Thanks for all the lovely comments on the Blakeslee top, everyone! Test-knitting is in progress, which is very exciting.
To let you know, the pattern for the Monami Cardigan is now available here or on Ravelry. Details on the pattern, including sizing, yarn requirements, and more, are up on the pattern page.
This little top is dead simple, but it hit that sweet spot for me—I managed to come up with exactly the project I wanted to be knitting, and knit the whole thing while I was still in the mood for it. (It helped that the design is plain enough that I could do it even while watching foreign-language films.) I was actually still SO in the mood for this pattern when I finished it that I contemplated casting on for another right away, maybe in the robin's egg/cocoa combination I mentioned in my last Blakeslee post—an impulse I ended up resisting only because the yarn store where I "casually stopped in" didn't carry the robin's egg sock yarn of my dreams.
I was beset by a sudden lust for stripes before I started knitting Blakeslee, and I love the way this stitch pattern, borrowed from Barbara Walker after a simple conversion to working in the round, combines tweediness and stripiness into some kind of ideal mashup of classic designs. It alternates rounds of plain knitting with rounds of slip one, knit one, and the resulting texture and pattern does so much with those very simple moves. I love the way the slipped stitches create a dashed line—it reminds me of a decorative running embroidery stitch, or the center line in that handwriting paper from elementary school.
Other details on Blakeslee: worked from the top down, at a largish gauge for a light fingering-weight yarn, which means it's light and airy, with lots of give. The yoke has raglan increases, and there is a minimal amount of waist shaping. Mostly it relies splitting the difference between negative ease at the hips and positive ease at the waist to create a flattering yet relaxed look. The short sleeves consist of an inch of 2X1 twisted ribbing to match the boat neck and the bottom edge, finished off with a double row of the contrast color.
We'll have to see if the test-knitters can replicate my results here, but I was surprised that one skein of each color in Malabrigo Sock was enough to finish this, with quite a bit of the Natural left over, and just a bit of the Boticelli Red. Hopefully that will make it a fun little project to use up some of those single skeins of light sock yarn we all have lying around.
I hope everyone's having a lovely end-of-summer!
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It's amazingly embarrassing that this has taken so long, but the Charles Victor Morine Tunic pattern and essay are finally up and available for purchase and reading, respectively!
Charles Victor is an unusual pattern, and I don't anticipate it being a huge seller, but I have received the occasional poke from an interested party and I'd like to apologize for the long wait. It's amazing what changing jobs and planning a commitment ceremony will do to a person's schedule!
I also hope that even those not interested in buying the pattern will check out the essay, because it was one of the most interesting thus far to research and write, and I hope that shows in the final product. My great-grandfather lived such an interesting life, over such a long stretch of time, that it really sparked my imagination to think about it. Imagine registering for the draft in 1917 and living to see Hawaiian statehood and the era of super-computers—or learning about Model T engines as a kid in 1910s California, and living to see men walking on the moon and giant satellites taking photos of nebulae. It's pretty amazing.
Because Del Monte employee Robert Kehlor took it upon himself to write/compile a history of the company in the Hawaiian islands, there is almost a whole book-chapter devoted to Charles Victor's inventions, which is pretty cool. Not that the book is a literary masterpiece or anything, but it was still interesting to get acquainted with a time and place of which I would otherwise have NO knowledge. What was it like farming pineapples in turn-of-the-century Hawaii? The answer was more intense than I realized. I had no idea, for example, that the industry was so young when Charles Victor entered it in 1924, and that the newly-transplanted farmers faced so many obstacles. Piqued your interest? There's lots more over here. For those interested in buying the pattern, it's available on the same page, or through Ravelry, for $6.50 or three pages of your own family story.
Aloha, friends!
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A week ago, though, we hit a snag when Mr. Bingley the dachshund came down with a nasty intestinal issue and had to be hospitalized overnight with IV fluids. The little guy is now fully recovered, but these ordeals are always stressful and expensive, as I'm sure all the pet owners and parents out there can attest. I'm working on another project, a fairly complex black lace shawl, but I needed something simpler, some therapy knitting to worry away at between the hourly trips outside with the dog and the subsequent anxiety over his condition. Combine that desire with a sudden craving for stripes, and you have the beginnings of Blakeslee, my new design-in-progress.
