"Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either." ~ Elizabeth Zimmerman

7/8/14

I'm Busy

The title says it all. It's summer time. Lots is going on in my life.

I've been knitting quite a bit, but most of it is doll stuff. I did these just this past week.



I've almost got the patterns memorized. That will be nice. I need to sew up some seams and weave in some ends, of course. I've also perfected the fit to exactly what I want. I've upped the needle size to 3's, double stranded the lace weight mohair, and adjusted the pattern accordingly. I am very pleased with the results

I received a large order of embroidered lace tulle trim for making skirts. These are just a few of them.



I ordered 15 different ones, but they sent me 3 extra free, which I thought was kind of cool, so I have 18. I spent quite a bit of time cutting them into skirt appropriate pieces. Now I'm waiting for the lining fabric to arrive that I ordered. Should be here in the next day or two. I've also been teaching myself about sewing doll clothes, and working with certain fabrics. There are lots of tips on the internet that have been extremely helpful.

One tip is use Freezer paper for cutting out small pieces. That is the coolest tip I've had so far this year. I did not know it could be used in this way. I tried it out yesterday and it works pretty well.

I did work on a knitting project that ended up frogged. I started the gloves that go with the fairisle hat I made for a shop model. If I thought the hat pattern was a mess, it was nothing compared to the glove pattern! I've never seen so many typos and math errors in one pattern. I don't think it was ever test knit. It was, quite frankly, unknittable as written. I wrestled to the top of the thumb gusset and stopped there. There was no point in going on with it. I would have to completely rewrite the thing to make it work. Since this pattern is in a kit the shop wanted to sell, I advised them to skip that idea. If they sold the kit, they'd have to add my rewrite, which is then just knitting a pattern I wrote. Not the original. Besides, who wants to support such a badly written pattern financially anyway. I frogged the glove and gave the materials and pattern back to the shop owner. She won't be carrying that kit.

I am amazed at how prolific errors are in published patterns now. Especially the ones from publishing companies. We, as knitters, shouldn't put up with this kind of thing. We pay for these patterns, they should be error free.

I have done very little beading this year. What time I can spend on crafting, I've been spending on doll clothes. So this last weekend I made myself sit down and bead. I worked on a project I started quite some time ago that got stalled due to frustration on my part.



I've figured out what I'm gonna do now and the project is back in progress. It is going to look much different than what I started doing. Sometimes the beads want to be something else from what's in my head. I hope to get it done in time for entering it in the fair.

Had a very nice 4th of July. We went up to my sister-in-laws cabin on upper Twin Lakes for a family barbecue. It was too chilly for swimming, but there was lots of good food and drink and it was nice to catch up on what everyone has been up to. We watched fireworks going off around the lake after dark too.

The weather here has turned hot and muggy. Typical July weather. I'm enjoying it. I like it so much more than snow.

Live long and prosper. \\//


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