Bad little miss Sew and So.

After much consideration, I've decided that I'm pulling out of Me-Made-March. I still fully support the idea, and I think it's important to wear the things I create. And I do think it's also a good idea to follow through on the things I've committed to. But there's a whole lot of stuff that's been working against me this time. The main thing is just time. Taking the daily photos has been a total rush job, and I haven't been at all satisfied with any of the photos or how they show the clothes I've made. Nor have I had the time to actually sit down and write the descriptions/post the photos, either here or in the Flickr group, since day 4. And since I'm getting more behind every day, it becomes a bigger job to catch up every day. Truth be told, I spent the weekend out of town visiting friends, and while I wore me-made things, I didn't even have a chance to take any pictures. The other factor there is that I'm picking up my seasonal retail job again very soon, probably before the end of the week, which means that I'll have even less time to work with. (And I actually can't participate in MMM on the job, anyway, since I have a t-shirt uniform I'm required to wear. This was a complication back during Self-Stitched-September, too.)

I do think that part of the problem lies in the handmade portion of my wardrobe, as well. I quickly learned that having only one pair of me-made pants was a HUGE detriment while it's still rather cool around here--better than it was, but the temperatures still haven't topped the low 50s on a regular basis. So I'm not very inclined to pull out the skirts yet--I'm wearing a 3/4 sleeved top now and that's kind of pushing it for my body's ability to stay warm, at least without my jacket. (Which, incidentally, is the same jacket I already wore on one of the few days I did post in here, also worn with black pants and a different colored top. And therefore kind of boring for me to photograph again.) But anyway, since I'm basically limited them to self-made tops, and I've discovered that while I have a lot of handmade tops that are in great colors for transitioning into fall and wearing through the winter, after wearing those for the last 5 months, I'm less inclined to want to wear olive greens and browns and those sorts of things. I want brighter, happier colors to chase away the last of those winter blahs. And most of the stuff I have in those colors came from places like the thrift stores, and therefore don't fit the parameters of the challenge.

So I'm giving up for this round. And I should probably feel worse about it than I do, but I feel that I learned what I needed to from this round. Which is basically that I need to work on pants and transitional/layering pieces for warmer weather. And I also need to find a way to take better/more interesting photos of myself wearing those handmade things, even though it's so much easier to just stick them on Donna. I'm not saying I'll never do this sort of thing again, but it'll probably play out in more me playing around with incorporating new items into my current wardrobe and doing outfit shots of that. (I'm thinking along the lines of those "1 item 6 ways" posts that Carolyn does.) And with more limited time now, I'd rather spend what I have doing things like practicing my flute and making new stuff, rather than writing up descriptions for rushed, crappy photos of the stuff I've already made.

My apologies to the other MMM participants, and I hope you understand.

Along the lines of my need to conquer pants-making, I am now in possession of the Burda pattern recommended as a starting point for those Anthropologie pants, and there are 3 1/2 yards of caramel-colored linen somewhere between Fabric.com's warehouse and my place. So it has to happen now. (Other than the color issue, I had no pieces of fabric with enough yardage that would work for pants. Though I am thinking about making the basic wide-legged pant from this pattern by squeezing it out of something in the stash, as a wearable muslin of sorts, before I attempt adding the pleats and such.)

Also, so this post isn't completely pictureless, I do have knitting progress to show.

I started this before the weekend, but here's where I'm at on the wrap now. It's made out of some very soft organic cotton, and I'm about 1/6 of the way through--since I am trying to partially offset my fabric stash by avoiding building a yarn one, I've decided I'm going to ignore the instructions as far as the length goes and just basically knit until I run out of yarn. It'll shrink up a bit lengthwise once I block it to open up the pattern anyway, more likely than not. (I think. I've never blocked anything, so I'm not sure.) And it's a repetitive pattern, basically the same 4 rows over and over with 2 rows of straight up knitting on either end, so I can get away with extending the pattern quite easily.

Me-made March, days 1-4 (and other progress)

Skipping my outfit for today so far, because at the moment it's more or less an exact repeat of Self-Stitched September's day 10, minus the shoes since I'm just bumming at home for the moment. And also minus the dry hair...I will have to change later because I have a memorial service that I need to go to tonight, so maybe I'll take a picture of that. But here's days 1-4.

I did this as a collage in Picasa with numbers, but the numbers seem to not be showing up. Silly program. So this is going from top to bottom, then left to right.

Day 1: The me-made element is my Eva jacket. Otherwise, new-purchased pants/shoes/jewelry, thrifted top.

Day 2: Featuring my military-style corduroy jacket. Otherwise, new-purchased top and pants. (And shoes, though you can't see them. Also, I kind of wish I'd worn grey pants instead, because I'm not too thrilled with this on camera.)

Day 3: Featuring the "Winter Beauty" top that I recently made, thrifted jeans, me-made earrings that you can't really see, and new-purchased shoes.

Day 4: Featuring the "Lucky Bamboo" shirt-- actually, the first time I've worn it during this colder season. (I'll explain in a moment.) Also new purchased cami and jeans (the latter which I'm very strongly tempted to dissect and re-sew, because I love the back pockets but they're uncomfortably big on me), and me-made jewelry which pre-dated the blog.