Fairly shapeless-looking laid out flat (my dress form is currently covered in pattern pieces for a sewing project I'm working on), but pretty darn cute when worn, I think. I wanted something simple and stripey, but with a slightly different take on stripes, and this tweedy two-color slip-stitch pattern was just the right combination of visual interest and mindlessness. Add on a top-down, in-the-round raglan shape, and you have some excellent dog-recovery knitting which is also, I hope, a bit sporty? A bit boat-y? I'm going for clean, simple lines and classic preppy patterning. I was aiming for collegiate with the color combination, so hopefully it doesn't look too much like Christmas; I'd love to see it in a more hipster-ish combo as well, like brown and robin's egg. It's growing pretty quickly; I'm envisioning just a bit of matching ribbing at the armholes for a fresh cap-sleeves-at-the-seaside feel, so it shouldn't be too long before I can wear the thing!
The yarn is Malabrigo Sock (in Boticelli Red and Natural), a present from David's parents on the occasion of my trunk show at the Windsor Button, in Boston. Blakeslee is David's middle name and the maiden name of his maternal grandmother, who was a Smith-educated Boston-area preppy of the old school: monogrammed towels, post-college trips to Europe on steamliners, boating in the summer, skiing vacations at epic old-fashioned resorts in the winter. I think the design has a bit of that feel, albeit with a somewhat updated silhouette, and I love that the yarn is from the correct geographical area, and a gift from the family. Thanks, Anne & Steve!
Large-amplitude, synchronous waving of terrestrial grasses has been termed 'honami,' (Japanese: HO = cereal; NAMI = wave) and has been shown to dramatically alter aerodynamical conditions within and above the grass canopy. We suggest that 'monami' (mo = aquatic plant) is important in coastal hydrodynamics and has major implications for larval settlement and recruitment.
R. Grizzle et al., Taylor University
A huge, heartfelt thanks to everyone who chipped in suggestions for the new cardigan design—there were so many awesome possibilities, and they were ALL better than the ideas I'd come up with myself. At the last moment I was blown away by Natalie's contribution: "Monami" adapts the idea of a current (like my inspiration, Kim Hargreaves's "Breeze") but transfers it into a different medium, water rather than air. As she points out, this plays nicely with things I've been thinking about throughout the Influence Series: it's not just about the current itself, but about that current's effects on objects around it (which may, according to the excerpt above, be to attract and further other growth). The water element goes nicely with the nautical feel of the cardigan's cables, and I also get a dorky little thrill out of the way "monami," though derived from the Japanese, is so similar to the French phrase "mon ami": my friend, my love. AWWWWW!
As for the cardigan itself, I'm quite pleased with the final result. The fit, while not exactly the same as my Breeze, is just the kind of relaxed, easy-to-throw-on yet flattering style that I know will get a ton of wear. (In fact, our June and July here in Portland have been so chilly up until yesterday, that I was quite glad for the sweater during our photo shoot down at the Eastside Esplanade wharf.) Photos by David, as always.
I think the textures here are my favorite thing about wearing the finished product. As much as the combination of garter stitch, chunky cables, and a ribbed, turnover collar gobbles up yarn at an indecent rate, it really is worth it when I get to wear the cushy, smooshy end product. I'm wondering how I never managed to fall in love with garter stitch before now. Maybe it was too obvious; I'm forever going in search of a complicated solution to a simple problem.
As usual, Jodi of Green Ray Productions was a great help in finding the perfect buttons. I can't explain the story behind these Viking-looking chips being navigated by what appear to be cherubs (?) holding a paddle with a giant goat's head (??), and if any of YOU can I will be very impressed. But I do love the way they extend the textural and nautical themes while contrasting enough with the rest of the sweater to hold their own visually.
I posted last time that I was disappointed at having to make my sleeves skinner than I would have liked. I was actually pretty bummed about it for a little while there, but with a little bit of wear they've relaxed substantially, and I like them better now—especially the way the transition from ribbing to cables becomes more pronounced when there's actually an arm inside the sleeve. This photo is a good shot of both the main cable and my simplified, smaller sleeve-friendly version; you can see some of the shared motifs pretty well.
