Sewing FOs: Sorbetto Tanks

This post is a love letter to one of Colette Patterns' most versatile designs, the Sorbetto Tank.  It's a free pattern available on their website.  You print it out on your home printer and tape the paper pieces together, meaning you can start your new sewing project IMMEDIATELY, as I felt I needed to one night.  There are so many great things about this pattern: it looks good in a solid or a print, it only has two pattern pieces, the sizing is very forgiving, and the possible modifications are endless.  Like so many of their patterns, it also easily transitions from work to weekend, an element I want more of in my closet.  So far this summer I've made three. 

For the first two, I bought two quilting cottons from Peapod Fabrics.  I'm lucky enough to live very close to Peapod, and the owner carries a beautiful collection of prints.  I did the first tank, with no modifications to the pattern, out of the slightly heavier cotton print.  It's such a cheerful color, and goes so well with my red cardigan!

Sorry for the low-res photos. Yes, I've gotten into Instagram.

Originally I'd tried finishing the raw neckline and sleeve edges with a bright red ribbon, but it didn't look very good and the ribbon wouldn't lie flat. As I was making the bias tape from my fabric scraps, I remembered that since bias tape is cut diagonally to the warp & weft threads of a woven fabric, it has more stretch and give, allowing it to lie smoothly around the curved edges of the garment.  I've probably worn this tank top five or six times since finishing it.  Incidentally, I also used the continuous bias tape tutorial from the Colette blog, and it's my favorite way to make bias tape, especially if all you have is smaller scraps. 

For the second one, I had some 100% cotton lace edging that I knew I wanted to use.  After playing around with several options, I decided to put it around the neckline.  The effect is very sweet in a way that makes me think of Anne of Green Gables or Little House on the Prairie. It's not a look I go for every day, but I like it nonetheless. 

Taken before I'd finished the sleeves. 

This fabric was much more lightweight than the first one, and made me think that perhaps I could've used a bit more room in the bust on the first one.  I was reluctant to print out the entire pattern again just so I could cut a larger size, so before making the third one I decided to dive into doing my first full bust adjustment (FBA for short).  I sat down with my scissors, tape, extra paper, ruler, and then spent about two hours reading tutorials before I felt I had a good idea of what I was doing.  Because the Sorbetto doesn't have waist darts I ended up adding a significant amount of space to the waist circumference, so in the future I might grade that down just a bit to compensate.  This is what my pattern piece looked like before I filled in the gaps with extra paper.  I'm not sure that I drew the new bust dart in exactly the right place, but it gave me the extra room I was looking for. 

Doing a FBA makes you feel as smart as doing calculus. 

I also decided my third Sorbetto should be a tee instead of a tank, and I used the free sleeve pattern from Sew, Incidentally.  I was a little apprehensive that it only came in one size, but it worked like a charm.  In the future, I think this would be a great pattern to practice drafting sleeves for, since it's not too complex.  Once I'd attached the sleeves and tried on the top, it was immediately obvious how much the FBA helped.  I never realized how accustomed I'd become to wearing tops that never had enough fabric in the bust!  I actually have enough freedom of movement of my arms in this top, and the fronts of the sleeve seams aren't under strain.  This was a huge step for me in terms of expanding my sewing knowledge.  I pulled out a fat quarter of a sweet Liberty of London print for my bias tape edging, and improvised a keyhole opening at the back of the neck (I was inspired by the photo in the bias tape tutorial).  

Hanging from the door to our ironing board closet. 

The main fabric is a soft linen that I got from an enormous discount fabric store near my parents' home in southern California.  I have so many memories of going to this fabric store with my mom as a little kid, but that's another post for another day.  Here's a closeup of the back neck:

Those Liberty prints kill me every time!  So gorgeous!

The finishing is a little rough on the inside of that opening, but I'm pretty proud of myself for making it up.  These three tops are already in my regular rotation, and I'm certain I'll be making more from this pattern.  I've seen so many adorable variations: inverting the pleat, leaving the pleat open on the bottom, eliminating the pleat altogether, different sleeve styles, lengthening the bottom hem for a tunic or short dress... this dress and tank are two of my favorite versions of all the ones I've seen on the web. The only downside to all this sewing with woven fabrics is that I'm doing a lot more ironing in the mornings when I get ready for work, but it's so worth it knowing I'm wearing something that I made and that is truly unique!  

