After a spring best characterized as an extended winter, summer has all of a sudden appeared. I’m under no illusions that it will last, so with a glorious 4-day weekend (Constitution day fell on a Friday, followed by Pentecost weekend, with Monday being a public holiday), we’ve dropped everything and are spending as much time outside on our patio as possible.

These past few weeks, I have been…
- looking for the details while trying to find refuge from a day-to-day lacking routine.
- eating fresh bread for “kveldsmat” and wrapping cheese in cloth instead of plastic. So far, some hardened edges, but way better than mold.
- wearing sandals and sporting bare legs, oh my!
- collecting little moments of summer preparations, a marching band in front of the university museum, colors, and random tableaus.
- bouncing from sewing project to sewing project, and not really feeling too inspired by any of them. It will come back. In the meanwhile, mending, patching, and little fixes.

Sorry for the kind of blurry photo – the rest of them are better! We were in a slight hurry to get to a birthday party, and since this picture best shows the shape of the Beignet skirt I’m running with it rather than retake the photos. The birthday party was lovely, and I got to wear my very recently finished Beignet (so recent I, ahem, didn’t finish the self-tie or the beltloops. They’re coming soon).

Fabric: Pinwale cotton corduroy from Fishman’s Fabrics in Chicago. Beautiful quality fabric, like everything from that store (though often on the expensive side by US standards). I cut the pieces out so long ago, I don’t know how much I’ve used, but I think at least 3/4 yards of a full 58″ width, possibly a little more for the odd facing piece. I still have fabric left over, though no plans for it yet! For lining I used remnants of kimono silk left over from a theater production. Beautiful stuff!
Pattern: Colette Patterns Beignet. I’ve had this pattern for a long time, so it actually has the watercolor illustrations of the first round, which I sort of prefer anyways. First, but not last time making this, for sure.
Techniques: In-seam pockets, fully lined, bound buttonholes, twill tape for stabilizing waistline.

I started this skirt over a year ago, and meant to finish it for a Sew Weekly challenge on buttons. For someone who enjoys the process of sewing very much, and in her perfectionist tendencies decided that all twelve buttonholes must be *bound*, it was a bit of a foolish endeavor to undertake in a week. So – the night before the challenge deadline I conceded I would not in fact have time to attach lining to shell, hem it all, and construct the 9 remaining buttonholes. And so it was put away.

Clearly I finished them eventually, but my goodness, there is a lot of fiddly steps to the bound buttonholes! After you’ve actually measured out and attached all the little pieces (which I decided would have the wales running in a horizontal direction and therefore needed much precision in applying) and then sliced and turned and steamed and stitched down flaps…. Then you have to make all the corresponding windows for the backsides! They did turn out lovely though, and in many ways I enjoy doing these fiddly bits – making corners for myself, as Kristen called it – but definitely best done not under time constraints.

The fit of this skirt is lovely. It curves beautifully over the lower back, and I think it’s a flattering shape. I will definitely make more of this – I’m thinking a sturdier cotton drill, unlined, with fun bias binding on all the seams for the next one. At the same time, I will probably also make some pattern changes, and also deviate from the instructions in the same way I did this time. For example, the width of the skirt front facing is absolutely killing me. I realized it when constructing the inside windows for the bound buttonholes, and then remembered that I’d seen this problem with other people’s skirts: the facing is too narrow. If you notice in the second buttonhole picture up there, the buttonholes should not be that close to the seamline attaching the lining. Not only did it make it very difficult to properly construct those little windows, but it’s not structurally very good.

I also made steps to reduce bulk over how the pattern is written. For example, all my seams are pressed open instead of to one side, including by the pocket where I just snipped in to the seamline above and under where the pocket is attached. Since the corduroy doesn’t fray super crazy, I also turned up just once for the hem. It won’t really show since the lining hem covers it. Finally, though the pattern doesn’t specify how to attach the twill tape, I chose to butt it up against the waist seamline, but only be caught in the understitching, as I thought it would get too bulky to have it sewn into the actual waist seam and folded back on itself. Oh! I changed my mind – here’s the new “finally”: Finally, I anchored the pocket seam allowance to a skirt panel seam allowance, since the pockets kept flipping back in the wrong direction while I was trying this on. I just laid the skirt flat, and pinned where the pocket could be attached to a vertical seam allowance – if that makes sense?

