Week 8 Report: Finished York and Socks 2

Sewing

York is done, yaaaay!

Someday I’ll learn to take non-crappy pictures!

So I finished it on Tuesday after work and of course had to wear it first thing on Wednesday. It fits pretty well, but now that the sleeves are in I notice that the back pulls a bit when I reach forward, so next time I make this pattern I’ll do a broad upper back adjustment to account for that. I picked up some of what feels like a cotton crepe maybe? at Goodwill, and I think it would be pretty great for this. It might be the next thing I do after my mom’s cardigan, we’ll see.

I was going to have my friend take a pic of me wearing it on Saturday when she was in town, but I failed to remember while she was here, so it’s another mediocre indoor shot.

Meet Ethel:

Ethel. (The machine, not the cat. The cat is Kaylee, and she’s clearly been pressing her nose to the window.)

Ethel saved my bacon. As expected, I was too lazy to try to figure out what was wrong with my other machine (seen in the background of that pic), so I pulled out Ethel. Ethel didn’t have a name until this week, but after blowing through the last few seams I had here with zero problems – zero, no bunching, no eating my fabric, I barely even noticed this wasn’t quilting cotton – Ethel got a name.

At some point when I expressed an interest in sewing when I was probably 10 years old, my great grandmother and I went into the cabinet at her church and she pulled this one out for me. I assume it was one she’d loaned them and was taking back?  I actually don’t remember ever asking about it, but she was very devout and I highly doubt she’d steal from the Church, so….

Anyway, my great grandmother’s name was not Ethel (it was Anne), because I thought it was a little weird to name my sewing machine after my great grandmother, but I am pretty sure her best friend’s name was Ethel (or was it Edith…), and I like the Alice Cooper reference, and so Ethel it is. I’m sure my other machines will get names as they come to me.

The tension on that cuff topstitching looks wonky now that I see it up close like that, but it is way less wonky than it would have been if I’d done it on the other machine

Thanks, Ethel.

As far as my mom’s cardigan goes, I pulled out the pattern and did all my measuring and some math to figure out what adjustments I need to do. I didn’t take pictures because it was me and a pencil and a ruler and measuring tape, and that is just not super exciting.

My mom and I have basically the opposite body shapes – I’m on the shorter side, tend to put on weight in my hips and thighs, and am a pretty average cup size so I’ve never really had to make bust adjustments. My mom is tall and busty and puts on her weight in the stomach area, so all the adjustments I’m just starting to get used to making for myself are the opposite of what I’m going to have to do for her. Based on the measurements I’ve done, it looks like I’ll definitely be doing a full bust adjustment (FBA), as expected, and also adding a little width at the waist. I’m going to trace off the pattern and do a tissue fitting for her probably next weekend, which will be a little weird because it’s a knit garment so the tissue isn’t a true representation. I think it will still be useful, though, to make any length adjustments she wants and to make sure the widths are at least ballpark.

Knitting

Two at a time socks, oh my gosh.

The setup for these was very awkward, since I’m doing two on one circular instead of two circulars, and also I had to re-wind the yarn so I had access to both ends. But once I got it all set up? This is awesome! There’s something kind of addicting about watching two pairs of socks be constructed at the same time. It is slower, obviously, but it doesn’t really feel that much slower.

I was going to do just a really basic rib, but as soon as I got going I realized I didn’t need the extra brain power just to handle the two-at-a-time thing, so I poked around in my newest knitting book, Lara Neel’s Sock Architecture, to see if there was any sort of basic, repetitive pattern that I could borrow for the top and leg of the sock, and found the single garter knit in her Strie pattern that is pretty much exactly the level of complexity I wanted in a quick knit – just enough to give it some variety so I’m not doing a 1×1 rib all the way down the sock. I think the color variations in the sock aren’t going to show off the pattern very well, but we’ll see.

(Side note: this book is awesome. I sort of hate following full patterns, but you can pick and choose heel and toe techniques from here and use them however you want. She has instructions for both top down and toe up socks, and if you are a pattern person, she spells out the pattern row by row and also has diagrams.)

Goals for next week:

• trace off the pattern pieces for the cardigan
• research FBA adjustment for knit fabrics and do it
• finish the legs on the socks and maybe start down the heel flap?