Overall, a happy, practical end to an interesting thought experiment. I liked spending some time digging into how the process of influence works (at least for me), and what kinds of considerations come into play during that process. I never stressed about modifying elements of Hargreaves's pattern so that it would be "different enough," but the combination of a different yarn, different dyeing method, and different cable motif led of their own accord to some pretty significant differences. To recap, I started on the left...
...and ended up on the right. Pretty cool! I think the influence is visible, but not overtly apparent if you didn't know the story behind the sweater.
Multi-sized pattern almost ready for test-knitters; I'm hoping to release this sometime in September, for some satisfying autumn or winter knitting.
]]>As you'll recall, I'm designing an original sweater influenced by an all-time favorite cardi of mine, my russet version of Kim Hargreaves's Breeze.
As much as I adore this sweater, there are two things about it that have always bugged me. You can see one even on the dress form: the fronts, with their narrow button bands fastened by buttons only about every four inches or so, have always gapped, and the problem has gotten worse with time. I'm sure there are many of you out there who share my hatred of gapping: I definitely wanted to alter the front of my new cardigan to avoid a repeat. Plus, the more I thought about it, the more I felt that a ribbed button band up the front of the sweater would be dwarfed by, and at the same time distract from, the cables on either side—the cables I'm using, after all, are a lot bolder and chunkier than Hargreaves's. Also, my "background stitch" is more textured, and I was afraid that a button band would be one piece of visual stimulation too many.
I played around with the idea of a chunky/wide button band, but it just wasn't working for me. In the end I decided to go in the opposite direction: taking my cue from another Hargreaves pattern, the Darcy Jacket, I knit the relatively close-set buttonholes right into the seed-stitch fabric. No bands necessary!
(Buttons to come soon; you know they'll be cute because they were selected with the help of the awesome Jodi of Green Ray Productions!)
Sleeves are the other part of the original Breeze that always bugged me: they were about an inch shorter than I'd really like, and quite wide. I made that sweater before I understood what a simple mod sleeve-lengthening is, or I would have changed it in the beginning. In addition to longer sleeves, though, there was another issue.
As you can see, the original sweater uses the same cable motif on the sleeve as it does on the fronts and back. My cable motif, though, is just too huge to look good on your average sleeve. I decided to take the general cabling "moves" present in the main cable, and design a smaller version appropriate for sleeves. This is what I came up with:
I think it looks like it "belongs," while taking up significantly fewer stitches. I do love the transition from ribbing to cabling in Breeze, and adapted my sleeve ribbing accordingly:
It doesn't have that beautiful flowing elegance of line that Hargreaves's has, but I'm pleased with it. The one thing I regret about the sleeves on my new sweater is that I had to make them narrower than I would have liked: between the garter stitch background and the heavy cabling, my six skeins of Madelinetosh DK were consumed at an alarming rate, and the colorway is (of course) unmatchable these days. So I had to scrimp a little bit on the sleeve width. When I write up the pattern, though, it should be easy enough to add a few stitches on either side of my sample numbers.
And speaking of the pattern: any ideas on what it should be called? I've been trying to come up with some kind of riff on "Breeze" (Gale? Typhoon?), but I can't say I've had much of a brain-wave yet. I'd be happy to pay you in patterns for The Right Name!
Up next: the finished product!
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A big hello from beautiful Oahu! David and I are having a fantastic delayed honeymoon here; lots of reading, relaxation, snorkeling (for David) and beach reading (for me). This won't be a super-long blog entry, but I wanted to get some pictures of the finished Tangerine Rooibos dress up. David was kind enough to snap some shots of it for me yesterday, when we visited the Foster Botanical Garden in downtown Honolulu.
I'm really happy with how this turned out. One always has to pick one's matching battles when working with a print, especially on a pattern with as many curved seams as Rooibos: there's just no way to match across every seam. But I like the way the pattern "reads" almost interruptedly down the center middle, how it's centered left-to-right (love that single cross-section between the points of the collar!), and I'm especially chuffed with how the cross-section parts match at the top of the curved waist inset, and how the whole tangerines match across the tops of the pockets.
