Sewing FO: You can't go wrong with animal prints

Actually, I think this is more like a quasi animal print, but it's a fun dress anyway. The pattern is Vogue V8552, which I made earlier this year in linen. This fabric is a strange polyester/lycra moleskin, which is sort of slick on the wrong side. It does not hold a pressing at all, which makes it annoying to sew with, but it's actually pretty comfortable to wear. I got it on sale at JoAnn for a very low price. This time around, I eliminated the pockets and sewed the tucks as pleats on the inside. For winter, it's a bit chilly to wear by itself, but it looks good under a black cardi or shrug.

FO: Faux capelet cardigan

I just finished this cardigan that is loosely based on the Boho Blouse by Stephanie Japel. I liked that capelet-like look when I first saw the pattern, but I didn't think it was cape-y enough, and I thought the trim hit too high on the bust line. I wanted the sleeves longer, but I couldn't just keep knitting further until separating out the sleeves because I would end up with ginormous armholes. I ended up separating out for the sleeves at the normal place, casting on a few stitches for the body section, then continued knitting the sleeves flat with additional increases. I made the sleeves end at the same point where the body trim ends, but instead of sewing the sleeve sides together, I sewed them to the sweater body itself. This helps the sweater look a little more capelet-like.

The pattern as written calls for a very fast rate of increases on the yoke such that all the increases are completed by 4" of yoke. This would cause the upper part of the bodice to be too loose, which I didn't want. I did the more standard rate of increases. My yarn is a very textured wool blend that I bought on my Japan vacation, so I omitted the cable stitches in the pattern. Finally, I wanted a cardigan instead of a pullover.

That blurriness you see on the sweater is not due to my camera or your eyesight. I partially felted my sweater by accident. My sweater ended up a bit large when finished , so I decided I would soak it a tiny bit, then run it through the dryer to shrink it. I did try this first with my swatch, and it worked well. However, for the actual garment, I decided to try a longer drying time, and I was amazed by how much it felted and horrified by how much it shrank. Luckily, it was still quite damp, so some of the shrinkage was reversible. I ended up wearing it all day, dampness and all, so that it would dry and form to my own body's shape. I also kept tugging at the various hem parts all day to keep the length from shrinking, which must have looked odd indeed. Ah, the things we knitters will do.

In the end, it's a bit shorter than I would like, but the width fits nicely. I lost the lovely yarn texture, but I gained the soft felted fuzziness. I'm pretty happy with the end result.

I have a theory about why my garment kept growing in size. The yarn is heavily textured, and all the texture-y bits don't pull through the stitches easily so the stitches start off fairly tightly knit. As I handled the garment more and more, the little bits of texture worked their way through the stitches and opened them up and the gauge got bigger as did the sweater.

Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day in the U.S.
It coincides with Remembrance Day, or Poppy Day in countries such as U.K. and Canada. I like the Poppy Day concept, so I decided to crochet a red poppy to wear today.

FO: Goodale

I've finished Goodale and I'm very happy with it. The yarn is Brown Sheep Serendipity Tweed. My biggest modification for this sweater is adding increases along the front. I started the increases at about 2" from the top front edges. By the time I reached the hem, I added about 3" to each of the fronts. This keeps the sweater from flaring wide open in the front.
I made some other customizations as well, because customizing my knits is just how I roll.
- I made it longer and added waist shaping.
- I made 3/4 length sleeves because I had a lot of spare yarn, and longer sleeves are better for fall.
- Instead of sewing the bottoms together for the folds, I folded before the ribbing and picked up 2 stitches together for the front ribbing.
- I sewed down the tops of the front lapels up to the pocket openings.
- I made my I-cord 1 stitch wider but used small needles to keep it tight. I twisted it for a figure 8 in the center.

Happy Halloween!

I don't really do much for Halloween other than wait for trick-or-treaters. We usually get close to a hundred kids or so. I don't think we have that many kids in the neighborhood, so I'm not sure where they come from. I decided to at least dress up a little more festively this year. This was my ensemble for greeting the kids.

On the needles

I'm one sleeve away from finishing Goodale. The yarn is Brown Sheep Serendipity Tweed. I had a lot of yarn so I decided to make longer sleeves. Longer sleeves are better anyway for a fall sweater. I love the front lapel pockets on this pattern, but I don't like the wide opening. On me, sweaters like that tend to sit even more open than shown on a model. I added increases to the front of the sweater. It still flares open when worn, but it's a much narrower opening.

I'm also working on the Geodesic cardigan. The yarn is Araucania Ranco solid. I knit all of the back of this cardi during the various airplane and train rides on the Japan vacation. The pattern is written for knitting the body in one piece, but I converted it for flat knitting. Smaller pieces are much more portable. Also, this is a hand-dyed yarn, and rather than worry about alternating skeins and color changes, I just decided to knit the different pieces from different skeins and not worry about color shade differences.

Japan souvenirs

I just returned from a vacation to Japan, spending 4 nights in Tokyo and 3 nights in Kyoto. I had a great time, even though I got bitten by a gazillion insects and the plane ride home was a breeding ground for respiratory infections because of all these passengers who were sneezing, wheezing, coughing, and phlegming (I don't think that's a verb). Of course, in addition to the sightseeing, I had to look for a few yarn shops and buy some souvenir yarn.

My first stop was at Okadaya in Tokyo. This is a seven story craft shop, with most of the 6th floor devoted to yarn and other knitting goodness. The address is 3-23-17 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, very near the train station. Thanks to pinku for posting a list of Tokyo shops back in 2006. Now, even though I had the address, it's still not easy to find it. Although I knew that the Tokyo address consists of the subareaNumber-blockNumber-buildingNumber, I did not know that the building numbers are not spatially ordered. I found out later that they are ordered by their construction dates. So, you sometimes have to walk around a block to find an address. Also, not all blocks have their numbers displayed anywhere, and many shops don't display their own addresses. After a while, I realized that for larger shops, it's easiest to just look upward for large signs instead of looking at doorways!

They have a large selection of Japanese and imported yarns. I just decided to focus on the Japanese brands.

I ended up purchasing 8 skeins of this really luxurious merino/alpaca/acrylic yarn. Don't you just love the phrasing on the label?

Next up was a trip to La Droguerie, which is a French craft store with several shops in Japan. The Tokyo address is 4-13-9 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, in the very chi-chi Omotesando shopping district. They have a smallish selection of pricey yarn, but tons of unique trims, beads, and buttons, also pricey.


I ended up buying some buttons and spent enough to receive a promotional giveaway bag. (Notice the Eiffel tower bead).

Now, on to Kyoto. While there, I decided to check out the Kyoto branch of La Droguerie. It's located on Kitiyama-dori, right across the street from the Kitiyama entrance to the wonderful Kyoto botanical garden, and we were going to visit the garden anyway. The merchandise seemed to be about the same as in the Tokyo store, although there might have been more yarn. I just bought a few not-very-exciting beads to hang on that safety-pin closure that I bought earlier.

Next was Avril, which is sold in New York as Habu Textiles. They are located in a restored building called the Sacra building in the center of the shopping zone, at the corner of Sanjo-dori and Tominokoji-dori. The shop space is like a huge loft, and they have an amazing collection of yarn, many with unusual textures and exotic fibers, and much of it costing more than I would ever spend on yarn.





However, even the priciest of shops has a sale basket, and in it I found this great textured wool/nylon yarn in fall colors. I bought 2 skeins.

In the same building as Avril is the Idola buttons and beads shop. It is smallish, but stocks a lot of very unusual buttons.


I ended up buying just two of these silvery buttons.

The amazing thing is -- I managed to pack all of this into my luggage!