Monday, February 12, 2007

discontinued


What happens when you impulsively buy yarn on sale then wait a year to use it? You realize that you don't have enough yarn to knit anything but a doll hat and you can't buy more because the stores don't carry it anymore.

Thus was my predicament this with yarn (and will be with many more yarn balls waiting patiently in my craft room). This is the third sweater I tried with this yarn, prematurely running out of yarn on two previous projects. On this project, I realized after knitting the front, back, and half of the first sleeve that the yarn was running precariously low. After a few hours of lamenting the prospects of frogging yet another failed project, I had an idea - short sleeves! Not quite brillant but pretty useful in this case. It worked like a charm, leaving only the tiniest bit of yarn left over (see above pic). However, this design choice turned this unisex sweater into decidedly feminine attire. Perhaps this is a sign? I think I'll add some embroidered embellishments to girl it up even more.

This sweater has an even longer story, which I'll elaborate on in an another post...

sugar, spice & everything nice

I finally finished my sweater interrupted and I couldn't be happier with it. Yea!

Friday, February 02, 2007

I love America

So my little case of homesickness has produced this patriotic number in just one month's time. The applique wasn't nearly as bad as I expected; I could get about 3 stars done in one TV show. Of course, I still have to quilt it.

A little happy accident caused the stripes to go horizontal, just like the flag. I hadn't designed this on purpose and only noticed it once it was all sown together. This only happened because I drafted my pattern horizontally instead of vertically (not realizing the consequences). This meant that the blocks would all be turned 90 degrees to the right, thus causing the stripes to go horizontal. Yea!