My Green Wedding Dress

The walk down the aisle

2010-07-01T10:24:00.011-04:00

Well it's been a long time, but here, finally is the long awaited post concerning my walk down the aisle.

The course of true love never ran smooth and neither did my trip down the aisle - which was actually the ramp down to the pier where Justin & I were married. The wood ramp down the pier. The outdoor wooden ramp, by a large body of water. So, to be perfectly clear, the surface was very uneven. Basically designed to catch on knitted lace. Due to various issues during train construction and bustling concerns and the whole "cutting off of the bottom 12" of the dress" the knitted train was longer than the fabric train. This actually looked kind of pretty, but meant that the fabric train wasn't giving the knitted train the protection that I'd thought it would.

Just before I set off down the aisle, there is an indication that we might have a tiny little problem:

Undeterred, I started my walk down the aisle:

See how pretty and spread out the train is? I think was actually snagged again, but it looks good.

Here I am, getting my first sight of Justin.

And trying not to cry.

Thos first three pics were taken by our professional photographer.

All the rest of these were taken by our friend Jay. I'm not sure if our photographer is just a little less free with his shutter finger or if he thought I might not want my herky-jerky progress captured for posterity. But Jay, with the instincts of a true friend, knew that we'd want every minute. Theresa, his wife, also with true friend instincts, immediately posted all of these pictures on Facebook.

So here it goes:

Initially I’m amused. I’m also nervous as hell so everything is hilarious.

This is about the third snag, so I’m done with it. My Lady Minions are poised to spring into action, but I can’t see walking down with a train carrier.

I reach back...

And take matters into my own hands.

This photo shows me talking to myself.

I don't remember exactly, but it was something to the effect that all those people who said I shouldn't try this whole "knit your own dress" thing would probably be pretty amused right now.

Fortunately I was also amused and so were all my guests and my future husband.

And I made it down the aisle unscathed.

Of course at the end of the ceremony this happened:

Leading to these reactions from the family

And from the Minions

(Theresa isn't even in this photo, having lept down onto the grass to run over and unstick me. Justin & I had no idea. We were all just wed and happy.)

There was this reaction from me:

And this from Justin:

So you can see that it all worked out just fine.

Well - we be wed

2010-05-27T13:50:00.003-04:00

Some day I will write an epic blog entry regarding the final details. Hell, my trip down the aisle warrants a photo essay all its own

But for those who weren't there, or just didn't look at me all day, here's me in the dress before the wedding (with the ever vigilant Jenny Gill lurking behind me).

And here I am with my buddy. This was actually taken by Jenny, who was following around after the professional photographer, wrangling my train and snapping a few pics over his shoulder.

Married life is good.

Other projects - wedding related & not

2010-05-03T10:42:00.005-04:00

I finished the shrug I was making for Mom - all part of our "If we prepare for cold weather it will be warm" strategy for weather management. I quite like it! I used Vanna's Glamour (yes, like Vanna White. She's a big crocheter. Who knew?), which is a yarn that should look cheap and tacky, but doesn't. It has a metallic strip going through it which gives it a little bit of shine, but the fabric is still soft and has a nice drape. Mom picked out the pattern - Stefanie Japel's Textured Circle Shrug

and I modified it to remove the textured stripes and made the sleeves a bit longer so they hit mid forearm instead of right at the elbow.

Should the weather be chilly, Mom will look fabulous.

I also continued work on a baby blanket I'm crocheting for a coworker. Such was my state of mind that instead of making a granny square, I somehow managed to make a granny triangle. What is really impressive about this is that I did NOT NOTICE that it was a triangle until I'd finished edging the entire thing and then went "Hey, something's wrong here!" Sheesh. Wedding brain.

Have made one strap for the dress and am part way through the second. They aren't blocked, so no picks yet.

And I started on a crocheted halter top for the honeymoon. I may or may not finish it in time, but I have to do something to keep my hands busy. My usual nervous energy is multiplied by 10x.

PS

2010-04-28T13:44:00.002-04:00

I am definitely ditching the sleeves. I don't know how exactly they don't work, because they look so perfect in my head. They do not, however, look perfect on my shoulders.

I am toying with the idea of making knitted straps - similar to the straps on the original pattern that inspired me.

I like the idea of having the little extra touch of green, not just the green in the skirt.

Or I may just leave the straps plain white.

Another gown close up

2010-04-28T11:34:00.004-04:00

The lace buttoned on to the dress. It actually pulls more taunt when the dress is on my body - this is just it draped on the sewing table.

Last night did a few hand sewn tweaks (those two problem areas which I thought I'd fixed weren't quite as fixed as I thought) and then did the actual dress hem with the horsehair. Took forever and I complained mightily to Justin about how much I hate hems and how dresses with trains have extra long hems which is unfair. I actually took the time to handsew the train in a blind stitch. Justin doesn't realize what a testament this is to my love of him, but other sewers will. I hate to hand stitch hems even more than I hate hems in general. But it looks damn good.

Then I turned up the hem on the lining - I decided not to have the lining go under the drape of the train, but just to have it follow the line of the train down the back of the dress and then stop at floor level. When the train is flipped up, a little bit of the lining will show in the back, as opposed to a tantalizing view of the backs of my ankles. The lining fabric is a darker ivory than the actual dress fabric, but I figure anyone looking close enough to notice is probably a pervert with an unnatural interest in ankles, so I'm not going to worry too much about offending their sensibilities in terms of my ivories matching.

Anyway, I turned up the hem on the lining. Since, as I just mentioned, it will show a tiny bit in the back, I wanted to make sure that I turned the hem in the correct direction, so the seam allowance of the hem didn't show when the train was bustled. I thought really, really hard about which way I needed to turn the hem, how I needed to situate the dress on the ironing board to make sure I turned it properly, etc. Then, with the unfailing instinct that leads me to get on I-95 going the wrong direction after getting off at a rest stop, I turned it the wrong way. Really, I will get off at the Chesapeake House, go to get back on 95, think really hard about which way I need to go and then get on 95 North, even though I'm driving from NYC to Baltimore. I have a horrible sense of direction. This is one reason I like the rest stops on the Jersey Turnpike - you only have one choice about getting back on the highway, so the worst you're going to do is end up in the Cars/Trucks/Buses lane when you meant to get in the one for just Cars. On the other hand, they don't let you pump your own gas, so I still prefer the Maryland rest stops. I only get back on 95 going the wrong way once out of every five or so trips.

So tonight I'll be redoing that hem and pressing it the other way. Fortunately I didn't have the energy to sew it last night, so I don't have to pick the sewing out. If that was the case, the ankle perverts would probably be looking at the seam allowance, as well as being shocked by the non-matching ivories.

Sewing Tweaks are done!

2010-04-23T10:49:00.003-04:00

After completion of the major sewing last Thursday (April 15th. on schedule, if you recall), there was some tweaking that needed to be done. There were two spots on the bodice that weren't laying quite right - one on the left side of the scooped neck and one under the right arm. In heavier fabric it probably wouldn't have been noticeable, but the silk is so delicate that every little pucker is obvious. I also realized that the left strap really needed to be half an inch shorter and that I might have sewn the lining down a little too tight, which was contributing to these pucker issues.

I spent one night thinking about these problems and finishing up the knitting. Then I pulled out my lovely handsewing around the lining and made my modifications. I carefully basted and tried the dress on and checked after every single change. I spent a lot of time sitting at the machine in my underwear and the dress's zipper got a workout (on the plus side, it no longer sticks at all!) In the end, all the changes made it just right. I had started to wonder if I was going to have to redo the whole bodice b/c I'd determined that I could not live with these little imperfections and I was more than a little nervous that I wouldn't get rid of them any other way. Fortunately this was not necessary!

Then I spent a night sewing on the buttons around the bottom of the bodice - this is where the lace will attach.

Put another button at the top of the train seams for the train to hook onto (exact details of that still fuzzy).

Last night finished resewing down the lining. And my shoes arrived. We have a weekend of more wedding festivities ahead of us, but after that - hem! I've decided not to block the knitting until I'm down in Maryland since it will just need to be redone then anyway. So after the hem, it'll be done.

I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with my free time. I contemplated doing a knitting project just for fun with no deadline the other night. I got confused and had to start thinking about something else.

I'll try to put up some more pics, but I don't want to show any of the completed dress til after the wedding. You know, so it's a surprise.

April 20th

2010-04-21T13:28:00.004-04:00

On this day knitting was officially finished. Measured length, decreased and cast off again. Did a chain stitch crocheted border around the bottom, since instead of now having a nice cast on edge, I now had a bunch of loose stitches on a lifeline. The crocheting let me do extra chain stitches between yarnovers and keep the more closely knit parts close, so overall I think it maintains the beauty of the design and also stabilizes it.

Plus, since I decreased out those extra two repeats of the chart, the top now fits around my rib cage almost perfectly, rather than being too big.

Oh and I don't think I like the look of the sleeves. I may go without. Maybe God was trying to tell me something when that first sleeve went down the drain?

Slicing the skirt

2010-04-21T13:18:00.003-04:00

A photo essay.

The damaged Size 13 border:

The non-damaged Size 10 main body:

The Lifeline between them:

The first cut:

After that I rapidly got impatient with unraveling and switched to my big scissors:

This turned out to be a mistake in terms of time spent. I got the bottom hacked off quickly and had no chance to lose my nerve. But it took FOREVER to unravel backwards up to the lifeline. It also took awhile to unravel and reclaim the yarn of the original border and I lost a lot of yarn in short pieces, etc. Since I hate to waste, this was upsetting to me. Plus it probably took 4-6 hours to do all that.

So in terms of "crappiest moments working on the dress" this was a close second to the whole dyeing "oh my god it's blue" day.

Fortunately it looks good now.

April 15th

2010-04-20T10:39:00.002-04:00

Keeping you in suspense a bit regarding the great cutting of the knitting. I took some pics, etc, but they're still in the camera, so instead you're getting a post about the finishing of the sewing.

I had set the personal goal that all major sewing be done by April 15th, one month before the wedding. It was also convenient b/c April 15th was a Thursday, right before Justin & I were heading down to Baltimore for more wedding related festivities.

People at my job having been giving me crap about not being a nervous bride, being generally work focused, etc. So I decided to take advantage of their generosity and understanding and give them some neurotic bride behavior and leave work early to finish up the dress. And it worked!

The dress was already in good shape, the main thing that was missing was the train. I was able to draft out the train piece in the silk and sew it in, as well as pulling and resewing (correctly) the train lining, which I had previously just basted in to make sure it looked okay. I noticed that the left bust dart in the lining wasn't sewn properly and was causing some of the lingering fit issues I'd noticed, so I fixed that too. Then did all the hand sewing - sewing down the bodice lining over the bodice/skirt seam, sewing the skirt lining onto the back of the zipper so the inside was cleaner, etc.

I also bought some horsehair braid to stiffen the hem and bought enough pearl buttons to attach the lace and to bustle the train.

All that needs to be done now is to sew on those buttons (can't be done till the lace is 100% done. Again.) and to sew up the hem (can't be done until I have my shoes).

And I bought my shoes yesterday online! They should arrive on Thursday, so I'd say it's 50/50 that the dress might be DONE by the end of this week.

Wouldn't that be weird?

Knitting Redux

2010-04-13T19:21:00.002-04:00

So I've alluded to the fact that there are some problems with the bottom of the knitted lace - specifically the part knitted on the Size 13 needles. Heck, I might have gone on at great length, I'm too lazy to go back and reread old blog entries.

This past Saturday Justin had his bachelor party and our apartment was filled with many, many men drinking a lot of whiskey and watching old WWF videos. I took this opportunity to flee to the East Side and spend the night at the apartment of my good friend & minion Jenny Gill, whom this blog knows well. I took the dress with me, figuring it could use some air, since it hasn't left the apartment since it came home as a cone of yarn many, many months ago. I took the dress out of its bag and told Jenny (probably for the 5th time) of the problem with the bottom border and how I was becoming more and more convinced that I was going to have to cut it off. She was skeptical, but once she saw the dress she agreed. The majority of it looks fabulous, the pattern is crisp and generally lovely. The bottom just looks kind of bedraggled and somewhat like it had been mauled repeatedly by Chiana. (Which it has not. She has generally been very well behaved to the dress.) Even when I was knitting it, I knew this part of the dress was very delicate and I talked about the almost frothy quality that it had, something which I, quite frankly, loved. I knew it was delicate, but I had faith in my ability to avoid protruding objects on the wedding day and generally prevent disaster.

Unfortunately dyeing was the downfall of the dress border. If I'd had correctly colored yarn from the start and only ever had to steam block it, I think the border would have made it. But I think any full scale immersion in water would have done it in. The repeated dunkings and agitations that dyeing the dress not once, but twice required, were just too much for the border. The yarnover holes became HUGE and the more tightly knitted "leaves" of the pattern became tiny. The crocheted border now just looked like crap. I would try to describe it some other way, but frankly, words fail me.

So I resolved to unpick the top part where I had bound off and starting knitting again, with size 8 needles. After about 5 minutes of picking at the final knot, I got it free and pulled back the last 3 rows, which included two decrease rows and a row of plain knitting I'd added for stability. The lifelines I'd chosen to leave in - 3 of my original 6-7 turned out to be really, really well chosen on my part. There was one just below those final three rows - made unraveling them and picking up the stitches a snap. There was another where I switched over from the Size 10 to the Size 8 needles. Okay, this one really has served no purpose in terms of knitting, but it's nice b/c it's also where the train ends, so it provides an easy reference point in terms of that. The final one is where I switched over from the Size 13 to the Size 10 needles. When I finish this blog entry, I'm going to go and cut the yarn below this lifeline. I'll then pick up the stitches and do... something. Maybe a crocheted bind off. Maybe something else.

I made this decision Saturday night and now it's Tuesday. I have made some excuses as to why I've put off this cut for 3 days. Some were legitimate - I drank a lot of wine on Saturday night and didn't want to do anything stupid. I also wanted time to do some new knitting at the top and make sure it still looked good. The overall design of the knitted lace piece won't really be changing, but the train will be dropping down to start at my lower back as opposed to my mid/upper back and the train itself will be becoming slightly smaller. I wanted to make sure this looked okay. It does. And I think a smaller train will if anything, be more appropriate to our casual wedding. Plus I still have no clue how to bustle the damn thing.

But it also took me a few days to get used to the idea, at least in my subconscious. Thinking about it consciously for as long as it's taken me to write this blog, I'm starting to get a little nervous. So I'm going to stop typing (ie. procrastinating) and go take the plunge.

The dress will be better for it.

PS I bought some buttons today. If they work with the dress I'll buy some more soon.

PPS The fabric part of the dress is going very well and once I work out some train issues, it'll be just about done. I should still be able to meet, or come very close to my goal of having it done before Justin & I leave town this weekend.

Invisible Zipper Feet are made by the Devil

2010-04-12T10:25:00.006-04:00

I am not a terribly intuitive person when it comes to mechanical things. I will be the first to say that I am good at many things, but putting things together, spacial relations, that sort of thing, I am not good at. (I also have a horrible sense of direction, but that's neither here nor there.)

So when the time came to attach the special invisible zipper foot to my sewing machine, I had a few difficulties. I have set many zippers in my time, and as I said in the last post, I'm pretty good at it. This was my first invisible zipper.

My first problem came when I took the zipper out of its packaging and saw this instruction:

Of course, I had already sewn the seam. I decided to wing it rather than picking it out. I ironed the zipper flat as instructed.

Then I took the invisible zipper foot out of its packaging and attempted to assemble it. There were various attachments depending on the "shank" of your sewing machine. Let me make it perfectly clear, I have no clue about anything regarding my machine's shank. Fortunately the packaging offered suggestions based on the machine's manufacturer. Unfortunately my machine's manufacturer had two different option attachments. Neither of them made any sense to me.

