, I bought some very cheap plaid flannel from fabric.com with some slight misgivings, my previous experience with cheap plaid flannel being rather disastrous.  When it arrived, I was cautiously optimistic.  It washed well, seemed to hold its grain after, and I thought might actually work for the dress I intended, which was a woven M7353.

I set those plans aside when I attempted to make a different plaid flannel garment and had serious issues with keeping the fabric on grain.  In short, it was so difficult, I had to abandon the project before I even really got it entirely cut out.  I still don't really understand it--it was Kaufman Mammoth flannel, and I've never had much trouble with it before, and I was reusing from an earlier garment that I'd matched all along the side seams.  Humph.  

I also made an Everyday skirt out of some Kaufman Durango flannel (a checked plaid) that just didn't turn out.  I mean, it is finished, and the plaid matches, but the skirt looks really bad on me.  Really, really bad.  Not sure if it is the plaid, the heavy weight flannel, the colors in the flannel or what, but it was a complete disaster.

After all that, I wasn't in the mood to match plaid any time soon.

After my Washi successes, however, I wondered about putting the M7353 bodice on the Washi skirt, since I really liked how the skirt fit, and I like how the fitted dolman sleeves on the M7353 look.  I couldn't get the idea out of my head.  I figured since the dress had longer sleeve options, it had a reasonable chance of looking okay.

The combination also seemed like a great winter combination that could be warmed up further with additional layers.  I have some non-plaid flannel that I want to make a Christmas dress out of (I know, I know), but I didn't want to try a new frankenpattern on the good stuff, so I decided to start with the cheap plaid I bought in the late summer and set aside.  The colors of my plaid are lovely (a deep claret red, yellow, spruce green, and black), but as I began to work with it, I realized that it was very thin.  Very very thin.  Stark contrast to my snuggly Mammoth flannel.

I cut everything out flat, while watching the BBC Pride and Prejudice.  It was a good sewing companion that day.  I felt good about how the plaid matching was going, and was feeling a bit confident that I might even get a wearable dress in the end--for the win!

Except.  I had graded up the sleeves on the bodice another 1/4" from my usual woven adjustments, and I think that was mistake number one.  Mistake number too was making the back elastic a bit looser than on my previous Washi dresses (5" shorter than the back width instead of 6").  Mistake number three was the skirt length, which looked decidedly frumpy in this fabric.  

These are all things I can theoretically change--I could take in the sleeve seams, cinch in the elastic, take up the hem, etc.  But the other two problems are a bit more intractable.  Number one is that the flannel is really too thin to be useful on its own in cold weather, and that was the whole point of this dress.  Number two is that the color combination looks really really bad with my skin tone.  For some reason it reads brown on me, and brown is generally a bad idea.  So I'm not sure it is worth trying to fix any thing on this dress, given that.  I know, I could add layers, put my burgundy L'Enveloppe over it, add a cowl, break up the plaid near my face, yadda, yadda, but that starts to get fussy.

In truth, I haven't decided what to do yet.  I was so appalled by how bad it looked on me, I took it off immediately and put it out of sight.  I think this is one piece that Stasia would say: let it go.  But maybe I'll try it on again in a few weeks and reevaluate.  In any case, I couldn't bear to take photos in it, so hanger photos it is.

In the meantime, I wanted to document my mad plaid matching skillz (*snort*), particularly in this fabric, which was SUPER hard to work with.  I don't recall working with a harder fabric than this, and that includes rayon bemberg.  It went off grain constantly, the plaid lines weren't really completely straight, so matching was very difficult.  

Still, it was a good experiment: a chance to try something new and do something hard, and I'm glad I tried it. I think I'll just make a regular Washi in the "good" flannel.  (The "good" stuff has a washi tape design and there is something in me that gets a kick out of the idea of making a Washi washi dress).

Basics: Navy Knit Dress

Oh look, another M7353.  I've actually worn this dress four times already and washed it at least twice, but just got around to photographing it today.  I guess that means it is a roaring success!

I mean, you really can't go wrong with a basic navy knit dress.  I've missed having one in my closet since my old one got too big and shabby last year or the year before, I forget right now.