As mentioned, I used remnants of kimono silk from a theater production to line this skirt. I had to piece several of the panels in order to have enough fabric, but look how lovely it is! I think it was a good choice for the soft corduroy since it provides some body (the silk being a little on the sturdier side). Unfortunately it also makes the skirt just a little lumpy in a way, since the corduroy is so very soft. That’s why for the next Beignet I want to try a sturdier fabric and not line it.

Criticisms aside, I really do like the shape of this skirt, and look forward to making it again. Not to mention how happy I am to have both this fabric out of my stash, and finally – this skirt out of the UFO-pile!

Pinwale Corduroy

Wow, what a couple of weeks it’s been. Very random, all over the place, and filled with moments. I worked a lot on the costumes I shared in my last post, and John has been (and still is) working on big projects at his job. Between the two of us, we’ve been exhausted, sick, and both. It feels like we haven’t had much “normal” time together, of doing household chores and making and eating dinner together like we normally do (um, to be fair – the eating is what we do together. John deserves all the credit for his default-chef status). In place of that, there has been work-night concerts (my awesome bassist friend was in town performing!), lego-playing, costume-modelling, and screw-this-I’ll-meet-you-for-sushi-or-popcorn-for-dinner-in-town. We’ve had the options of letting the apartment and the laundry and the dishes be left un-done, and just do something together instead, and I’m really glad that’s what we choose.

Photo by Ina Cyrus

I’ve been working for this pretty cool project: This traditional folk dance foundation does a three-year project in a municipality, ending in a final project performance. It’s very much shaped by the folk music and dance material traditional to each municipality, so every project takes on a unique life and progression. I got involved to make costumes for one of these final performances, and it was a really nice experience!

The setting for the performance was a chess-game, and the concept revolved around what happens if the pieces starts breaking the rules. This show is an expansion of the version they did last year, and part of my job was to expand on the costumes they had used. This meant I was making a lot of pieces that needed to supplement the tunics they already had in place. It also meant that the silhouette was more or less already given, but anything I added also needed to be very dance-friendly.

The main pieces I worked on were the vests for the kings and the queens. They already had beautiful hand crocheted crowns, but they needed something to make them more visibly different. I gave them vests with exaggerated collars (they queens more so than the kings, as you can see), and to make sure they were dance-friendly, the closures were made up of elastics in the front.

I also made four skirts for the rooks. I really wanted a straight, column-like shape in the skirts for the stoic rooks, but you can’t dance and roll around on the floor in a pencil skirt! The solution was to use stiffer and heavier fabric for the main portion of the skirt, and to insert cheese-cloth-like thin fabric in between the panels. When the dancer moved and twirled and stuff, the panels opened up to full skirt shape, in line with how the other skirts were moving on stage.

Photo by Ina Cyrus

There were of course more chess-pieces to identify, and we used hats and collars to do so. The pawns had simple tunics and hats, the knights had flat shoulder-collars, and the bishops were given neck ruffles. And, being costumes, lots of velcro as closures!

A recurrent inspiration was the medieval times, for several reasons: The previous performance was based on the old norse royal game of chess, so the existing tunics were very much medieval in style, and also – with my background in medieval studies I do jump at a chance to draw source material from the era. Several of the patterns were even based on medieval clothing, and I think it does show! In a good way, of course. For instance, the late medieval period saw a lot of collars attached to the bodice in the back with a diagonal seamline. It’s not really done much anymore, but it makes attaching the collar much easier, and I think, also more stable.

In addition to working with costumes and getting a lot of freedom in picking fun fabric combinations, I got to meet a great group of kids who did a wonderful job on stage. They were a dedicated and fun bunch, and I’m glad to have met them!