I then consulted the internet. Found several blogs/FAQs/etc on invisible zipper installation, of which one was actually vaguely helpful. Spent 15-20 minutes alternately staring at the machine and then running into the living room to stare at the pictures on the computer. This became very frustrating. Finally realized that the invisible zipper presser foot did not snap on/off like regular presser feet. Rather, I had to unscrew and replace the entire presser foot apparatus. If you have a sewing machine, this might make sense. If you don't, don't worry about it, just trust me that it is really unintuitive and would have been MUCH easier if someone had, I don't know, SPELLED THAT OUT IN THE DIRECTIONS.

Did I mention all this was on Thursday night? Can you tell that I'm still annoyed about it?

Anyway, here, finally is the installed presser foot.

Once I had that taken care of, getting the zipper in was pretty simple. Here it is half done:

I could see where the installation would have been much simpler if I hadn't already sewn the seam. In fact, when I got the zipper in, the seam ended up being crooked, so I had to rip it out anyway. Oh well.

Also I have some basting pinhole issues that I have to deal with or I'm going to have to remove and resew the skirt. Oh and the darts are showing through on the bodice just the tiniest bit, but it's bugging me, so I'm going to trim off the excess fabric there.

Still, definite progress made. I'm cautiously optimistic that I might be able to finish by this weekend. Very cautiously.

Much Accomplished!

2010-04-08T13:01:00.002-04:00

Looking back at blog titles, I seem to have two modes - super productive or nothing is getting done. Oh well, I guess I've always known that I wasn't a moderate person!

Monday - bought a new iron, sewed up the skirt seams. Discovered that although the new iron's directions specifically say not to use steam on silk, the wrinkles only disappear if I do. Basted the skirt onto the bodice and realized that I really needed to purchase a bra to wear with this thing.

Tuesday - bought not one, but two bras. Took them home and one is perfect. Bodice was making kind of a weird dent above where the bra ended. I think it needs some interfacing to give the layers of silk some more support. Also thought it could be lower cut. Tried on the dress with the knitting over it. Pretty! But the bottom of the knitted skirt is still kind of a mess. Tried some intensive steam blocking, but I just can't get that lower portion (what was knitted on the Size 13 needles) to perk up.

Wednesday - ripped apart the bodice, added interfacing to the lining. Resewed the lining to the bodice top. This took many tries and many careful seam rippings. Finally got a nice, symmetrical curve, lower cut but not too low cut. Also took some tweaking to get the straps positioned just right.

Plan for tonight - actually sew the skirt to the top; press the top and finish trimming those seams. Set in the zipper. I'm a little nervous about this as I've never done an invisible zipper before. On the other hand, I'm usually pretty good with zippers, so fingers crossed. I must remember to BASTE it first. I'm just going to keep repeating "baste" to myself at random intervals today.

Still thinking about what to do with the knitted skirt bottom. I can't leave it all on there and I can't take it off either - the dress will be too short. Do I take off some? Do I take it all off and knit some additional lace at the top to make it longer? The whole skirt will have a narrower silhouette then, but it's crazy wide already, so I'm not concerned about that. What to do, what to do...

If it's not one thing, it's another...

2010-04-05T10:18:00.002-04:00

Massive amounts of cleaning & organizing around the house this weekend, and some sewing. I finished sewing the seams on the lining, cut down the actual skirt pieces to the width I wanted at the top where they will be attached to the bodice and sewed part of one skirt seam. Then, as I was pressing the lining, the iron started to spit water all over my fabric. I thought this was because the water was running low in the steam chamber, so I refilled it, let it heat up and tried again. More spitting. Really, spitting is kind of an understatement, as it implies that a little water came out. This was enough water to make 4" x 10" splotches on the lining. As in, something I really would NOT want to have happen on the actual SILK dress fabric.

I can only thank the sewing gods for smiling on me. That and go buy a new iron.

Oh, and under the heading of "I can't possibly be making enough projects for this wedding" I'm making a shrug for Mom (cross reference this under, "We are making warm wraps so it will be 95 degrees on the day of the wedding"). I'm using this pattern, only not doing the knit/purl strips (mainly visible on the sleeves in the pattern pic). I'm making the sleeves slightly longer than the pattern calls for and ending each of them with 10 rows of seed stitch to prevent rolling. So far I have the back, all of one sleeve and most of the other. Of course, I still have to pick up all the stitches for and knit the border which forms the collar, rest of the back and the sides. But so far, so good.

A busy weekend that did not involve sewing

2010-03-31T13:27:00.005-04:00

We met with the caterer.

We got our marriage license.

I had a wedding shower in Baltimore.

(To see more shower pics click here.)

We went to a friend's wedding and I wore the shrug (and received compliments!)

And now A Voluminous Evening of Brevity is playing to sell out crowds! We were even offered an extension, which we unfortunately had to turn down due to actor availability and the importance of protecting the integrity of the show.

But after that closes tonight and I sleep for about 24 hours, I'm heading back to the sewing machine.

Shrug Done/Sewing Commences

2010-03-23T11:06:00.003-04:00

Unfortunately gloomy weather yesterday & today means I've taken no photos as yet, but I can report that Sunday 3/21 saw the beginning of official sewing on THE DRESS as well as the completion of the wedding day shrug.

The shrug is quite lovely - a little tight, but I think it will relax with blocking. Grafting the two ends together was more complicated than I'd expected and took nearly two hours. Least said about that the best. I may wear it to a friend's wedding this weekend as I'd like to get more than 1 day's wear out of it and wearing it on our wedding day isn't even guaranteed.

By the way, I don't think it's too early to start praying for beautiful 75 degree, sunny weather on May 15th. Not too early at all.

Sewing commenced on Sunday morning. I had cut yet another bodice piece out of lining fabric and used this to figure out the issues with the bodice. I'd had some problems with the darts on this pattern - they just weren't laying properly. The ends were poking out in a way that looked dumb at best and kinda like Madonna in the early 90's at worst. Finally realized that the main problem was that, measurements given on the pattern envelope not withstanding, I really should have cut a smaller size for the bodice. Fortunately I was able to partially recut the pieces and adjust the side seams and got a nice smooth fit. Was able to translate those changes to the actual bodice pieces (bodice, underlining, lining, all cut from silk) and completed the bodice, along with sleeves. Also made some modifications to the skirt pieces, again starting with the skirt lining, to make the skirt completely A line as opposed to partial A line, partially gathered at the waist.

I'd love it if I could attach the skirt pieces to the bodice before we leave for Maryland this weekend (that would still leave the train, setting in the zipper and the hemming). But between performances of A Voluminous Evening of Brevity tonight and tomorrow and the bus at 9pm on Thursday, I think it's unlikely. Still - you never know!

PS I knitted one new sleeve on Oscar night. Somehow I never posted that. Am planning to knit the other on the bus on Thursday. This weekend told Justin the story of the sleeve that went down the drain. He was surprisingly calm about the whole thing, although the fact that it happened weeks ago and our drain has been fine since probably contributed to that calm. That and several Heinekens.

Fabric Shopping - Done!

2010-03-17T14:14:00.003-04:00

Went out yesterday at lunch and GOT IT DONE. Phew! Major load off my mind.

Got a good deal with a smaller fabric store in the garment district - they knocked off a dollar a yard when I said I needed 5 yards and then threw in the half yard at the end of the bolt, presumably b/c I am so darn cute. It took a little while to find just what I wanted - I had a swatch from the store from last fall, but at first they were giving me a lighter, more yellow ivory fabric. Eventually, after drafting in one of his coworkers to assist, the fabric store employee and I were able to find something that was just right.

Laid it out and cut out everything but the train last night. Have about 2-2.5 yards leftover, which is what I was hoping for. Enough for the train and to recut some bodice pieces if need be. I went ahead and cut the skirt pieces off of the New Look pattern I used for the second trial dress - the skirt was still fuller at the waist than I wanted, but it's always easier to take something in rather than let it out.

Unfortunately I have no soundtrack for the cutting - if I did it would feature frequent scratchings and mewings by Nyssa. I finally had the brilliant idea to lay out the dress in the bedroom where I could shut the doors and keep out the cats, as opposed to in the living room, where it's a kitty free for all. Needless to say, Nyssa was not pleased to be excluded.

Stalled

2010-03-12T11:26:00.000-05:00

A stomach flu pretty much derailed me for this week, so no progress. Fabric shopping postponed til next week, but I need to GET THIS DONE.

Preliminary Fabric Shopping

2010-03-08T14:28:00.002-05:00

Well the final test run of the dress didn't go so well - I didn't like how the pattern piece I'd drafted for the top turned out and I still find the skirt to be too full.

But Mom and I did do some fabric scouting at Mood Fabrics on Friday and I think I've settled on the right material at least! It's a lovely ivory silk, fairly lightweight with a nice sheen. We found it at Mood Fabrics and I also have a similar swatch from a smaller fabric store I visited last fall. So sometime this week I'll be purchasing that.

As for the still undetermined shape of the bodice, skirt and train, I'm just going to wing it. Generally I do best that way. Although looking at the list of dress parts which I'll need to wing it on, I realize that it's basically the whole dress.

Oh well - onwards and upwards!

The shawl

2010-03-03T16:14:00.005-05:00

Has been taking up a lot of time. Here it is.

I still really need to make new sleeves to replace the one that went down the drain and the other one which was a victim of the dye.

Fixing a Hole

2010-02-22T15:24:00.007-05:00

Warning: this post is not for the faint of heart!

Two things before you start:
1) This post contains a mystery which remains unsolved.
2) It has a happy ending.

So, I mentioned in another post that there was a hole.

This is it.

Yeah, it's not pleasant. Of course, when you look at it in context, it becomes a little less scary.Can you see it? I circled it below.

So, not a tiny hole and certainly not one that could be ignored. But it could have been worse. The weird thing about this hole, which I noticed almost immediate, was that there were no broken threads. I couldn't find the spot where the yarn had broken to allow this bit of unraveling to occur. For those of you who are not knitters, each knitted stitch is looped through the one below it. And is connected to the stitches on either side of it. If you drop a stitch at the top of a knitted piece, it's possible for that loop to unravel all the way down to the bottom cast on edge (similar to when you get a run in your pantyhose - starts as a little hole/broken thread and away it runs). But if you don't drop a stitch, and the yarn doesn't break, there's really no way for the loops to unravel. Even if this made no sense to you, trust me, there's no way for a hole to develop without a broken bit of yarn or a dropped stitch.

If some more experienced knitter out there does know how this could happen, please tell me. Because I cannot wrap my head around it. As you may have guessed, this is the mystery of the post.

I looked for the broken yarn, but couldn't find it and figured I would go about fixing the hole and the broken ends would present themselves. Fortunately for my current purposes, the lace is now very stiff, so the stitches were very easy to pick up. The hole occurred in the part that was knitted on size 10 needles, but I used a much smaller needle, a size 2 to pick up the stitches.

Here are the stitches picked up. You can see that I used a pair of needle nosed tweezers to pick up some of the loops. It worked so well that I can't believe I'd never though to use tweezers before. Even better than using a crochet hook!

You can see how the lifeline is right below the area where the hole formed. Sheesh! But back to the problem at hand. I figured out which part of the pattern had unraveled. Then separated the strands and started reknitting them. After knitting them on the size 2 needles, I transferred them over to a size 10 needle so that the stitch size was consistent. Here's the size 10 needle.
Here are both the size 10 and size 2 needles.
I kept knitting. I found no loose or broken threads. I completed the pattern and ended up just having to tie the bit I'd reknitted onto the existing stitches on the side. I used some of the left over yarn I'd dyed and tied it very tightly and wove in the ends.

If you look at the pic below you can see that although the worst of the hole has been corrected, there is a wide section right in the middle of that looks like a stocking run. There should be a line of stitches and yarn overs up through there. Somehow they'd vanished too.

I reknitted those stitches as well and then tied them in where they were supposed to be. Again my tweezers were quite helpful.
And that's how I fixed the hole in the dress. It looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

I still have no idea how the hole was created. I hope no other holes spontaneously appear. This was almost fun to fix, like doing a jigsaw puzzle and a logic problem at the same time. But it also took about two hours, during which time I was in the guest room with the door shut and Nyssa constantly beating on the door. (For those who don't know, she is a very large cat.) I would prefer not to do this again.

PS

2010-02-19T14:12:00.002-05:00

Oh, remember the sleeve that went down the drain? And how it was draining normally?

Well Tuesday morning when I was taking my shower for work, I noticed that the tub was filling with water. Our drain is a little slow sometimes, so I didn't think too much of it until it was up to my ankles.

Some might call this denial.

By the time I recognized the problem, I had to seriously speed up my shower to keep water from overflowing onto the bathroom floor.

Fortunately some strenuous plunging dealt with the problem.

It's been fine since then.

I still haven't mentioned the whole sleeve/drain thing to Justin.

We'll see if he's reading the blog.

Dyeing Saga continues

2010-02-18T13:37:00.000-05:00

So I patiently waited my two days, which was really only one free evening of crafting time. I did some sewing and started knitting on my wedding shawl.

(Oh, did I not mention I'd decided to do a shawl too? My mom convinced me that it could be quite cold on May 15th, as it was in 2009 and I'd want to be able to go outside and still look pretty. So I started working on this in cream. In my defense, I conceived of this idea before I realized that there were going to be dyeing complications.)

Wednesday when I got home from work there was no change in the wrongness of the fabric color. Here it is with one of the swatches and a tiny ball of yarn dyed in the correct color. You can see at the top left of the picture that I'd dyed tons of extra yarn as well.

My plan was this - take some of the extra yarn and dye it in the yellow Rit dye. Take the sleeve which had gone through the dye remover (I never took a pic of that, but it came out baby blue) and dye it in the same green dye combo which had produced the swatches above. Of course it also produced the dress, so that was a bit risky. I also did some more reading and figured that at some point I'd upped the amount of dye I was using more than necessary, so I decreased that as well.

I mixed up the big vat of Rit dye, using a cup of salt as they'd recommended when dyeing linen. (I'd also bought more salt.) And I did a little sample size of the green dye. (not pictured)

Well after about 15 minutes I thought that the sample in the yellow looked great. I waited 30 minutes as instructed. Still good. I rinsed. Still good. I washed in Synthrapol - still good!

At this point the green sleeve had been in soda ash for about 15 minutes but I could tell that it looked waaaay too dark. I decided to throw caution to the winds and dye the whole dress (except for the two sleeves, since one was down the drain and one was in the other dye bucket).

So I did. Part way through I was concerned that the yellow was being too highly diluted - there was now a LOT more fabric in the bucket and it was still leaking green dye, despite being washed and rinsed several times. I diluted some dye in hot water and poured it in.

After half an hour I pulled it out. It looked great. I rinsed, washed in Synthrapol and then spent what felt like the next 3 hours washing out all the Synthrapol. I think that was my initial mistake. I didn't get out all the Synthrapol and it prevented the dye from taking properly in the first vat.

So I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed and soaked over night.

When I left for work on Thursday I left this behind me.

That's our guest room bed underneath - it's a queen sized bed. So that gives you an idea of the scope of this thing.

There are still some problems. There's a big hole in the train right above the switch from the Size 13 to the Size 10 needles. If it had been in the Size 13 part I'd have just cut the whole thing out as now that it's been fully wetted down the whole thing is about 4-6" too long. (So much for hearing that dye was going to shrink it!) But anyway, the hole is above the lifeline. After all that we've been through though, this doesn't even phase me. The size of the hole compared to the overall size of the dress is so tiny. It's kind of hard to imagine b/c it is a big whole. But I think I could gather it shut with dental floss and it would barely be noticeable in that sea of knitting. (I won't be doing that obviously).