I used Kaufman's Laguna jersey, which is the same line as my red Pascha dress, so I was reasonably confident about how it would work with this pattern.  In a word: splendidly.  The Laguna line has a fairly wide color range, but I wish there was a burgundy and a deep olive green, because those are the two colors I'm missing right now.  I had knit dresses in both colors last year, that were too big by late spring and not really my style any longer, so I let them go.  I might just make a burgundy one from the Shetland flannel line, as it will work for color and warmth in winter.

(Outtake: what happens when you turn around too quickly for the self-timer!)

I love how soft this fabric is, and how comfortable the dress is.  I can't really say enough good things about Laguna jersey.  I did shorten the skirt a bit on this dress, as with the fusion dress, and I still think it could go slightly shorter, but I'm not going to mess with it now.

The scarf was a recent Old Navy find and I love it.  Sometimes white doesn't look good next to my face, but this scarf seems to work.

Pocketeses!  I've said it before, I'll say it again: these are the best drafted inseam pockets I've ever worked with.  I'm thinking of using them on a flannel washi dress for winter.  (Actually, I'm thinking of Frankenpatterning the M7353 bodice to the Washi skirt for this dress, and using the pockets from the M7353.  I'm not sure it is going to work, but maybe I'll do a quick muslin to check before cutting into my flannel).

In sum: the perfect three season dress.

And for your amusement, I present this, by Birdie:

I especially like the caption--ha!

Fusion Dress

Today: the Fusion Dress.

 I have been obsessed with this fabric since Art Gallery released the collection in the spring, and while the price was a bit dear, I bought it this summer, because I was afraid (correctly as it turns out!) it would be sold out by fall.  I ended up getting it at Hawthorne Supply Co. (formerly Hawthorne Threads) as they had the best per/yard price.

It behaves just like every other Art Gallery jersey I've worked with before, and was a good fit for my beloved M7353 pattern.  It was nice to make this again in a knit--it had been a while!  

Took me a bit to wear it, though, as we were kind of stuck in the armpit of the weather system for most of September and the first 12 days of October.  Thankfully, it has cooled down a LOT and is now pleasant and lovely October weather.  

The color is a bit difficult to photograph accurately (and truth be told, I missed my optimum lighting window this morning because of public bus issues and had to make do).

The most accurate photograph is the one at the top--the background color is a sprucey green, and the centers of the flowers are a deep saturated red-purple color.

As a happy accident, this necklace from ThredUp was a perfect color match.  I like them together very much.

No construction notes except I made the skirt slightly shorter (2" of length added, instead of 2.5") and I could even take it to 1.5" for a future iteration).  I guess I like slightly shorter dresses right now. The hardest part of the dress was thread matching, because it isn't quite green and it isn't quite blue. 

The scarf was another happy ThredUp find, and it is a reasonably good color match to the centers of the flowers.  I'm wearing a lot of scarves this fall--I seem to latch on something each season and wear it constantly.  I guess this is the scarf rotation.

I did a big try on over the weekend, which made for some major culling.  I'm feeling pretty good about how my clothing stands at the moment, as well as how future projects will fit (I have about one dress per rotation planned through summer).  I've reduced the total number of pieces I have by quite a bit, and am curious to see how it works out.  I used to have about 85 pieces total, and I'm sitting around 65 currently (including planned makes).

I've been having a bit of a think about what it is to be healthy, as I've gotten pretty hung up on the number on the scale.  I had a bit of an epiphany last week when my mom was here, as I realized that while our scale numbers are close to 40 pounds different (she is skinny!), our clothing size is very similar.  The difference?  I have a lot of muscle mass, and always have, always will, and muscle weighs more.  (I've always known that, and knew I was densely built, but somehow, having the comparison of my mother, who carries her weight similarly to me, but isn't densely built, was eye-opening).  

I'm not sure what healthy looks like for me. I've always measured health by the scale and measurements and BMI, and I'm no longer confident that they are good measures to go by.  I get 10,000 steps in most days, my CBC numbers are in the normal range, and my A1C has been normal for a few years now, and my waist measurement is below 35" but is that healthy?  I'm not sure.  I've got this ideal in my head (along with a particular scale number and measurements) that I can't quite seem to shake (but I do feel that I'm on the verge of being able to do so).

I'm not quite to anything definite yet, but I will say, I'm feeling better in my body, and learning to let some things lie.  I don't want to be the woman who is always on a diet, always trying to lose weight, trying to look a particular way, constantly obsessing about it all, but neither do I want to be a poor steward of this vessel.  I'm getting there.