Pants!

I know I have griped at length about my large bust and never being able to wear dresses, needing to dull horizontal bust darts on my knit sweaters, tryign to learn how to do full bust adjustments etc...
I dont complain as much about my bottoms because i often wear skirts which fit me more easily than pants. But I do have fitting issues down there too! :/
In fact, i can only get pants when I go back to USA. I've given up looking in France, it's just hopeless!
If i can manage to fit my thighs and butt into something (which is hard enough to do inFrance, and which i dont understand because there are some large women here who have pants ... where do they get htem?! I've never dared ask a random full figured woman "where do you find pants big enough to fit your thighs?". I might upset them lol!

WAIT!Speaking of upsetting people! Would you believe a co-worker asked me last week if i was pregnant!!!!???  I just lost weight ! Like 10 pounds!!! And she asked if i was prego! Gee thanks!

Ok rant over, back to the pants thing.  I was saying ...If i can manage to fit my thighs and butt into something, I have about 4 inches worth of baggy crap going on at waist and the waist band pulls down horribly in the back.

Well, I had a few pairs of jeans from USA. And two of them ruptured along the chub-rub lines! Just totally blew out! Geez! And at same time :/
So I'm reduced to one pair of pants. And baby it's cold out!!!

So I decided i needed some cute sewn pants. However, I am not going to sabotage myself with multiple muslins and fit adjustments, resulting in frustration, and no garments...
I chose a cute, wide legged pair of pants that claims to be beginner. Sounds good right?!



Well, so far, it is holding true to its claim! It is pretty darn easy!
As with all the Colette patterns, the instructions, which come in a clever booklet format with a back flap for pattern storage, are well written and fully illustrated.

Last week I cut out the pattern pieces and did a good amount of assembly up to the fly front.  And screeeach!!! I skidded to a halt as i just didnt get it.

The booklet is sprinkled with design ideas and helpful tips.  One such helpful tip was to go to the coletterie blog and check out the fly front photo tutorial.
Today I finally got up the courage and a few minutes of anough menatl focus to do that.

And LOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!



I did it!!!!!!!!!
And it looks decent :D
So proud of myself and sooo giddy over Coletterie!

I would like to close out with something Caitlin said inher tutorial blog post that really hit home and made me tackle this zip with a very zen and accepting attitude
"As always, when you’re tackling something new, go slowly and don’t be afraid to use your seam ripper to pull out mistakes"

What are you up to? Trying anything new these days? Try to remember Caitlin's words of wisdom!

Squee

Behold!

I've been wanting these Miss L Fire shoes since the spring summer collection came out. What Katie Did had a sale so i said wth and got them :D

I LOVE them :D
They make me happy :D

And while waiting for them i got myself a couple of somethings to match them - did pretty good too considering I only had a computer screen memory to go by.


I've started making the bombshell dress out of the hawainy flowered one.
But I'm not having much luck as the craftsy course is really not up to standards.  There is a pdf pattern but there arent even any instructions with it!!! wtf? and the camera angles do NOT let you see wth Gertie is doing so you can try to figure it out that way. And she even glances over much of the construction saying you can put these together on your own. uh, really? with no pattern instructions?
i managed the skirt up to the gather and here i'm stuck!
I sewed the gathering lines along the wrong edge.
And now i think i know which edge but can't figure out what to do with the drapey part when assembling the front and back!
Very frustrated. As for the bodice, I'm going to do a more simple and everyday wear plain bodice.

I took advantage of the WKD sale to pick this up too :")

Been waning one forever but they're pretty pricey so ive held off but again with the sale...
I love how it feels on - really pulls my waist in and helps with posture but ...boobage prob as usual :/
ive kind of messed with the bonings trying to mold it to my bust's shape. It's a little better but not great. Thing is I need it to pull in right on the sides but it has no support there :/  I hesitated getting an underbust one and wish i had but i so so so want to be able to wear pretty strapless or thinly strapped summer dresses... sigh...