So about that last shirt....it's been in a pile that I meant to put in the refashion pile all winter. Since I made the pattern myself, more or less, it ended up kind of big on me and I have to pull a good chunk of the actual shirt through the slit for the wrap ties in order to get it to lie flat up top. So I've been thinking about deconstructing that part and taking it in. But between that LBD that took forever and the serger problems I've been having over the last several months, it hasn't happened. Nor did putting it in the actual pile, I'm sorry to say. So I rediscovered it when I was cleaning my room on Wednesday and figured why not, I'd just wear it, because it's still really comfortable. And since I now wrap the ties all the way around like a belt, it's really not that noticeable that I'm taking a quarter of the inner wrap with it. I hope..

It's sad, but I'm already kind of dragging my feet about the daily photos. That, and feeling kind of bored with my options, since I've already been wearing most of them all winter. Which really doesn't bode well, since it's only day 5. But hopefully it'll warm up soon and I'll be more excited about it again.

But enough about that, let's get to some craftiness! I've got 2 things in progress at the moment:

First off, my quickie sewing project that of course is taking much longer than expected. I'm using leftovers from that flowery peasant-type top I made last summer to make a case for a 15-pack of circular knitting needles that I recently bought off of Etsy. This is as far as I've gotten so far, because I'm going about this completely intuitively and probably not in the most intelligent manner. So I have to add binding to one more "page" (doing it book-style), add fabric to hide the batting that is currently the "cover", and add some kind of closure.

.Secondly, I ended up starting the beret. Which is really black, but we all know how badly that photographs. I think greying it out with the flash shows the current progress much better anyway. I'm about 20 rows in, and will probably need to do at least 10 or 15 more before I start the actual beret top. I'm not sure, since it's measured in inches instead of rows. I was originally hoping to get that done before next weekend so I could just focus on the wrap, but I'm thinking that might not happen now. It's been one of those weeks where all sorts of wrenches got thrown into plans and things took longer than expected--not in a bad way, but in a way that hasn't left me with as much time to work on these sorts of things as I'd hoped. But there it is.

On the plus side, look at the pretty knitting bag that my mom made for me!

It's big enough to hold all of the yarn I have so far, as well as all of the needles and the folder I've put my printed-out patterns in and stuff. So this will make it a lot easier to pack for the crafty weekend!

Taking care of business...

First of all, since there were requests and posts with pictures are more fun, me wearing recently made stuff in real life! These are all from Saturday--me wearing my Waffle Hat and Constellation Gloves while a friend and I were enjoying the view by the Chesapeake Bay...

....and the recently refashioned shirt, while at my birthday dinner with five of my closest friends and my sister-in-law. (They took me to a creperie, and it was delicious!)

This was the best I could do for a full-length shot--after dinner, we went back to one of the girls' apartments for dessert, and then goofed off a bit with a Wii dancing game. Thus the super-grainy quality of the pic--it was screencapped from the video one of the other girls took on her phone. It turned out to be a really fun day overall, and thanks for all the birthday well-wishes!


Second order of business: I've been going back and forth on whether to do Me-Made-March this year. I finally decided that I'll regret it if I miss out, since it was fun to participate in the project back in September, so here's my rather last-minute pledge:

"I, Becky, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-March '11. I will endeavor to wear one handmade piece of clothing each day for the duration of March 2011. In addition, I will endeavor to add handmade accessories as often as possible."

(Stepping it up from September by trying to actually wear handmade clothes each day--there were a few days then that I only made it because of a necklace.) 

Finally, to answer a few recent comments:
From this post: Christina, the beret is black. Carolyn, I do know the word beanie! Though I'm not sure if that's how we'd term this sort of hat. And Liz/Anoriell, not a bad idea.... I'd have to figure out what to do about stitch counting, since so far what I've been doing is using an app on my iPhone to track that, and it's worked really well for me so far. But I can only do one project at a time on that. (Of course, it was a free app...since it seems I'm going to stick with knitting this time, I may check out the paid stitch counter apps to see if they'll support multiple projects.)

So far, I have cast on the beret, but not the wrap. We'll see how far I get on the hat before I need to be ready for that weekend hangout thing.

From this post: Sarah-- perhaps. That's the main problem with my addiction to crazy print fabrics--they're so distinctive that I never know what to do with the leftovers! Don't want two shirts that look the same, you know? Though, Anoriell, your idea about a knitting accessory bag type thing could work-- I actually am currently working on a case for some circular needles, since I got that multipack of them off of Etsy, but I'm using the leftovers from this instead since there's more of them and I wasn't sure I'd have enough of this fabric to support that many pockets. But I may have to whip up some stitch markers, since the beret is going to need multiples of those, and will need somewhere to put those. So far, I've been using random toggle clasps that didn't get put away after my pre-craft show jewelry-making binge. (Yarn storage won't be an issue-- my mom's actually making me a nice bag to haul that stuff around in, since she's been on a bag-making kick.)