Confessions

I have a confession.  Lately I've been into sewing more than knitting and spinning.

During my lunch break at work, I've been frequenting thrift stores to find clothes that could use a new life.  I look for large skirts or dresses that have nice fabric which isn't too worn (no holes, runs, stains, etc.).  Once I find something, I take it home and throw it in the wash...I even washed a wool skirt, GASP!  ...and guess what?  It turned out fine, imagine that...wool in a washer machine!

After the skirt is washed and pressed, I use the fabric to cut out a new pattern.  The last skirt I made out of thrifted finds was a grey wool skirt.  I made it into a Colette Beignet.  Unfortunately, I only have super crappy pictures of it.  I need to teach my husband how to take semi-decent pictures!  I do have a picture of a beignet skirt that I made yesterday though!

The very last step was to sew the button holes and sew the buttons on.  I fought like the dickens with my machine, trying to figure out how to make it sew button holes!  The machine won...those buttons (all 6 are from my stash, SCORE!)  are just placed on the skirt to get the jist of what it's supposed to be like.

Next, I'm planning to make Tilly's Miette skirt in black.

Does anyone else sew?

Twins!

This week, my mom went to help out with lamb birthing at a farm.

 

The lamb had twins!!!!!

Something Resembling a Sweater

I finally have something that actually resembles a sweater!!  Remember this post about the Seamless Raglan Sweater?  Check it out, it's now more than just a bunch of tubes claiming to be a sweater!

You may be able to see in the first picture that I'm going to put a half zip on the sweater.  After I joined the sleeves to the body, instead of knitting in the round, I turned the knitting when I was at the half way point in the front.  I've also switched from the raglan construction to a yoke construction.  After my husband tried the sweater on, I showed him pictures of raglan and yoke sweaters again.  We also looked at the sweaters that he wears often and decided to go with the yoke.   I'm stoked....yoke construction seems waaaaay easier!

I'm Loving...Laurel

I am sooo in love with Colette's new Laurel pattern!








It's a simple shift dress, but there are soooo many variations you can make!  Colette even published a free e-book on some variations with tutorials on how to make them.

Damn my new budget!  I want to buy this AMAZING pattern now!

Have you purchased the pattern?  Are you planning on participating in the contest?

I'm Loving...Podcasts

This week I'm loving knitting and spinning podcasts!  I've been listening to the SpinDoctor podcast and Knitmore Girls.  I highly recommend them.  Do you listen to podcasts?  Which ones?  I would LOVE to know, I'm always open to new podcasts!

Weekend Update

Sunday morning perfection...

Apologies

Apologies guys for my lack of blogging lately!  To tell you the truth, I don't have anything to show you.  You see, I have this problem...I always start knitting things then decide that I just don't like something about it.  Maybe I don't like the pattern, or the yarn isn't perfect for the pattern, or my gauge is waaaaay off.  Then I end up frogging it. 

Recently I've decided to use up my stash, so I went downstairs to peruse through said stash.  I have 5 skeins of turquoise Lion Brand Recycled Cotton that I bought at Joanns years ago on clearance for 97 cents/skein!  It was on CRAZY sale, how could I resist! :) 

After I picked the yarn out that I wanted to knit, I searched Ravelry for a pattern.  I wanted to knit something summery with this yarn, since it's cotton, and I wanted to pretty much use it all up. I have about 900 yards, so I could make a tank top, however, I read the reviews for this yarn.  Many ravelers (is that what you call people who use Ravelry??  haha) said that this recycled cotton yarn doesn't keep its shape well after washing.  Some people said that it stretched a ton, others said it shrank...So do I really want spend all that time knitting a tank top, only to have it shrink/stretch after washing?  Eventually, I decided to knit a baby blanket with it.  The pattern I chose was Surprise.  Welllllll, about 10 rows into the blanket, I decided the yarn didn't show off the pattern and decided to frog it.  Back to the drawing board.

Last night I spent ungodly amounts of time surfing Ravelry (again) and finally came up with this...

 

Sophia! What do you think?  I think this sweater will be PERFECT for that yarn!  The sweater is loose enough that if the yarn stretches some, no big deal!  I'll just be super careful while washing, so that it doesn't shrink.

I'm curious, has anyone ever used Lion Brand Recycled Cotton?  If so, what were your results with it?