Knitting FO: Lunasea Socks

I could probably temporarily rename this blog "Adventures in knitting stuff that I've had queued on Ravelry for more than 2 years", with the way I've been choosing projects lately.  The latest FO is another pair of socks (first official knitting project for the Seam Allowance!): the Monkey pattern by Cookie A., out of Blue Moon Socks That Rock Lightweight in the Lunasea colorway.  This sock yarn has, in the past, been a little odd to work with. It's a very dense sock yarn, really almost a sport weight compared to stuff like Tosh sock or Malabrigo sock.  It's also very tightly spun and plied, and thus it's not nearly as rub-against-your-cheek-and-sigh soft as those, either.  It knits up into an incredibly hard-wearing fabric, though.  Of all the sock yarns I've knit with, the socks I've knit out of this yarn have yet to get holes (and after five years of being in the rotation, that's saying something).

Gauge has been tricky for me with this yarn in the past, though.  Knitting it up on size 0's is ridiculously dense: more like kevlar than socks.  Knitting on size 1.5's often yields a sock that is comically large in the foot, though.  Oh, and I should mention that only recently have I acquired size 1 sock needles.  So for these socks, I knit the feet on size 1's and the legs on size 1.5's, and it worked like a charm!  They fit nicely, and I'm still as in love with this colorway as I was when I first purchased the yarn back in 2007 (yikes).

 

Just like everyone else in knitterdom has told you, the Monkey pattern is a great one.  There's a reason it's so popular: the lace pattern isn't too hard to read or memorize, it does a great job of breaking up any potential pooling in your variegated yarns, and the rest of the sock construction is straightforward.  I will almost certainly knit this pattern again sometime, as I still have lots of variegated sock yarn in the stash.  

Starting thoughts on the Seam Allowance project

One of my larger goals this summer is to learn more about sewing clothing.  I took a garment-sewing class at Verb during spring break (and meant to blog about it then, really I did!) and eventually finished the top.  I like the shirt quite a bit, and have worn it four or five times since completing it.  For those who are interested, this is the "Violet" top by Colette Patterns, and the fabric is a lightweight cotton floral print by Lecien. 

Joining the fronts and back of the shirt.

It got me excited to sew more clothing, but I didn't have the mental energy to put together anything more complicated than a quilt with rectangles during the second half of the semester.  As final exams wound down, my thoughts returned to more clothing.  Knitting sweaters is all well and good in October, but in June my thoughts were on breezy tank tops and sundresses.  As she so often does, Kristine at Verb read my mind and has started an initiative that she's named "Seam Allowance".  In my head, I've been imagining this as a learning community and support network. It's well-timed both in terms of my interests and work schedule; summers are always less hectic for me. So this is what my kitchen table looks like these days (except messier, and with more fabric scraps scattered all over the place):

The sewing station.

The Seam Allowance pledge is to make 25% of your wardrobe, and all forms of creating garments are allowed: sewing, knitting, weaving, crochet, etc.  I have to admit that I was a little hesitant at first; 25% sounds like a lot of clothes when I consider my closet and dresser.  Am I over-committing myself to a project that I will burn out on once my work picks up again in the fall? And what does 25% of my wardrobe even mean?  What do I want it to mean?  What do I want to get out of this?  What do I want to learn?  How do I want to change?  

Another Violet shirt, this time out of midweight cotton from a discount store in Anaheim.

I decided to join after doing some thinking.  Yes, 25% of my wardrobe feels like a lot, but that's primarily because I have lots of clothing that I don't wear.  Some of these items just aren't for everyday (pantyhose and strapless party dress, I'm looking at you).  I have no guilt or anxiety about hanging onto these items or having purchased them instead of making them.  Some of them are for everyday, and I'm holding onto them for slightly sentimental reasons even though I don't wear them.  This category includes clothing items that were gifts but don't quite fit my style, band t-shirts purchased at concerts out of commemoration, and clothing that used to fit but is a little too small these days.  Some (maybe most) of these items should probably go to the donation bin.  So one of the things I'm hoping to get out of my participation in Seam Allowance is to make more conscious decisions about my wardrobe, and thus keep it to a manageable size.  Kristine suggested that 25% could mean that we have enough handmade clothing to wear one handmade item every day.  I still haven't quite decided what I want 25% to mean, but I think I'd like to define a core set of clothing items that are in "regular rotation" (i.e., they get worn at least once every two weeks, or something like that) and have 25% of my regular rotation items be handmade. 

