I'll blog about sewing again soon, I promise.

I just need to actually have something to show. I did at least start quilting the fabric for the bag my friend is paying me to make. (Two pieces down, one to go.) And I did go to Joann's today to take advantage of their Columbus Day sale and pick up some underlining for my raincoat/some buttons for the teal skirt. (Nothing on hand at home. I checked.)

But in the meantime, I did finish up two of my FESA knitting projects over the weekend!

#1, the Counterpoint hat.

An easy finish, as all I had left to do was put the brim in and stitch the hat closed at the top of the ribbing.

The brim is pretty subtle, so I had to take a profile shot so you can actually see it. And I like the quasi-tweedy but still really colorful effect of the yarn. Even though it makes me want to walk around with a magnifying glass and say things like, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

The other thing I finished was my cable slippers. Not the most flattering shot ever, as they look like deformed socks this way, but this is what you get at 12:30 in the morning in someone else's residence. I'm glad these are only meant to be lightweight slippers, since they feel kind of like they're going to fall off when I wear them. It probably would have helped if I'd stitched them up more, like the originals were, but I was literally sewing the first one of these around my foot and this was as far as I could stretch it. Mental note to self: Whenever I attempt socks, I might need to add a few stitches in that just-below-my-toe area to compensate for the extra width there.

Since I had both of these finished by Saturday night, I spent our tv-watching time on Sunday working on that scarf I'm making from the hat leftovers. It's currently about 15" long. The nice thing is that it's complicated enough of a pattern that I still have to look at the pattern for pretty much every single line, but not so complicated that I couldn't watch tv or chat with my friends.

I did think about picking up my Cadence sweater, but I looked at the directions and the very next row starts the chart. Which I'm still not entirely sure I read right before, and I think that's something I'm going to have to hole up in my room away from people and give full concentration to. Which means this is a great time to sidetrack myself from it completely by sewing, right?

The Frankenblouse, and other craftiness

Well, here we are--the big 600! I wanted to wait to post it until I actually had a finished project to show. And since I've been working on other stuff in the meantime, this one's going to be a bit pic-heavy. Also, just as a reminder, there's still time to enter my 5-year/600 post giveaway, which is open through Monday! And now, on with the show...

This is the blouse I finished today (about half an hour ago, to be precise.) It has the distinction of being on both my Summer and my Fall Essentials Sew-Along lists, and was kind of a transition between the two. It was also a mash-up between two patterns and my own improvisation. And, well, like the literary monster it's named for, the results are a bit less than pretty. I'm hoping it looks less lopsided on me than it does on Donna! But I did have some issues with this, probably due to the pattern merges I made.

Namely that it ended up huge on me. I had to chop this much off of the sides just to get it anywhere remotely close to fitting! And it still doesn't quite have the look I was hoping for. So this probably would have worked better if I'd worked with two patterns from the same company. Or maybe a more fitted lower half. Oh well...you live and learn.

I'm not entirely convinced about the back either, due to the two lines from the stitched-down pleat. But it'll probably work better when I'm wearing it, because unlike Donna, I'm not blue-skinned.

And there are details I like. Like the button closure, which was the detail from the original RTW blouse that inspired me to do this. It could be a bit neater, and probably would be with skinnier button loops, but it seems like it'll hold the front closed pretty well.

I'm also pleased with the sleeve, which is pretty much straight off of the New Look pattern. Except I cut the band/tie longer so I could actually make a bow out of it, since I'd learned before that it's not long enough to do so otherwise.

So I wouldn't say this is a complete failure, and I'm still planning on wearing it. And it did bust a piece of stash fabric that I've had for well over five years, so that's certainly a good thing.

(While I'm at it, the update on that: I added in about 4 yards for the raincoat fabric, and it probably should have been a bit more for the things I got for the Vogue dress. But since I'm planning on using those up next, I didn't bother to add them in. I did completely use up this metallic stripey fabric, so that leaves me at about 253.5 yards, down from 275 at the beginning of the year. Only about 150 yards to go to reach my target....this is going to take awhile!)

It hasn't been all sewing around here by a long shot. I whipped up a quick necklace last Saturday:

Super-easy, since all I had to do was put a clasp on it, and link the pendant to the pre-made chain.

I just couldn't resist this pendant when I saw it on a more recent Joann's shopping trip, because it's my favorite painting by my favorite artist. There were actually two pendants in the pack, the other one being a small circular one with the moon from this same painting. But I gave that to my sister-in-law (who also loves Van Gogh and this painting in particular), so no picture of that.

And I've been doing a good bit of knitting, too. Back on Labor Day, I finished this:

It's the first of the cable slipper pattern that I found. I had to leave a bigger foot opening than it called for (I was literally sewing it shut while it was on my foot, and well, my feet are wide so I couldn't take it as far), so hopefully they'll stay on all right.

I think the cables turned out really nicely, though, and this really was a perfect beginner cable project.

Though the second one is started, I haven't worked on it since Labor Day, though. Mainly because I'm getting sidetracked....

I finished the first of my two swatches for the Newbie and the Knitter knitalong. As it turns out, since I knit rather tightly, I had to take this up a full two needle sizes from what the pattern called for! This is the pre-blocked swatch...

And here's the post-blocked one. This is going to be a much more open knit than I thought, so I think this one will be another one I'm going to have to wear camisoles under! But it does knit up lovely, very soft and drapey. And the alpaca isn't causing me any allergy-esque trouble except for a slight tingling in my hands when I've been working with it for awhile straight. Since I won't be handling it that long when I'm actually wearing it, I think this means I'll be ok.

I also went ahead and started the hat I want to make for the fall, because the yarn was just demanding to be played with. I have to say, I love this yarn so far--it's a dream to work with on the bamboo needles, with no splitting or shedding. Hands-down the nicest 100% cotton yarn I've worked with so far. (Probably because it's also the most expensive 100% cotton yarn I've worked with so far.) And the color scheme makes me think of a sunset--it's been fun to see how the colors change and blend together as it goes. I've gotten about 2" done so far, and need to knit another 3" of the rib before I get into the main pattern of the hat.

What's on the needles...

I started this one last week, and it's going along fairly quickly! This is the first of a pair of slippers (second pattern down on this page). I'm knitting two yarns together, which is the first time I've tried this--the Lion Brand Recycled Cotton in Seagrass,  and Caron Spa in Green Sheen. I'm  hoping that I'll get the best of both worlds--the cotton seems more durable, but the bamboo is much softer. I like the mottled effect that I'm getting from doing the two together--the cotton was already two-tone, and the bamboo adds a nice brighter shade to the green.

A close-up of the cables. This is my first time doing it, and it's not nearly as scary as I thought it would be! Granted, this is probably a really easy cable, because it's the same pattern repeating over and over on a flat rectangle, and only four stitches affected every six rows. So I'm thinking this was probably an ideal project to try it out on.

Maybe, just maybe, I can finish the first slipper (at least the knitting, not the sewing) by the end of the long weekend....tomorrow's plans are another movie marathon/hangout/yarncrafting day with my best friend, so I'll get quite a bit of time to work on it!