A new skirt

I'm going through one of those phases when I hate all my clothes and want everything new. I'm not a big shopper, and I generally like my clothes, so this is a pretty rare thing. Maybe once every eight years or so? And I'm caught in its throes now. So here is the first of several planned summer skirts. The fabric is April Johnson from Jo-Ann, a surprisingly good quality cotton with decent body. I'm very hit or miss with Jo-Ann, usually more miss than hit, but this fabric is a good one.

I won't tell you the pattern number because the pattern was awful. It was one of those multisize patterns, but they failed to include the yoked waistband pieces for all sizes. So I had to tinker with that waistband quite a lot to make it work, not an easy feat without a hip curve or French curve to re-draw the pattern pieces. (I used to own these shapely rulers, but snapped one during a move and can't locate the other. It might be in a storage box somewhere.)

So the fit at the waist isn't quite right, but it's good enough that I can wear the skirt as long as I don't tuck in my shirt. The only other pattern modification was to use a solid black bias binding instead of a regular hem. Basically, what happened there was I decided to bind the hem edge because the fabric is a little ravel-prone. So I sewed on the bias binding, and before I turned and marked the hem, decided it looked cool and left it as it is.

Finished it a week ago, have already laundered it twice and worn it three times. I think this one will get a lot of wear. Very comfy in this blistering heat, so much cooler than pants or shorts.

Knitting Update

It's not all fabric and thread here right now.  I've also nearly finished the gusset on a second sock, have started balls 9 & 10 of a double-stranded bed-sized blanket (which will take 12 balls total), and have knit more than a few rounds of a stranded mitten. But none of these are finished, and the sock and blanket are boring projects -- I'll post when they're done, though.

A cozy cardi

I finally finished this one.

This is the Mendocino cardigan designed by St*rmore. I have to cheat on her name because she's notorious about complaining when people alter her patterns, even if for personal use, and this one was modified. Some of the modifications were accidental, and some were deliberate.

Accidental Modifications --

There are side vents at the lower hem edged in seed stitch. Only I managed to knit them onto the wrong side of the cardigan fronts, and I didn't catch this until the pieces were blocking, so I had to either re-knit or live with it. I chose to live with it. I added 9-stitch-wide panels of seed stitch under the back side vent, stitched to the fronts, so that the side vents have mini-plackets now. And for the fronts, where the extra seed stitch can be seen near the bottom button, I have decided to call this a design feature. It doesn't bother me that much, to be honest, even if I never would have done this on purpose.

Deliberate Modifications --

The collar. Oh, the collar. This collar is loose and low, hitting somewhere between normal scoop neck and crew neck lines. That's one of the things I like most about this sweater, actually. It won't ever bind around the neck.

But as designed, the collar is bigger than mine, and it's knit on before the button bands are added. This would have resulted in a gap of almost two inches at the top of the button band which would be just band, no collar. I didn't want that. To my eyes, that gap was too wide. So I added the button bands first and knit the collar onto the full neck circumference.

I made two other modifications. First, I wanted a shirt-point collar style, so at the front on either side, I added one short row just above the right and left button bands. If you look closely, you will see that the collar is slightly wider at the collar points than at the rest of the collar.

Second, I wanted to build in some extra ease in the collar fall. Collars are composed of two parts, the stand and the fall. The stand is the part that rises up from the neckline and is closest to the neck. Then there's a fold or roll line, and the fall is the outer part of the collar that is on top of the outer garment and hides the stand from view. A stand should be slightly smaller than a fall in order for the collar to lay properly, so I added a few extra stitches to the stand after the roll line right around the shoulder seams. I probably added too many because I ended up with a slight point at the tops of the shoulders (not really visible in this picture), but I kind of like the way it looks. So I'm leaving it. I could use the iron to shape the wool there and reduce that point, but I'm not going to bother. The collar rolls beautifully as it is, and I don't feel like monkeying with it.

So that's it! I'm pleased with the finished product, and I have to say that the Sublime yarn is well named. It really is Sublime. This cardigan is as soft and warm as a favorite old bathrobe, the kind of thing I'll be tempted to wear every day this winter.

On a recent shopping trip to bucktown with the girls, we popped into the Needle Shop. I saw this fabric and had to have it for some pajama pants for the boy.

I always pre-wash my fabric (or pre-dry clean it, if it is dry clean only) to remove any factory sizing and to preshrink it before cutting. In this case, the fabric shrunk quite a lot during pre-washing. Even though I would have had a few inches to spare before washing, after washing, the fabric was about four inches too short for the pattern.

The pattern was for pajama pants with a cut-on waistband. This means that instead of cutting separate strips of fabric for the waistband and sewing them onto the top of the pants (a sewn-on waistband, because you sew it on, get it?), the waistband was all one piece with the pants. To make the elastic casing in this kind of waistband, you just fold the top of the waistband down, stitch it in place to make a tube, and run the elastic through it. This means that the pants pattern is elongated at the waist, though, because the waistband and pants are all one piece.

