A Staple Dress

Hello once again!

September has been a crazy month. I had 2 weddings and a 10k to run, all on consecutive weekends. Crazy, right? I can't lie- I'm pretty exhausted from all of it. But do I get to rest this week? No, because I have something booked for myself to do after work every night this week. All fun things, don't worry, but man. I am going to sleeeeep this weekend!

But you came for pretty things, right? Hopefully this qualifies.

Yes, I made another dress! This time of the Staple variety. I picked up this Anna Maria Horner voile aaages ago and just now decided what I was going to make. It was a difficult decision. The fabric is just so pretty and I didn't buy enough to make anything terribly complicated. So this was really the perfect solution.

I know everyone and their mom has made a Staple dress and so you have probably already heard how comfortable they are. Well, they are. Simple, comfortable, easy to wear. And the light voile made this a perfect late summer make. Not that I will have to stop wearing it in fall. Because Tucson.

I kind of love dresses with pockets, but I think this fabric is probably too light to make them very useful. If you put anything in them it drags the dress down in a rather unattractive way. So I don't use them much. Next time I will omit them if I'm using a similarly lightweight fabric.

I'm afraid I haven't finished much else this month, but next time I'll show you what I'm actually working on instead of waiting til the end. I'm not great at remembering to take progress shots, but I will try!

Happy first day of fall!!

I made a hat!

I finished some things! Yes, more than one thing! What a joyous occasion this is! Here's one of the things!

Right, so. I've been knitting tons of winter stuff. Because winters in Tucson are bitterly cold (obviously) and I just won't survive unless I'm covered head to toe in hand knits. Or I'm crazy and belong somewhere with a colder climate. That could be it, too.

Crazy is probably a good description.

The pattern is the Capucine Hat and you may notice if you click through that link that my hat doesn't exactly look like hers. Well, let me tell you what happened.. This hat is written for both bulky and super bulky yarn. My yarn was bulky and I somehow misread the directions, which clearly state that the bulky directions are in [square brackets]. Ahem. So this was knit with the instruction intended for super bulky yarn, which means my hat ended up not so slouchy...

At first I was sad. But then I realized when I put it on that what I had really just done was made myself a PONYTAIL BEANIE. Yes folks, that's right. I can wear my head up all winter and still keep my ears warm! What a revelation! So then I went from disappointed in myself for failing at instructions to EXCITED!

So while the pattern didn't turn out as planned, it is still awesome and nice and toasty. Which may come in handy if I go anywhere cold this winter ;)

Isn't it nice when a mistake turns out to be just fine?

Adelaide Dress

I've been working on my clothes making skills lately. It is long overdue!

Have you heard of Seamwork? It's a sewing e-magazine put out by the people behind Colette patterns. Every month there is a new issue with a bunch of articles from sewing techniques to fashion history to sewing resources online or in a particular city. That part of the magazine is free, but if you want all the patterns, it's $6/month. You can also buy each pattern on it's own for $7.

Anyway, that's where this pattern came from. I like button down dresses a lot and I thought this one would be a good place to start.

The only alterations I made to the pattern was to grade down a size on top, which is something I have to do fairly often. Three cheers for pear shapes! There is a little bagginess along the neckline still, though, so I might take a bit out next time and see if that fixes it. Still, I love how it turned out! I had to wait for my chartreuse snaps to come in (I got them from Cowgirl Snaps on Etsy), but it was so worth it to get something fun instead of just the boring white they sell at Joann...

Bit of an awkward pose. I was trying to listen for the sound of the camera. I can't find my remote so I've been having to use the self timer... :( Not nearly as convenient. Anyway, as you can see the back fits really quite well! The fabric is a chambray I picked up at Imagine Gnats. It wrinkles a bit, but that's expected. I still really like the way this fabric looks and feels.

Close up of the snaps! I picked up a pair of snap/eyelet pliers at an estate sale for like $3- score! I hadn't really used it until now. But it works! It's a little annoying to get all the pieces lined up in the right spot on the fabric, but by the end I was starting to get the hang of it. In the end I only ruined one snap! And it was a backing piece, not a pretty front piece, so it was fine. I would definitely use them again :)

I'm pretty proud of this dress. It fits well and I took my time and followed the directions, no shortcuts. It's also the first dress I used my new serger on! Did I mention I bought a serger? Well, I did. It's very exciting. I'll have to take some pictures for you ;)

Healed and back in action!

Technically, I've been okay since about the last week of July. Technically. But there was so much knitting and sewing to catch up on that I've only just sat down now to tell you about it!

Let's see. First, I finished my blocks for Sarah of Sew What Sherlock. You *may* remember we started a bee a loooong time ago. But life got in the way for several of our members and so things fell by the wayside for a bit. But we're gathering momentum once again that will hopefully see us through to the end!

Sarah's quilt is going to have a bunch of paper pieced arrows (the pattern is her own design and available for purchase) with low volume background blocks with a variety of shapes and patterns.

The whole this is very scrappy. It's going to be so lovely when it's all put together! Above are my background contributions.

 A shot of the arrows in their entirety. Please excuse the feet ;)

And a sort of close up of my favorite block. I just love pinwheels.

I've been working on other stuff, too. Photos to come soooon! :D It feels so good to have 2 working arms again, I can't tell you...

Dead Stop

Last week I pulled the right trapezius muscle in my shoulder while walking my dogs. The smaller one saw a quail family and wanted to eat it and jerked my arm harder than I thought possible. This has rendered me basically useless. I haven't been able to knit, sew, or really use the computer at all. I missed a couple of days of work because most of what I do all day involves the use of the computer and it just hurt too much. I'm still not 100%, but the muscle relaxants prescribed by the doctor along with heat packs and pain killers have been slowly helping me heal.

This has been driving me absolutely insane, of course. I hate not doing things. I don't even like watching TV usually unless I'm also working on something. But that's been my week. When I take the muscle relaxant I can't even read much because I just fall asleep. In other words, I have been soooo bored and all I want is for my shoulder to get better so I can do things that I like to do again!

But in the meantime... Here is a picture of the shawl I'm working on. Or will be working on again once my shoulder heals.

The pattern in Zilver and it's free on Ravelry. It's a fairly simple pattern and easy to memorize, which I like. It's a nice project to work on when I just want to relax. I love it so far! I might even be finished if it weren't for my shoulder! I chose a free pattern for my first shawl just in case I didn't like knitting it. But! I've found I like knitting shawls so far. I definitely see more in my future.

You may be wondering how I managed to type all this out if typing is agony. ONE HANDED. Yes, this was all painstakingly and slowly typed out with my left hand. Here's hoping there's only a few more days of this and then I can get back to doing thing with both hands. That will be a wonderful day...