Photo by Ina Cyrus

This picture was supposed to show how far I got before I ripped it back all the way to the hem, but it doesn’t really show anything at all, except a yarnbomb in my lap. And my water bottle in the seat-back pocket on the flight to Amsterdam. Anyways, the story doesn’t start there. It starts here:

Or, you know, it starts further back. I made John a Seamless hybrid sweater (Elizabeth Zimmerman style) back in 2009. Since I keep borrowing it, I figured I should probably just make one for myself. So I started, with some lovely tweed yarn in a seafoam green that I bought in Portland, Maine, and I knit all of the stockinette of the body before deciding that yes, I really did need to buy two more skeins to have enough yarn, and no, I could not find a dye lot match.

So, I ripped back to the hem and now I’m knitting this sweater – again – but now with alternating new yarn and old yarn every row. I considered just doing the one color and then the other, but I knew the color difference would be too much for even a transition blending to camouflage this one. You can see the difference in the color if you look hard; the hem actually is a different color being just the old yarn, and there are striations in the stockinette. I don’t mind (at least I mind a lot less than very subtle, but not subtle enough colorblocking would have).

And, this sweater got to go back to Italy being exactly as much knit as it was last time, despite the hours put into it in the meanwhile.

I’m glad it’s all stockinette though. I am travelling to spend this coming weekend doing a final fitting (and then opening night!) for the costumes I’ve worked on the last several months, and I’m bringing a book and this sweater to keep me company in transit. Here’s to smooth sailing from now on out!

These past few weeks, I have been…
- travelling for my easter vacation. First a few days in the Netherlands and Brussels, and then on to Italy. Brussels was absolutely lovely, and I hope to go back and spend more time there! It’s charming and new and old and people are nice, and there is a huge beer selection. Good things.
- eating fresh artichoke for the first time – they’re in season!
- reading about historical (fictional) Venice in “The Glassblower of Murano” for two days while sipping wine. Ok, so half of the time it was raining so I sat inside. Lest I make this too idyllic-sounding (though it was delightful, and exactly what I needed in my vacation).
- sawing and hauling and stacking wood. Burning wood. Sweeping. There is a rhythm to the days at this place in Italy, and it revolves a lot around manual labor, followed by eating, and then more of the same. It’s quite lovely, and a huge reason we travel down there in the first place. Last time the visit was so short I didn’t really fall in to this familiar rhythm, but this time I eventually did, and it made me remember why I enjoy spending time there. Much needed.
- knitting on the same sweater as I did last time. Except, in the meanwhile I’ve ripped it back to the hem band and now I’m doing every other row of not quite identical colors. I’ll save the details for a separate post, but it felt ironic, yet appropriate to be redoing the work in the same geographical place.
- making quick art to hang out with the printer, the aloe plant, and the receipt pile. (after coming home, rummaging to find my resumes, and stumbling across this font excercise and having a frame on hand in the right size. Perfect.)

Yarn: Fingering weight “Tynn Alpakka” yarn from “Du Store Alpakka”, in a dark brown.
Pattern: Heritage Pretty Mallory by Cascade Yarns. By the way, I came across an early discussion where the designer was settling on the name of the pattern, and I liked the first iteration of “Renegade Mallory”. See more of my notes on my ravelry project page.
Techniques: Lace on the sleeves, top-down raglan construction. Did shaping at sides instead of in middle. I used twisted knit stitches on all the rib, and it helps it not stretch out too badly, and looks very neat. The rib doesn’t lay totally flat though, but I’m not quite sure what to do about that.

I started knitting this last april, and got about 4 inches past the neckband into the raglan construction, and then I put it away for almost a year. I’m not sure why I did, but after picking it up in January, it’s been pretty much a breeze! I mentioned here that I was flying through the sleeves, and they really did go so much faster than I expected once I had memorized the lace repeats. Of course, all I had left then was half a sweater worth of stockinette knitting! Slow and steady, and finally I was done with that too.

