Cuffs, 18 years aged.

 

These redworked cuffs started life around 2006, as my interpretation of the pair worn in the 1536 portrait of Jane Seymour. Back then, the resolution of the picture I had wasn't great, so my pattern differs slightly in detail.

I used a white linen, medium to fine weight, and red filament untwisted silk from Eterna Silk. I made it this far, probably in 2007, when life took a turn and I stopped playing in the SCA for 7 years.

I returned in 2014, but these cuffs sat, untouched, as I had decided on a Florentine persona, and they were of Tudor design. Then Duke Tindal won the crown for a second time in the East in 2023, and his consort, Master G. Emerson True, had an Elizabethan persona. 

Perfect! I found where I had stashed the cuffs in early April, as they were coming up to Lyndhaven in May for the next Crown, so I had a deadline. I had since run out of the red silk, however, so had to guess at a matching color and ordered a gradient set of reds on Etsy. Luckily one of them was a very close match, so I got going. 

I had to remind myself how to work the pattern in double running stitch, but it didn't take long and this was after a day or two to see how close the silk colors were. I had started it with the idea of the design being reversible, but I hadn't learned where to start and stop the threads to make it look good, so I decided I needed to line them. It did unfortunately make the pleating a bit stiff, but would also protect the stitching from skin oils. 

I finished the embroidery in time for Crown,  but they weren't assembled into cuffs yet, so once I got settled in on site, I started sewing. I got one finished the Friday night, around half past midnight, and the second one the next morning during the tournament. I hadn't the tools to make eyelets to close them, however. 

I presented the cuffs that afternoon before feast, along with a net bag for HRM Tindal, where I had learned to net to make the bag, which was suitable for his persona. More about that in another post. I was so gratified that TRM Emerson loved them, gasp and all. 

However, I had forgotten to take a picture of the finished cuffs! So a few months later, TRM Emerson was visiting again to Ruantallan in September for the Merry Matron Tavern event, and was kind enough to let me get some pictures of the cuffs, and of him wearing them. Instead of eyelets, he uses brass pins to put the cuffs on over his shirt cuffs. Baroness Admiranda had her camera, and took these photos for me, for which I'm very grateful. 

So finishes the journey of these cuffs, 18 years on. 

Time for a new dress

Been a while, gotta shake off the dust around here. 

I've decided I havent made an Italian dress in a while, my last complete one was back when I returned to the SCA about 9 years ago! I had attempted one since, but it suffered from being badly rushed, and someday I may return and see if I can salvage it. 

This new dress is experimental in that it will be my first try using the bodice block that Baroness Janet Kempe helped me make back in the spring of this year. If it works, great, it will be a supportive layer to wear either alone or in the future under a fancier layer. If it doesn't, I'll not be as upset about it as I would some of my other fabric. 

I'm using fabric I've had laying around a fair while, I think it's a silk blend, but will burn test it at some point. It has a tiny herringbone or zigzag pattern in a dark olive and brown, which ends up looking like regular olive. I cut 3 panels 44 inches long, as wide as the fabric is, to make the skirt.

Then sewed them together after ironing, leaving 10 inches at the top to turn into slits to reach pockets underneath.

Next up is the bodice, which is taking me a while. I've gotten into a space where I'm overthinking and questioning what goes in order, and wanting to avoid a past mistake of putting too much fabric where I put the eyelets, thereby making the eyelets too difficult to sew. But I shall overcome, in time.

FO and yarn totals so far.

Here's Ashes to Ashes, my latest socks that I finished last night:

Pattern: Rudy Got Sole
Yarn: Knit Picks Risata, color Ash
Needles: 2.5 mm
Started August 25, 2012, finished Sept 12, 2012
Grams: 76.4

That brings my 2012 total to 1118.6 grams, and my 2 kg stash-down total to 227.6.

I've also just restarted the argyles again, due to changing what needle size I'm using, and crocheted 2 more squares on the Sunny Ferns blanket. Hopefully now I can get some real progress done on these argyles, and get them done by the end of the month.

Crochet eats yarn.

I've been thinking about projects to use up some of this mountain of yarn I have, and also contemplating the large amount of cotton and cotton blend yarn a friend gave me a couple of years ago. Among the cotton was 20 balls of Patons Grace in a nice medium green called Fern, which is a color now discontinued, but Wasabi is very similar.

