A mending experiment

I made a sad discovery last Saturday morning. (I meant to post this last week, but it kind of got away from me.) As you can see from my last post, I wore a brown shirt that day. My original plan was to wear my Engagement shirt, since it was supposed to still get pretty warm that afternoon, but then I found this when I was about to put it on:

Holes! Four of them, right in the lower back! I'm not sure if this snagged on something in the wash or what. But this made me very sad, because I'd only worn this about twice so far!

I had other sewing plans for that morning, but I decided to try and fix this first, lest it end up sitting under my bed with holes in it for months and I forget all about it until next summer. (Now that I think about it, immediate mending is probably a better strategy for me in general.)

I've mended jersey knits before. The problem is, you still see it. And one of those holes is particularly large for this type--pretty close to a full 1/8" in diameter. So I decided to try a little experiment to minimize that as much as possible.
I ironed a little bit of double-sided fusible onto a scrap leftover from the shirt--fortunately for me, I hadn't emptied the trash by my sewing machine since I made it! (Incidentally, I think the problem might be with the fabric itself, because the scrap had holes too. Yikes.)



Invisible patch!! Then I just cut around that piece and fused it to the wrong side of the fabric over the holes.

It's not perfect. I was afraid that just ironing the fabric on would make it fall off again the first time I watched it. So I did secure it with some hand-stitching as well. The biggest hole (all the way to the right) is still kind of obvious. But the smaller holes ended up pretty well-hidden, I think. Hopefully it will stay.

I have been doing some sewing lately, but it's a gift project, so I can't share it yet. I'm hoping I can finish that up in the next day or so, because I'm getting very antsy that I haven't started The Dress yet! I also got as far as I could on said gift project on Friday night-- I was having a Once Upon A Time/craft marathon with my best friend so she could get caught up before the season premiere next weekend. So I also did a little scrapbook work (trimming page protectors to allow access to pockets and the mini-albums I like to make on pages that I have a lot of photos for). And I even attempted to start knitting that afghan that I want to make, with a modification that I liked even better. The bad news is, I discovered that the needles I'd bought, which is what it called for in the pattern, are too big to make a good afghan--they're just way too big for the yarn I ended up with. The good news is, turns out I was doing the background for the trees wrong anyway, so unraveling it wasn't a huge loss. I guess knowing that I need to buy smaller circular needles is still progress, right?

Which leads me to the question...I'm trying to figure out what on earth I should work on when tv-watching with the fiance over the next several months, because it sure isn't going to be The Dress. So I've been debating whether I should knit some simpler/smaller stuff like hats and handwarmers, or work on catching up on some scrapbook type stuff. They both have their pros and cons--knitting doesn't need a whole lot of stuff out, but following the patterns would mean that both the shows and Doug would get less attention. Scrapbooking takes way more stuff, but writing aside, it would be more of a brainless thing, I think. (And I'm probably way more behind on that, so catching up some would be a pro....but then, I have to take the time to match a bunch of papers to my printed photos, so that's a con.) Hmm.

I must be nuts.

Because I stumbled across this recently, and I really, really want to make it. It's easily the coolest afghan I've ever seen in my entire life.

This is the Yggdrasil Afghan, which is a shockingly free pattern from Knitting Daily. If those Celtic knot and leafy borders weren't amazing enough, look at the center...

I mean, seriously! How cool is that? I like this one even better than the tree of life afghan I've been obsessing over since I first discovered Ravelry. So much so that I actually spent a rather significant chunk of the evening trying to figure out good options for a yarn which would allow me to make this in an affordable fashion, preferably without having to resort to those huge balls of super-cheap acrylic. (So far, the front-runner is this.) Surprisingly, I can actually use the called-for yarn, which is the same stuff I used for that wrap I made over the summer. But in order to make the size I want (which of course is the biggest one so I can have as much epic Celtic knotting as possible), I'd have to buy nearly $300 worth of yarn! I've never even spent close to that much on fabric for formalwear! Or pretty much all of the fabric I bought for my last bedroom makeover, including the curtains and the quilt!


But, of course, this is labeled specifically as a difficult pattern. I've only been knitting for 11 months now. And I've done maybe two projects involving cable needles so far, and they were both something like 1-2 stitch cables. Plus the finished product is huge. So this thing would probably take me at least 5 years to finish, especially since I'd most certainly be working on other projects in the meantime on both the knitting and the sewing fronts. That, and I have to learn how to do at least half of the various techniques involved. So am I completely insane for even considering this?


The good news is, I've finally managed to get my Cadence sweater to the point where the sleeves are separated off and I'm actually working on the body by itself. So progress! Also, I finished my dress for the Mad Men party about 45 minutes ago, save the belt (for which the kit has not yet arrived) and pressing the hem. I'll take some pictures of both of those things tomorrow when I have a better shot at decent lighting.


On a random note, have any of you other Blogger users been having trouble with the front page of your blog? For the last couple of weeks, I've only been able to see the most recent post, and have to click on the "Older Posts" to see anything further. Other than sidebar-type stuff, which is still working fine. I know it's not my settings, because I've checked that and I should be able to see at least 5 posts here...odd. (Edit: And of course as soon as I post this, I can see the first two most recent posts...)