Thursday morning Justin and I stood cramped in the guest room with Justin blocking the door so the cat couldn't enter. Nyssa feels that the guest room is her room and was quite displeased with me for kicking her out. We looked at the dress and I sighed deeply. Justin gave me a hug. Then he screamed. I looked at him.

"The cat scratched me trying to get in, " he said, "let's get the hell out of here before she does something drastic."

So we shut the door and went to work.

Dyeing is Done

2010-02-16T15:48:00.002-05:00

And wow was it a bitch. I actually had off President's Day this year for the first time ever. Following the sage advice of my mother, that it was time to shoot the designer and dye the fabric.

So I set out to exacting replicate my earlier results in terms of color.

First I soaked the dress in Synthrapol to remove any dirt or anything that would interfere with the dyeing process.
Then I measured out the salt - salt helps the dye bond onto the fibers. It took all the salt I had in the house, almost precisely!

I carefully mixed up the dye and mixed it altogether. I remembered to add Calsolene oil to break the surface tension of the dye (not doing this had led to problems in the past).And dropped in the dress! I was dyeing the skirt portion of the dress as well as two little sleeves I'd knitted. After much trial and error I'd finally come up with sleeves that worked properly. Earlier efforts which I'd blogged about turned out not quite right - the left sleeve looked a little wonky b/c of the way the pattern decreased. I ended up having to reverse the pattern for the right sleeve, knitting where I would have purled and purling where I would have knit. It was a pain in the butt, but it looked good in the end.

I made kind of a mess.

I waited and stirred.

Justin woke up and politely requested use of our bathroom.

I moved the whole she-bang into the living room so I could babysit it while Justin got ready for work.

After 20 minutes I stirred in the soda ash to set the dye. Then I let it sit for 45 more minutes.

And in then I rinsed it out.
It was a color that was about as wrong as wrong could possibly be. Not a bad color, but certainly not the color I want my wedding dress to be and not a color remotely similar to ANY of the tests I'd done previously. I did a wash in Synthrapol. No help.

I sat down and had a beer. It was 2:45pm. I waited 15 minutes and then called Justin at work and told him what had happened. He told me that he knew I would figure it out. I took some deep breaths and researched dye removal on the internet. I found out that although dyers hate and scorn Rit dye, Rit Color Remover is considered quite good. I put the whole dressin a barrel of Synthrapol with really hot water and went out to Michael's.

I'd planned to go to Michael's to look at beads for a possibly headpiece, but found that I could not focus (funny that). I ended up going to their tie dye section and buying two boxes of color remover and a bottle of yellow dye. After all, the dress was blue and as every school child knows, yellow + blue = green.

I went home, dumped out the dress and proceeded to rinse it out. As I was doing this, one of the sleeves slipped free from the mass of knitting and went down the drain of our bathtub. It is indicative of the mental state I was in that this really didn't even phase me. I tried to grab it, failed and then kept rinsing. Our drain has no stopper and is basically a pipe that takes a sharp 90 degree turn about 2" down, so it was just gone. The water seemed to be draining okay, so I just kept rinsing.

I mixed up one packet of dye remover and dropped in the remaining sleeve. It immediately turned a lighter blue. I said a bad word and then left it to soak.

While that happened I formulated my plan. 1) See how the whole "dye removal" thing turned out. Early results were poor, but who knows? I could try re-dyeing it. 2) Dye the whole thing yellow now and hope that the resulting color was more pleasant.

I resolved that regardless of which plan I took, I would not do anything for at least two days, as the dye colors do change a bit as the fiber dries out completely. I left the dress in the sunlight and decided to hope for the best.

I quietly cast on for the dress again. I told no one about this.

That was President's Day.

Progress

2010-02-09T13:09:00.003-05:00

Sunday night during the Super Bowl cut out the revised pattern pieces for the top of the muslin dress.

Going to try and stitch that up tonight.

Last night used the final dye combo to dye the right and left sleeves I'd knitted last week.

Good news! Dye combo yielded the same color that it had the first time! Yay!

Going to reknit these sleeves one last time so I can actually dye them with the skirt portion of the dress.

The rest of this week is a little busy with Justin's birthday and some wedding events for friends of ours.

But I think there's a good chance that next week I will be doing the big dye. Start praying for me (and the dress!) now.

Sleeves

2010-02-04T12:57:00.006-05:00

After much trial and error on the sleeve front, I finally came up with a design I like. This takes advantages of the natural decreases & increases in the pattern and gives the edges a nice, swoopy design. In fact, I like this way of decreasing (which works on both sides of the pattern) much better than what I used on the body of the actual dress. I do not, however, like it so much better that I'll be reknitting the dress. Nope. The decreases already in there work just fine.

So with the sleeves, first I had one that I loved, but was far too big. That's it above. Then I dyed it - it's the green sleeves in the lower middle of the picture below. Then I tried to make a smaller one that just looked terrible. This is it here. Dyed it became the dark green sleeve on the far right. And the shape looked even more horrible than it did during blocking, during which time it was vaguely acceptable. Then it turned crappy. Everything else in this picture are various test color swatches I worked on in the last few weeks.Then I hit on my smart decreasing idea, the sleeve looked great, but was still too small. Then in a moment of brilliance, I came upon the idea of doing the exact same pattern, but going up a needle size. Voila! Perfection. Or at least, near perfection. I'll know for sure when I actually sew up the new bodice.

All this experimentation took place on the left sleeve. Last night I was able to successfully translate the idea to the right sleeve. It's blocking right now.

It's a real statement on what Justin's gone through in terms of being surrounded by knitting (or possibly in terms of time spent around me), that he can see this on the arm of the couch and say nothing. In fact, I've done this numerous times, to no comment. Just so no one worries, I did not leave the sleeve full of pins on the arm of the couch near where he sits.

Another round of dyeing -1/20/2010

2010-01-24T15:04:00.000-05:00

Well, the mysterious blue incident of 1/18/2010 left me befuddled. I came up with several plans:

1) try using the original Dharma Emerald green in a lower concentration for a lighter green.

2) try again using the ProChem Spring green - I kept looking at this sample and it grew on me. I had washed one of the two sleeves in Synthrapol (crazy good detergent for use before and after dyeing). Although initially it appeared to have made no change, once the sample dried, it was definitely a different, less teal type color. I kind of liked it.

So my original mission on 1/20/10 was to try and do the Spring Green again. Initially I thought it still looked all teal-y and horrible. This turned out to be a good thing, b/c I started dyeing with the two emerald dyes and ended up leaving the Spring green in the soda ash wash (you use soda ash to set the dye) for nearly an hour. And it yielded a very pretty color.

And so did the Dharma Emerald Green. And the Pro Chem Emerald Green - well, I actually don't like it so much anymore. Unfortunately it's pretty much impossible to convey the true colors through photos. To look at this, the bottom skein, which is the Pro Chem Emerald Green is by far the prettiest, but in real like it's a little too yellow I think.

The Dharma Emerald is in the middle and the ProChem Emerald is on top (and it's looking blue again. Sheesh. It doesn't look that way in real life). I've been carrying these three skeins around with me all day, looking at them in different lights, etc.

I think what I'm going to need to do is knit another swatch and then dye the swatches and see how that goes. But I feel hopeful. Hopeful! A night of dyeing and I actually could live with and/or actively like all of the results. Hooray!

I also started knitting a new sample sleeve - I was very industrious on 1/20/2010. This new sleeve is based on the idea of knitting the sleeve back and forth (so the pattern is perpendicular to my shoulder) and simply binding off or decreasing on either end to taper the sleeve, as opposed to the original sleeves I knitted, where I started with just a couple of stitches and then increased out in pattern to the widest point, then decreased again at the other end. Hm. That was surprisingly hard to describe in writing. I'll have to take a picture.

New top

2010-01-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

So after the blue dyeing debacle of Monday 1/18, I felt the need to take a break from dyeing and instead did some work on the new top of the dress.

I had received the new bra I ordered from Victoria's Secret to be sewn in, but despite the fact that I've been a 34A since 1994 and every bra I've ever had from Victoria's Secret has been a 34A, this bra did not fit. It was in fact, too small, which if you're familiar with my bust size, is almost amusing.

I'm thinking I'm going to ditch this built in bra idea. I only had a half formed concept of how it would work and it's just turning into a pain in the butt, when I'd originally conceived it as something that would be nice and simple. Although Mom did tell me that there's a store near her shop called Bra La La and suggested we go there to look. I might do that just based on the name.

I had to recut a new front piece with a wider, slightly lower scoop neck and I feel good enough about it that I'm going to cut it in the green silk essence and see how it goes. Just going to do spaghetti straps of the same fabric, not try to find rattail cord as is the plan with the real dress.

BLUE?!?!?!?!

2010-01-21T14:40:00.003-05:00

So I had the emerald green from ProChem that was the front runner for dye colors. I decided to do another test of it, with a slightly higher concentration of dye, b/c my results before were a little patchy and I just wanted another test.

Many hours (and my last swatch) later I had this:It's a horrible picture, but I had no energey to take a better one. See the swatch in the middle and the hank of yarn tied with red? You know, the ones that are BLUE.

Seriously?

Blue?

Where in god's green earth did that come from?

For contrast, the blue (BLUE!?!?!?) swatch is laying on top of the original ProChem emerald green swatch. I also threw in the ProChem Spring Green swatch, which was original dismissed for being too turquoise. It's quite green by comparison.

After saying "Blue?" about 200 times and asking Justin what color he thought the swatch was (Blue. No surprise there. Boy's not color blind.), I finally gave up on dyeing for the night and made my self a large alcoholic beverage. This happened on Monday. It's now Thursday. I've only now had the strength to write about it.

New skirt

2010-01-12T11:19:00.001-05:00

Sewed it up last night. It will fit over my butt, with or without a train.

Phew!

Recut

2010-01-11T17:14:00.003-05:00

Last night I cut out the "muslin" again using the New Look pattern. I also went ahead and ordered a new copy of the pattern online, since the pattern envelope and the first page of instructions remain stubbornly missing. After looking up the pattern back online I realized that since it's a Junior pattern, I needed to cut out a size 11-12. That was a little weird (I'm a size 6 in ready made clothes), but patterns do tend to run crazy small for some reason.

The skirt is MUCH narrower - I bet I lost 18-24" of the full skirt circumference. Which is very good. I actually have slight doubts about it fitting over my ass, but with the train in there I'm sure it will be fine. I don't want a situation where I have to wear pantyhose.

So I cut the new skirt from the pieces of the old skirt and the new top from some cotton poplin I had lying around (leftovers from Justin's Dr. Horrible coat from Halloween 2008). Although I liked having the lighter, silkier fabric to see the drape on the first mock up dress, the fabric frays like crazy and isn't very practical for reusing as a pattern. My plan is to fit it using the poplin pieces, like a traditional muslin, then deconstruct and use them as the pattern - first for the green mock dress and finally for the real ivory dress.

I'm modifying the V neck top (it's the yellow dress in the sketches on the bottom) so that it's a scoop neck.

It sounds more complicated than it is.

And I was finally able to find a bra on sale to work into the dress. I'm planning to sew it into the dress so that I have the dress straps giving me support through the bra and don't have to wear a strapless.

Dyeing

2010-01-07T15:55:00.004-05:00

So really, I've been dyeing for awhile now. Back since the end of November. But December was a crazy month and there was no time to blog.

No time.

So anyway. Dyeing!

Okay, first of all, dyeing with fiber reactive procion dyes is a big pain in the butt. Not hard, per se, but a big pain in the butt. It has a lot of steps and involves a lot of measuring and is very meticulous. I don't like being meticulous. (In case you haven't noticed.) I also don't particularly like measuring.

So I ordered all the stuff from Dharma Trading Company (the name amuses Justin, big Lost fan that he is to no end) and commenced my first round of dyeing.

To begin with, if anyone is interested in reading the whole process, I'm using this set of instructions from Dharma's website. I did some other reading as well, but this is what I have printed out and take into the bathroom with me to dye.

As the fabric rested in the dye and later in the dye mixed with soda ash, I kept the bathroom door tightly closed to prevent any curious kitties from wandering in and trying the highly toxic dye. Justin came home from work and inquired if the bathroom was available for, you know, use. I said, yes, it certainly was. He added that he didn't want to be poisoned by toxic dye. I said that as he was unlikely to be curious enough to try drinking the pretty green water, he would probably be safe. His response is best left unprinted.

So the first round of dyeing, using Dharma's Emerald Green yielded a beautiful dark forest green swatch. I left one piece in for 15 minutes and one for 20, but there's very little difference in color. Those are the swatches on the far left and far right. Well, I liked this color, but it seemed a little dark. I showed it to Justin. He liked it, but after I asked him if he thought it was dark, he admitted that it was. We both felt it would be good for a wedding in say, March, but not so much for May. Jenny saw the swatches and loved them. My mom saw them later that month and didn't like them too much - she thought it would make the dress go from being ivory with green to just being green.

Clearly more samples were needed.

None of the other greens on Dharma looked anywhere near like something I'd like. So I went to PRO Chemical & Dye, the other big source for these type of dyes. Ordered two more dye colors - spring green and their version of emerald green. Well, spring green was a colossal failure. Those are the two little swatches in the upper middle, the ones that look almost turquoise. And therein lies the problem. They're turquoise. No good.

So finally, just this Monday, I dyed a swatch in PRO's Emerald Green. I really though we had a winner. I still think we might. I used half as much dye as I have for the others since my last Emerald swatch (the Dharma one) was so dark. And that may have been my mistake. The color looked great when I first pulled it out of the dye bath and then I even worried about it getting too dark. But unfortunately when I rinsed it, especially when I rinsed it with Synthrapol (which takes out the excess dye), a lot of the blue tones washed out and left it a little too yellow. Still, I have high hopes. It's the swatch in the middle, kind of around and under the other 4.

Here they are again, without the flash. The true colors are kind of in between the two pictures.

Not sure when I'll try another dye test - this time with the full amount of dye for the PRO emerald green. I also want to start working on redoing the dress mock up, and work on a new knit design for the sleeves. It's dawned on me that I might have to shake a leg a little so as not to be rushing through the home stretch.

I'm sure that surprises no one.

Sleeve and train photos

2009-12-02T12:21:00.006-05:00

Mom was up for Thanksgiving and took some pics of the ensemble.

We determined that the single sleeves I'd made were too narrow and so did this mockup with both of them together:

And took a couple separate views of the train - one with it spread all the way out and one with it crumpled down to fit the fabric.
You can see that although I've taken out most of my lifelines, I haven't given up on all of them just yet!

I'm going to try and dye some samples tonight or tomorrow. I was so tempted to just throw the whole thing in the dye (the dyeing process is really complicated! It has a lot of steps! I don't want to do it more than once!), but when I told Justin I'd gotten the dye in the mail he said to me "You are going to do a practice run first, right?" In that voice he uses when he knows my intention is to do the exact opposite. Busted!

Dye Received

2009-11-23T11:20:00.004-05:00

Big box o' dyeing supplies was on my chair at work when I got in today. Not sure if this will be happening until after Thanksgiving... but Mom did ask if there would be any dyed items during her visit and so I might press her into service!

Here's my latest color inspiration picture:

How gorgeous is that? She even has dark red hair like me! (Although I think my groom is much cuter!)

Buying the Dye

2009-11-12T15:43:00.003-05:00

After some advice from Lakeside Linen and some random research online and some evaluation of the materials I have on hand at home, I have purchased my dye.

And it's been shipped.