Mad May Matterhorn

I did it! I finished something! And it's part of a kal! And it's even done before the kal is over! GO ME!!!!!
Finally lol!
Here's my Matterhorn hat designed by Ann Hanson (knitspot)

Knit out of madeline tosh vintage in the thunderstorm colorway.
I  have already knit the hat and mitt set for the monthly adventures Christmas swap a couple of years ago.
Now i'm knitting a matching set for myself because i, like most knitters, have many handknits but they never match lol. Now come winter i'll be ready with a cute black hat/scarf/mitt set :D
I'll start on the scarf and mitts later in the year when i get some stuff off my plate.

btw, wierd. when i look at this pic i see why so many people say my eyes are blue even though they're not.

spinit swapit knitit swapit

I mentioned yesterday that I'm working on a project out of my friend femke's handspun.

And also that i spun something to send her to knit up for me.

It was actually a project that had been on me wheel for 2 or 3 years!
 It was hogging up two of my bobbins leaving me with only one extra that i had started another project on but was stuck to go further because i needed a second bobbin for that project too :/
I was very glad for the spinalong portion of this swap.  It was just the kick in the butt i needed to get my wheel cleared off and to finish off that ooooold ufo that was weighing down my spinning mojo.
The yarn is spun up from pretty little oh so fluffy batts swirled into cupcake form by Joan McGuire from The Cupcake Fiber Company on etsy.  I ordered Superwash Panda Fiber Sock Batts (Superwash Merino 60 %, Rayon from Bamboo 30% and Nylon 10% blend) in the colorway Waterfall.
The packaging is so cute (this is her pic from her etsy store)

As she mentions on the page, these 6 little one ounce cakes are "ideal for spinning 3 ply sock yarns. Simply spin each ounce before plying 3 together. You will end up with 2 skeins of soft durable yarn of equal weight."
Of course i had to try this!
I ended up with 6 bobbins that i weighed and estimated the length of thanks to my swift. It has a counter to tick off the number of revolutions, and yardage next to different pegs on crossarms so after finishing off a cake, you just multiply the number of revolutions by yardage according to pegs and you get an approximate yardage for your cake.

Each ply was different so i noted in the box under each skein's nest its characteristics and tried to harmonize the plies to make the two resulting skeins of yarn as close to one another as possible.

Here are my notes for the skeins :
skein 1 ply 1 this was a 270 yds for 29 g mildly overspun cake
            ply 2 this was 221 yards for 29 g and while i first thought it was fairly even and well-spun, it turned   out to be a crazy mess with many loosely spun (um, unspun even lol) spots mixed in with spots so tightly spun they corkscrewed and broke!
            ply 3 178 yards for 30 g - uneven spin with lots of kinks and many breaks
total 244 yards for 86 g 

skein 2 ply 1 262 yards for 30 g - quite overspun but evenly so throughout
            ply 2 279 yards for 29 g. medium spin with a few overspun spots and some very underspun parts that just flew apart during the plying
            ply 3 224 yards for 31 g. tight spin, loose spin, thick spin thin spin.  dr seuss material.  lots of breaks. very poorly spun.
total 302 yards for 93 g 
grand total 546 yards for 179 g. about sport weight i believe.

As you can imagine, the plying was a little tedious what with all the breakages and flyaways and having to overlap the strands back in. but all counterspun up together, well, it really didnt look quite that bad!  I did add in a new cake as each strand ran out and pull from both inside and outside of final cake to maximize ply usage. You can see in photo up top how little yarn i wasted in the end :D!

And once i got my bobbins cleared i was able to go ahead and finish off that other mini-skein i had been working on :D
i love it!

I was using a beautiful sample i got in a phat phiber box to practice fractal spinning on.  This is something i had been envisioning and then actually heard about the technique on ...a podcast or two... and found that it was an actual technique with anactual name and actual steps to it lol. So i did what they spoke of and love how it came out :D

WIP Wednesday

I am feeling a little overwhelmed with my stash and ufo pile again.
Thanks to a little picture treasure hunt going on at eat sleep knit, my fave online yarn store (see sidebar for link), i had to get a picture of myself with my whole stash in my eat sleep knit shirt.

This motivated me to organize it a little better. I had gotten lazy with new additions. Also ravelry didnt have the "stored in " info on the stash page the last time i organized so going through it all i was able to be a little more specific.
I'm still in the process but much happier as things fit better and look better and i have a big shopping bag full of stuff to give away again.
AND i took advantage of this organizing time to reevaluate all the ufo's i had hanging around.
I have decided to give a few more up - yarn and all.

After all of this here's what i have left for my WIPs (works in progress).  NB : i have been informed i'm an alongaholic. I think this is a very accurate accusation :") and accounts for the high number of WIPs :P


This is my matterhorn hat, knit out of madeline tosh vintage for the madmay kal.
I am nearly done and really want to finish this up +++



This is my 3 in 1. i looooove this sweater! i ordered mad tosh sock just for this with baltic, which i find to be one of the most beautiful MT colors, as the main color. Thing is the colors didnt play well together :( so i had to rip out a good bit and start over with some greenish malabrgo silky merino i had in stash. MUCH better. but i kind of got annoyed with it because i could have been near finished if i hadnt had to rip out so much and too i look at how much i have left and i go... aaaaghhhh!!! this is a fall sweater anyhow so once i get a few wips and projects i have buzzing around in my head out of the way, i'll get back to this.



I got my wheel back out!!!! Thanks to MA spinning and knitting swap :D
This is some massam that julia sulkycat gifted me a while back. i like how it's spinning though i had a little trouble at first with drafting - first because of loooong fiber length but mostly because of a slight felting prob from the dying process.


whoa!!! this is one heck of a challenge for me lol. takes a lot of concentration so it hasnt been getting much attention lately. my brain is a little busy with kidd-o probs and getting my ped nurse school applications going and doing my career counseling and and and sigh.... i hope to finish this by Christmas for Rémi.



SCREAM!!!!!!!! this is the bane of my existance, the reason i havent touched my machine in months, the cause of all my sewing angst...It's the same dress as my red starry dress. since red starry fit me this should too right?! wrong :(. The mods i made on red starry didnt work on this one. thing is red starry isnt perfect. i had to have a friend help me with the bust. even after fiwxing it i noticed it still didnt fit just right. the bust darts are a little off and bust still a little tight but with a little bag underneath.  the cotton quilting fabric has some give and drape though so it's ok.  the fabric in this dress is ... wierd?  it's, well, i dont know what it is. i had assumed it was cotton. or a dotton blend. but it feels kind of stiff and almost waxy. and the bust darts being in the wrong place is blatant on this one!!! i have to take the timeto figure out how to redraft the whole darn bust again :'(!!!! so i just stare at the machine and feel nervous and queazy lol.


this is a sweater i bought and love other than the fact that it didnt fit quite right in the bust. i had to purchase a larger size because of the bust but as is often the case this makes shoulders and neck not fit right. usually not a big deal but in this top's case, since the neck and bust is so unique, that did make a huge difference.
I think i've managed a decent fix on it.  So far it's just basted. All i need to do now is go in and sew the seams correctly.


This is my newest WIP and a huge flick off to the butterfly dress lol.  I made the skirt of the red starry and butterfly dresses and for the top i decided to draft my own like the red top i had been fixing.  i messed up on the top but like how it tirned out anyways. i have basted to see fit and style of top. now i need to go in and sew it up correctly.  i did the whole thing in one afternoon!!! cutting and basting and all! pretty proud of myself. but now i have no idea how to go about the finishing.
it's a knit. and whereas i LOVE how it's so forgiving!!!!!!!! i mean, no fit probs with this baby!  i don't have any inkling how to do the neck and sleeve hems!


plain old self striping afterthought heel socks just to have something mindless to knit when i cant think farther than "knitknitknitknitknit"


a pair of socks i test knit and need to finish and send info back to designer (thank you elliebean for opportunity to test knit for you)


the spinalongknitalong swap i'm doing. this is yarn my friend femke spun and i'm knitting it up to give back to her. this is to be finished by end of may. YIKES!


this is a very very old ufo. i love it sooo much and will one day finish it. one of the few old wips i have kept.

PHEW!!!! do you have that many wips dragging you down hanging around? How do you deal with your UFO's? Do they stress you out or not bother you at all.