The pattern has some slight shaping at the princess lines in the front and the back, but I wasn’t crazy about potentially seeing that shaping, so I moved it to the sides. I also decreased a little extra on the front only, to shape for the bust a little better. This means that the sweater isn’t actually the same front to back, but you can’t *see* the difference easily! During my easter travelling I kept having to hold up the sweater to the light to see where the shaping was. So, this morning I took some scrap yarn and wove in a couple of rows of contrasting color to act as a sort of label. I thought that was quite clever!

I call this one a success. Also, pretty sunsets and clear skies, and warm, thin sweaters for spring days that I believe are here.

Just a quick note to let you know I’m off on easter vacation! First we went to Brussels, which was lovely (the picture is from our B&B which had the best pastries for breakfast, as well as beeing appropriately stylish for being on vacation). Now we’ve landed in Italy, where my goals are few and good: eat, drink, and relax.

I’ll be back in a week or so with a finished sweater, some costumes, and a rested mind. Have a lovely easter everyone!

I recently checked in to my patternpage on ravelry, and saw my Reversible Biking Hat has passed 100 projects! Yey! I thought it could be nice to collect the questions I’ve gotten since releasing the pattern all in one place, so here we go – a little reversible biking hat Q&A. I’ll add to it as there are more questions, and hopefully it can be a resource! Follow this link for the actual Reversible Biking hat pattern.

What are the sizes?
They are Small, and Medium. The first hat was made to fit my boyfriends head and appearently it’s really small! I kept getting feedback from knitters about the hat ending up too small, so I added another larger size. Since the original wasn’t very big for men’s heads, I called the original size S, and the larger size M.

… and the stats?
The size S measures 16″ (41 cm) around, is 8″ (20 cm) tall, starts with 96 stitches, and counts 24 repeats.
The size M measures 18″ (46 cm) around, is 9″ (23 cm) tall, starts with 112 stitches, and counts 28 repeats.

Well, I’m making a hat for a *really* big head… how do I make a size L?
For the next step up, I’d reccomend casting on 128 sts. Here is why: The difference between the S and M sizes, are (112 sts – 96 sts =) 16 sts. The reason for adding 16 stitches between the sizes has to do with the decreasing pattern, so to keep that in check, add another 16 stitches on to the M size stitch count (112 sts + 16 sts), totaling 128 sts.

And, to get a little technical about the decreasing: This setup will give you 32 pattern repeats, which will decrease with 16 sts per decrease round until decrease row 6. Decrease row 6 has you halve the stitches, so at the end of row 6 you should have 32 stitches. For the final decrease row (decrease row 9) you’ll halve the stitches again, for a total of 16 stitches. You might want to do another round of decreasing half the stitches if you prefer ending with 8 stitches instead.

I’m going rouge and using a totally different gauge yarn than recommended. Any comments?
Yes! Do it! I love knitting based on what I have on hand, and I’ve never been very good at matching yarn and pattern perfectly. So, I’ve learned to adjust the pattern according to my yarn. It’s not that hard, I promise. I wrote about that in this post on alterations to the biking hat pattern, so be sure to read that too.

The general gist of it is this: you take the finished measurement of the project, multiply it with the gauge you get with the yarn you’re using, and that is the total number of stitches you need. Let’s do an example. The circumference of the Reversible Knitting Hat in size is 16″. My hypothetical gauge with my hypothetical yarn is 3,25 sts pr inch. 16 ” x 3,25 sts pr inch = 52 sts. So, I need to cast on 52 sts to achieve the goal of 16″ finished measurement.

In other words, goal # of inches x your stitches pr inch = amount to cast on.

Great. What about row gauge?
Yep, my example didn’t address row gauge. But for simple objects like hats, knitting until indicated length will be fine. However – if you use yarn that is way thicker, or way thinner than the original, you’ll probably have to adjust the number of rows to decrease over. Thinner yarn will need more rows to get enough height, and thicker yarn needs fewer rows. If you’ve knit until the decreasing starts, you can just measure your rows to see how many you get pr inch, and multiply by how many inches you’re doing the decreasing over – which for this particular hat is around 1 1/2″ – 2″.