I remain totally sold on piping. So easy and cute, and I think, with this dress in particular, it really helps to define some of the pretty lines that might otherwise get lost in the print—particularly the pockets, but also the cute little collar.
As I mentioned, I did a full lining rather than the recommended partial facings, since otherwise the cotton lawn would have been a little bit too revealing for my taste. Here's the behind-the-scenes inside-out shot:
You can see in this photo that I cut the same pattern piece in shell, lining, and interfacing, then interfaced the lining before sewing all the same darts in the lining as I did in the shell. Below the bust there's no interfacing; I just put together the lining as directed for the dress, and attached as directed for the facings. I also attached the lining to the invisible zipper after installing it in the shell, which makes the whole thing feel very fancy and finished, and makes me happy whenever I wear it:
Well! This is turning into a long blog entry after all, and I have a beach to lounge around on! I'll leave you with a final profile shot (you can see that not everything could be matched as nicely as the front):
And, for a little perspective, here's the tree against which I'm leaning. Amazing!
(Photo credits: Nathalie Bearden photography; Udessi; Furniture and Design; Colette Patterns. The shot of the stool with the bird decals has been sitting on my hard drive for years; I failed to track down its source.)
You could put together a surprisingly modern, clean camisole from the romantic Cinnamon pattern: matte textures instead of shiny, orange under-bust inset in a white cotton lawn background, with orange or teal straps and a little bit of modern bird embroidery off-center toward the bottom edge (think Lotta Jansdotter). Love the white/orange/teal combo.
(Photo credits: Shorpy, Shorpy, Binbin.net, Colette Patterns. Ditto to the lovely calligraphic chalkboard (?) image; I saved it years ago and can no longer track it down.)
Or, a more predictable but slightly racier option for the Nutmeg set: black silk with gold lace (and/or embroidery?), à la old-fashioned vaudeville halls. Something to glint in the flickering candle-light!
Is anybody else putting together boards for this? I love seeing different takes on the same theme.
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In two weeks David and I are taking our delayed and highly anticipated honeymoon to Oahu, and one of my favorite ways to savor pre-trip anticipation is to make a new piece of clothing to wear on vacation. In this case, I wanted a new, clean little sundress, and I'm psyched about how my choice is turning out. It's a modified version of the Rooibos dress from Colette Patterns, and right there I already feel great about it because I've been meaning to try out Sarai's line of patterns forever and I'm finally getting around to it. Gotta share the Portland love whenever possible! I must say, I love the pattern: graded for a huge number of sizes, sews up smoothly and without any unpleasant surprises. The styling of this dress is very three-dimensional: lots of darts and curved seams, coming together in a way that seems a little different than most other, commercial patterns I've worked with. I like it! Plus, it's made me a total convert to piping: easy, cute, fun. What's not to love?
I'm making this dress in a much lighter fabric than the pattern calls for: a cotton lawn print from Spoonflower called Best Tangerine. The same designer has avocado and peach prints; I really dig the retro botanical vibe combined with the fresh, clean white backgrounds. I would seriously order three yards of each if only I could afford it.
The lawn base is gorgeous—soft, light, and airy—but it's also fairly transparent, so I'm altering the pattern and doing a full lining instead of the partial bodice facings recommended. What you see extending below the bodice is the cotton batiste lining, which I worked up while the Spoonflower fabric was being shipped to me, helping to cut my impatience. As you can see, I sewed the lining with regular seams, but the lawn is finer than the batiste and I'm working it in French seams throughout, which is always exciting to me. Quite a bit more work, but when I see the neat, clean finished product with all seams encased, I must admit it's a bit of a thrill.
