Recently in Project Planning Category

My yarn has arrived. My next project may now begin.

"What is it?" you ask.

(photo is totally snagged from Thea, but I saved it to my own server)

Thea announced the existence of Golden on her blog, just about a month ago. I beat a cyber path to her bloggy door begging (pleading!) to let me be her test knitter. She graciously consented, and even gave me some time to play around with baby booties.

But the yarny call of Golden was too much to ignore. When Thea mentioned last week that WEBS has placed this yarn on sale, I knew that the time was right. I wanted a navy blue. Apparently, Classic Elite doesn't dye the stuff in that colorway. I think that I got as close as I could:

It's "Marine" and it's got a touch more green in it than a navy would have. We'll ignore the fact that I bought a very similar colorway in wool last month at Brooklyn General. I know what I like.

Because this is a test knit, I need to swatch and wash, first.

Sewing?

Perhaps. I doubt that I can make this a regular series, but in celebration of the Spiders' triumphant return to Brooklyn General today, I'm talking about more upcoming sewing projects.

Brooklyn General, as you might know, sells wonderful fabric. I certainly have been dreaming about it for a long time. At long last I'm ready to buy some of it to produce something cute for moi!

Sheepishly, though, I'll admit that I'm planning things a bit far in advance.

What can I say? It was $5. And, although my sewing prowess leaves much to be desired, I can already think of things I want to change on this pattern. First, I know (without even looking) that I'll need to lengthen the waist. I'm not extremely tall (5 feet 8--172cm, if you're being metric about it) but proportionally a lot of that height must be concentrated in my waist.

I might want to add a seam close to the base of the skirt, just to add a subtle detail. I haven't yet worked this out. Maybe I would change the direction of the fabric below the seam. Maybe I would use some piping at the seam. I don't know. I don't even know how hard it is to do something like that. And maybe, if it weren't too hard, I would add the same detail on the sleeves. Anyway, some advice/opinions from all the real seamstresses out there would be appreciated.

I hope that everyone had a nice Valentine's Day. Let me tell you, it didn't happen a moment too soon. Chez Subway Knitter was down to its last morsel of chocolate! We were truly in a state of emergency.

Despite the dire situation, I'm doing a little project planning these days. I know, I know, I've got a sock on the needles that needs to get finished (and I'm having fun knitting it, too). What business do I have thinking ahead?

But, I cannot help myself. The eye wanders.

Being a New Yorker and all, I'm making a concerted effort to add a bit of fashion to the wardrobe. I'm mostly failing miserably at this task, but I'm hopeful that little by little I can turn it around. I did buy new jeans last weekend (good!). Not crazy-expensive designer jeans (bad!), but inside this budding New Yorker is a prudent New Englander, and she will not let me spend all outdoors for an item of clothing that I can wear once, maybe twice a week. I bought two non-designer pairs for about the price of one pair of Calvins.

There's the frugality, and then there's the simple fact that none of those designer jeans fit me. My goodness! How scrawny do your thighs have to be to fit inside one of those pairs? Seriously. I'm size six or eight (depending on the brand), and I'm usually working to get those jeans up to my backside. And how low do I want my "waistband" to go? I'm not the only person who doesn't want to feel like a sausage, am I?

So, apparently I'm not a designer-jeans kinda gal. I accept that. But surely, this doesn't exclude me from other types of fashion forwardness.

Last year, during my Queens days, I laid my eyes upon an unusual wrap-type-thingie at The Point. It was a house pattern, free with the yarn purchase. Although I loved the design (and unfortunately, no, I don't have a picture), I couldn't quite pull the trigger. Then with the move, and unpacking, and the holidays, and the traveling, I forgot about it until last week.

This, however, is very similar, and I find its drape appealing.

Thea designed this pattern.

It's almost like a scarf with sleeves, right? Now, occasionally, yours truly gets to go to a big, dressy affair. Imagine this knit in cashmere. Delish, no? And, something like this would have been perfect for that Christmas party I went to this year when we were on the roof watching the fireworks... Yes, I went to a private Christmas party that included fireworks over the East River. Trust me, in New York, these things happen all the time. Such a garment would be useful.

Thea's offering the design on her blog as a fundraiser for FINCA, and you can read more about this worthy organization here.

I'm thinking that for spring it would be great to have a loose, wrappy type coat-thing that I could toss on when I was running out for errands, or dinner in the neighborhood, or, or, or.

And, I want to sew. Sew! Sew! Sew! "Sew what?" you ask. (Ha! Nice pun, I reply.) Sew this.

It's a shirt. I don't think that I've ever sewn a shirt before. Have I? No. But I find the long cuffs on this one hard to resist. Imagine the insides of the cuffs sewn in a coordinating fabric. Pretty nice, huh?

Plus, it would go with my new jeans....

Someone needs to help me. With all of my knitting books in storage, I can't identify this stitch pattern, much less figure out its repeat. It must have something to do with dropped stitches, but in what combination I cannot decide.

Photographed at Rhinebeck, it's one of the patterns that I'm thinking of using for my Prism Scarf. Apparently, I'm not alone in liking this motif. Did you see the Logan River Wrap in the Winter Interweave preview? Oh, yeah, and there's another pattern in there too (thanks for all your kind comments about my print debut).

My design aside, I think that the latest IK is fantastic! I want to knit almost everything. It's been a long time since I've been able to say that about a knitting mag. Kudos to the IK peeps for a great issue!

For those of you who don't know (and this is many) I'm about to become an Interweave contributor. Or rather, the contribution was long ago; it's due to be published soon. I think. I actually don't know, and will be just as surprised as you are to see my name among the pages.

Interweave recently contacted us contributors about participating in a pattern-on-demand service. Meaning that instead of hunting down a back issue of Interweave (or more accurately, grabbing a copy from your friend's bookshelf and scanning it) you can simply go to the website and download (for a fee) a copy of a particular pattern. [I don't know if articles will also be available in this way.]

This is a great way to determine which patterns are standing the test of time, and more significantly to halt (or at least slow) copyright infringement. It'll probably encourage more of us to knit from back issues. Why go through the trouble of hunting down an entire issue of a magazine when you need only one or two pages? Doesn't that seem like a waste? You no longer need your friend's bookshelf when you can download and print a clean beautiful copy of the desired pattern from your computer.

At first only a selection of the Interweave catalogue will be available in this way. Let's hope that it continues to expand as this service proves popular.

What got me thinking about the importance of this matter in more depth was a recent search for a sock pattern. Someone somewhere recently completed a pair of socks, and linked to the pattern. I don't know who the heck this was, and if someone does know, please email me. I liked the pattern immediately. It is, however, out of stock at The Loopy Ewe. Drat and darn. I'll have to wait until it restocks.

Imagine if TLE had a setup much like Chicknits, whereby once you pay your money you get an email with a PDF version of your pattern. No more waiting, and more importantly no more inventory issues for the shop.

I'm singling out TLE and Wendy Knits, but only because it's topical for me. This is far from the only designer/shop relationship with this type of pattern distribution setup.