And repeat patterns?
You also going to need to check that your new number works with any repeat pattern! The repeat pattern in the Reversible Biking Hat is 4 (k3, p1), which means any total number of stiches you get after doing our fancy math, should be divisible by 4. If it isn’t, round up or down to the nearest multiple of 4.

That was easy. To make it a little harder, let’s look at the decreasing again. This pattern is set up to work best with an even number of repeats. In the example above, I’m starting with 52 stitches, which is divisible by 4, producing 13 repeats. That’s not an even number. What is going to happen, is this: I start with 52 stitches, and decrease 1 sts pr repeat for half of the repeats, including the first and the last repeat, so 7 sts (now 45 sts total). Then I decrease 1 sts pr repeat for the other half of the repeats, 6 sts (39 sts total). I do that one more time, reducing first to 32 sts, then 26 sts. This number now gets halved at least once, to 13 sts, or alternatively another time if your stitch number at this point is above 15-ish, but this is depending on the thickness of your yarn.

Now, what has happened is that instead of each 4-stitch repeat section being combined neatly with its neighbour several times over for a wedge-like finish towards the crown in tidy pairs, you have one little section left over, and an odd number of stitches to pull the loop through. Most likely *nobody* will ever notice, but it doesn’t decrease as neatly as with an even number.

I want to make spirals like that picture up there.
Easy! I covered that in this post, so be sure to read that. Basically, you stagger the repeated section every yo-row by one stitch. So at the beginning of every yo-row, knit 1 stitch (or 2 if you’re into steeper diagonals!), *then* knit the rest of the section as normal. You’ve effectively just nudged the pattern over by one stitch, and when you keep nudging at the beginning of every repeat, you get diagonal lines!

Phew. I’m glad we’re done with all those numbers. Let’s look at some pictures.

image credit alois

image credit manosa

image credit kellys

Any recommendations for picking a good fiber? Something that won’t get too hot, but stay warm and keep its shape for cyclists biking in the cold.
I enlisted the help of my boyfriend – the handsome man in the pattern pictures – for an answer to these, since he’s the cyclist in our household. This is what I learned from him:
•  The version I made in a wool/cotton mix (the dark grey hat in the pattern pictures) is his lightweight version. I’ve also noticed it’s not as good at keeping it’s shape, I suspect the cotton does that. He doesn’t really use that one below freezing.
•  The sports wool version I made in brown, no pictures of that unfortunately (like a sock yarn with some poly I think) is what he uses when it’s cold.
•  Neither are enough for bitter cold (from -5 celsius or around 20 degrees fahrenheit), and he has a lined fleece earflap hat he uses for that, as well as one of those microfiber things that almost totally covers his face.
•  He says the eyelets means that neither of the biking hats never really get too warm, since they sort of self-ventilate!

These past few weeks, I have been…
- soaking up sun… sun that we’ve actually had! Look, sun makes shadows!
- eating winter fruits and vegetables; lots of avocado, some fennel, parsley root and parsnip. Mostly avocado though, I can’t get enough!
- looking for signs of spring everywhere. You wouldn’t know it by the temperatures we’ve been having, and the snow (!) we woke up to the other day, but I *am* seeing crocuses and snowbells and pussywillow, and the fact that there is daylight both leaving for work and coming home is a dead giveaway. Spring *is* on its way.
- sorting out a more pulled-together wardrobe, piece by piece. I have a couple of new-to-me bags, some new jewellery, and plans for pieces to make to fill in the gaps.
- making costumes like a champion. Cutting out muslins of old bedsheets, pillow for my knees, and canned tomatoes as patternweights. I’m doing the costumes for a dance collaboration with a chess-game setting, so I’ve been dreaming up kings and queens and rooks and what-not, and it’s quite fun! It’s all black and white of course, but I’m using a range of fabrics to keep it interesting, from linen and bamboo, through boiled wool and cotton gauze, to fake and real leather. It’s really starting to come together now, and that is always the best part of a project. Soon on to finishing touches!
- reading a beautiful aussie magazine that John brought me back from his work travels. Every page is a treat, and I’m still not done reading it. Just looking at that cover makes me happy.