Progress

I´m on the front bands of my Olympic sweater with the neck band and a sleeve to go! I had to rip out the left front band again due to serious miscalculation on my part... see for yourself:


The body of the sweater is blocked already, some of the ends are woven in and I should be able to finish this till Sunday!

Pants galore

Here you see 6 of the original 8 fabrics. 2 have been used. The first pair of pants is a bit too small (no biggie, I´m losing weight anyways) but also a bit too high in the waist for my taste! Here are some pictures:




The second one is almost finished. I barely had enough fabric, because it wasn´t very wide. I only need to sew the waistband to the pants, finish the crotch seam and hem the pants. These brown pants are made from the same pattern as the grey ones, I just shortened the waist, hopefully enough.

Mass production
All 10 knits washed and dried, waiting to be ironed. I´ll try the pattern out next sunday!
I need to leave soon for a seminar lasting through saturday afternoon. So I won´t be getting much done sewing wise until Sunday. But I plan on doing lots of sewing then... finish my brown pants, start and finish the first of 10 knit tops to get the fit right and start the assembly line for the remaining 9!

Planning... and some FO´s

Again, it´s been way too long and my resolution of blogging weekly has been shot to s***! I just can´t seem to get in the swing of things. But a lot of stuff has been floating around in my head and I need an outlet for that.
I thought about joining the Knitting Olympics with a huge challenge to myself: knit a cardigan that has been in my idea book for too long and which I will design on paper before the opening ceremonies on friday. I just joined the YarnHarlot´s Knitting Olympics and will try to cast on during the opening ceremonies, which will be on tv at 3 am on saturday morning due to the time difference. Frank and I both want to watch it so we´ll set the alarm, open a nice bottle of red and cuddle up in bed.
I´m not sure I can finish it, but I´ll try. The intended yarn is elann Superwash Bamboo in dark green. I swatched a couple of days ago on 4 and on 5mm needles, washed the swatches and decided to stick with the 4mm just like the ball band suggests.
Here a some pictures of my recent sewing fo´s and knitting wip´s. I´ve sewn two knit dresses (actually three, but the last one is pretty much a wadder), a woven sheath dress and a pants muslin ready to be taken apart again to copy the pieces.

This is dress 116 from BWOF 10/2006 in a grey knit with silver flowers and stars printed on it. I made this for the 40th birthday of Frank´s former roommate. Please excuse the bad pic. They were taken at 2 am after the party with a selftimer with awful lighting.


This is a gathered knit dress I made for the New Year´s Party we went to. It´s practically selfdrafted and I love it! The fabric is the most awesome charcoal sweater knit I bought from Ann at Gorgeous Fabrics. Here is a closeup of the gathering at the side seams. I covered the seams with black satin bias tape as a little detail on an otherwise plain but curvehugging dress.




This "beauty" is the wadder. The fabric is actually a very nice viscose/wool knit but I ruined the dress... More on that once I summon up the courage to rework this one. Luckily I´ve got enough of this fabric to try some things.


This is dress 117 from BWOF 09/2007 in a poly herringbone fabric that tends to wrinkle easily, as you can see in the pictures! Sorry for that, I just took the dress out of the suitcase...


The invisible handstitched hem.

Knittingwise I´ve got my purple Rosa´s Cardigan, my lavender Apres Surf Hoodie (back and front done, sleeves more than halfway) and some other wip´s I´ve been ignoring.

I´m going to rip back the sleeves and reknit them the way they are intended in the pattern (short sleeves). The yarn is elann Highland Donegal in a nice grapey purple.

This pile of lavender pieces are front, back and two halffinished sleeves of my Apres Surf Hoodie knit out of elann (are we sensing a theme here?)baby cashmere in dusky lavender.
Here is a peek at my very first finished weaving project woven out of 2 skeins Cascade 220 Superwash Paints.

I really like this scarf and have a second one a little wider and shorter and with two different colourways of the Cascade 220 in the warp and weft on the loom. It´s almost finished, maybe I should finish this up before the Olympics start to get it out of the way!
Sewingwise I´ve been doing lots of planning. I´m in sore need of pants, so that´s what I´m tackling now. I´ve been away on business for the last couple of weeks and in the evenings, in my hotel room, I traced two pants patterns (I´d wanted to trace three, but couldn´t find the third one): a Burda Designer pattern by Bogner and Vogue 1059, the latter of which I have muslined and worked out most of the fitting issues. The third is also a Vogue A+O pattern (V2907) which I desperately want to find because I think it will be a good one for my body type. With these three patterns I want to sew a series of pants. I´ve got three wool fabrics in black/grey, two brown cotton twills (one pinstripe, one solid), a white twill, a shiny grey poly woven and a beige/brown herringbone poly blend, which comes to a total of eight pairs of pants from three patterns. These will hopefully stuff huge gaps in my wardrobe.
Another project I´ve been thinking about is this:
10 yards of cotton interlock, pretty beefy and not flowing at all, in 10 colors. I plan on making a basic raglan v-neck shirt with 3/4 sleeves. In ten colors... :-)
This is what I plan to be sewing and knitting in the next couple of weeks. I cleaned up my office today and put everything I won´t be needing for the pants + top marathon and my knitting away.
Hopefully that will help me be productive…