I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and new year, filled with time with friends, family, and food, lots of it. Hopefully you got all of your holiday knitting done well in advance, or at the very least not right up to the deadline. This year I didn’t make anything for gifts, which may come to some as a surprise. If I had known that I wouldn’t have a lot of time to knit, or not enough energy to, I could have planned ahead. I could have months ago made a few things for gifts. But alas that’s not how things went. I did make a sweater, if you haven’t seen that post, you should. I even modeled the sweater (I still need to reblock it to get it to the correct size) which I forgot how uncomfortable being in front of the camera makes me. Even when I’m the photographer taking my own photo (WiFi on cameras these days help out a bit). But I did get photos, which I know it’s one of my pitfalls when making something.
You must be wondering what I am working on now that a sweater is off the needles, well I can’t tell you. Not that I don’t want to, but it’s a design, another one that is part of a series. I am hoping to get this one done really quickly so I can get pictures of it next month when I am on vacation and maybe bring another design with me so I can get photos of that too. But I digress, I have been working diligently on it, making good progress, which makes me hopeful. I am hopeful that it will be done and not be too plain. Until then I have been working on my next pair of vanilla is the new black socks, quite a surprise I know. They’re still the Halloween colors that I started a few months ago, but I’m traveling down the leg of the second sock at least.
I have picked up a new hobby, which this would be the final one. I don’t have enough time or space to get anymore. I picked up sewing, which I had my reason to justify it. I wanted to learn to make my own clothes because most of mine need to be altered anyways. So why not make clothes that actually fit me well. Also, I want to make my own fitted suit as the goal to work towards. That was the plan anyways, but then I saw some bags and I knew I needed to make those too. So I started with a standard first pattern, an easy tote bag. I purchased a craftsy class or two to get going. By the way, I forgot what it was like walking into a craft store and be overwhelmed. When I got the fabric to make the tote I had that feeling. I spent an hour just walking around in a daze, finally picking up some fabric for the tote and some more for something eventually (that stash habit is coming over).
So I sewed that tote in no time, pretty easy with just darts for shaping and a pocket. Then I bough more fabric for my second and third projects. The second was supposed to be a dress for my mom out of an easy pattern, but I did that third. The second was a fully lined duffel with zippers and snaps and things that a beginner should be daunted by. But it wasn’t that hard to be honest, a few fiddley parts but not bad at all. I made the inside pocket flaps, a zippered pocket, then made the outside pockets, flaps, outside walls, attached them all with a main zipper, side panels and before I knew it I had a duffel. One that I had selected everything for, cut out the pieces, interfaced a lot of it, and put together myself. I used it last weekend and it was perfect for weekend jaunts up to see my partner.
Is it 100% perfect? No way, but for my second sewing project ever it was impressive to my parents who both quilt and my mom sews a little bit. I’ll take pictures of it soon, but I am tempted to make another.