Vintagefusion Knits & Crochets

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Inching slowly

Perhaps it's the year end approaching, there seems to be a burst of activities which made me alternate between highs and lows... at times, I feel so energized that I can't get to sleep even at 3am in the morning. But on other days, I can't seem to fall out of bed until past 11am.

I swear the haze has a lot to do with my tiredness. I have sensitive skin, eyes and nose. So the haze has resulted in my skin having a huge breakout, and my eyes watered more frequently. Not to mention the weariness that sets in.

Other than that, much of the activities are centered around my knitting. I was invited to for a local magazine, Simply Her, that is writing an article about female bloggers in Singapore. It's going to be out in the December issue. The photoshoot session was quite fun as I had a chance to meet up with another blogger that I heard so much about but never met in person till that day.

Silly me, I had brought my camera along but everything happened so fast that I didn't think about flashing my camera until the whole shoot was over! Drats!

Other than that, my own knitting progress has been slow.

The 12 year old that has been previously ripped back to the hip has grown. But be forewarned as I am going to rip it back again. I don't quite like the way it fits so I want to change the shaping again.

I am sure there are knitters out there who would probably frown at my constant knitting and ripping; being sure that there's a much better and foolproof way of calculating all the stitches before commencing (i.e. the scientific way). And I would tend to agree. However, with longer garments like dresses, there is always the issue of gravity so it seems to be that knitting the dress up is closer to reality.

Besides, I am not the Queen of Frogpond for nothing [grin].

Lacey Mo is also coming along well.

This is one project that I haven't quite mastered the charts yet as it's alternating between a few variations. So I can't be having chit-chatting and looking my friend in the eye when I am knitting this piece. It's grown quite a bit now.

My galfriends who knew of my great ambition to make this into a jacket has several observations:
"How are you going to wear it?"
"If you put this lace on, it's almost like wearing nothing!"
"How would you wash it?"
"A jacket seems very challenging. Why don't you convert it into a shawl?"

A SHAWL?! No way! After all that hard work, I would much rather have it pieced together as a complete garment. But I may be speaking too soon. Let's see how this goes.

I also had an instant gratification piece -- a knitted Zigzaging Shanghai Scarf* for an ex-colleague of mine.

She wanted to go to JiuZaiGou in China during early Oct and requested a scarf. She's even offered to pay but this scarf is my gift to her. She's been such a nice pal and office mate in my previous workplace.

True to her niceness, she's also offered to take a photo of her wearing the scarf for my blog. Yay!

PS. Thanks to those who has shown interest in that Bamboo lacey top -- the patterns are all on scraps of paper so hopefully one of these days, I can gather all of them and consolidate into a proper single pattern sheet!

*Bet you are asking where the scarf pattern came from...I designed it during one of my trips to Shanghai.

link | posted by emy at 12:55 PM
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Monday, October 02, 2006

A trip down memory lane

Thanks to you gals for all the compliments on the white lace bamboo top. I pondered on how best to answer many of you who queried if I have designed it.

What constitutes a designer? Does that mean you start totally from scratch and sketch out what you have in mind? Then do swatching and proceed to knit from start to finish?

I get inspired by the various things I see...this lace top came about as I wanted to try something top down. And then I browsed pattern books that provided lace charts and see which ones I liked. Then worked out gauge and fit; adding the shaping according to my own body measurements.

The cute picot edging came about as I wanted some color constrast. I noticed that I knit mostly single colored garments. I am sure the bottom edge would look just as purty with plain ribbing but then again, it's always fun to test out your own ideas right?

There is also a lot of frogging involved. Especially with the sleeves as I wasn't sure how I wanted it to look. I tried the matching picot but it was a major disaster as it made the lace bits way too over the top! (I am sure some of you would have figured it out but I just had to *try* it to be convinced.)

I love putting things together and I find that I am such a fusspot that even before I start a pattern, I usually try to visualize how the pattern would look when worn on me.

There are times when I don't get it (the style) right -- like the red blouse I gave to Mom; it's so femine and conservatively delicate that it's not me. (But you can't say I didn't try!) LOL.

Or this light lilac cardigan with scalloped edges but a short body fit.

My friend gave me a snort when I wore this. (You know what that means.)

I am not even sure if I am a designer of sorts or perhaps I can be called Queen of Improvisation - as the other students like to call me. [Yup....we always alter and improvise on patterns to improve fit and change certain elements.]

The pattern is scribbled in a few pieces of scraps as I did the number crunching using my trusty calculator. There's 3 in the living room already but I still can't find them whenever I need them! I'll get around to consolidating and writing them one of these days hopefully.

Just over the weekend, I decided that with no projects on hand, it's best that I start reviving one of the oldest WIPs I've got.

This is my 12 year old baby -- to be precise, in Singapore education standards, as a child, it would be a Primary 6 student, taking its PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examination) this year!

I remembered why I ditched it aside then:
It was going to be a dress but I wasn't sure if I could find a seamstress who could help me create a lining for it as it's meant to be off-shoulder.

So going at it for one night, I managed to work some ribbing and cast off; deciding that a tube dress should work well. But alas, it was just too roomy (no, I weigh about the same as I did 12 years ago) and completely shapeless on me. That's what you get when you do not learn to swatch! [Hey, but I've learnt now -- all the ladies who are learning from me start with swatching! And yes, be comforted that I started out pretty much like you all too! (grin)]

Armed with the skills I have in hand now, I started taking a few measurements. Imagine the waist is 4 inches way too big! I have a schematic and decided that I might have enough yarn to do some design on the neckline. And off I ripped.