It's super-easy to modify this pattern to be fully lined: I just set the facing pieces aside and cut out lining pieces for every piece included in the dress (lightly taping the upper and lower side-front skirt sections together to make a single piece, since I don't need pockets in my lining). I cut back and front upper-bodice pieces out of a light interfacing and fused it to my lining fabric before sewing the darts. Interfacing the whole upper section means there's no visible line where the facing piece leaves off (something I would worry about otherwise), and also that my bra won't show through the finished garment. I sewed the lining according to the instructions for sewing the dress, and more or less followed the instructions for working with the facings, except that I put together the entire front and entire back of the lining before joining it to the outer shell. Hopefully I won't run into any issues when I go to install the invisible zipper, but barring that it's been totally smooth sailing.
Memorial Day Weekend was typically gross here in Portland, but having this cheery project to work on, and a vacation to look forward to, has really raised my spirits. I may still be wearing sweaters, but at least I can sew sundresses!
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Last weekend the beautiful warm weather descended on Portland, just in time for my birthday! It was actually Sunday, but my folks took David and I out to dinner, then to dessert, and in between the two we had a glorious book-shopping trip at my home away from home. It was great. I wore my Vine Bolero with a little sundress that my mom made for me, as a present for my sixteenth birthday!
Sunday, May 9
Spent my real birthday lounging around the house in guilt-free laziness, in my new blue cords and a tank top from local indie boutique Moxie (I'm linking them because I like them, but this tank top is six years old, so they're unlikely to still, you know, carry it in stock).
Monday, May 10
This is how I usually wear the jacket I made from Vogue 2870: paired with knee breeches and thin, storebought socks for that 18th century mariner look. In the winter I even add a cravat!
Tuesday, May 11
This is one of my favorite work outfits for warmish/transitional days: a cotton gingham dress (which I didn't make myself, but which I'd like to find a similar pattern for) and my Betty Jean McNeil cardigan. Classic 1940s.
Wednesday, May 12
Wednesday I went a bit more casual, with my olive green cords from back in January, and a simple button-down shirt.
Thursday, May 13
I know this is a goofy photo, but you can get a sense of what I'm wearing, and more importantly WHAT is Mr. Bingley doing? Maybe burping? He has such a funny posture going on here. This skirt is my first try at Simplicity 9199 (I wore my second try last week), made with organza and some mysterious green fabric I picked up at Goodwill. Although it's aged OK and I've certainly gotten a lot of wear out of it, I have to say I think my days of shopping for fabric at Goodwill are over. This stuff pills in a really weird way that makes me feel compelled to pick all the pills off one by one. And then there was the unfortunate incident with the pink corduroy I got there to make a "wearable muslin" for my pants pattern, that ended up actually wearable for all of 30 minutes before developing a random tear right through the middle of the butt. There is a limit to my frugality: mill ends, yes. Potentially rotten Goodwill yardage: not anymore.
Also pictured: a silk peasant blouse that was a gift from my mom 9 or 10 years ago.
Friday, May 14
Finishing off the week with another beautiful warm day, I opted for a summery skirt and shell with my Liesl thrown over it. Also decided to accessorize this outfit with a new haircut! Very exciting. I always wait SO long to get my hair cut that when I finally do it, it's like a revelation.
So, that's week two. We'll see how I do during the second half of the month, when I will have to start mixing up my standard outfits to stay interesting. Maybe I'll resort to some of these amazing WWII-era tricks!
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Now, one of my absolute favorite things about Hargreaves designs is the organic flow of ribbing/finishing into body:
It's not like Kim Hargreaves invented this technique; she and Eunny Jang just happen to be the designers I learned it from, but there are plenty of others who make it a priority as well. Which actually brings up an interesting question: an artist (say, Beatrice) can be a strong influence on another artist (say, Chris), for reasons which don't originate with Beatrice at all. A casual observer, in fact, could assume that Chris's primary influence must have been Beatrice's mentor Abigail, when in fact Chris could be totally unaware of Abigail's existence except through her influence on Beatrice. There's also the possibility, of course, that Chris, Beatrice and Abigail all just worked toward similar conclusions independently; from the outside, there's often no way of telling. (We were just having a conversation about this over at my other blog; some friends and I read a short story by Borges that reminded me strongly of Nabokov's Pale Fire—but had Nabokov read Borges before writing his book? Does it matter?)
