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Restingmotion

  • A Little Change in Plans

    Funny how plans change if you allow yourself time to dream and play.

    IMG_3622  I had intended to dismantle the blue skirt, and remake it in the exact same style, just shorter and smaller in total girth, but somehow, the more I looked at it, the more evident it became that I didn't want to make the same skirt over again.  

    So I found a pattern, traced it off, dithered over alterations and decided to just go for it.    

    A shorter skirt, with eyelet over the entire length of the leg, required a different lining than the original skin-tone silk/cotton.  The demands of the new design dictated underlining rather than a separate lining.   As I fretted over lining choices, an olive batiste practically threw itself off the shelf at me.  Olive and Navy is one of my favorite combinations.   It seems this skirt remodel is taking on a life of its own.

  • A Day in the Sewing Room

    IMG_3615  I had a really good day, or partial day actually, in the sewing room yesterday and I am amazed at how much it helped my state of mind.  

    First of all, I finished a sweater that I started in April and abandoned.  At the time I was looking for some mindless knitting and since I was working without a pattern, and didn't know if I would have enough yarn for sleeves, I put the whole aside rather than do the math. 

    The yarn is a cotton/acrylic/rayon boucle from On-line, now discontinued.  The stripes on the sleeves are in Dolcino, a nylon ribbon by Trendsetter.  I added the stripes to the sleeves when I realized that there was not going to be enough of the original yarn to have much more than cap sleeves.  I really like the way the sweater turned out and it is a good basic sweater that will see a lot of wear.

    (if you also read my knitting blog, purlsandmurmurs, sorry for the double posting)

    I also got the blue eyelet skirt completely disassembled and had an accompanying "aha" moment.  You see the skirt, as it is now, is too long by a couple of inches.  It ends at mid calf which is not a flattering length.  But I didn't remember it always being that unflattering.   So when I looked back at the original post, in September 2007, I saw that the skirt was slightly below my knee, but not as long as it is now.  It didn't grow so what happened? And no, the skirt is not sitting below my waist now, nor was it sitting above my waist then.

    Hips.  The problem is in the hips, and perhaps in the backside as well.  When I first started loosing weight I lost it mostly through the middle, through the tummy and waist, and that pesky full hip measurement did not budge one iota.  Now I'm not complaining about losing the middle,  but I got in the habit of altering my skirts by taking in the waist and upper hips, but leaving the fullness at the hip.  Well as fabric goes out to accommodate bulk, it draws the length up.  Apparently somewhere along the line, my hips started getting smaller too, and I didn't really notice this.   The extra fabric that used to go out over the hips now hangs straight down, making the skirt longer.  Hence the need for complete disassembly.   The final skirt is going to look much like the original, but I need to recut it, removing three inches of length from the waistline.  I'm sure there will be some other reworking to be done as well. 

    I also spent some time cataloging and sorting patterns, both knitting and sewing, and finally working through the stacks of patterns and magazines, and piles of clothing and sweaters that I want to refashion.  Now that  I feel I am taking control again, I feel the pressure lifting and a bit of that ability to just play coming back.

  • Continuing onward through the UFOs

    IMG_3615  Picture of me wearing Stormy Wildflowers:

    I knit this sweater with several inches of negative ease but as you can see, the fabric is quite light without much structure so it quickly becomes loose.  Any bigger and I would be ripping it out.  The sleeves are loose but better than the body of the sweater.  The dolcino has better memory than the Maya.

    IMG_3611  Since I don't want to start another new project until I finish at least one or two more UFOs I resurrected Shelagh from the depths of the "projects past" drawer.   I ripped the right front back to the fold line with the intention of re-knitting the top section correctly.  However when I started to actually measure what I had and knit, I discovered that the entire thing was wonky so I ended up ripping the entire right front and starting over.   I knit from the shoulder through the armhole shaping last night, 87 rows, but many of those rows are quite narrow.  Now I'm on the thicker, double section which will take a while longer.  This time however, I shall knit with thought and do it right. 

  • Stormy Wildflowers

    Just finished!

    IMG_3610

    Basic tee shape, my pattern adapted from a combination of a favorite RTW tee along with those alterations I have learned I need to make, to wit:

    1.  One inch of length was taken out at the center back waist to account for a bit of a flat/sway back, This was done by adding short rows from the center to the sides so that the front and back side seams would be the same length.

    2.  An inch of length was added at the center back near the top of the armholes, before the shoulder shaping.  This was done using short rows.

    3.  About 1 1/4 inch was added at the center front at the bust line, to add length to go over the bust and keep the sweater from pulling up.