I continue to work on the sleeves and will be dyeing my swatches first as a test.

And dyeing a bunch of extra yarn as well.

Fingers crossed.

Cute Little Sleeves

2009-11-12T15:16:00.003-05:00

I think it'll improve a lot with blocking. For some reason I didn't take a picture when it was done. Worked up fairly easily in just a few hours spread over two nights and I took copious notes, so I have fairly high hopes about making the other one with little trouble. Hopefully those aren't famous last words.

This dress sews up fast

2009-11-12T14:56:00.005-05:00

Which is really good, because I don't really like it.

Justin had a long day at work on Sunday - shifts at both jobs - and I was recovering from a cold and didn't want to go out, so it was a perfect day for sewing. And in the end - I finished the dress mock up.You can see that the Halloween decorations are still up.

Okay, actually I didn't set in the zipper b/c I really didn't think I liked the dress. In a word, it is too big. Well, two words. Not too big for me - it fits just fine. But there is too much fabric in general. The skirt, as I expected is much too full to go under the lace. It doesn't exactly look bad, but doesn't have the sleek, flowy look that I had envisioned. More of a sausage kind of look. I didn't think I was going to like the ruching over the bust either, but that wasn't too bad once I put the dress on.

Anyway, I thought of many things and alterations... I think first thing will be to try the same top with a slimmer, A-line skirt. I promised Mom that I would change nothing until she came up for Thanksgiving and could see it and give me another opinion. Then I think we'll try to make another skirt out of the large pieces of the first skirt.

Oh and the train's not nearly long enough.

In which I baste

2009-11-05T10:07:00.000-05:00

These are the myriad pieces of my bodice. The bodice has both a lining and an underlining.

Step one is to baste the underlining to the fabric pieces. Of course, I cut all the pieces out of the same fabric, so it doesn't look like much. But I did a whole lotta basting.

Here it is with the flash:

And by the light of the sewing machine:

These are steps that usually annoy me and I rush through or skip. But I am trying to use my hard won Halloween costume lesson of patience (and pinning. and basting.)
And now I'm going to take a nap.

What I've been up to lately...

2009-11-03T19:09:00.005-05:00

So I made that skirt at the beginning of the month and then wedding dress sewing went on hiatus so I could focus on Halloween costume sewing.

Halloween is like a high holy day to both Justin & I and it doesn't seem like a real holiday to me unless I make at least some part of our costumes. A purely store bought costume seems like a cop out to me. I've done it before, but I do always try to make some portion of at least one of our costumes.

This year, I outdid myself a bit. I made both. Completely. From scratch.

I did have an old bathing suit pattern that I partially used for mine, but the whole top is improvised. And Justin's was completely made up, with some vague guidance from a shirt and a pair of his pajama pants. It was very interesting and I learned a few things.

First - although least useful in terms of wedding dress construction - I did some cool things with boning. A whole lotta infrastructure went into make that collar stand up, including an elaborate skeleton made out of zip ties. There were back supports that hooked into his tunic under his robe. There really should have been an extra hook on the front of the robe to keep the collar from turning on itself, which it had a slight tendency to do when he moved (which he kept doing all evening long. Silly man wouldn't just stand still and be admired! He wanted to enjoy his own party!) I was very proud of myself, since all my knowledge of using boning in this way comes from a 10 second clip from Season 4 of Project Runway where Chris March was making one of his elaborate gowns which had a huge collar and it showed the model being buckled into a harness underneath her dress to support the thing.

However since my plans for the dress do not include a huge collar, this was the least practical of the lessons I learned. And really, I don't think I technically "learned" anything, since I knew all this stuff already, but it was good to have it driven home to me yet again.

1) Slippery fabric is a real pain in the butt to deal with. You must be patient.

2) You must pin EVERYTHING.

3) Basting really is a good idea, especially for tight fitting things (the legs of my bathing suit almost brought me to tears one night).

4) The sewing machine knows when you're angry. I was told this by a professional costumer in college and it affirmed all my previous sewing experiences. If you are angry, frustrated or tired the machine knows. You will make more horrible mistakes and you will then need to spend an epic amount of time picking them out (one more reason it's good to baste). It's always better to stop and not try to push on to some artificially imposed stopping point (I will stop after I set in this zipper - yeah, it's a great idea to try and set in a zipper when tired and cranky.)

5) When you're sewing and you're really on a roll, it's awesome.

6) Also awesome - compliments. Got a big bunch of them and am starting work on the practice dress full of confidence in my own sewing prowess. Just confidence mind you. Don't want to bring down the wrath of any sewing gods.

Closure

2009-10-18T23:16:00.006-04:00

Last Monday I finally did the deed. Literally months after I'd cast off the dress, I actually cut the thread which bound it to the cone of yarn.

Of course, before I did that, I wound off an absolutely enormous amount of yarn, a huge hank of it and I cut the thread on the other side of the huge hank. If I need to do any reknitting at the top, I'm covered.

Then I set about dealing with the unwieldy hem/cast on edge. In the time that's been freed up since finishing the dress, I taught myself to crochet and I did a single crochet all the way around the bottom edge. It took forever. Well, not really forever, but it took 3-4 hours.

I was telling a new coworker about the dress the other day and she asked how many hours I thought I'd worked on it. I couldn't even hazard a guess. So I was aware of the time as I did this crocheted border. Looking back, I can only say that I've worked on the dress "a lot". I had thought 100 hours, but I think that's a woefully low estimate. Fortunately this was 3-4 hours well spent as the hem is now much more stable and the scallops that are a part of this lace design are already showing up more clearly. I'm even considering doing a similar border up each of the side edges.

Those are much shorter - I bet it would only take 2 hours.

Sewing Commences!

2009-10-07T10:08:00.004-04:00

Last night I FINALLY sat down and banged out the skirt for the practice dress.

It's funny - someone yesterday asked how many hours I thought I'd worked on the dress and I couldn't even begin to venture an estimate. There have been busy months and there have been slow months in terms of dress progress. September, for example, was a slow month. Not really sure why - I was on vacation for a week, but what was I doing the other 3 weeks? Not a clue.

Speaking of which - mental note to self: You are not as smart as you think you are. Or rather, you are every inch the brilliant woman that you think you are, but your memory is not as good as you think it is. So the next time you draft a brilliant pattern piece or come up with a brilliant knitting pattern, for god's sake - WRITE IT DOWN. TAKE SOME DAMN NOTES. As you might remember I had to piece together the train b/c the pattern was too wide for the fabric and also because of the fabric flaws. Trying to figure out what the hell I was thinking when I cut out those pieces was challenging at best. I did figure it out eventually, but a note or even some conscientious pinning would have made a big difference.

So anyway - sewed the skirt last night. Wow. It's large. I keep saying that about parts of the dress, don't I? Anyway, just looking at it I think it's going to be too full for what I'm going for and I'm going to end up switching to a more A-line skirt, but I'm going forward with it for now. I'm also a little concerned that the drape of the train is going to end up being too short.
See that little bit of train hanging down? It looks too much like an afterthought. And I'm blaming that on the size of the other skirt pieces, not on my pattern drafting.

Didn't get to try it on with the knitted lace - it's too unmanageable in its current form. Once I have it attached to some form of bodice I'll do a test run.

The dyeing saga...

2009-10-06T14:32:00.000-04:00

Dyeing linen is really hard. It's insanely complicated, which is something I really wasn't prepared for when I came up with this "I'll just dye it!" idea months ago. Poor planning on my part really.

But apparently plant fibers are insanely more complicated to dye than animal fibers (like wool). Very few dyers actually seem to dye linen. And dyers seem to be a very close mouthed group of people as a rule. I'm not sure why this is, but I'm having very little lucky getting advice and am mainly relying on one article I found on Knitty for guidance.

Fortunately it's a really thorough article.

So I'm going to have to dye this thing and I'll probably have to do it on the back fire escape and I guess I better do it before it gets too cold. The time has come. I must bite the bullet and buy some dyeing materials.

** Well that's the blog I'd written before I was given a little bit of hope on the dyeing front. Through the wonders of the NYC MetroStitches I am possibly getting hooked up with some ladies who specialize in linen dyeing. Hopefully they'll give me some advice! Everyone keep your fingers crossed for me...

Making the Muslin

2009-09-17T19:44:00.006-04:00

Which is actually not made of muslin, but of Silk Essence (the essence being that it's 100% polyester). So far I've cut the thing out and when I return from vacation I will begin to sew.

And let me tell you, cutting it out was epic.

First of all, this was a few weeks ago, when some may know that Justin & I had a weekend from hell. Friday night we notice that our cat Chiana, typically squinty eyed, was insanely squinty in the eye department. She tried to do her usual thing of sitting between us and alternately glaring at one person, then the other, but was hampered by the fact that her eyes really weren't opening. We weren't positive something was wrong, but with Labor Day coming up, we didn't want to risk her not being able to see a vet over the long weekend. So Saturday I was up early on the phone to the vet and then taking her to the vet two hours later. Joy. Chiana is generally a very calm cat, but I believe anyone with a pet knows how delightful a trip to the vet can be. An hour later I came home, $150 poorer, with two different medicines which needed to be given to her a total of 5 times per day and with one of those crazy collars to keep her from rubbing her eye (she had a cyst in it). She didn't like the collar.

Approximately 20 minutes later, Justin & I smelled smoke and heard fire engines. Fortunately our building was not on fire, but the one behind us was. The street was shut down. Huge ladder trucks were pulled up with their ladders on our roof. Justin watched out our back window and saw fire fighters rescue two people. And could feel heat from the flames. It was that close. I had gone out to look around outside and saw a fire fighter rescue a dog from a fire escape. It was crazy, but we were lucky. Our apartment just smelled like smoke for a few days. We did promptly check our smoke detector and our renter's insurance policy though.

So anyway, traumatic weekend. Sunday I decide to cut out the dress. This is very difficult with a cat. Cats feel that the should be able to la on anything and they love tissue paper, which is of course what patterns are made of. So there was a lot of this:
And she was so miserable in general that weekend, that I felt really bad making her move.

Actually the first problem came when I realized that I could not find the pattern envelope or the first page of the directions. I took them with me to Maryland to buy the fabric. They have vanished. I have no clue where they are. I'm worried I threw them out by mistake. I was able to get the sizing measurements off the internet and I could live without the first page of instructions, fortunately. It was mostly the suggestions for how to lay out the pattern pieces and I generally ignore those anyway. But I'm very frustrated that that envelope is missing.

Also, I need new scissors. Really, really badly. Because mine have a serious dull spot which meant that every few minutes they'd catch, not cut and I'd end up with this:

Oh and the six yards of fabric I bought? When I opened it all up and unfolded it, I found this: In case you can't see it too well, there's a 3" slash on one edge, two huge red X's in some kind of grease pencil and also a red stamp of some kind. And the stamp does show through onto the other side of the fabric. Yeah, that made laying things out really interesting. Fortunately I was able to cut around a lot of it and what did make it in is all in the train. And if I do convert this dress to something I could wear normally, the train will be the first thing to go. But I was mightily annoyed.

The final thing is this:

That's the train pattern being wider than the fabric, something which I confess I did not think of AT ALL when I was drafting the pattern. Now this fabric is about 44" wide, not 45", but I don't think that extra inch would make much of a difference. Which means I need to either 1) buy only 60" fabric, 2) redraft the train or 3) make the train in several pieces. I ended up going with option 3 for this trial run, and we'll see how that looks. Even in the finished product, the train will be entirely under the knitted lace, so a couple seams are the end of the world. But I'd been laying out and cutting for about 2 hours at that point. So I wasn't real thrilled.

Still, it's cut out! And I drafted the slight changes to the top of the bodice to allow for straps - I want it to swoop up a bit into the straps, rather than just go straight across. Fingers crossed on that one.

I used the pattern to cut out a new top for an old dress of mine - the green one I wore to my friend Mary's wedding. I'm a little nervous about my size selection now, b/c that version at least was way big. I was swimming in it. Now granted, I am not a well endowed woman by any stretch of the imagination, but it appeared to be meant for someone with double D's. Hence my nervousness. I'm thinking that a lot of alterations may be in order.

Mostly done. Really this time.

2009-09-17T19:30:00.003-04:00

So I've cast off for the skirt. Twice actually. I haven't actually cut the thread, so the skirt is still attached to the enormous cone of yarn. But the knitting on the skirt is, in essence, done.

It was actually done about two weeks ago and since then the dress has been sleeping quietly as I contemplate what exactly to do next.

The first bind off - took place on a Saturday night. I'd worked the decrease rows that come with the lace chart, which are actually meant to gather in the top of the knitting for attaching to an empire waisted bodice - perfect. Exactly what I wanted. I was still worried about it being a little too big, so I bound off REALLY tightly. I mean really, I knit tight anyway. It was crazy tight.

Of course the next day when I tried it on I realized two things:
1) The top was now too small and wouldn't meet in the front when wrapped around my chest. There was about a one inch gap.
2) The whole thing was too long. Fine if I was planning to wear heels. But I'm not. Also the last few inches weren't blocked and there was no room for this thing to droop AT ALL. Not good.

So I had to pull back about six rows. The decreases are meant to be done on lines 13-14 or 6-7 of the pattern. I'd done the 6-7 decreases. Essentially what I did was pull out those 7 rows, then the 13, 14, 15 & 16th rows of the repeat below. That was a little rough since I'd foolishly put in a lifeline at the end of the pattern repeat (you can see the beige lifeline in the pics above), ie. above row 16, instead of at the decrease point, between rows 12 & 13. Fortunately I was able to drop the stitches down and pic them up one by one, which was vaguely nerve-wracking and extremely time consuming, but worked.

I did the new decreases. Mindful of the 1" gap (which really was more like a 2" gap), I bound off REALLY loosely.

It is now the correct length.

It overlaps about 2" in the front, which I think is good and will provide visual interest.

It needs to be blocked, but it is done.

And it can't be blocked til I scrub out the bathtub and buy a new stopper for the drain, to replace the one I threw out months ago in a fit of pique. I tried to register for a new drain stopper, but Justin refused to scan it with the gun at Bed Bath & Beyond. He was opposed to putting a $2.99 item on the registry and said he'd just buy it for me if I wanted it so damn bad. He didn't though. I really should have pressed him on that one.

Making a train pattern

2009-08-31T15:41:00.015-04:00

So here's the post I promised about making the train pattern. Life got crazy last week with my office moving, so this post has been sitting for over a week waiting to get finished. Anyway...

I started out with the dress laid out on a sheet on the floor, as I posted previously. Then I threaded some green ribbon through those handy lines of yarnovers I obsessed over when I was decreasing for the train. The neat line of yarnovers stopped below the yellow life line, so I just laid the ribbons on top of the piece, continuing the diagonal lines as established by the yarnovers.

I took a look at it and decided I'd laid it out with the train waaaay too short and wide. So I did it again, stretching it longer & skinnier this time.

It's not so obvious in the photos, but it was in real life. Trust me on this one.

Then I covered the train area with tissue paper and taped all the paper together.

I tried to then trace the lines of ribbon with a pencil, but it wasn't really working - I obviously didn't want to press too hard, but still kept tearing the tissue. So I dug out my little sewing marking wheel thingie (I'm sure it has a real name, I just don't know what it is) - which is a little spikey wheel on a handle. I used this to trace the ribbon lines.

Then I cut out along the lines, leaving plenty of extra room.

I folded the pattern piece in half in a vague attempt to make something symmetrical and taken into account the differences between how the piece was blocked on its right and left sides.

Finally, I used a highly scientific process, involving an improvised compass (a piece of yarn tied to a pen) to determine that the curve at the bottom of the train did not work as any kind of regular, semicircular curve known to man (or woman). So I kind of spliced two curves together and came out with something that still looked pretty good to the naked eye.