I also have several goals involving body image that are tied up in Seam Allowance, but I'll write more about those later because they really deserve their own post.  

Oh, and I'm counting all my handknit socks, too.  

Knitting FO: Darjeeling Socks

A large portion of the sock yarn I own was collected between 2007-2009, or as I'm going to call them, "The Variegated Years".  This was a time when I was fresh out of grad school, dizzy with the prospect of a real honest-to-goodness paycheck coming in every month.  It was during this time period that my stash size exploded, and one very big enabler instigator assistant in this process was The Loopy Ewe.  Now, don't get me wrong, I love Sheri over at Loopy.  She helped me build a very nice sock yarn stash that is a beautiful (if a bit worryingly large) source of inspiration. 

This yarn, Numma Numma Toasty in the colorway "Apple Butter" was no exception.  And plus, it's mostly browns and tans!  They're neutrals, so they'll go with anything, right? Right, except we have to actually KNIT the socks before we can dash around in their delicious golden-hued warmth, pretending we live somewhere the leaves on trees change color in the fall.  I actually went back to my order history and saw that this yarn was purchased in January 2008, which means I've had this yarn sitting around in my stash for more than four years.

I bet if, back in 2002 you'd asked my husband-now-but-boyfriend-at-the-time if this knitting thing would go this far, he would not have ever suspected that I could be the type of person capable of purchasing yarn and then hanging onto it for more than 4 years because it was just too pretty to let go.  What can I say?  Must be the wool fumes.

If I love the yarn so much, how come it's taken this long?  Well, I went off sock knitting for a while, and then just when I started to get back on the wagon, something had shifted subtly in sock knitting.  Before, everyone was looking at color combos and coming up with hilariously funny (and sometimes punny) names for their colorways.  Now, it was all about solids and semi-solids and shaded solids.  Or self-striping, but in the very meticulous way that means you probably just want to knit a plain old pair of stockinette socks and not put any kind of stitch pattern on there to muss up the colors.  It was just that much more difficult to find a pattern that I could really visualize in a variegated yarn.

The Darjeeling Sock from Knitter's Book of Socks though, had all the hallmarks of being a good pattern for a very colorful yarn.  Purl-stitch rows, broken ribbing, and on top of that it has interesting arch shaping in an unexpected place!  I was flipping through the book trying to decide which pattern to knit after finishing my pajama socks, and knew this would be next.  And I was right, it's great for variegated yarn.

I've since finished these socks, and they're very nice.  I've learned to make my socks a tiny bit longer in the feet, since the soles of my socks tend to felt a tiny bit and shrink up after many wearings, and I think this will help them hold up a little better.  I did the surprisingly stretchy bind-off at the top of these socks, which was a new technique for me.  I knit these until I practically ran out of yarn, so they end quite high on my leg and the extra stretch is more than welcome.  I'll probably knit this pattern again, and I think the only thing I'd change is the pattern on the heel flap, which was a little hard to keep track of during knitting.  But other than that, I can't wait to add these beauties into my sock rotation on the next chilly morning! 

Spinning Update: A sweater for the husbeast

For the longest time, I've been avoiding posting about my spinning because it's been so boring.  I mean, when your husband starts asking when he'll get his own handspun handknit sweater, it's such a happy moment.  I had so much fun with the first one!  Washing the fleece, immersing myself (literally) up the elbows in the processing of what comes off the sheep into a wearable garment.  That thing is my go-to sweater for beach parties.  It all sounds like so much fun, until you stop and think about all the knitted items you've made for yourself that never get worn, or get worn so infrequently that it hardly seems worth the effort you put into them in the first place.  You begin to realize that you'll just kill yourself if you make something that he wouldn't wear, so you have to start asking him about clothing preferences.

