More progress!
Yesterday I went to an art festival. Apart from being the hottest I can remember ever being in the South (as opposed to the single most obscenely hot day I can ever remember, which was 106 degrees at Hoover Dam in August 2002, and though I've technically been in hotter air temperatures, the sun was so hot it hurt my skin), the festival was a prime opportunity to people-watch, and I was not disappointed. You see all manner of crazy out walking, people who drag their poor fur-coated dogs out in the heat, people with fifteen layers of clothing, people who don't realize the first law of crowds is "don't stink them up." My favorite booth had some unbelievably cool jewelry, but alas, aside from some weavers there wasn't any yarn. It's been an extremely dry summer down here. The grass is brown and dry. I think this is why the deer has been showing up - my apartment complex is still watering the grass, so she has been able to find something to eat.
Tired, hot, drained, and amazed that I had a 20-ounce diet Pepsi and a 24-ounce bottle of water and still felt parched, I turned up the air conditioning until my feet got so cold they hurt, and knitted away on my sleeves. I finished them! I basted one and tried it on, it's the right length!
AND! late last night I sewed the first side seam. Now I see what all the top-down fuss is about. Seaming two pieces that feature a lot of shaping was kind of weird and possibly not for the timid. But at least I had the shaping to let me know if the sides were really lining up. (The seam is straight, but I wish I'd taken more care to increase neatly.) Even with good light and a chibi, this yarn is practically unseamable...the yarn gets too splitty and the color is too dark. I also found no less than THREE knots in the last skein, the one that will become button bands and the collar. (One other skein was full of knots, and piecing in new skeins of cotton is neither easy nor fun for me.) All the sleeve ends and back ends have been woven in, and I only need to seam the rest, weave in the ends on the front, knit the button bands and knit the collar. At the rate I'm going that will probably take me another month.
But at least today it's only supposed to be 92! And I would just like to thank the good Lord for air conditioning and Nexium, amen.
Tired, hot, drained, and amazed that I had a 20-ounce diet Pepsi and a 24-ounce bottle of water and still felt parched, I turned up the air conditioning until my feet got so cold they hurt, and knitted away on my sleeves. I finished them! I basted one and tried it on, it's the right length!
AND! late last night I sewed the first side seam. Now I see what all the top-down fuss is about. Seaming two pieces that feature a lot of shaping was kind of weird and possibly not for the timid. But at least I had the shaping to let me know if the sides were really lining up. (The seam is straight, but I wish I'd taken more care to increase neatly.) Even with good light and a chibi, this yarn is practically unseamable...the yarn gets too splitty and the color is too dark. I also found no less than THREE knots in the last skein, the one that will become button bands and the collar. (One other skein was full of knots, and piecing in new skeins of cotton is neither easy nor fun for me.) All the sleeve ends and back ends have been woven in, and I only need to seam the rest, weave in the ends on the front, knit the button bands and knit the collar. At the rate I'm going that will probably take me another month.
But at least today it's only supposed to be 92! And I would just like to thank the good Lord for air conditioning and Nexium, amen.
posted by Jen at 6:52 AM
3 Comments:
Ugh, seaming dark, splitty yarn is no fun. I don't mind seaming as a rule, but cotton is my nemesis. I can't get it to seam up neatly (ever), nor have I ever managed to weave in an end so it's actually invisible.
Hmmm, I think I was at Hoover Dam that day...DH wanted to be back in the over-AC-ed casinos back in Vegas ASAP. At least I could hide in a cave at the last arts fest I went to. I don't like seams, I have several topdown raglans going.
Didn't you love the giant dog statue in the middle of the lawn? If you followed the way it was facing, you got to the rest of the large rusty sculptures, including an Edgar Allan Poe one w/ a creepy black raven on it. It was spooky, but somehow enticing as well. ; )
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