So I redrafted the pattern to make it a sewn-on waistband, cut the waistband pieces on the cross-grain, and voila, I had enough fabric to make the pants, after all.

Danger Boy loves them. He said he's going to declare tomorrow an official Underpants Day after school gets out so that he can wear them all day after school.

The fabric is really lovely. I would absolutely buy it again, but I would buy extra for shrinkage!

By the way, I hate the new blogger interface. Am I the only one? I can't figure out why one picture is floating in the middle and the other is right justified.

Testing the new blogger interface.

Sheep! Baby Sheep!

It was my pleasure to test knit this pattern for Knifty Red, a/k/a Kris Carlson, a/k/a designer extraordinaire. The pattern is now live an on sale at ravelry (ravlink to pattern). I had one skein each of Paton's Beehive acrylic in the 4-ply fingering, which seemed more sport than fingering to me. It knit to the right gauge, so it's all good. The yarn is durable acrylic, a little splitty but nicer than your average acrylic. I had a half skein of each color left over, but they're big skeins.

The picot hem was fun, and the added weight of the doubled fabric there makes the woobie drape nicely. The instructions were very easy to follow. I chose to make mine in blue and white because all the other test knitters were using brown and gray, and I wanted to see how it would look in a color. I think the result is cute and playful in a muppety way.

It knit up in no time at all. I spent two weeks on it, but I was also knitting around on other things, and I didn't have a lot of knitting time during those two weeks. If you're one of those people who knits an hour or two a day, I can see this being done in a week. The final bits -- sewing the ears and curly hair to the head, embroidering the face -- took longer than expected, but the rest flew off the needles, so it balanced out.

The head swallowed up a shocking amount of stuffing. But the end result is great -- really, I can't say enough good about how this came together. It's going into the poor box at church for the Christmas toy drive. It will make some baby out there very happy, I hope!

Tofu for Carnivores

This is the tofu dish I make for meat-eaters. Even people who claim they don't like tofu end up raving about this one. (I suppose you could use chicken or fish in place of the tofu, but I've never tried it!) Warning: Not diet friendly!

Ingredients:
1 pkg extra-firm water-packed tofu
1 package Thai-style flat noodles
2 c chopped mixed veggies (pea pods, carrots, broccoli, water chestnuts -- dealer's choice)
3/4 c chunky peanut butter
1 small jar satay sauce (found in Asian food aisle)
2 T peanut oil
2 T toasted sesame oil
2 T soy sauce
2 T rice vinegar
1/2 c packed brown sugar
generous dash of Sriracha chili sauce ("Rooster" sauce) to taste

First, squeeze the tofu of excess water. I do this by layering paper towels on a plate, with the tofu on top, and another plate on top of that. Put something heavy like a can of soup on top of the top plate to weigh it down. Give it ten minutes or so to press -- I usually chop the vegetables and assemble the other ingredients while the tofu presses. After the tofu has pressed, discard the paper towels and cube the tofu into bite-sized pieces.

Boil the noodles in salted water. Drain and set aside.

In a wok or deep skillet, heat both oils, soy sauce, and vinegar. Add the tofu and stir-fry until the cubes take on a golden brown hue from the sauce (about 3-5 minutes). Add the brown sugar and let it melt into the tofu and sauce. The sugar and sauce will begin to bubble and look thick after just a minute or two. Not to worry! This means it's carmelizing, which is what you want. The tofu will begin to take on a crispy look around the edges (about 5-8 minutes), and when it does, add the vegetables, peanut butter, hot sauce, and satay sauce. The peanut butter will take a bit of time to melt into the other ingredients (about 2-3 minutes). That's okay. Just be patient, and stir frequently so that the sugar doesn't burn.

Put the noodles into a large serving bowl, and dump the tofu-veg mixture on top. Toss to coat and blend. Serve immediately with lime wedges to garnish and spritz. It's also good reheated, but it might need a bit of liquid to freshen it up -- a splash of soy and vinegar will do it, or a bit of vegetable stock, if you have it.

Serves: 4 hungry people
Calories: A million billion. But who cares, when it tastes this good?

Goodbye, Gypsy Girls

It would be fair to say I have worn these socks to death. As soon as they came out of the laundry, they were on my feet. And they held up beautifully, but about six months ago, the color began leaching out of the yarn at a shocking rate. After each washing, the former electric blue faded closer to powder blue, until only faint traces of any blue at all remained. The jet black? Jetted far away. I knew it was only a matter of time until the socks were goners.

And when I pulled them on this morning, I ripped an inch-long hole in the back of the heel. Just, pfft, the fabric tore like wet tissue. No point darning them when they're practically disintegrating already, so these got pitched.

I'm going to have to do some serious sock knitting pretty soon. I think I've tossed about six pairs since my last crazed bout of serious sock knitting, and I'm willing to bet a few more pairs are going to be following the Gypsy Girls to sock heaven soon.