Anyway, in this case I'm claiming a strong Hargreaves influence: even though Kim didn't invent the whole ribbing-into-cables idea, she certainly put it to good and consistent use. When I was first learning about sweater-knitting, her patterns were always so pleasing for the smooth way all the elements come together: ribbing into cables, sleeves into armscyes, collars that tied everything together by repeating a motif from the cuffs. So I wanted to be sure that my homage sweater included this detail of Breeze. Since my chosen cable is built off a modified 4x2 ribbing, that seemed like a good finish for the lower edge, with the full-blown cable emerging organically from it:
Obviously, this is shaping up for a much different feeling than Breeze. Chunkier, less linear and more three-dimensional, with chewy textural qualities in place of Breeze's Deco sophistication. I kind of like the idea that Breeze, which set me on the path of tailored Deco-inspired garments, is now helping me to explore a different kind of cardigan. Despite all the differences, though, I think the influence is still visible when you look at the completed back:
Since my cables are so much chunkier than the ones in Breeze, I omitted the center-back repetition, but retained Hargreaves's basic idea of locating the left and right cables just at the place where the armhole decreases end. Despite the bulkiness of these cables, I think the final effect, with the narrow-ish column of garter stitch between the two cables, will end up giving the impression of slenderness.
The waist shaping is understated, but hopefully effective (in this photo it's pinned out into more or less a straight line along Gertrude's curves):
I based the pattern of decreases and increases on measurements I took from my Breeze sweater, which decreased about an inch relatively quickly, then increased slightly more than an inch much more gradually. For this new cardi I actually exaggerated the gradualness of the increase, spreading it out over almost the entire length of the body prior to the armhole decreases, but kept the slope of the initial decreases more or less the same. So far, I'm quite pleased.
Up next: the completed torso!
Previous posts in the series:
Saturday, May 1
Last Saturday David and I went to a production of Othello with my folks (the tickets were a generous gift from my coworkers! And the play was fabulous!) and I wore this fun Issey Miyake dress that I made in my pre-blogging days, along with my prized green Fluevog boots. It's a super-fun pattern (Vogue 2556), but be sure to have enough room to cut out: as I recall there are only three or four pattern pieces, and all those gathers means lots of extra fabric!
Sunday, May 2
On Sunday I finished my new cords, and for the rest of the day I bummed around the house wearing them and this cute thrifted t-shirt my cousin picked up for me when we were in college. Reading IS sexy!
Monday, May 3
On Monday I was so stoked on my new pants that I wore them again, this time slightly dressed up with my Dansko mary janes instead of my Tigers, and a dressier top that my mom gave me years and years ago (I think it originally came from Anne Taylor). Love the light blue/dark brown combo.
Tuesday, May 4
Tuesday saw a doubly me-made outfit: this double-layer skirt made from Simplicity 9199 (which I've made a couple of times in various fabric combinations) and my Breeze sweater, which I'm still wearing until my "replacement" cardigan is finished. I must be standing oddly in this photo; the hemline of the skirt is not actually longer on one side than the other.
Wednesday, May 5
On Wednesday I paired my Maxine Elliott shell with a button-down shirt (a hand-me-down from my mom, originally Coldwater Creek), short pants (five-year-old J. Crew), and matching argyle socks (Sock Dreams), along with my trusty Danskos. As a side note, I wear the same shoes to work every day, because I walk a mile and a half each way to get there. So although I have a whole closet of cute heels, it's the supportive shoes that get the wear. I've had the pair featured here for seven years, and they still look and feel pretty good, but on Wednesday David and I picked me up a supplementary brown pair. Hopefully they'll last another seven.
Thursday, May 6
I love this combo, which regular readers have seen before: it's my modified version of Kim Hargreaves's Darcy pattern, with a plaid skirt I bought in Milan, my new Danskos (yes, they look exactly like my old ones except brown), and the Paul Atwell Socks. A slightly wintry outfit for this time of year, but our office has been having some...temperature regulation issues.
