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Showing posts from June, 2014

Moving house...

And job and state and kids schools and childcare and LIFE! We are packing up and heading to Sydney - which is, if nothing else, a whole lot warmer than Tassie! While this looks very organised, the disturbing back story is how many other tubs there are... I would like to say this is a surprise, but to be very honest the first thing I thought of when we realised we would be moving house, likely to somewhere rather smaller, was what on earth I might do with The Stash of Doom!  Time to be a bit more disciplined about sewing up my stash only (mostly) I think!!! Anyway - this blog might be quiet for a good few weeks while I move everything and everyone, get settled and get some internet action cranking in the new digs.  Happily for me, yarn club will still be sending me projects of awesomeness (poas, as they will now be known...), so hopefully I can at least keep up with some rather more portable knitting. See you on the sunny side!
Week 7 of the Wardrobe Architect series focused on prints / patterns and solids. I laughed when I read the title, as I knew my answers were going to be all along the same vein.  I just don't do prints/patterns very well at all.  The exercise which asked us to pick the 10-20 most worn items out of the wardrobe and see what percentage of them were printed?  HAHAHAHA.  If you don't count stripes, none of mine were patterned at all. In a nutshell here is what I knew already: I massively prefer solids I do like textural variation (so slubby dye variations for example) I love stripes I don't mind an indistinct dot or something like a chevron (which is clearly just messed up stripes...) All other patterns need to be small-scale and non-novelty and not in-your-face-patterny I hate florals.  Even small ones. What did I learn?  Perhaps that I should be more targeted in making sure I incorporate patterns into my wardrobe and that I buy fabric with pattern!  I also remi

Wardrobe Architect: Weeks 5 and 6

So I have let this series slide a bit with all the whirlwind changes going on in real life (moving state...!).  However, I was finding it useful and once we have moved, I want to try and apply the analysis to the things I sew in my new life :) So here is more... Week five and six of the Wardrobe Architect Series were all about colour.  The first exercise required us to go and play with colours we liked and come up with a palette we are drawn to. My first effort at doing this is below: Apparently, I like blue :) Actually, I don't think this palette is truly representative. The tool I was using made it hard for me to get to the colours I really wanted (as they aren't very colourful) and I am not sure the colours are really representative/true.  The grey-ness of palette 3 looks on the edge of lilac (definitely NOT a preferred colour!) and the mustardy colour I chose in P4 looks too yellow. What I can say for sure is that I like these colours: Black Grey - pretty

Jellywares Yarn Club - Gaptastic Cowl

I have wanted to make this cowl for so very very long (why have I not?), so I was super excited when the latest yarn club instalment had this as one of the recommended patterns. Here is it as a wip: I love it.  So much so that my terrible phone picture put this in soft focus.  OR, the camera is dirty :) The Gaptastic cowl is a free pattern from Jen Geigley on Ravelry.  It's pretty much an awesome seed stitch big loop and the colour of the wool that Jodie from Jellywares sent in the latest yarn club instalment was the perfect colour for this pattern The cowl itself is so spongy and soft and can be kind of adjusted to sit however you want.  Here I a looking like I just found a very difficult maths problem in the bathroom mirror: And again, wearing it with my super power suit (in my work bathroom) as a non-wrapped cowl.  Again a truly fabulously bad photo, but despite that you probably get the gist of how awesome this cowl is (it truly transcends my crappy p

Carnaby Cape Pattern Test - Handmaker's Factory

I was lucky enough to get the chance to pattern test the Carnaby Cape for Handmaker's Factory a little while ago. www.handmakersfactory.com.au I was interested to see when I got the pattern that there were no actual cape pictures.  Instead a rather lovely picture on the cover as above, and some extremely clear line drawings as shown below.   www.handmakersfactory.com.au  The first thing I noticed when I finished the cape was how much it resembles the line drawings.  This might seem like an odd point, until you see how many pattern reviews have comments like "the sleeves seem longer than in the drawings" or similar. Score one for the cape! The cape is an interesting take on the usual buttons-to-create-sleeves approach as it uses a tie belt instead.  The tie feeds through some rather lovely bound buttonholes, and I was super impressed by the clarity of those instructions.  The pattern calls for a medium to heavy weight fabric with some drape, which does n

Captain America Pyjamas

A very special young lady was in search of some super hero pyjamas. Here is a truly terrible picture of the result :) My kids wanted to photobomb :( Note I did not make the power rangers outfit... The bottoms were the Alex and Anna Winter Pyjamas pattern without the cuff and the top was a Skinny Flashback Tee from Rae. I cut the sleeve piece for the top in two at what seemed like the right point for the contrasting arms, then made two new pattern pieces from that single sleeve piece (you just have to add seam allowances on for when you sew it back together - it needs to end up back at the same size as the original piece would have been).   I cut a star out of some wadding stuff I had left over (I think it was Annie's Soft and Stable, though I can't imagine it would matter awfully, as long as the stuff doesn't fray or shed fibres everywhere) and appliqued that onto the front with a zig zag around the edge.   I then made the stripey curved front  piec