Asking around on the #ravelry channel, I got a suggestion of the Sunny Spread. I haven't done crochet in a while, and that looked like a good use of the yarn. Once I got started, I realized that duh, crochet uses about 3 times as much yarn as knitting for the same space. This is good. I can get 5 squares out of one 50g ball of yarn, plus a bit extra which will be used for seaming. I'm currently planning on either a 9 x 11 blanket, or a 10 x 10, depending on if I need the extra yarn from the 100th square for seaming.

I am planning on buying a couple balls of another color for the outer border, however, as I think it'd set off the green better. I have made an exception in my diet that I can get yarn to finish a project that uses stash, as long as there's more stash than new yarn. I'll try not to abuse that too often, though. I already got 400g of Knit Picks yarn for my argyle socks, which I'll talk about in a later post.

I've 6 squares crocheted so far, it's a very easily memorized pattern:

The Dreaded Yarn Diet

Yep, decided on a yarn diet right around my 33rd birthday back in July, just after I'd ordered 1100g of yarn from Knit Picks. I looked around the office/yarn room here, and realized I had no room left in which to put that order.

I have a small closet that's full to the brim, I have to carefully restack things when I go in there now. I've a dresser that's 3 drawers dedicated just to my Knit Picks yarn. I've handspun sitting on top of the boyfriend's bookshelf, and 5 WIPs on my desk.

Then I made the mistake of using the Excel function of Ravelry's stash page to see just how much I had (that was put into Ravelry).

...

...

Just under 30 kg. That's 66 pounds. Once I separated out the Knit Picks yarn (because I knew I had a fair bit), after including the birthday yarn once it arrived, that came to 6.18 kg, or 13.6 pounds. My sock yarn total is 15.9 kg/35 pounds.

So, I decided that instead of picking a set time, like a year, that most people seemed to do, since my main goal is to knit use up some of my prodigious stash, I'd set a weight limit.

One kilogram of Knit Picks yarn, and one kilogram of anything else. We'll see how long that takes me.

What blanket?

Well, I knew it had to happen, I got distracted from the blanket by a wily sock. But this was kind of planned, because by the time I start block 5 of the blanket, I'm going to need a longer needle. So I ordered a 5.5 mm 60" ChiaoGoo needle, and am waiting for it to show up before I get really working on the blanket again, though I will take it to the in-laws (common-law in-laws, but easier to type), to finish block 4 over the Christmas holiday.

The wily sock is almost finished the gusset, which for me is pretty darn quick, since I started it last Friday, the 16th. It's a blatant rip-off of a friend's sock, momo. I just fell in love with hers and it wouldn't get out of my head. I'm using Regia 4-ply Color 5030, silt, in 2-row stripes with plain white. I hope to finish the sock over the weekend as well, and possibly have a pair before the end of the year. If it does go over, it'll certainly be done by the week after.

I think I've finally figured out a formula for my socks. On 2 mm needles like this one, I need 80 stitches, in Regia 4-ply I'm getting 10.5 stitches to the inch. My feet are 9" around, so it should work. For each needle size up or down from 2 mm, I'll add or subtract 4 stitches. I hope to knit a few pairs over the next couple of months to see how this works out. Standard flap heel, though I may try the sweet tomato heel as well.

Blankets are big!

Yeah, I've started my first blanket, and am just now starting to realize that blankets are big, and that's a lot of square inches to be making by hand.

I'm making the Moderne Log Cabin blanket in 3 shades of blue and a grey in Red Heart Comfort, because it's not a bad feel for acrylic, and I can get a lot of it without breaking the bank. The picture to the left is where the first 3 blocks join up.

The corner isn't quite straight, but I'm also still figuring out how to pick up stitches that looks good to me. I think I have it figured out now, but I still have about 31 ridges, so 62 rows, left to go before I finish block 3 (the dark blue). I had hoped to finish that block today, but it's already starting to look more like tomorrow.

In the same vein, I was kind of hoping to finish this for Christmas, not as a gift, but as a handy deadline so we can actually use this blanket this season, as I'm hoping it will fit on our queen size bed (what was I thinking?!) But maybe for New Year's Day instead? We're looking at spending 4-5 days for Christmas at his parent's place, so lots of knitting time, I hope.

I went down to the new (well, as of either this last June, or the one before) location of the Halifax Farmer's Market (oldest in North America, from the signs), and picked up a pretty skein of yarn from Lismore Sheep Farms. This picture is a bit more neon than the skein actually is, but my phone likes to emphasize the reds/pinks:

I will try to post more updates on the blanket, and other things as they cross my needles. I have some rather large plans for 2012, the hard part is picking which plans to do, because I can't do them all in one year!