Friday, May 7
Every first Friday of the month I have an early-morning meeting to which I have to drive, which means I can wear heels! So here I am in the houndstooth skirt I made from a vintage Simplicity pattern, a thrifted button-down, and my heavily-modified version of Kim Hargreaves's Aimee pattern, with some Franco Sarto heels. You may recognize this outfit from David and my engagement shoot; it's one of my favorites.
Whew! This kind of blogging feels so narcissistic, but hopefully you'll find it somewhat interesting.
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Regular Family Trunk Project readers may be getting tired of revisiting this pattern by now; it's my old pants standby, Vogue V2907, altered to fit me the way I like. But if you are tiring of them, I don't know what to tell you: I'll undoubtedly be making more versions of it, because I wear my two previous attempts on these pants ALL. THE. TIME. So often, in fact, that my olive-green cords are nicely worn in at this point, and it feels great to have a fresh new pair with which to ring in the new season.
The details on this version: I made them with the little ornamental tabs, as you can see.
These are adorable, and a great use for a set of four cute buttons (these are vintage, a gift from David's aunt Marcy), but I haven't yet made a set with which I'm entirely satisfied. Every tiny difference in size and shape is somehow magnified, and they never seem to match perfectly—a little wider, a little narrower, a little pointier, a little blunter...you get the idea. Ah, well. They're still cute, and I love how they're lined on the back sides with the same fabric used for the yoke facing and the pockets:
This particular fabric was also a gift: part of a super-thoughtful Partnership Celebration present from Anne's friends Etsuko and Yoshiko: they picked out a whole series of gorgeous cotton Japanese prints, in quantities perfect for lining pants, dress bodices, shirts, and so on. I'm so excited to put them all to use! They'd also be great for a wide stripe around the bottom of a skirt, or for an appliquéd pattern on a larger project. I love this crisp, tessellated kimono pattern: I have some left over, and am thinking of making some largish self-covered buttons with a kimono at the center of each. How cute would that be?
In other news, this iteration of the pants is slightly longer than previous ones:
I'm learning that when it comes to pants, I actually like them slightly longer than I think I'm going to when hemming. The thing is that when I'm actually wearing them, they're usually in action (walking, running, sitting), all of which makes them ride up slightly. My only complaint about my olive-green cords is that they're ever-so-slightly shorter than I'd like. The length of the blue ones, I think, is pretty perfect. Nice and cozy.
One of my favorite changes from Version 1 to Version 2 was the substitution of jeans-style patch pockets for the original welt ones on the back of the pants, and I repeated that change on these. I actually like these even better: the smaller wale on this corduroy means that they look smoother, and I lined up the grain so that it coincides better with the lines of the pockets. I don't know if I'm imagining it, but the patch pockets feel so much sturdier and lower-maintenance than the welts.
All in all, a great little project. I've been living in these since I finished them a week ago, and since they're made from mill-end corduroy from a pattern I've used three times before, this is probably about a $14 pair of pants. Score!
And now, a brief break from the Influence Series, before plunging back in: I've been running across some seriously inspiring things on the interwebs lately, and wanted to share. Sometimes the internet/email feels like a vast, many-headed monster that is gobbling up all my time and energy, but other times it reinvigorates me and makes me see my own habits and life in new ways.
This is such a cool challenge, and although (let's be honest) nearly every month is "Me Made Month" around Family Trunk headquarters, I thought I'd play along by documenting my outfits this month & maybe doing a weekly post about them. Since I make so few tops I won't be able to commit to entirely me-made outfits, but I can definitely commit to at least one handmade garment every day. You will also get to see how HORRIBLY REPETITIVE my work outfits are, but hey - a girl can only sew so fast.
In addition to being crazy challenging and a fascinating history lesson, this brings up SO many interesting ideas about impact and cost of clothing. Since rationing worked on a coupon system which applied equally to, for example, a cheap wool skirt and an expensive wool skirt, and a person couldn't (theoretically, leaving out the black market) buy either skirt without the requisite coupons even if she had enough money, there is a huge incentive to buy only high-quality clothing, stuff that's likely to last for a long time. There's also an incentive to recycle, trade, shop thrift stores, and, famously, "make do and mend." On the other hand, there is little incentive to sew from un-recycled fabric, rather than buying clothes new, since both raw materials and finished goods were rationed; the goal is to reduce consumption across the board. This is a slightly different perspective than my usual one, which focuses more on knowing where my materials are coming from than on reducing my bottom-line consumption, and I've been thinking about Susannah's project a lot since I discovered it. Her blog also features all kinds of cool stuff on austerity Britain, a place and time I find fascinating; I highly recommend checking it out.