And that's the train pattern piece. Isn't it cute?

Done? Not so much.

2009-08-28T09:48:00.004-04:00

So last Thursday night I was quietly sitting, finishing up the first Size 8 rep of the chart while watching Defying Gravity (I'm of mixed opinions). After I finished (the chart, not the show), I thought, "Well, I better do a test and see how long this is, so I can decide how many more reps I need." I used my highly scientific method of holding the needle around my body and then raising it until the bottom edge of the fronts of the dress rested on the ground. I put the needle about at my waist. Nope, dragging on the ground. Raised it. Raised it. Raised it to just under my boobs, which as you all may know is where the skirt on an empire waisted dress sits.

I stood in shock. The dress was done.

I went into the dressing room to see what I looked like - one hand holding the needles around my chest, the other holding the still enormous cone of yarn. As I walked through my closet (our apartment geography is weird, my closet is a tiny hallway that connects the main apartment to our dressing room, which is another small room where we keep all our dressers and I have my sewing machine, as well as all the Barbies that Justin deems too "girly" to be displayed in the public areas of the apartment), something happened. Something which has plagued my mother's fears every since I made the decision to knit the dress. The bottom hem caught on something. Specifically, it caught on one of the boot hooks of my Doc Martens, which were mysteriously kind of out and about in the closet, as opposed to kicked to the back as one would expect of boots in August. Anyway, the dress caught, I felt a tug and I stopped moving. I quickly ascertained the source of the tug, unhooked the dress and moved on. The place that had snagged immediately blended back into the froth of lace that is the bottom border.

So that's one major worry semi-resolved. I will still do some reinforcing down there, of course, but the dress caught and there was no disaster.

I looked at myself in our full length mirror and, allowing for the fact that I was wearing a t shirt and shorts under it, the dress looked damn good. My main thought at this point was:

"Huh."

"What am I going to do now?"

The answer was "Some frogging." The dress had only one rep of the chart on the Size 8's and I really did want some more. Plus I needed to to the final decreasing to get the piece down to something vaguely approaching my underbust measurement. And it was on the floor. In fact, it was bordering on slightly too long.

So I sat back down on the sofa. And ripped back to my last lifeline, which was where I'd switched to the Size 8's.

Then I looked at the next lifeline - the one I'd put in right before I did the final train decreases. The decreases I'd decided I could live with, but now that I was looking at them again and thinking how they'd be more on my back and less on my butt, I was less thrilled with them. I threw caution to the winds, pulled out the first lifeline and ripped down to the second.Here's a pic showing the two lifelines - the vertical arrow is the first lifeline and the horizontal one is the second - both are a little hard to see since they're turquoise and blue on a blue background.

So now I'm redoing the train decreases and I feel much better about them - it's not quite done yet, but I looked at the pattern of the lace and I think I came up with a concept for the decreasing that flows with the pattern much better. It probably won't take the full 16 rows to decrease out the stitches, so as soon as I've done so I'm going to switch over to the Size 8 needles.

I'm hoping to get off one rep through the chart and then 7 rows more. The lace chart comes with an additional set of decreases to be done on either row 7 or row 13 (I think), which is used in the Dayflower Cami pattern to decrease the skirt before the bust stitches are picked up. It's a pretty good decrease pattern and I think it will work for me.

So the end is in sight. Really close. I have to figure out how I'm going to cast this off and if I want a little extra ruffly bit at the top. I really thought I'd have more time to make these decisions.

Aerial Views

2009-08-25T14:55:00.006-04:00

So I switched over to the Size 8 emails last weekend and did a few rows on Friday night. The needles seem so tiny! I actually switched mid pattern - I didn't want to make the switch right after I finished the train decreases, but I didn't want a whole other rep in the Size 10's. Put a lifeline in on the last row in the Size 10's. Finished up the pattern, threw it on yet another lifeline and pulled the whole thing off the needles yet again.

Here it is all crumply. I spread a sheet on the floor so it wouldn't touch our yucky carpet and started spreading it out.

It's really, really big. I had to climb up on the arm of a chair to get the whole thing in frame.

I mean, it's huge. You can see the train section in the middle, all nice and curvy, the border looks great in the photo - still have some worries about finishing the edge, but the pattern looks great. There's too little of the Size 8 section completed to really get the contrast between it and the Size 10 - most of what you can see is on the Size 10 needles. I think I'm going to need to do a bit more decreasing to bring it down to my underbust measurement, but I feel pretty confident about that working.

I actually now feel confident enough to say that I think I am pulling off this crazy scheme of mine. The last time I took it off the needles it still looked way too large and wide and kind of like a misshapen shawl. Now it really looks like something. Like part of a dress. Like the elegant lace that will go over my wedding dress.

Next post will be me drafting the pattern piece to make the train for the fabric portion of the dress - fun!

Other Knitting

2009-08-24T13:27:00.003-04:00

Will have a major update soon, but for now, take a look at the cute little booties and hat I made for my cousin Cary, who's having a little girl in December. (In fairness to family, I will mention that her sister Gretchen is having a baby hopefully any day now. But she elected not to find out the sex, so no booties for her til after delivery.)

Both of these are super cute and easy knits, free on Ravelry. Mary Jane booties and the Berry Baby Hat. I've made the booties for several babies and a 4 year old too, just by using bigger needles & yarn. I'm thinking of making a pair of these booties in grown up size for myself! The hat was a first time knit, but I will definitely do again.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder, m'dear...

2009-08-18T20:25:00.003-04:00

"... or forgetful."

To quote the Disney cartoon version of Robin Hood (the one with the foxes? Tell me you didn't love that movie as a kid? I called it "Fox Love" when I was little.)

Well in this case Lady Cluck was right and absense did make the heart grow fonder. No dress knitting since last Thursday, total physical absense from the dress since Saturday (and a complete inability to spell absence, as spellchecker keeps alerting me). I missed it! I wish to work on it again!

And I bought the fabric for the "muslin" of the fabric part. Went for a green similar to what the lace will eventually become. Figured, why not?This pic is surprisingly true to the actual color of the fabric. Ultimately I'd like the lace to be a less silvery green, but for a cheap mock up, this is a pretty good color. Might even turn out pretty enough to wear on its own!

B/c I'll need another full length dress with a train? Right?

A whole new stage of drama is about to begin...

Project Fatigue vs. Separation Anxiety

2009-08-12T12:12:00.002-04:00

So for the first time I’m experiencing true dress infidelity. Like, I’m feeling the desire to work on other projects. A strong desire. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’ve not touched another bit of knitting since I started the dress. I was working on a summer sweater of my own design during Arsenic and Old Lace. Almost finished that, but a fatal flaw in sizing, as well as a yarn flaw that I thought wouldn’t be obvious and really was, sent that project to the frog pond. I’ve also been working on a cute striped bikini top with the leftovers from the baby tart hats. That’s almost done, it just needs a cute piece of cotton to be used as a skirt and make it into an apron top or a dress. And I did a variety of baby knitting of little hats and booties… although technically I think I was still just swatching on the dress then.

But throughout all of this, I really just anted to be working on the dress. And now, I find myself wanting to work on other things. I spent a great deal of Monday night frogging old projects. In an attempt to save money and the earth and yarn and such, I’ve been taking apart things that just didn’t work. The first was the summer sweater mentioned above. That I plan to remake, just correcting for my horrible mistakes in terms of gauge (although I really should have checked my gauge before frogging the whole thing. Darn.) And I cut out the bad yarn flaw, which I’d ignored as I knit in the dark and ended up being right over my belly button in an extraordinarily obvious fashion.

I also am in the process of frogging the first sweater I ever made. It was woefully large and although I loved it for being the first thing I made, I wore it twice and knew I’d never wear it again. And I’d spent waaaay too much on the yarn to let it lie. I started frogging it last year, then was distracted, then realized just the other day that I really wanted to make the Airy Wrap cardigan from Fitted Knits. And this yarn would work for it. So joy of joys, I’m frogging mohair. In August. On 90 degree days. I’m insane.

Really, the heat may be part of my lack of desire to work on the dress. Even though it’s light and airy and all that, it’s still pretty warm when the whole thing is piled in my lap on a 90 degree day. So we’ll hope it isn’t 90 degrees the day of the wedding. Of course we're hoping that anyway. Also I don’t plan to spend the wedding with all the lace of my dress piled in my lap. I’m planning something vaguely more aesthetically attractive than that.

I’m frogging my Cropped Cardigan with Leaf Ties. I love it and I love how it looks, just not on me. On me, it does not cover my boobs. And it’s not like I have big boobs to cover. It just kind of frames them in an odd way. I don’t know yet what that yarn will become – some other kind of cropped sweater I suppose, or maybe a full length but short sleeved one.

But in the end, I think part of the reason that I’ve slowed working on the dress is that I know that the more I work, the closer it will be to being done. The process has become almost bittersweet. Once I finish the final train decrease, there really aren’t any big challenges left with the skirt. I’ll have to do the crocheting around the top to reinforce it so it will hang properly. But that will be after I’ve cast off. I’ll have to do the final decreases for the empire waist, but after all the decreasing I’ve already done, I’m not too worried. The end of the knitting of the lace skirt is in sight. Still at least a month out, but in sight. It’s a wonderful thing. But it’s also a little sad.

Or it could just be that I’m terrified of dyeing this thing and I’m trying to put it off as long as possible.

Ode to my Lifelines

2009-08-10T16:05:00.006-04:00

I'd never used lifelines before this project and let me tell you, they've been, well, lifesavers. Really, I realized that I hadn't knitted a lot of lace before this project - some scarves, Branching Out, Wisp & Juno Regina, and the original Dayflower Cami that inspired the dress. Some projects with lace trimming or some such, but otherwise that's all.

Only one time have I had to unravel all the way to a lifeline for the whole dress - the first train decrease I did wind up taking out a whole 16 rows. That was kind of depressing. And there was the one isolated section where I dropped down to the lifeline and fixed one repeat of the chart. But just knowing the lifelines were there has been so good for me psychologically.

I took this picture to show off all my lovely lifelines. (And added some green arrows in MSPaint, since they're a little hard to see against the plaid sheet background.) The first is the purple - it's at the top of the border section. The second, pink, is at the top of the short row section. In this pic they're very close together, but at the deepest part of the short rows they're 12-18" apart. Then I placed the yellow lifeline before I started decreasing for the train and the blue one after the first train decrease. I've since pulled that blue lifeline; now it's just before the final group of train decreases, which is the one where I'll be decreasing from both sides in one repeat of the chart. I made a special new chart just for this section, but I really couldn't face another swatch, so I'm just knitting the whole darn thing. But I did at least have the sense to place a lifeline, so if it looks like crap, away it'll go again. Plan then is to pull the blue lifeline a second time and run it through at the top of the train section.

Plan after that is probably a couple more repeats on the 10 needles, then the final needle change down to the 8's. Can you believe that? FINAL NEEDLE CHANGE.

Clearly, I'm having a hard time with it.

Almost a whole train

2009-08-10T15:57:00.005-04:00

See those two stitch markers? See how close together they are? They used to be NINE repeats of the chart apart from each other. Now they're less than 3 repeats from each other.

I said to Justin yesterday - I think I'm closer to the end of this now than the beginning. He looked at the pile of knitting and said, "That's not the whole thing, right?" In Justin's defense, he hasn't seen any of the sketches of the completed dress - allowing for the whole thing to be a bit of surprise on the big day. I quickly reassured him that it was NOT the whole thing, that there would in fact be a large fabric portion to the dress so I wasn't, you know, indecently exposing myself to all our family and friends. He nodded.

"I figured."

My first wedding related injury

2009-08-02T23:30:00.004-04:00

Burnt myself on the iron when steam blocking last Sunday night. Was on the phone with my mom - when she heard me say "Ow" she asked what was wrong. When I admitted to burning myself, she said "You probably shouldn't be doing that while talking on the phone." Apparently I can do nothing without total concentration, or disaster may occur.

Treatment included a Spider-Man ice pack (no, I do not know why we had one of those in the freezer), some Neosporin and a band-aid. One week later my arm looks like this:

And the dress looks like this:

Lightly steam blocked and still on the needles - which I shoved into the cargo pockets of my capri pants for this photo.

I almost can't wait to really wet block this thing. Only the fact that it will take both many hours and about a million pins is holding me back. That and the fact that we keep having company on the guest room bed.

Successful Decreasing

2009-07-27T16:40:00.007-04:00

Hooray! A post that is not about failures!
Or mistakes! Yay!

Successfully finished my first set of decreases - the train now contains 7 repetitions of the pattern instead of 9. Didn't end up following the swatches/charts I'd made exactly. Had a couple of ideas on the fly and am now trying to chart out what I actually did... we shall see. Each set of decreases MIGHT be a little different and that's okay.

The whole thing is still huge. I attempted to photograph it on the ironing board. It didn't work. The apartment is too narrow for me to get a shot!

Here it is spread out across a green dress for some contrast. Of course eventually the lace will be green and the dress will be ivory... and it won't be this shade of green, but whatever. Yes, that is more of the dress hanging off the ironing board in the back of the picture. It's still extremely wide.

The decreases came out pretty well - I think they blend really well... hopefully will continue to do so as I do more of them! This is the left side decrease section.

And this is the right side of it. Hopefully when all the decreases are done I'll have two nice diagonal lines of yarn overs tracing the boundaries of the train.

Although it looks huge all spread out - okay, it actually is huge when it's all stretched out - when it hangs it has a nice drape. I'll be making the "muslin" of the fabric portion of the dress sometime in August and I'm thinking I'll start with the pattern with the more gathered, as opposed to the A line skirt. I don't envision that the fabric/knitted pieces will be exactly the same size, but I figure they should be in the same ballpark at least.

Tragedy narrowly averted.

2009-07-16T10:04:00.009-04:00

Of course all of my postings seem to deal with mistakes - otherwise at this point it's just a lot of blah blah, it's so pretty blah blah.

(Although I am almost to the point where I can do the lace pattern without checking the chart! Just need to do a quick peak at the beginning of each new row to make sure I'm on the right track. Very exciting as I rarely get to this point. Of course, now I'm nearly at the point where I need to use my decrease charts, so soon I'll be chart bound again.)

So yeah, found another mistake; couldn't figure out how to fix it on the fly and pulling back would have taken me down to the pink lifeline which I frankly found depressing. Since the mistake was limited to one repeat of the chart and was so close to the lifeline, I decided to try something kind of radical.
Using my KnitPicks Options Needles (product placement) I sectioned off the damaged section - took off the actual needle tips and then used the caps they give you to secure either end of the rest of the work. Then I unraveled all the affected stitches in the repeat down to the lifeline.

I picked them all back up using an extra needle. From there I reknitted each row using the loose yarn. Aside from the fact that I picked up and started knitting with a size 8 needle, forgetting that the section was on 10's, it wasn't too hard. That first row I was sitting there thinking "Why do I have all this yarn left over?" but once I realized the whole sizing issue, it went fairly smoothly.

I put my extra cable on to my size 10 tips and knitted away.

Six rows later I was able to disconnect the caps, reattach the points and continue on as if nothing had happened!

I think one or two of the yarnovers in this section might be twisted a little funny, but it's nothing that leaps out at you. I've now knitted almost the whole rest of this repetition of the pattern and I can no longer find the mistake.

The repetition I'm finishing up right now is the full length of the piece, no increases, decreases or short rows, on Size 10 needles. My original plan had been to immediately start decreasing for the trains, but I did some math and realized that that would make the train end below my butt (or possible in the middle of my butt) and I'd like it to end above my butt. So I threw in this extra repetition, which will hopefully move it into the higher butt area.