Let's just summarize a few facts here.  The husbeast is the kind of person that A) doesn't like anything too fancy (no colorwork) B) naturally runs a little warm and thus C) owns precisely one other sweater.  Oh, and this is the sort of sweater I want him to feel comfortable wearing around the home, so nothing too tight.  Did I mention that the man is also 6 feet tall, and has extra-long arms for his height?  This is going to be one huge sweater, and if I was going to spin for it, that meant a major commitment to spinning a solid color. I started spinning the singles during last year's Tour de Fleece, and haven't gotten anything new on the wheel until last week! 

That's why my fleece (Blake, the one I got washed by Morro Fleece Works) was the perfect match for the project.  First, I have a TON of fiber. Ok, not an actual ton, more like 4+ pounds.  I tend to spin yarn that is denser than commercial yarn, so I knew having a large amount was important for a big sweater for a grown man.  Second, it's all one color.  Further to that, the beautiful chocolate brown is a color I know the husbeast won't find objectionable and since it's the natural color of the sheep's wool, it won't fade over the years the way something dyed might do.  Third, it's a really heavenly preparation from Morro, which means very little predrafting and overall faster spinning.

The challenges have been keeping myself motivated to keep spinning the same dark brown merino wool over the months, and to keep myself spinning consistently.  I made a few choices in designing what type of yarn I'll spin to help with consistency.  I'm doing a 3-ply yarn (a true 3-ply, not a chain or navajo 3-ply) and spinning six bobbins in a row before plying.  That's truly the most boring part, spinning 24 ounces of brown wool singles without the quick break of plying in between.  Having six bobbins allows me to mix & match my plies to help even out the yarn a little bit.  I label the bobbins 1-6 in the order in which I spin them, then I ply 1, 3, and 5 together and 2, 4, and 6 together.  My yarn is ending up in the heavy-worsted-to-aran-weight range, which is quite plump. Having a thicker yarn means that small inconsistencies won't be quite as noticeable. 

The color boredom I've been getting around by letting myself spin a bag of Hello Yarn fiber in between each "batch" of 6 bobbins, so right now I'm spinning my "Curiosities" superwash merino.

Hopefully getting to play with a little color will help me stay motivated.  We'll just try to ignore the fact that I've already got one dark brown sweater on the needles (more on that later) and am preparing to knit a second, larger, dark brown sweater. 

Putting the "starry" back in Starryknit

I usually try to keep it to crafty stuff on the blog, because talking about the starry part of my blog/Ravelry name sometimes feels a bit too much like my day job. However, I'm making an exception because the semester ended two weeks ago and this event is so special it's worth writing about.

Tomorrow afternoon the planet Venus will be nearly perfectly lined up with the Sun and Earth, and we'll be able to watch Venus "transit", or cross in front of the Sun from our vantage point on Earth.  It's like a mini-eclipse, except that Venus will only cover up a tiny portion of the Sun's surface. This is a very rare occurrence, for several reasons:

1. Earth and Venus are tiny.  To scale, if we made the Sun about the size of a large grapefuit, Venus and Earth would be the size of poppy seeds.  Picture that in your mind for a second.

2. Earth, Venus, and the Sun are all very far apart.  They call it "space" for a reason: it's mostly empty! In our poppy-seeds-and-grapefuit model, Venus and Earth would be about 35 feet and 40 feet away from the Sun, respectively.  Even though Venus is at its closest approach to Earth, it will look like a smallish black spot on the Sun tomorrow, only covering up about 0.1% of the surface area of the Sun. 

3. The orbit of Earth and the orbit of Venus are not in the exact same plane.  Another way to say this is that their orbits are tilted relative to one another.  If you think about those two poppy seeds, you can imagine how even a very small difference in the orbital planes means that most of the time, Venus is NOT transiting the Sun even when it's at its closest approach to Earth. 

Okay, so how rare are we talking here?  Well, the last transit of Venus happened in 2004.  That doesn't sound too bad, right?  Only eight years of waiting.  If it's cloudy, no big deal.  I'll catch the next one.  Except the next one doesn't happen until the year 2117.  Read that again: I said 2117, not 2017.  So unless you plan on living an additional 105 years, you won't be able to catch the next one. As I've been telling ALL of my students, friends, and family: this is LITERALLY a once-in-a-lifetime event. 

