Slow Jumper

This is another ageing FO- one which I actually finished knitting in March 2009!!! I fell out with it, and only got around to taking pictures in May 2010. More embarrassingly, I then decided I liked it after all, and have worn it quite a lot in the last year- but only got around to blocking it last week. (These are the May 2010, pre blocking photos...)

I used Elizabeth Zimmermann's Icelandic yoke sweater pattern for the yoke, but I took the measurements and the shaping of the body and the sleeves from the tatty old jumper I was replacing (which was not yoked), so it didn't quite work out as intended. That's what I get for disobeying the Zimmermann!

It doesn't quite behave itself over the bust and shoulders, or in the upper arms, but I've decided I don't mind. Blocking did help too, once I eventually got around to it...
It is the only garment I have ever made with a view to wardrobe planning. I made it to replace a black polo neck jumper I wore for work with either a tan, black and white checked skirt, or a bright orange one. The original jumper eventually became too bobbly and tatty to count as respectable work wear, so I planned this jumper to go with the two skirts (hence the colours in the yoke).

As it happens, I since got the yellow skirt shown here at a clothes swap, and I now also wear the jumper with a short tan corduroy skirt. And with some tweed trousers, also from the same clothes swap, so it is a bit of a winter workhorse!

It is ravelled here, and there are a few more images on Flickr too.

Messy sunny Tuesday

Following on from yesterday's post, and given that it is Tuesday...

The scraps, and the pattern piece for the self fabric belt for yesterday's dress has been sitting on top of my sewing machine since last May...
My engagement with Messy Tuesday (which is meant to be a reaction against the excess of the unattainably perfect in domestic blogs by being open about the grubby, ugly, mess which is often just out of shot) has so far been somewhat cheaty. I want to boldy embrace the concept, but I take huge pleasure in pretending to live in beauty- and I'm unashamedly houseproud- so I found it impossible to photograph my sewing dregs in situ, and felt compelled to put them on a well lit chair. So it goes...

I have also been embracing messy Tuesday through LAUNDRY. Today is the second glorious drying day in a row- a rarity in South East London, which is to be celebrated by load after load of laundry

Thank you Felix and Lara for messing up Tuesdays!
PS- all those lovely socks in the foreground were knit by housemate Alice, and the stripy jumper is this one.

It's that time of year!

The daffodils are out, the clocks are going forward, and I'm blogging- it must be spring!

I'm cheating wildly by posting a dress which I made last spring, in May, using both a vintage pattern and vintage fabric from my grandmother's stash (I think- the pattern could have been a lucky charity shop find...)

It's Simplicity 5668 and has a 1973 trademark. It makes me feel a little like an air hostess (which I clearly quite like- as I wore it very often indeed last summer)

As promised by the pattern envelope, it did indeed go together in a Jiffy, very pleasing. I made view 1- in red on the envelope, and quite clearly the envy of misses views 2 and 3. I'd been saving the fabric up for ages, and had all sorts of plans, involving tracing off Burda patterns and altering them. Fortunately I came to my senses and realised that if I wanted a dress this side of 2050 Jiffy easy cut easy sew was where it was at...
I also appear to have taken exception to the photographer- pesky paparazzi!

Spring just keeps springing

It appears that I only blog in the spring. Ah well, at least it is a cheerful time of year...

Aptly enough, the image above shows a hot water bottle cover which was originally meant as a Christmas present. The image below shows its state around Christmas (and for some time thereafter)


Fortunately it can be reassigned as a somewhat unseasonal birthday present, and will be posted tomorrow- phew!

The buttons come from my copious inherited button stash- and I do mean copious. It includes an actual shop rack of buttons which my Grandmother bought at a closing down sale some decades ago:


The armchair and cushions lurking behind the knitting are also from her house, and they now grace my home- albeit a different home since I last posted (it still has the same people in it, and is only down the road, though!).
For the second year running I appear to have moved house, changed jobs, and made less stuff than I would have liked. I'm hoping this is not a set pattern.

I have been rubbish at responding to comments and messages- I'm not sure I'll get though the backlog, but I'll give it a stab. Sorry if you have been trying to get in touch!

Spring is sprung

Spring is most definitely here- not only have I finished my first warm weather dress of the year (and my first bit of sewing since moving house in September!), but it was still light enough when I got home from work this evening to have a bit of a photoshoot on the roof terrace.

The dress is dress 101A from the March issue of Burda, and the fabric has been in my stash for ages. It came from the same sales shelf at the back of the fabric shop as the cloth for this, this and this (among others- I think I'm the only person who buys from that shelf, and I take that responsibility seriously...)

I really love the fabric, and have been mulling over what to make with it for years- I had considered the Whirl Away dress, and the one I made a while ago was meant as a kind of wearable muslin. I wanted something with quite a lot of volume, so the bird motif had space to (ahem) sing, and the Whirl Away's huge skirt seemed ideal. However, I don't really wear the one I made, and it's a nuisance to walk around in, so back to the drawing board I went.

I'm very pleased with how this turned out. It has the volume I was after, but the yardage is actually relatively contained, so I even have enough fabric to make another! (I had to keep telling myself this as I mucked around with seam allowances- Burda does not include any, and I'd never made up a pattern with no seam allowances before...)

On another track completely- thank you for still reading! I'm glad this blog is still lingering on the odd RSS feed. Yay!

A year and a day

So, life has been mostly offline in the last year...

I've changed jobs, moved house, made some stuff (but not as much as I'd like). I've thought a lot about blogging, and about what it's for. I've skipped my blogiversary. Can a have a blog-hiatus-iversary instead?

I think I'll try to post weekly here again, but I'm not going to feel guilty if I don't. I might cheat and show you pictures of things from the year's gap- nothing like a bit of time travel!

Like the little quartet of images above: spring in the garden of my old house, in last year's London "snow event"; summer in Italy, craning the set for an opera I worked on into place; autumn in the doorway of my new house, with Flatmate Alice's boyfriend, the first time we all went to see it; winter in Italy again, driving to the seaside to eat fish with friends and celebrate the new year. Not a bad haul!

Messy Tuesday

I feel I'm somewhat going against the spirit of Messy Tuesdays by posting a stage-managed picture of some mess, but it turns out that I'm far too vain to post the real mess currently engulfing me, and besides, this particular mess is a beautiful and interesting one, which I quite wanted to talk about anyway.

This mess is my embroidery thread box- but it's messiness precedes my ownership of it. It is one of the many textile related things I inherited from my maternal Grandmother. She (like me, as Flatmate Alice can testify) was a great saver of things. Among other oddments of hers I have a large bag, and several tins, of her odd buttons, a box of empty cotton reels, and this box, which I decanted from a bag, of her embroidery thread ends. There are also several boxes of full skeins of thread, all sorted into cottons, silks, etc, and arranged by colour, but I do not have those. I was never a big one for embroidery (to my her slight disappointment, as it was her favorite craft) and I only have this lot because I once rashly declared that I enjoy untangling thread, and my mother responded by presenting this bundle to me. As you can see, I got about halfway through before getting bored, not too bad! And in a way, I'm glad I didn't untangle it all. This is a mess that is older than me. Some of it is probably older than my mother. There is enough untangled to do what little embroidery I am likely to do, and enough left for the next person to untangle. Or add to.

(The fabric in the background is from my Paris trip, it's 3m of silk from La Folie des Coupons, and I think it will mostly be lining. Unless it turns out to be very, very frilly cocktail dress. You never know...)