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…