That's all I got. Back soon (really & truly, this time) with the completed back, and then the completed front, of the Breeze-influenced cardigan I can't WAIT to wear.
]]>And now, where were we? Oh, yes.
Obviously, since I'm looking to replace my existing sweater in a number of my work ensembles, COLOR is part of the whole influence/inspiration matrix here, even though (if I recall correctly) I didn't make my cardigan in the same yarn or color as the original Kim Hargreaves model. Luckily, most of my outfits involve more color-coordination than color-matching, so I don't have to duplicate the exact shade. After looking around for a good long time, I decided on this gorgeous yarn, ordered from the always-delightful Erin at Eat.Sleep.Knit:
It's Madelinetosh DK, in the "Golden Hickory" colorway, and I'm so excited to finally work with this yarn. My choice here was itself an example of influence: so many of my knitting peers, notably Kate at Hello Knitty, were extremely enthusiastic, that I knew I had to give it a shot. A couple of things to note: my original sweater was knitted in Karabella Aurora 8, which is both a less variegated and a thicker yarn (worsted versus DK), although similarly smooth and round, making both great for cables. The DK weight means I have some room to play with some more complex pattern details, but the variegation means I'll need to keep those patterns bold in order for them to show up well. Luckily, "bold" is exactly what I had in mind.
Now, you probably noticed that Breeze involves lovely twisted-stitch patterning.
In fact, this is the design that introduced me to the idea of knitting through the back loop! THANK YOU, KIM HARGREAVES. I totally fell in love with the crisp, squared-off look I could achieve by twisting my stitches; I started doing it, and I never looked back. Lots of my own designs, including Julia, Wednesday, Caulfield, and Anney, involve twisted-stitch cables. Which is all well and good, but I might be getting just a TAD bit tired of twisted stitches. For a while now I've been wanting to explore the cushier, bulkier side of cabling, poring over stitch dictionaries and drooling over the big, bold, rope-style fisherman cables I found there. In particular, I was really digging this gorgeous thing, collected for posterity by the ubiquitous Barbara Walker:
(To quote you chapter and verse, this is the "Nautical Twisted-Rope Cable" featured on page 181 of Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, colloquially referred to as "the red one.")
At this point, I was pretty pleased with how things were coming. The bold, bulky qualities of the cable were holding their own against the variegation in the yarn, the stitch definition at my chosen gauge was excellent, and the fabric I was getting was deliciously cozy. And at this relatively light weight, even such a bulky cable is capable of co-existing with a fitted garment. I especially like that this cable, although it has a completely different feel from the Breeze cable, preserves a nautical aura from the original. Whereas Breeze feels to me like something that would be worn by a young girl being taken out on a sail boat in the early summer, this cable seems more likely to be worn by the person actually sailing the thing. They are thematically linked, but each have their different flavors.
However, one of the things I really like about the Breeze pattern is the way the cables present a curved, almost scalloped edge against a textured, yet flatter, background. I decided to take out the 4X4 cables to the left and right of the center panel, and experimented with different possible "background" fabrics. Reverse stockinette, as featured in the original Breeze, does complement variegation well, but stockinette fabric was feeling anemic next to my multi-layered cable. Seed and moss stitch were other possibilities, but in the end I decided in favor of simplicity: some good old-fashioned garter stitch.
For some reason I've always shied away from garter stitch, but in this context I'm absolutely loving it! It provides my fabric with just the right amount of "cush" to complement the squishy cable, and it looks beautiful in this semi-sold/variegated yarn. I also like the way in which the horizontal lines it produces contrast with the vertical cable and help the cable pop out of the background. This cable/fabric combo is definitely something I would love to wear.
Up next: moving from micro to macro, and the finished sweater back!
Previous posts in the series: