Anda skirt salvage

So I got up the morning and turned my failed Anda dress into a skirt:



The sewing at the top seam is shamefully bad. I'm not sure why I sewed it so carelessly. Resentment? Anger? Anda-HATE? Probably. It's kind a shame because the skirt turned out okay for a salvage job. It's comfortable and wearable, especially if I cover the top with a shirt.

Mixing polka dots with dotted Swiss is very pleasing. The outfit is a little reminiscent of Smurfette, which is a look I should probably avoid since I'm short. But I like it anyways. I wish I could look at teal and white without thinking of Smurfs!

Oh no, Anda, no.

So this didn't work:



I finally finished my Burda Style Anda dress only to find that my modification -- adding interfacing to the neckline and sleeve edges -- was a bad choice. The interfacing is too stiff and messes up all the drape that's supposed to be happening. I threw the dress in the wash to see if that would soften up the interfacing at all and only managed to put several permanent wrinkles in the thing. NOT GOOD. Unless wrinkled, sack-like, and unflattering is your thing.

Think I'll chop off the top and make it into a drawstring skirt. I love the teal dotted Swiss fabric. It's kind of a shame I abused it this way.

Yarn Review: Nashua Handknits Cilantro

Nashua Handknits Cilantro
Aran weight

70% Cotton, 30% Polyester
colourway: Geranium

I bought this yarn on a whim during the big ol' Dressew yarn sale. I'm really glad that I did! I've never worked with a yarn quite like it.



Although it's mostly cotton, it has a lot of stretch and spring. It's lively. It's assertive. When you pull on the yarn to get more from the ball, it bounces around like it's alive. I was careful to knit it with a loose and gentle touch, since pulling the stitches tight would probably deform them badly and mess up my gauge. The yarn is very round and over-spun, giving it very strong stitch definition. I think it would look great in cables, as long as you were careful to keep the tension even.

It has a matte finish and a soft, almost powdery hand. I think it might be a good choice for an owls sweater (designed by Kate Davies). I've been wanting to make owls for some time, but I was hesitant to knit a pullover in bulky wool -- it would just be so hot, and I'd probably never wear it! But this yarn would be good worn next to the skin. It's not the right gauge, but I think I can make it work if I go a size up ....

Stripes are the enemy

So I finally figured out the shape of the neckline (I think) for my asymmetrical pullover. But now I'm running into a problem with the stripes.



Because the pullover is knitted in the round, the front of the pullover joins at the lowest part of the neckline -- the point marked by an arrow in the terrible sketch above. This is also the transition point for the stripes. I have been using a TECHknitter's jogless stripes technique, which worked pretty well in my Noro striped sweater (also a top-down raglan), but it's not working so well here. The stripes are thinner, which means I have to change yarns more often, which makes the trail of change-points more obvious. Also, the stitches at the join are looser than I would like, which makes the stripes less neat in some places.

I'm really not sure what to do. The stripes change across on the front of the garment, so the stripes really need to be neat and perfect.

Last night, I was reading Ann Budd's Simple Style, which states "...in a simple sweater, a few design elements--executed perfectly--can result in a clean and beautiful garment. Choose a flattering silhouette, add a nonfussy detail or two, finish it expertly, and you've got a classic" (p. 108). Well. This got me thinking about my execution and how it's really not coming together as far as the stripes are concerned.

I could

1) Keep going and see what happens. This seems like a bad idea, since I'm pretty sure it's not going to look good.
2) Start over in a solid colour (or fatter stripes).
3) Turn it into a cardigan (because then it won't be joined in the round).

What do you all think?

I love Burnaby Public Library!

I was having a hard time tracking down Barbara Walker's Knitting From the Top, so I trekked out to Burnaby Public Library to borrow their copy.

I ended up coming back with five other books.



And the funny thing is, I barely spent any time looking! Burnaby has a great selection of knitting and fashion books, and a huge art section. Definitely worth the trip, and your VPL card will work there too.

Undo, redo (it yourself): Asymmetrical pullover 01

In May, I decided to design my own sweater, a top-down, raglan pullover with an asymmetrical neckline.



Coming up with ideas for colours and shapes was easy. Starting was difficult, mostly because of the top-down, seamless technique. In a conventional handknit garment, the individual parts (i.e. the front part, the back part, the sleeves) are knit separately and joined later. If you have designed a sewn garment, it's generally not hard to imagine how you should begin knitting the parts of a sweater. But when you knit a top-down seamless sweater, you're making all the parts simultaneously, a little bit at a time. If one part starts goes wrong, the whole thing needs to be torn back.

This morning, I am frogging 4.5 inches of sweater (in other words, the whole thing).



Two things can go wrong right from the start. Your proportions could be off (this happened with my garter stitch swing sweater) or you could start shaping the neckline incorrectly. I was lucky enough to figure out good proportions from the start, but I keep messing up the neckline. I've torn it back three times already. It look me a lot of thinking to realize that the neckline should look like this, roughly speaking:



(You know, if the sweater had been cut up the sides and up the insides of the sleeves.)

And now I just need to figure out how to achieve that angled line and rounded corner. I think I've figured it out (but only after hours of knitting a neckline that would join somewhere near my my solar plexus).

Lesson 1: I should try testing the rate of decrease on a swatch first, to see if the neckline will be too shallow or too plunging. I should then try to picture that angle on my body. I don't know if this will work or not, but it's less effort than knitting 4.5 inches of yoke only to rip it out the next morning!

Lesson 2: Tearing back is annoying, but it's not the end of the world. In fact, it seems to be a fundamental part of the process of making something good. Camilla Engman is an illustrator who designed two very cute amigurumi animals for Debbie Stoller's The Happy Hooker. In a 2006 Whip Up post about her process for creating original amigurumis, she said "I will have to start with admitting I’m not a very good crocheter, I’m good at undo, redo, undo and redo. And maybe I have a good eye for what’s cute."

Cat and Girl Bootleg Merchandise

Dear Dory Kornfeld,

On 9/22/06, I sent you the following Gmail chat message:

guess what--I am actually going to finish the cat and girl official bootlegged merchandise that I started making you back before I was employed.

As we both know, that did not happen. I did not get around to finishing your unofficial Cat and Girl merchandise until today.



It is a bit wonky. I am not very good at sewing zippers yet. But it has a nice stripy flannel lining. I'm not sure how I transferred the image to the canvas. I think it involved one of those fat image transfer pens? Anyhow, it must have been a convoluted process because I haven't attempted it since this one time in 2006.

Watch the mail, Kornfeld.

Sincerely,

Kat Siddle

PS: Did you know you can buy a real, official, non-copyright-breaking Cat and Girl Scarf?!

Visual person

When I was a kid, I really wanted to be the person who thinks of names for makeup. When my family visited the drug store, I would stand in the make-up section and look at the a lipsticks, making up my own names for the colours in my head. I had no interest in wearing make-up what-so-ever. I didn't start buying cosmetics until I was in my 20s! I was just completely taken with the idea of naming colours. I thought that I would be great at this job, certain that I was a unique and obvious talent in this area.

Naming lipsticks in an exercise in colour and words. At some point, I stopped thinking that I was good at colours, or at visual things in general. I knew I was good with words, though, and I started to believe that this was my one artistic strength. My parents always encouraged me to follow my interests, but they especially valued reading and writing. I was a good writer from a very young age. Language has always come easily to me, so easily that I don't really understand how it can be hard for others (even though I know that the vast majority of people have difficulty writing). I loved reading, too. In my head, the equation was pretty clear: Loving books + being a good writer + getting lots of praise for writing = I should become a professional writer. And in the middle of all this, my interest and skill in the visual arena just sort of fell away.

I have trouble thinking of myself as a visual person. Even though I've always liked art and fashion and crafts, even though I've always had strong preferences in colour and texture. Even though I was obsessed, as a kid, with the different breeds of horses and dogs--an interest that I now suspect was as design-oriented as it was zoological. (All dogs are Canis lupus familiaris. The breeds are essentially differentiated by how the animal looks).

This is probably an incorrect assumption on my part, but it's hard to shake. Even though I just read the Benefit Cosmetics catalogue from front to back and am now kind of enthralled by visions of "classic ballerina pink" and "smoky pewter" and "papaya pearl."

A large space for making things

Our second bedroom is large and bright, making it a perfect workroom. Curtis has a desk set up at one end, and I took the really bright spot by the window.



1. Bulletin board for inspiring images and organizing the sketches and notes for my exciting-yet-secret new knitting project.
2. A china owl from my Granny's house.
3. The pull-out poster/calendar from the May 2005 issue of Discorder Magazine (drawn by Kirsten Pudas). Discorder was a student magazine that I edited for two years (2004-2005). It was an intense (sometimes harrowing) experience where I basically never knew what I was doing, but I'm really proud of the issues we published in the spring and summer of 2005. Dory Kornfeld did lots of drawing and writing and layout, Graeme Worthy did the art direction. We were a pretty great team! The spring-summer issues have a certain uncompromised quality that makes me feel like we were firing on all cylinders.
4. Sewing reference books, including Diana Rupp's Sew Everything Workshop and The Vogue Sewing Book.
5. Fabric storage.
6. Yarn for the secret project.
7. My sewing machine (Janome Sewist 625E).
8. Pattern and notion storage.

I am very anxious to get this space up and running. I've fallen behind on Project: Dresses, and I have at least four half-finished sewing projects laying around. I could really stand to make some basic knee-length skirts, too.