Hopefully by this point I've convinced you that it's worth stepping out for ten minutes tomorrow afternoon to try and view the transit. If you're interested in doing so, I have a very important safety warning for you.  (If this were a 1970's instructional video, I would be wearing a lab coat and would take a second to don my lab goggles right now).  Please promise me that no matter what, you will NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN.  Even if you have sunglasses, it's just not safe.  Sunlight is very bright (especially at 3PM in early June in the northern hemisphere, but that's another science lesson for another day), and it will damage the rod and cone cells on your retina.  The website transitofvenus.org has some great information about safely viewing the transit. If you're in a pinch, take two sheets of paper and use a safety pin to poke a small hole in one sheet.  Hold the sheets parallel to each other, using the pinhole to project an image of the Sun onto the other sheet. 

You can play around with holding the sheets of paper closer together or farther apart, to get the best balance between a large enough image and a bright enough image.  Just to be clear, you don't look through the pinhole, you look at the image of the Sun that will appear on the second sheet of paper. 

Now that we've got the safety portion out of the way (takes off safetly goggles), let's talk timing.  This transit has some historical significance in addition to being a rare event.  As I said before, we had one transit in 2004, then this year's in 2012, and the next one is in 2117.  This is the regular pattern of Venus transits: a pair separated by about 8 years, with pairs spaces about a century apart.  Back in 1761 and 1769, astronomers were especially excited to observe and precisely time the two transits of Venus because they could use the information to measure exactly how far away the planets were from the Sun in our solar system.  Up until then, we knew how far away everything was proportionally (for example, we knew that Jupiter was about 5 times further away from the Sun than Earth), but we didn't have an absolute measurement (number of miles/kilometers) for any of those distances.  Despite people all over the world observing both transits in the 1760's, their timing wasn't accurate enough to calculate these distances.  Science had to wait until the pair of transits in 1874 and 1882 (when photography of the phenomenon was possible) to determine the distance scale of the solar system.  Sky and Telescope has published a fascinating piece about two astronomers who stitched together the photographic plate negatives taken at California's own Lick Observatory in 1882 into a 30-second digital movie. 

So when should you take your makeshift pinhole camera outside and view this once-in-a-lifetime event?  Well, it depends on where you'll be on our little planet.  Thankfully I've found a very good transit-time-calculator that will tell you when you'll be able to see the transit.  If you're in the SF Bay area, the transit begins shortly after 3PM and will still be going when the Sun sets.  I'll be out in a campground, eating barbeque, knitting a pair of socks, and celebrating my 30th birthday. 

Sewing FO: Quilted Coasters

Just a quickie post this time to talk about my new favorite and fast hand-sewn gift: coasters.  About a year ago I signed up for Verb's Pressed Seam fat quarter club, which means that every month I have six delightful new fat quarters of fabric arriving at my door.  I really love the idea behind yarn/fiber/fabric clubs both as a way to steadily support small creative businesses and as a way to grow creatively myself.  Clubs often get me to try things that I would normally not choose for myself; and as long as I'm careful in selecting clubs that are put together by people with whom I share similar tastes in colors/prints, I rarely get something I outright dislike.  More often opening club packages is a happy mixture of "Ooh, beautiful!" and "I would never have picked this out for myself, but it's so INTERESTING!".

With the fabric club, getting a steady influx of fat quarters is a great way to keep the creative juices going.  The first month I managed to use five out of the six fat quarters right away, and the second month I used three.  After that, I started to lag.  Six months in and I was still wowed by every shipment, but had fallen into the habit of washing the fabric, pressing it, and returning it to the plastic fabric bin.  I started to feel a little guilty about how much fabric I was amassing (although we'll have another post later on stash guilt), and started looking around for ways to use up some of those fat quarters.  Along comes the delightful little quilted coaster pattern from Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts (by the same author as Last-Minute Knitted Gifts).

 

I chose several prints and spent two afternoons making about twenty coasters.  About half ended up being a gift for my sister-in-law.  Originally I was a bit worried that the coasters would be too bumpy to be really practical, but they're great!  The only part that really took some practice was cutting out squares of batting and stuffing them in the folded-up coasters, but it got easier after I'd done four or five.  And now that I've done the pattern all the way through several times, I think I could get into a good production-line rhythm with them. Here's the entire set that I selfishly kept for myself, with a large water glass for scale. My favorite one is the butterfly print where the coaster is nearly completely taken up by one giant wing!