On the not actively knitting related front - I'm thinking more and more about adding something to the border/Size 13 section to stabilize it. This section will be the part dragging on the ground, both as the train and as the hem of the dress and as I think I've said before, those cast on loops (and all the other loops) are biiiig. The fabric portion of the dress will give it some protection, but since we're getting married outdoors on a pier, I'm walking over a brick deck and our site has a whole lot of heavy machinery all over the place, I want to help this dress out all I can. I'd prefer to keep the knitted and fabric portions as two separate entities, so I don't want to baste the hems together, but I'm still thinking of crocheting around the bottom edge of the border or possibly adding some kind of tulle backing to the border section only. This would be tacked on at both the top and bottom of the section and maybe at a few other places in between and would hopefully give it some extra stability. This is an idea that won't be acted on for quite awhile, but it's something I'm giving more and more thought to lately.

Swatches!

2009-07-08T12:37:00.005-04:00

Who knew we'd be seeing swatches again at this late stage of the game???

But once I finished all those short rows I realized that I'd never come up with a left decreasing swatch that I liked. So I set about making some new ones.

Really loved my first one, but went off the reservation a little bit and made it with four too many rows. Too bad, as it was very pretty.
It's the one on the right and actually doesn't look too pretty here. After I blocked it I had stuffed it in my tote bag and I did a less than stellar job of smoothing it out again before taking this photo.

Anyway, went back to make one with the appropriate number of rows. Took a bit of charting and a bit of winging it, but finally came up with something that I like - the swatch on the left above.

Only to pick up the dress again and realize that I was on about row 6 of the 16 line chart, and starting to decrease part way through the chart would be confusing at best, since I made it to start decreasing on row 1.

So I'm going once through the chart plain - no decreases or anything. Should take another night hopefully. I'll try not to rush...

Very Pretty!

2009-07-06T10:58:00.004-04:00

Managed to finish up those short rows, put in another lifeline and do some more steam blocking.

Laid out a clean sheet on the floor and laid this baby down.

With the flash
And without (slightly blurry, but the colors are nicer)

The section in the middle is what will be the train; the narrow pieces going off to either side will be the sides & side-backs of the skirt. I'm now going to start slowly decreasing out the train section, which is about 1/3 of the total length, so eventually it will come to an end in an inverted V, hopefully somewhere in my middle/lower back area. The whole thing is on size 10 needles now and will be for some time until I do the final switch down to size 8's for the last 10" or so.

I'm pretty excited.

PS When I showed this to Justin, he did not mention cobwebs. He just said "very pretty". He's a smart man.

Eh crap - take 2

2009-07-02T09:47:00.004-04:00

Just go back and reread any of my screw up posts. B/c really, I do not learn. Did I not say, I should not rush and set arbitrary goals? I think I did. But on the night of July 1st, being very excited about being SOOOO close to being done the short rows, but also being very hungry and wanting to make my dinner, I rushed through the last couple of rows, got to the very last lace repeat (why is it always the last one?) and realized that I was a few stitches short. Realized actually, that the problem was in the second to last repeat, where I'd forgotten to make a couple of yarnovers a couple of rows back, which would now be a couple more stitches and as a result in a place where I should have had 3 stitches, I only had 1.

Just 1 lonely stitch. I tried to kind of pick up and create the stitches. It didn't work.

I turned to Justin and said "It's very frustrated when you get close to the end of something and so you rush a bit to finish it and then you make mistakes." He agreed "That is very frustrating."

I put it down and decided it was time for dinner.

After dinner, feeling much calmer, I pulled back two full rows and the final row just back to the mistake. Fixed it. Re-knitted the two frogged rows and then was able to continue on out of the short row section!

Realized an earlier error, where I'd run the lifeline through my stitch markers. Fortunately, my cheap habit of not buying stitch markers but instead using loops of yarn paid off, as I was just able to untie and retie each loop.

Sighed happily, looking at the fruits of my labor. Turned to Justin and said "Look how pretty!" He said "Very pretty! (pause) It still looks like cobwebs."

*sigh*

Actually kind of looks like a train

2009-07-01T10:57:00.005-04:00

Have about 5 more rows to go til the short row section is completed and I do another off the needles steam blocking.

Took this picture this morning on the couch.

Looks awfully pretty to me.

Eh crap.

2009-06-25T11:35:00.009-04:00

Remember how I'd been afraid I had too few stitches? Well, went back to the dress two nights ago, did a quick stitch count and although one side was fine, the other side had somehow grown by 8 stitches.

EIGHT. That is not a small number. That's not, oh crap, where did this stitch come from, oh well I'll just do a k3tog instead of a k2tog. That's OH CRAP, this side has grown by the length of half of the lace pattern. I found the problem and it started about four-five rows back. Which was probably about the time that I decided I was SOOO close to the end of the lace pattern that I should push through and finish the last few rows before I stopped for the night.

So yeah, that was a mistake. Apparently I should not push myself towards arbitrary goals. That way errors lie.

Anyway, the only thing to do was to drop each stitch down individually to the error point and then pick it up again. (This is me trying to show how many rows I had to drop. It was kind of hard to photograph- I really needed one hand to hold each needle and a third hand for the camera.)
Dropping the stitches led to long, long trailing bits of yarn.

And in the end, to this. Which, amazingly, I was able to rewrap onto the cone without it knotting or doing anything else horrible.

There were a couple of bad moments during the frogging process - one of the worst at the very end where I accidentally dropped down too far and had the last 10 stitches down two rows further than everything else. Fortunately I was able to take that loop of yarn and knit the two rows back again. I'm not really sure how I pulled that off, but it worked, so I'm not thinking too hard about. In the middle of it all I'd dropped one extra row down, so the free end of the yarn was in the middle of my work, instead of at the end of the row where it should be, but that wasn't that big a deal, I just had to slip a lot of stitches til I got to that point and then continue knitting.

While all of this was going on, I watched what was seriously the most horrible book to movie adaptation I've ever seen - The Other Boleyn Girl. Not the recent Hollywood movie with Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman (don't get me wrong, that was pretty bad too). No, this was a BBC version done years earlier. I had watched about 15 minutes and was going to turn it off, but then I found the mistake and couldn't be bothered to do anything as complicated as picking up the remote and hitting "stop".

In the end, I managed to fix the mistake and then reknit everything I'd had to unknit. The next night I did one more rep of the lace chart.

Which brings us here:

I'm experimenting with using Justin's Rock Band drums as a new photo platform. Obviously the dress has outgrown the speak top and there's only one corner of the apartment that gets natural light in the morning. Soon I'm going to have to start draping it over the fish tank.

In which the short rows become longer...

2009-06-23T12:58:00.005-04:00

Two nights ago I finally got my hands back on the dress and spent about great 3 hours working on it. Over the weekend I'd started to get really paranoid - just before I last put it down I felt like things were going along too quickly. I had become convinced that I'd done something VERY wrong and had now churned through more than half the short rows and lost some of the stitches along the way (I figured I'd missed some yarnovers in there or something.) So when I picked up the needles last night, it was with some trepidation. I won't lie, I'd already started mentally composing the blog entry where I commented yet again on the sin of pride, was going to chastise myself about not being careful enough, etc.

So the first thing I did was a quick stitch count on both sides of my various train stitch markers.

They were right.

They were all right and both the left and right side stitch counts were in agreement with each other - I hadn't leaped ahead on one side or anything.

I was amazed.

So I started short rowing again. Justin and I watched 3 episodes of Season 4 of The Wire and I made a significant dent in the amount of short rows left to do. I started to get a little bummed about how this was taking, then I realized, duh, the short rows are getting longer. Ah math! You thwart me yet again!

So here's the progress - I think the dress is starting to get a little too big for my usual photo spot!
(Everything above the purple line is the short row section - it's getting pretty big!)

Didn't happen.

2009-06-18T12:26:00.004-04:00

Some work stuff bled over into the evening (good work stuff, fortunately!), had to do laundry and go to the grocery store. By the time it was all done it was close to 10pm and I was too tired to pick up the needles. That's when mistakes happen. So, I exercised some surprising self control.

Of course now I had dress withdrawal, b/c I didn't work on it last night and won't be able to tonight or tomorrow b/c of the show. Maybe there'll be some time on Saturday afternoon, but my future mother in law will be in town and we're probably going out to lunch. Good relations with the future in laws must take precedence over the dress.

It's just so pretty. I miss it. The slight disappointment I felt after finishing the border is gone. I want to work on this thing all the time. ALL THE TIME.

Have been receiving some good advice from Calista on Ravelry regarding places to scout out fabrics in NYC. If it ever stops raining I'm going to start looking!

Short Rows Galore!

2009-06-17T12:47:00.006-04:00

So last night started out kind of crappy and ended up quite nicely.

I looked at my original notes and saw that the plan was to work back and forth across the middle 3 repeats of the train. So I decided to just do that. I'll have to take the whole thing off the needles and steam block it again to make sure it's a nice shape, but I would have had to do that anyway. If I have to redo, well at least the short rows are going pretty quickly.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The crappy start. The crappiness came when I started my nice short row set up row and realized almost immediately that there was a mistake in the border. Let me say that again a mistake in the BORDER. As in, BELOW THE LIFELINE. How did I miss this previous? Well, when I placed the lifeline I counted to make sure i had the right numbers of stitches. I did. Unfortunately I had one seriously misplaced yarnover.
Here's a picture of the mistake.
Can you see it? It's kind of off to the left near my thumb. Trust me, it was there and it was annoying. Fortunately the mistake was in the very first repeat of the pattern, so I pulled out the lifeline, went in, fixed the mistake and then put the lifeline back in. Then realized that I'd only partially fixed the mistake. I'd added a yarnover where one was lacking, but hadn't realized that there was now an extra yarnover where there should have been none. I pulled the lifeline out AGAIN, knitted across, fixed the extra yarnover issue, pulled back what I'd just knitted (it was easier for me to find the mistakes if I tried to knit the next row, rather than just slipping the stitches), put the lifeline back in a second time and took a very deep breath. And a very large drink. Started again and this time, it worked.

Round about this time Justin got home and asked what I wanted to do with the evening. I told him I had absolutely no idea as I'd just spent the last hour staring at the same six stitches. He wisely removed himself from the room until I'd put a few rows between me and the mistake.

But after that, and after I had some dinner, the short rows went like a dream. Much like when I'd done the swatch, things didn't exactly match up, sometimes I had a few more or less stitches added on one side or the other b/c of changes in the pattern, but it all worked out pretty well. I'd say I'm about halfway through the short row portion and if all goes, well I might get that done tonight. If not it'll be days till it gets done since Arsenic & Old Lace starts up again tomorrow night and this is NOT dark theater knitting.

So here's the whole thing as it is now:

Getting very large. If you look closely for the purple lifeline, you can see where the border ends and the short rows begin.

Here are a couple of closer shots:

I'm really pleased with the contrast between the border and the short rows. The pattern looks great in the smaller stitches (even unblocked) and I feel like the border section is already getting more shape and definition from the stitches above.

I was still so excited this morning that I did another row before I went to work this morning. In fact - that's another thing that's nice - I can do a row in less than half an hour! I'm trying to really savor that since soon I'll be back to the full length of all the stitches and just doing the gradual decreases for either side of the train.

Here's a very, very close up showing the current end of the short rows.
Oh I'm so pleased right now. This is another savor moment. Because as I was typing I remembered that way back when I was swatching, I never did come up with a left leaning decrease swatch that I liked.

Eh, winging it is working reasonably well so far. I'll just keep doing that. Plus, blogging is much interesting if I screw up now and then. Stressful, but more interested. Cause otherwise it's going to be some very boring posts coming up.

So yes, savoring the moment. Savor. Savor. Savor.

Back on the needles

2009-06-16T13:21:00.002-04:00

That's where the dress is. Back on the needles. After all that math, I realized that I really wanted the train to be more of an oval than a circle and that I really couldn't be bothered to calculate the various aspects of ovals. So now I'm just trying to figure out exactly where to turn the short rows. I'm torn b/c starting working them across the middle 5 repeats seems a little too broad (there are 9 repeats in the train) and starting across the middle 3 seems too narrow.

It literally just occurred to me that I could turn midway through a repeat. Would be vaguely more complicated, but it is totally doable. So I guess I'll go do some more math after all.

Mom and Jenny have evaluated the border section and we've all decided that either some crocheting or a ribbon border will be needed to help keep those cast on stitches from catching on things. They're just so darn big. This will be pretty I think.

Mom and I did further experiments with the dress this weekend, holding various parts of it and various swatches up to different parts of my body. Really, we should have taken photos. I was wearing a kelly green baby doll top and it looked quite pretty showing through the ivory lace. So if dyeing goes poorly, there is a viable alternative.

I also addressed Mom's fears regarding drooping of the lace - my plan currently is to knit up through the Size 10 portion, which'll be about 2/3 of the skirt and then let it hang while I sew the fabric portion of the dress. Or at least the skirt part of the fabric portion.

Finally the skirt will be removable, so if it is catching on things horribly at the reception, I can just take it off. But I hope, with some good bustling, that this won't be an issue.

Um... wow

2009-06-10T19:54:00.008-04:00

Border is on the life line.
I actually took it off the needles b/c I wanted to check my gauge and make sure it was actually true to the swatches.

It is. It's large.

(Please ignore the fact that there is a door in the blounge. In fact, ignore the word blounge as well.)

Here it is in a kind of circle on its nice purple lifeline.

I lightly steam blocked the whole thing and I'm a little bit afraid of it. This is a picture of it growing as I block.

It's very, very big.
To clarify, it's exactly the size that I planned, because this section has to border the whole sweep of the train - which I planned to be 60". And it is. The whole thing measured at about 13 and 2/3 feet - I was aiming for 13 feet. So I was aiming for large. I just wasn't fully prepared to be smacked in the face by the largeness of it. I might in fact be on the way to a tiny little freak out, so I'll concentrate on the details.

I'm okay with the fact that it's 13 and 2/3 feet, which is 2/3 of a foot larger than I'd planned. The lace looks better blocked taller, but I didn't realize that until about a third of the way through - I think I could make that extra 8" or so go away if I had to. And even though gauge is very important, yadda yadda yadda, it's a full skirt. That splits up the front. And extra 2/3 of a foot isn't going to kill anyone.

So now I'm left with figuring out exactly how to do the short rows to make the train curve as I want it to. I actually did geometry this evening for the first time in more than 15 or so years. I'm now going to publish that geometry on the Internet and hopefully not embarrass myself or Sr. Mary Dee, the nun who taught me geometry (and calculus - but the least said of that the better). The idea that Sr. Mary Dee might see my blog and recognize incorrectly done geometry is actually scarier to me than the idea of the ridicule of the general public. After all, I have a theater degree. No one expects great things from me mathematically. Except for Sr. Mary Dee. And she was one scary nun. Once she scared the hiccups right out of me. I'm not kidding - it can be done.

Anyway, the 60" sweep of the train would be half the circumference of the circle, if I was making a circle. Circumference = pi * diameter. Diameter is what I'm looking for, so I'll know the width I want the train to be when I finish the short rows. 60 * 2 = 120 or the full circumference of my imaginary train circle. Divide both sides by pi and I get a diameter of 38.2". Divide that in half to get the radius of this imaginary circle, which is the height of the short row section and I get 14.1. Of course I never bothered to write down the gauge of my size 10/short row swatch b/c I was only really concerned with the gauge of the size 13 swatch (to get the bottom measurement of the skirt) and the size 8 swatch (to get the top measurement of the skirt). I have to go dig out my swatch from my wedding keepsake box and measure. There are all my little swatches. Don't they look cute?Fortunately the height is between 7-8" for one repeat, depending on where I measure it (the difference is due to the scalloped edge). So I can work the lace chart two full times and will get about 14.1 inches, or the desired height of the internal section of my train. And that means I'll have a 2-3' train with the border, which is a nice length I think. The width of one repeat is about 5-6" (again, difference is caused by the scalloped edge), which is a little more of a problem, since the train section has the pattern repeated 9 times and that would give me 45-54", not 38". I'm not really sure how to deal with that.

