03.31.08

Hello, random!

Posted in sewing at 8:44 pm by wendy

One of my issues with sewing is that there’s no knit-purl.

There’s no basic cast on then some simple repetitive motion that is all you need to do to get an FO. (Okay, yeah, you need to know a bind off, so knit two stitches then slip that first stitch over and repeat, simple as that.)

There is way more washing and ironing and measuring and drafting and testing and pinning and cutting–and then, The Machine.

D@mn! Who the hell said sewing was the easy simple housewife scrimpin’ way to do sh!t?

‘Cuz that’s what I thought.

I was definitely wrong.

Sewing is to knitting like chess is to checkers, you’ve always got to be thinking of the shape you are making and how that’s changing the next shape you’ll be sewing and finishing edges and –it seems you’ve always got to think about the finished product and the steps inbetween.

Of course knitting is so slow; if you find out you messed up and it looks ugly, you rip it out. But you weigh that against the time it took you to get there, and the material takes the damage too. And you figure out where you went wrong and you fix it. So I guess there it’s a bit the same.
The flexibility of knits is multitude. Sewing is a nitpicky taskmaster.

And then there are just plain dumb, stupid mistakes.

See, I was so proud of myself.

I was making a big pot of tea and I thought, “hey, I’ve got cheesecloth, I’ll make a big ol’ reusable teabag!”

So I cut a long rectangle of cheesecloth, I cut a length of hemp cord and even scoured it of any processing cr@p, then laid it in the middle of the rectangle of cheesecloth and folded the cloth over the cord.

So, writing this, I find the next logical step after just folding it over once would be to sew a line underneath that hemp cord to hold it in place, THEN fold the cloth and sew it like I did.

It is so totally completely boneheadedly obvious in retrospect.
But instead I folded the long rectangle of cheesecloth over the hemp cord, then folded it sideways, and then sewed down the side, across the bottom, up the side.

And then because I’m a dumbass, thought, hey, I’ll sew along underneath the cord so it will be all nice and secure. So I did, and sewed the freaking tea bag shut.

march-003.jpg

D’oh!

03.06.08

Greyhounds Don’t Shed, and Other Tall Tales

Posted in dogs, sewing at 9:10 pm by wendy

Crivvie got a massage today.

Crivvie the HairBrained Girl
 
 
We went after Crivvie with the Furminator today, as it’s been a long while. This was all from just one side…and no trick photography here, the hairball is bigger than her head (not including needlenose however).

Despite the ‘crazy eyes’ look in the pic, she loves it.
She actually has a type of undercoat, which is kind of unusual for greyhounds. It’s quite soft, but short staple, so perhaps someday I’ll dehair it and blend it with some cashmere or somesuch. Mom would have got a kick out of that.

~~~~~~~~

I was cruising around looking for fabric (I may not sew worth a damn, but I’ve got the stash impulses) and saw this: Knitmare On Elm Street. Might make for a cute knitting bag fabric or needle case.
ETA: when I googled for a better closeup of the knit pirates fabric, I found Alison of Blue Blog’s cool bags.

Speaking of stashing, Nick and I went up to Ashland yesterday and I stopped in at Fabric of Vision. It’s a small shop, but packed with good stuff, and the owner was really nice and very helpful. I bought In Stitches and Sew What! Skirts, and a yard and a half of fabric with which to make a fairly simple A line skirt.  I was just checking out etsy, and look, here’s the fabric!

The fabric reminded me of my Grammy Kitchel, something she might have as curtains at the La Jolla house.

Our amazing sheepy bed has arrived (pics in the next post, I promise) and I thought it might be neat to make organic sheets and a duvet for the bed. I googled organic fabric and found NearSea. Wow.

They have a nice selection and good prices of organic and plant dyed yarn as well. I built a shopping cart of about $600, for fabric alone.

Then I bookmarked it and walked away. Thankfully, the cart was not saved. When I have come to my senses, I will return and build another cart. ;)

I, uh, still need to unpack my sewing machine though.