    Yarn:  Linie 125, Maya, from On-Line.  This yarn is discontinued and is 45% cotton, 45% acrylic, and 10% rayon.  I had 720 yards in 8 skeins and I used 7 of them.  I needed extra yarn to complete the sleeves.  The colored stripes are Dolcino by Trendsetter, and acrylic and nylon microfiber, which happened to coordinate and knit to the same gauge and drape as the Maya.

    I love this tee.  The striped sleeves keep it from being boring, it is light and comfortable and fits well.  I'll try to get pictures of the sweater on me tomorrow or over the weekend

     

  • Stash Building

    IMG_3604  I ordered some fabric.  

    And somehow it struck me that I stopped buying fabric somewhere along the way.  Perhaps it was the beginning of the fabric closet reorganization, in which I suddenly didn't need or want any more.  Or perhaps it was something else.   I am inclined to think I saw all these wonderful things I have, each filled with potential that I want to explore and I realized I had enough.

    That is until I received some swatches from Michael last week.  They weren't the first swatches from Michael, or from anyone else, but somehow this was the first fabric that tempted me since last April.  

    IMG_3605  I don't have specific plans for these so they are just potential.  I do have ideas, but they are not at the top of my list.  I have no regrets even though I will admit that when I was sorting through the fabric closet I thought I had far too many bouclés and tweeds and fabrics with color and texture and not enough basic things. 

    IMG_3607  And yet here I am buying more of the same.  Temptation calls.  I was perhaps feeling a little weak and overwhelmed and engaged in a little retail therapy.  I have no regrets.

    There will also be a few other pieces coming, pieces for which I have specific plans, plans I hope to execute soon.  Oddly enough, despite having a closet full of fabric there seems to always be some lack.  I shall share with you upon arrival and hopefully creation.  It would be nice if execution immediately follows arrival, but then that may be asking a bit much.

  • Searching

      "We cannot love ourselves unless we felt affirmed by the parent." James Hollis The Middle Passage, p 68.


    No, I am not starting a diatribe against parents here.    My parents raised three successful children who shared and carried out their mores and became responsible respectable members of the culture in which they live.  All parents are only people who tackle a job that has been defined for them by a culture in which they are only bit players; most of them hope they are doing the right thing.  As I said, this is post is not about parents. 


    But, if you have been reading any of my blogs for a while, it is no secret that I have been struggling with a lot of issues revolving around who I am and my place in the world.  Whether fretting about what to wear, a representation of my place in the world, or what I really want as opposed to what I feel I should want, it has been a rocky couple of years.   And truthfully, during much of this struggle, I have felt pretty stupid.  I felt stupid because I didn't understand how I could do and become everything I was brought up to do and become, well almost everything, and still not know who I was or what I wanted.  I felt stupid because I felt the yearnings of my 6 year old self, the idealism and anger of my 20 year old self, the magic and spiritualism of my pre-teen self, and I wondered if my adult self had anything to do with me, the actual me, or if it was all just an illusion of the self I thought I was supposed to be.


    I don't particularly feel stupid anymore, and truthfully, finding Hollis's book has contributed greatly to that acceptance.  I found the book on a lark.  I knew nothing about the author.  I really didn't know anything about the book.  But the title appealed to me.  I expected some frivolous self-help book.  I was surprised.  I have read the book twice now in the last month and feel I need to read it again.  I can't really review the book at this point because every time I read something I start making connections and thinking about things in different ways.  I am still in the middle of this whole process of discovery.


    But back to that quote.  It is not necessarily representative of the book.  The book is not about blaming one's parents for all life's ills, quite the opposite, it is more about seeing one's way through the choices one has made, and the choices that have been made for one, accepting responsibility, and moving on. And yet the ease or difficulty with which one embarks on that path begins early, before one even has a choice. 


    The quote above struck me the other day when I read it because as I read that line that day I gave myself permission to forgive myself for loosing myself and for working on finding my way back.  I felt like saying: "Well of course it took you this long".  And with that statement came acceptance.  


    This line struck me because something else has been on my mind as well in this period of turmoil.  In mid-July, soon after I began reading Hollis I made posted a comment on this post  at La Belette Rouge about a dream I had throughout my childhood and at different stages of my adulthood.  I called the dream my gluttony dream, and although I won't go into it here you can find it at the link above.  My comment garnered the following answer from Belette:


        "What is supposed to be nurturing has holes in it and instead of being a source of nurturing for you has started to eat you up.  Is that how it feels? Did you have that kind of feeling as a child?" 


    In reading that comment I suddenly looked at the gluttony dream differently.  Oh it was still about gluttony, but it had a broader context, which well may be true of all dreams.  And I realized that this feeling  that nurturing had holes and was eating me up characterized much of my childhood from an early age.  And of course this feeling has occasionally consumed me lately as well.  It is no one's fault in particular that the child I was felt she was being consumed in the process of trying to be the child she felt the world expected her to be.  It was no one's fault that the adolescent I was felt that there was the true me and the me I presented to the world.  All adolescents feel this way to some extent or another, and probably all children feel consumed during some stage of the passage from childhood to adulthood.  Why it plagued me so much I may never know. 


    I don't know that the six year old girl who first had that dream knew anything about being consumed by nurturing.  But that night is permanently imprinted on my memory and I know that that little girl knew that she had to chose between who she was and what was necessary to be a part of that laughing family on the other side of the wall. I only know that that little girl who sat in the dark and cried that night needs to come out now.  That girl cannot escape the woman she has come to be, that woman cannot escape the world in which she came to live, but she must also embrace the girl she was.  It is nice to come home again I think, although sometimes the passage is rough.

  • Fall Interweave

    Picture 4  I've had rather mixed feelings about Interweave Knits lately.  Sometimes there are patterns I love, sometimes not much, and I even toyed with not renewing my subscription.  But then there are some designers whose patterns I adore, and their presence in the magazine alone make it worth the price.  

    It is not surprising therefore that I love Angela's newest pattern, the Inversion Gansey.  I can honestly say I adored it as soon as I saw the cover of the magazine, before I knew anything about the pattern or the designer, and this is something I am looking forward to making and wearing.

    There are two other patterns in this issue that I like but my feelings are a bit mixed about both of them.  They are not, like the Inversion Gansey, sweaters that scream "Me, Me, Me! Yes, Yes, Yes!" and yet, I can't quite let them go. 

    Picture 5  Rosemary Hill's Leyfi Pollover keeps drawing me in despite the fact that I don't usually like sweaters knit in the round (this applies to Angela Hahn's pattern as well, although Ganseys are usually pretty well structured).   In fact the more I look at it, the more it appeals. I like the airiness of the lace at the yoke and neckline, the way it provides shaping across the shoulders and upper chest, and the continuation of the lace pattern down the sleeves.  The problem was never whether or not I liked the sweater, but whether I would actually wear it.  It wasn't really until I looked at the designers photos on Ravelry, which I find far more appealing than the ones in the magazine, that I accepted that this is a sweater I could actually wear and love.

    Picture 6  In the same way, it was the Ravelry photos that won me over concerning my third choice from this issue.

    Once again, I was somewhat attracted to the pattern, Deborah Helmke's Cloisonné jacket, but with reservations.  At first however I couldn't quite put my finger on the perceived problem.  The shape is good, the button at the top, the lace bottom, the three quarter sleeves.  I liked the intarsia pattern combined with the lace.   

    It was only after looking at the project page for this sweater on Ravelry that I figured out that my reservations were actually due to the color combination more than they were to the actual pattern. This surprised me somewhat as usually brown and turquoise are a favorite combination, and I am usually able to see beyond the color and look at the design and schematics to see my own version of the design.  Not this time.

    I see now that I do really love this sweater but I personally would wear it in a more subdued combination of colors.  Or perhaps I would use contrast but make the intarsia and lace have a stronger value than the background; it all depends on the colors chosen.  And as soon as I recognized that I was reacting to the color and not the design, the potential became obvious.  

    All photos in this post are from Ravelry and not Interweave Knits.  The photos from Interweave are too grainy to scan well. 

  • Disappointment and a Plan

    I had a bit of a panic weekend before last and attacked my sewing room in a frenzy, pulling projects out of knitting bags, and tossing the various stacks of things to be refashioned, ripped or just finished in a mad flurry of cloth and yarn.  I hadn't done that in quite a while and it is amazing what havoc a few moments of frenzy can wreak on a space that took considerable time to sort and organize.

    IMG_3595  I never found what I was looking for, but I did eventually realize that it never existed.  I did however find a skirt I had put aside to take in and subsequently forgotten.  It was one of the very few summer items in a stack that is mostly appropriate for fall and winter and has therefore been mostly off the mental radar.

    I tried it on and took it apart weekend before last, before life got a little hectic, and only managed to take it in and put it back together this weekend past.  I wore it yesterday and it was a bit of a disappointment.  I can't say that there is anything wrong with the skirt but that it just wasn't "right" for me, and although the issues were minor, they added a grating edge to a day that had its own share of frustrations.

    1.  It was still too large, although not that much, 2 to 3 inches in the waist.  I could wear it but it kept spinning around.  For this, at least I don't blame myself.  I did loose a couple of pounds and have been working out, but the effect of this has been somewhat hidden as I had a couple of gluten encounters over the past couple of weeks and those, combined with a couple of courses of prednisone which they required have led to much fluctuation in size, the kind of which I had not seen for a long long time.

    2.  I had forgotten that I didn't really like the skirt.  Oh it is pretty, and I loved it once.  But the tops and shoes I once wore with it are gone now, the tops too large and the shoes too small, and I had trouble finding just the right thing.  I wore it with a striped tee and espadrilles and it was fine but not quite great, and I was discouraged by not finding anything in my closet that seemed to work correctly with the feel and the proportions of the skirt.

    I was disheartened at having spent my precious sewing time altering something which only needed altering again immediately.  I was also annoyed at myself for not thinking about the actual garment and how I would wear it.  For once I just grabbed something and did it without over-thinking the whole thing and it ended up that I should have thought about it a great deal more than I did.

    I spent the evening watching a movie that made me cry (For Love of the Game) and knitting the sleeves to the project that prompted that tossing frenzy mentioned earlier.   Somehow, when the evening was over the solution came to me, and I will still have this skirt and a way that I can wear it.  After a quick check in the closet, I am sure that the new skirt will work, at least with shoes I currently own, and possibly with a couple of tops, but I really need to make some new tops and blouses anyway.

    Although I started the day disappointed that I was just going to rip the skirt apart again immediately, or just toss it aside and call it a casualty of war, it ended on a positive note, and now I am actually looking forward to ripping and refashioning.  

    More to come.

  • Striped Sleeves for Stormy Wildflowers

    I found myself in knitting limbo at one point last week, wanting something to knit in the evening after a long day, but not wanting to start another sweater at a time when I felt overwhelmed with the number of UFOs hanging around.   

    IMG_3583  Looking through the various project bags I remembered this project from last April using On Line LInie 125.  I knew I had to knit the sleeves and thought it would be a quick easy project although that proved not to be the case.

    I only had 4 skeins of yarn and I wasn't sure if this was going to be enough or how much of a sleeve I would get.   I thought I could pick up the sleeve at the shoulder and knit down, ending the sleeve when I finished the first two skeins.  But I really didn't know what I was doing.  I don't really understand top down knitting well enough, or how to accommodate the shaping of the sleeve cap as I knit from the body of the sweater.  

    I suppose I could have looked the information up, but it was actually easier for me to just rip out the sleeve spread the sweater out, and write a quick pattern for a sleeve including the cap shaping, then knit it flat from the hem up.  I guessed that I would have enough yarn for elbow length sleeves.

    IMG_3582  I was wrong.  I ran out of yarn before the cap was finished.  Since I decided I don't really want shorter sleeves I had to come up with another plan.  Luckily, in the bin where I store odd balls and leftover bits of yarn, I found two colors of Dolcino which work perfectly and I cam up with the striped sleeve shown above.  It seemed rather lucky that I had two colors that worked so well and knitted up to a fabric with similar hand to the original sweater.

    I started the second sleeve last night and should finish it soon.  I don't have anything written down, and am using the first sleeve as a pattern for the second sleeve.  To finish the sweater I will use the two colors of Dolcino to finish the neckline, carrying the colors from the sleeves to the body of the sweater.  I think it will work out quite well.

  • Fall Preview

    T&CSept  The September issues of magazines and fashion catalogs have started to arrive.  I haven't really started to absorb anything yet, but the cover of the September Town & Country magazine really captured my imagination.

    I just like the combination of everything Tory Burch is wearing in this shot: the sweater, the blouse, the squash blossom necklace with the scarf over it.  It strikes me as the perfect combination of color and pattern, of classic and boho.    I wouldn't necessarily have thought to pair these items this way but it looks just right to me.  I love every one of those pieces except I couldn't really wear the yellow scarf as it would do very unflattering things to my skin.  Of course the scarf that makes the whole outfit pop but it is the play of color and pattern, the repetition and the contrast that makes it work.  I can learn from that.

    Aside from the overall outfit, I want that sweater.  Actually I want the sweater I imagined when I first saw this photo, before I looked at it carefully and noted the details. When I first looked at the picture, I thought the sweater had short sleeves, and I actually preferred that, although I can see how long sleeves would be more versatile.  I personally wouldn't like the thickness of even a very light sweater bunched up at the elbow, and after pushing the mohair up, I'd have to reblock it to get it to fit at the wrist again.  This kind of thing annoys me to no end.  But I would wear a short sleeved, very loosely knit mohair sweater with a shirt with the sleeves rolled up,or even with a turtleneck sweater with the sleeves scrunched up.  Although I think the original price of this sweater is reasonable, it is not really what I want.  My own version of this sweater however is a definite possibility, it would be a quick knit, and at some point the perfect mohair in the perfect color will cross my path.