And that's really all the math I can handle. I know that I can figure out a way around that 7-16" difference. I know that I can now calculate exactly where to turn my first short row. I feel that that knowledge is about 15-20 minutes of hard thought away from me. Okay, maybe closer to 20-30 minutes of hard thought.

I also feel that I've drunk half a vodka and soda and I've already worked equations that involve pi for god's sake.

I bought a nice bridal magazine yesterday. I think I'm going to go read that for awhile.

Sometimes, you have to quit when you're ahead.

Border Done!

2009-06-08T10:34:00.006-04:00

Finished on Friday night.

Whew! I was surprised at how bittersweet it was. I mean, I was really, really glad to have it done and move on to something a little more complicated, but I also had the thought - this is done. I am only making 1 wedding dress and this is the only border it will have (I've decided to call the Size 13 section the border. Sounds much nicer than Size 13 section & easier for non-knitters to understand). This dress is a finite project and part of it is done.

Of course, if something goes horribly wrong down the line and I end up having to start over, I'm going to look back at this entry and laugh my ass off. With a large alcoholic drink in my hand. Ditto when it's two weeks before the wedding and I've feverishly sewing - I will look back at this and laugh and laugh and laugh. (Don't worry Mom, the dress will be done long before 2 weeks out.)

I started to put in the lifeline, but decided to wait and do one row on the Size 10 needles first (mental note - think of catchy name for Size 10 section). The lace pattern ends on a right side row and the stitches on the wrong side row are a real pain in the butt. B/c the yarn is so fine and the needles are so big, the yarn overs tend to travel and slip around on the needles - they basically move ahead of the stitches next to them and it can get confusing. I started the lifeline and then was really concerned that I was going to screw up the stitch order and make a big mess in the process. So - 1 row of Size 10, then life line.

I also started another knitting project - a very basic top down raglan shaped shell with cap sleeves.
The last two weeks have been stressful - Justin & I are both working really hard on a new show that opens on Thursday night and spending long hours out of the apartment. Frequently I have been coming back brain dead, but too keyed up to sleep and really wanted to do some nice soothing knitting. Each time I reached for the dress I forced myself to pull my hand back - knowing that in my brain dead state I was likely to make a horrible mistake, or make a very tiny mistake which would seem horrible or make a mistake and not even notice it until two months from now, when I'd see a glaring error in a totally unfixable location. I think this was very wise on my part.

But I was still left without soothing knitting and I realized that I really, really need soothing knitting in my life. I'm not a knitter who usually has 10 projects on the needles. I tend to work on one thing til it's done, occasionally two. So this is a little unusual for me. But I cast on for this little top last night - using leftovers from the Printed Silk Cardigan I made for Mom last summer. Due to a shockingly poor yardage calculation on my part I had a LOT of KnitPicks Shine Sport (my fave yarn) in turquoise. I also have some purple and pink from the baby hats of death. So that'll be a new top. I was going to use the yarn to teach myself crocheting, but I felt that learning did not really fall under the soothing, mindless vibe I was going for. I knitted on the subway this morning, standing up, during rush hour. Mindless. Soothing. Good.

Sooo close!

2009-06-01T12:32:00.003-04:00

To finishing the size 13 section of the dress. In Justin's words "It actually looks like something now, not just like a ball of string." I have a delusional hope that I'll finish the last 6-8 rows of the pattern tonight, but our new show is opening soon and I'm crazy busy wearing my off off Broadway producer hat, so there's not much time over the next couple of weeks. If not tonight, hopefully on Thursday.

Here's a pic of the dress, nestled in its home - a Junior's bag.

Justin was right - it's actually starting to look like something. That's why I took the bag pic - I like looking in and actually seeing it fill the bag. As opposed to early on, when I accidentally grabbed that mess of yarn that is my monument to pride (ie. my first two attempts to cast on) and had a tiny heart attack because I thought I'd pulled the dress of the needles. I can't make that mistake anymore. Thank god.

Another trip to Maryland

2009-05-25T11:33:00.005-04:00

Big developments on the dress, but on the fabric rather than the knitting front. Spent 5 days in Maryland last week and as I previously discussed, the dress doesn't travel. Just seemed like a very bad idea to tempt fate that way. So I bid farewell for a little while and decided to take the time in Maryland to concentrate on the fabric end of things.

Mom & I took a trip to Joann's to scout out patterns and fabric. I love Joann's. My first job was at Joann's and I worked there all throughout high school and for the first summer of college. Fabric for every formal dress I wore came from Joann's and even now I frequently order from them online. So of course, Joann's was where we headed. Main goal was to go through the pattern books and hopefully find a pattern since they're currently displaying the spring/summer looks. Mom & I sat down at the pattern book table and started flipping. At the end of the day I had 4 patterns that I thought were real contenders. One was out of stock, so that was that. And one Burda 7689 I decided was basically represented in elements of the other two, so it was out.

So here are the two finalists - New Look 6902 and McCalls 5806. Now the McCalls is a lot easier to pictures as a wedding dress b/c it IS a wedding dress pattern. And I do really like it as styled on the pictured model, but I'm not positive that I want all that shirring on the bodice - as someone who's rather petite in the bust, I could use the fullness, but I'm concerned it will be a little too busy. The pattern has an option for a non-gathered bodice, but that has seams down the front for shaping and I really wanted darts, not seams. So we have pattern 2 - New Look 6902. Which has a nice flat bodice, like I like and a slightly less full skirt. I think the flat bodice is going to end up winning out and the fuller skirt, although I might redistribute the fullness a little so the back has more fullness than the front. Also neither of these has a train, something which I gave absolutely no thought to until this very minute, so that's an issue which will need to be dealt with. The knitted train definitely needs some fabric under it so that it won't catch on the ground.

I browsed through Special Occasion fabrics and wasn't really wowed, when Mom drew my attention to the swatches of special order fabrics. They had a silk twill that I really liked and we color tested white & ivory with my skin - no surprise, I looked better in ivory. It's not too yellow of an ivory, which is nice. Then Mom found a green lacey, embroidered fabric in just the right shade of green. We held the two together and she said "It's going to be so beautiful". I honestly thought she was being sarcastic for a moment, then realized that she was actually choked up! At which point I got pretty choked up myself and we ended up hugging in the middle of Joann's and totally having a "My baby's getting married!" type of moment. Mom said afterwards that she'd heard other women say that it was a very special moment when they first saw their daughter in her wedding dress. I said that it's a good thing she's a seamstress too, b/c the moment that most normal mothers and daughters would be having in a bridal salon, we were having under the flourescents at Joann's, getting teary eyed over two 12x12 swatches of fabric!

Besides being touched I also felt really relieved b/c until I saw the swatches together, I was a little nervous that the ivory/green color combo wasn't going to work. I breathed a hefty sigh of relief, I'll tell you that.

Neither of us had brought a camera, so we came back to the store the next day to photograph me with the swatches.
PS on the knitting front - I've almost finished the second repetition of the chart on the Size 13's. One more repetition, then lifeline, needle change and short rows!

Back after a break

2009-05-21T10:25:00.002-04:00

Just came back from 5 days in Maryland, but found some awesome fabric for the non-knitted portion of the dress and took some more great pics of the Baltimore Museum of Industry. Nice long blog (but sadly not terribly knitty) blog post should be coming soon.

Eek! Justin saw my wedding dress!

2009-05-13T14:29:00.005-04:00

Yup, it happened. He came home from rehearsal and I had not yet finished my nightly 4 rows.

Fortunately, I don't think it was enough for him to be able to visualize the finished product.

At this point, we've decided that it works best as a hat.

Pretty classy, right?

PS No Star Trek: Next Generation last night and Star Trek:Entreprise does not work nearly as well. I ended up watching 18 Kids & Counting on TLC about the Duggar family who has (you guessed it) 18 kids. Their friends who have 17 kids came to visit. It was beyond disturbing, even more so than when I tried to watch Bridezillas over the weekend.

Scratch that - Bridezillas was actually WAAAY more disturbing. There was a woman who interrupted her mani/pedi to go get a pork chop. I'm not making that up.

4 More Rows

2009-05-12T09:53:00.002-04:00

No pics, but knitted 4 more rows last night. It takes about an hour to do two rows. It's a 16 row pattern. I'm planning to work it 3 times before I put in my lifeline and start the short rows and most likely change needles. At this rate it will take me 8 more days to finish the Size 13 border. Of course I won't be working on it every night - going out of town this weekend and not planning to take the "dress" with me. That seems like a recipe for disaster.

Oh and it seems like Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes provide the perfect amount of entertainment without being distracting. Thank god SciFi has them on heavy rotation... can't imagine why that is.

Successes and Failures

2009-05-11T11:43:00.006-04:00

On Saturday night, I was sitting on my bed with my nicely cast on stitches, purling away and listening to the sounds of a rehearsal for our theater company's production of Arsenic & Old Lace going on in my living room. I turned and actually started working the first lace row of the pattern (it starts on a wrong side row) and actually had the thought "Wow, I had no trouble casting on for this!"

Stupid.

Stupid.

Stupid.

I would like to say, in my defense, that I only THOUGHT this. I did not say it out loud to anyone, not even to myself or one of the cats (Nyssa was watching the rehearsal, Chiana was hiding from it). How the knitting gods heard this blasphemy I do not know, but they sure as hell did.

Within five minutes I hit one of my many markers and realized that I was a stitch short. No problem, I have these markers every 3-4 repeats so I never go too far without realizing I've made a mistake. So I raveled back and found a weird spot in my knitting. I could not initially define what this weird spot was, only that it was weird and it somehow caused a stitch to be lost. I looked at it for a very long time and did a number of interesting experiments with dropping loops, picking them up and turning the knitting in various ways. None of them worked. I finally came to the conclusion that in my purling of the first row, the knitting had gotten twisted on the needles and I had not noticed and just purled right on through. So the knitting was now twisted. A tiny twist, which would probably not be noticeable. But it was there. I stared at it awhile more, then put it away for the night.

The next day I sat on the sofa looking at the knitting and decided that I could not start out knowing that their was a mistake so near the beginning of the dress. I'll allow for the possibility that there'll be mistakes down the line which will get ignored or worked in, but now? When I hadn't even finished 3 rows. Couldn't do it. Frogged the whole thing. Cast on again. Purled VERY carefully this time with no twists. Started working the first lace row. Got to the final section and realized that I was short two stitches. Figured it must be a mistake since I'd counted THREE times to make sure there were enough stitches. Asked my mom to be quiet while I counted the stitches again. Yes, I was talking on the phone while I was knitting. Listened, with perhaps less than good grace to my mother's suggestion that doing something else while I was knitting the dress was perhaps not the best idea in the world. Pointed out, rather testily I admit, that I'd made the mistake BEFORE we got on the phone, hence it was not the phone which was the problem. Gave up again. Finished call with my mom, trying to be a bit more polite to her. After all, it was Mother's Day.

Once we'd hung up, I cut off the twice knitted beginnings of the dress. Cast on for a third time, trying to achieve a quiet, Zen-like state. Counted each section VERY carefully 4 times. Purled the first row, being very, very careful not to twist. Began knitting the first row. Made it about 2/3's of the way through when a very mischievous part of my mind tried to point out how well things were going. That part was quickly shouted down by the rest of my mind reminding it that Pride goeth before a fall and also that the second mistake was in the LAST section of the row, so it wouldn't do well to count our chickens before they were hatched, etc. Made it to the last section and knitted the last 18 stitches literally holding my breath.

Success!

I purled another row just to be safe and then put it down. Doesn't pay to temp fate.

So at the end of the weekend I'm left with this:

And, rather sadly, with this:

Which I'm keeping as a monument to pride.

371 Stitches

2009-05-08T11:31:00.002-04:00

I think we're going to need a bigger boat.

Blocking Difficulties

2009-05-07T16:06:00.003-04:00

So the first blocking of the Short Row Swatch was no good. I pulled the top totally straight and distorted the bottom so the stitches were all stretched and it didn't have the nice scalloped edge that this lace pattern makes.

I looked at it. I left it on the towel all pinned up for several days, looking at its wrongness and willing it to fix itself. Finally I gave up and re-wet it and re-blocked it. This finished product is much prettier, but it's left me with some lingering doubts regarding the blocking of the finished project. This is going to be baaaaad to block.

I was already thinking it was going to be bad and being relieved that I have a guest bed that I can block it on and not need to rush or worry about the cats sleeping on it or clawing it up while it's drying. And I am still glad about those things (and lucky too - we've signed the 2 year lease renewal, so no worries on that front till 2011 - not til after our first anniversary in fact. Wow. That was weird to think about.) But anyway, I think I'm going to need to do some serious blocking related research and maybe invest in some blocking wires. Anyone have thoughts on blocking wires?

But overall, I've swatched all I can think to swatch. The needles are here. The yarn is here. I think it's time to start.

Tomorrow is our 8 year dating anniversary. It'd be very poignant and lovely to cast on then, but I have to go to work, go to a theater meeting, see a show and probably go for drinks afterward. Yes, I do HAVE to go for drinks afterward. It's part of the supportive seeing a friend in a show experience. Anyway, tomorrow is not an ideal day to cast on. Waiting til next Friday, which is exactly one year til the wedding, would also be poignant, but I doubt I can be that patient. Also I'll be sitting on a train bound for Maryland that night.

So I think I'll cast on tonight.

Size 10 Short Row Swatch

2009-05-04T19:04:00.004-04:00

All right! Happily was able to bang this out this weekend. Short rows, thank god, pretty much work the way I thought they did. Plus, I didn't bother with wrapping stitches (or with working in the wraps), just left the holes, figuring that they'd blend in with the pattern. Or make their own pattern. Something to that effect.

I ended up finishing one whole repeat of the chart and didn't have enough stitches left on either side to do another and keep adding an extra stitch each row. So I just started going every other row and every third row and I don't think it was too noticeable. We'll know for sure once I block the thing.

The only possible hitch is that the short row area seems to be pulling the border rows a bit tight, they're ruffling up a little at this point. Might work out with blocking or might just be an issue with this swatch. I was only working the short rows over 3 repeats of the chart and for the actual dress I'll be working it over something like 9 repeats of the pattern and working it on Size 13 needles. So I'm not going to waste time worrying over that. Hopefully I just didn't jinx myself there, otherwise I'm going to be going back to this email in a month or to and saying "I told you so!" to myself. I love to say I told you so, and it only loses a little bit of its charm when it's self directed.

All in all I'm amazed at how much planning I've done on this. I've knitted 4 swatches! And that's only counting the linen swatches. I knitted a whole bunch of other ones and there were a few that were frogged and redone so many times that even though only 1 swatch was produced, something like 4 swatches were knitted. If the saying is "Measure twice, cut once" I've always been more of a "Measure once, cut once" kind of a girl. Or, truth be told, a "Vaguely estimate the measurement and then say screw it and cut it anyway" kind of a girl. I won't lie - this has lead to a dress making related problem or two or five and to some of the incidents of crying and cat throwing that I eluded to in earlier entries.

So why was this time different? Well, part of it was that I kept repeating to myself over and over "It's your wedding dress stupid". That had something of an effect. But honestly it probably had more to do with making up my mind about the yarn and then not having the needles. If I'd had exactly what I wanted on February 11th I probably would have cast on that day. This whole taking my time thing has been good. Even though my basic concept has been the same pretty much from Day 1, I've given a lot of thought to the design and have made some tweaks. I've opened myself to the possibility of dyeing the finished product, although this idea scares the crap out of my mother. I promised her that I'd have the dress done more than a month before the wedding. She suggested that I try to have it done perhaps a little sooner than that. I'll certainly do my best. Fortunately when I told her my needle sizes, I think she was relieved. She was afraid I was knitting the whole thing on 1's! My eyes and my hands hurt just thinking about it...

Later: Would have posted this last night but the internet at home hated photos. Didn't have time before work this morning to check out the blocked swatch, so that's a little something to look forward to when I get home!

Size 10 swatch anyone?

2009-04-30T16:48:00.003-04:00

Maybe with some short rows?

Since the official needles are still in the hands of UPS and the cone of laceweight linen is unending, I have decided that this weekend I will knit another swatch. Size 10. Short rows. An attempt to make a miniature train.

And maybe, MAYBE, a week from now I'll be casting on for real.

Math sucks.

2009-04-29T13:52:00.006-04:00

I finished and blocked the size 13 swatch over the weekend. Here it is pre-blocking.
I tried to crumple it up and make it look like it was a train, or flowy or something.
Which really just makes it look like a pretty mess, but that's okay.

So here it is after the blocking.

And gathered up again.

And here it is with the swatch on the size 8 needles, for contrast. Isn't that crazy? I thought that the 13 swatch looked insanely large, but compared to it the size 8 swatch looks almost dense.
I spent most of last night trying to do math and figure out how exactly the train is going to work. I'm planning to go with the two side rectangles and a train triangle idea of construction, but I'm going to knit them as one big piece. The original idea being that the train triangle would give the back fullness (and a train, duh) and it would be decreases out, until there were only the two side rectangles left at the top of the piece. I still want to use that plan, but I'm trying to figure out exactly how to work this. I want to cast on for the whole thing at once, so I think the best was to make the curvy-floor draggy part of the train is to do short rows. I want a big, long section in the Size 13's, probably about a foot deep and then do short rows to fill it the whole "floor section". Then begin the skirt proper and start doing the planned decreases on either side of the skirt train section to give it its triangular shape.

Problem - my experience with short rows is very slight and I'm not sure they'll actually work in this manner. I've done a lot of thinking about this on the subway. Guess I need to sit down and try to chart it out. Urgh. This is the situation where normally I'd just wing it. If I had the needles I'd totally be winging it right now.

But I don't have the needles.

Needles are on order

2009-04-23T20:00:00.003-04:00

From Knitpicks - interchangable nickel plated circulars. Now I'm wondering if I should have picked the Harmony Wood. I usually do prefer bamboo or wood to metal. Not really sure what I was thinking on that one. Size 8, 10, 13. Will have pictures of the completed size 13 swatch soon.

Oh and other knitting projects - besides a variety of kiddy stuff and the cardigan I promised to knit for my grandmother, I really want to do the new Gatsby dress from the summer Interweave Knits. That doesn't make me crazy, does it?

I really want those needles...

May 15, 2010

2009-04-23T19:25:00.010-04:00

That's the date kids. That's when it's all happening. And quite frankly that is the absolute deadline for the dress to be ready.

Where's it happening? Why at the Baltimore Museum of Industry! Yeah, we loved it before we got there and we loved it even more after we saw it. With everyone word spoken by Jessica, the awesome site coordinator, we loved it more. In fact, it was the second place we visited and we canceled the rest of our appointments. (okay, that's not strictly speaking true. We canceled two and went on one just to make sure that the BMI was THE place. It is.) It has everything we wanted - it's a very different place, big, spread out, tons of stuff to look at, near the Harbor and it screams Baltimore. Weather permitting we'll get married outside on the brick terrace under the neon glow of the Domino's Sugar sign - a Baltimore landmark. Inside we'll party around a crazy variety of exhibits. We are so, so thrilled. Mom said it was great to see both of us so happy - eyes lit up like little kids. When we were driving back on Sunday afternoon/evening Justin turned to me and said "I just can't believe that it's so perfect."
Well, one thing - it was built years ago, so it definitely wasn't under construction when those scenes from "The Wire" were shot. So we'll just have to look out for drug dealers (kidding! No one read that and freak out.)

Got back to NYC and the hand pain which has been plaguing me a bit settled down, so I figured it was time for some more dress work. Took my size 8 swatch and did some math for the top of the dress - know the number of repeats I want for that. Monday night cast on a sixe 13 swatch. Plan is to have 3 "panels" - two side panels of 7 repeats each, which will form the front, sides and part of the back. One larger panel which will be triangular and will form the train and possibly a portion of the center back. I put panels in quotes b/c it will all be one big piece, but I'm still visualizing it in dressmaker terms as pattern pieces. Don't know if that's good, bad or just how my mind works. Anyway - the purpose of the size 13 swatch is to make sure i have sufficient fullness at the base of the skirt - we're going for a gathered A-line shape here, with most of the shaping provided by decreasing out the back triangle panel and by switching to successively smaller needles.

Gotta say - size 13 might be a little big. It kind of looks like a knotty mess right now. But then, lace does look bad until blocked and I did want a "frothy" look. Only time will tell I suppose.

Oh - in case you couldn't tell I decided to throw caution to the winds, knit with Kay's laceweight and dye it at the end. Procrastination at its finest.

Also it was pointed out to me by someone (Hi Nana!) that I write an awful lot of words. Such is my way I fear. Plus I'm afraid that if I don't write all this down in multiple places, I'll forget.

You Can't Take Photos in Old Navy

2009-04-20T11:48:00.003-04:00

Last Wednesday Justin & I were having dinner with a friend and I was killing time between work and our dinner reservation. So I decided to go window shopping at Old Navy. Now I love the Old Navy Town Gowns and when I first saw the ads this year I thought - those are what I want for my bridesmaids! But I checked online and they didn't come in green. So I let that idea go...

But as I was browsing through Old Navy - there it was! It's not exactly like the Town Gowns, it has a tiered skirt and the bodice is a little different, but it's very close. So I decided to take a couple of pictures to show my prospective maids - just as inspiration. I took one pic with the flash, didn't like how it washed out the color and then took a couple without flash. As I was snapping my final pic, one of the store employees came by and mumbled "You can't take pictures."

Really??? I didn't argue b/c I make a point not to argue with people who are just doing their jobs (and probably being paid minimum wage), but really Old Navy!?!?! No pictures? I can see in high end bridal salons where designers are afraid of their designs being ripped off and made for cheap. But we're talking about a dress that retails for $29.50 and has been on sale this season for $15!

Sheesh.

PS don't have the cord to hook the camera to the computer right now, so no pics posted. But I will put them up later! I'm sticking it to the man! And YOU are that man Old Navy. YOU.

PPS Here's the picture. Ha!

To dye or not to dye?

2009-04-14T12:40:00.004-04:00

No real progress made on the actual knitting front, so look at this incredibly cute baby hat.

Thank god it is the cutest thing I've ever knitted b/c I can't tell you what a pain in the ass it was to make. I think that's my fault far more than the designers and it was quick - that's the good thing about a hat for a newborn. Even if it's obnoxious it's over quickly. The pattern is Baby Tart from Knitty.

Like I said, no dress related knitting done, but I've done some more yarn investigations. Ordered two colorcards from Webs - one for their Valley Perle Cotton and one for their 8/2 Cotton-Linen blend. Both had shades of green that I liked either in the catalog or online, so we'll see how they look and feel when they arrive.

I also reached out to a couple of dyers about the possibility of dyeing Kay's laceweight. First to the folks at Red Fish Dyeworks (www.redfishdyeworks.com) - I really liked the greens in their A color wheel, but they only do silk yarn blended with wools and alpaca and I'm worried about the heat as the wedding seems to become later each year every time I turn around. Anyway - haven't heard back from them. So that's that.

Second I emailed Ray at Knitivity. Ray had commented on Kay's M-D post and given info about his Duralace - a wool/nylon blend. Again - warmth issues. But I went to his website and read about how well he matches colors - there was a page which unfortunately I can't find again where someone had sent him a picture of their tabby cat and he made a sock yarn colorway to match! As a kitty lover I was both intrigued and somewhat disturbed by my own intriguedness. (When I told Justin his reaction was much simpler. He was just disturbed.) So anyway, emailed Ray, who got back to me VERY quickly even though it was a Sunday - in fact, I think it was Easter - and said that unfortunately linen is out of his scope of dyeing at this point in time. But he made some helpful suggestions regarding contacting other dyers through Etsy or Ravelry and also gave me a couple of points to think on. Those being 1) do I want the yarn separated into hanks before dyeing and 2) would I want to knit the pieces first and then dye them.

The answers to those questions being 1) no and 2) Huh. Never thought of that.

Although the prospect of trying to dye the lace in its current cone form is downright terrifying to me, the idea of dyeing the finished project seems somehow more manageable. Now that may be b/c it's also something that I could put off to very far down the line or it may be because I enjoy procrastination. Which are really both the same reason.
Of course the reason not to do this is kind of major - what if I dyed it a horrible color? All my hard work would be lost/ruined/destroyed and I would be left a quivering mess of a bride. In fact, if we really want to get crazy with the worst case scenarios, I would be doing the dyeing mere days before the big event, thereby dooming myself to appearing in a half done dress, an ill-fitting David's Bridal gown (no time for alterations!) or naked.

To which I say - well I'd dye one of the tiny sleeves first. Far in advance.

Anyhoo, that's about it. We're at T-3 days til the great wedding site visit of 2009. It would be fair to say that I wish I had some Valium. I can't even tell you what I'm nervous about, as I dearly love everyone who will be present and really like every place we're going to see. Just feeling highly nervous anyway.

Just b/c I cannot stop talking about it - here's a list of where we're going:

The Cloisters
www.cloisterscastle.com

Baltimore Museum of Industry
www.thebmi.org
to see pics of an actual wedding there go to:
http://stephen.lovelifeimages.net/category/Baltimore%20Museum%20of%20Industry_1.html

Chase Court
www.chasecourt.com

The Harbor Club at Pier 5
http://www.harbormagic.com/Meetings_Banquets/Weddings/weddings_receptions.asp

American Visionary Art Museum
www.avam.org
actual wedding pics:
http://maryland.perfectweddingguide.com/photographs/all/wedding-celebrations/wedding-reception-venues/american-visionary-art-museum/1648/new-image29sep085501/
http://blog.jasonknauer.com/2008/08/angie-matt-wedding-at-american.html

The Baltimore Museum of Industry is our favorite - it says something about a place that you can be watching old episodes of The Wire and say, "Oh look honey! Those men are discussing a drug deal right near where we might get married". I mean literally, on the pier where they have the outdoor weddings. Of course the episode was a few years old, so I think the museum was still in its construction stages. Hopefully there are no drug dealers there anymore. Or even actors, pretending to be drug dealers.

Anyway, keep your fingers crossed for me.

The big swatch is done!

2009-04-09T10:52:00.011-04:00

More good ssk suggestions have come in and I realized that I'd probably be fiddling with getting the right leaning decrease down for awhile and that I might as well just finish that big swatch so I could see it blocked and see what I thought of the needle size.

So I finished it with a pretty tight bind off at the top - figuring that eventually I'll want it gathered in for the top of the dress and then gave it a light blocking (pic above).

Got up this morning, pulled the pins and took a look.

To put it simply - I like it.

Look at it being all drapey and train-y and stuff!

I'm even thinking the needles could go bigger. I had a random thought the other night as I was falling asleep - maybe I'd start at the bottom with REALLY big needles - maybe 13's - then go down to 10's about mid-way through and then down to 8's at the top. I think it could work. It would be very frothy looking at the bottom, which would be pretty cool.

Whatever random off the cuff decreasing I did throughout seemed to really work. Of course I don't remember any of it, having not bothered to write it down, assuming it would look like crap. So I'm left wondering - is it better when I'm not trying too hard or is it just that even if the decreases aren't the best, the crappiness isn't as obvious on the laceweight yarn as it is when I do the swatches in the sportweight?

Here's the final decrease - where I decreased one repeat from the left and the right. I added some lovely arrows to point to the place in the middle where the pattern was eliminated altogether. Just threw that together last night while watching TV and drinking a beer. I mean, is is perfect? Probably not. Is it something that would look fine amidst a sea of lace? Yeah. Totally.

And the right leaning decreases which have given me such stress in the little swatches? They look fine.

So we shall see. I'm still going to try and come up with a nice, consistent chart for those decreases, but I'm not going to keep stressing over how pretty it looks. In the end, I think it will be just fine.

So my debate right now is train or no train? I really would like a very short train - no more than a foot or two. I feel reasonably confident about my ability to create a bustle, but I realized that I'd need to attach the knitted lace to the underskirt at the bustle points for it to work effectively. Not sure if I want to do this. I had thought that the underskirt would be part of the train as well... maybe the train could just be the lace? Especially if it ends up super frothy, that might be okay? I don't know... thoughts?

Looking at yarn

2009-04-07T17:18:00.008-04:00

I think the comments have pretty much stopped coming in over on Mason-Dixon Knitting, so I took them all and made one big list that I've been working my way through slowly but surely.

Things are still a little up in the air with respect to the date, so I won't make a final decision just yet. While I could conceivably feel good about a 100% merino or cashmere for an early April wedding (especially if it's anything like this April - sheesh!) I don't think it would be quite as nice for a mid-May wedding. The great wedding site trip is next weekend, so it's just a little while longer to wait and then the yarn ordering can commence.

Back to the comments! So many wonderful suggestions, from incredibly specific ones with color suggestions and weblinks, to general fiber ideas. About 30 different suggestions in all.

And that's just for yarn! There were also suggestions about the design - one of my favorites came almost in the form of a haiku, I have copied and pasted it here b/c to do otherwise would not do it justice:

daisys you knit daisys
then put them together

i would make an apron
with lovely satin ties
down the back

the apron could be removed
and then passed on

Posted by elizabeth a airhart at April 1, 2009 09:19AM

I don't think I'll end up using this suggestion, but there's just something about this comment. I keep coming back to it. I feel like elizabeth was in such a lovely Zen type place when she wrote it, it makes me calm just to read it. It was interesting to me how many people thought about the dress or the knitting being passed on - apparently I will be crafting an heirloom! No pressure there... but really, how many people wear a dress again? Particularly their mother's dress? Someone else had commented that she would never wear her mom's hippie dress, but her grandmother's Coco Chanel like 50's dress would have been perfect. It's funny, my grandmother's dress was definitely more like today's styles - big full skirt, fitted bodice, although not strapless as everything is these days. In some ways my design is more like my mother's - both of us will have empire waisted dresses and neither of us went strapless, but Mom's dress was high necked and long sleeved! She got married in January, but still... sleeves of some kind I will have, but definitely not the high neck. Anyway, the comments got me thinking about legacy, family, heirlooms, changing things between generations. I apologize now to my possible future dress wearing children! I will not be taking your theoretical taste into consideration. Hope you like green, otherwise you're screwed. But I digress...

On the design related front, I had a comment too from my friend Nutella about new & improved ssk's which I have to try for the next version of the right leaning swatch. I hate my ssk's currently. I always hate my ssk's, so it's not like that's anything new, but it's frustrating. I also have some ideas for improved decreasing which will better incorporate the natural decreases in the pattern - instead of starting the decreasing at row 1, I'm going to try starting in later in the pattern where the stitch count decreases already and the left side of the pattern comes to a natural conclusion. Hopefully the combination of these two things will lead to greater success.

Decreasing is hard

2009-04-03T12:45:00.003-04:00

Apparently wine is very useful when trying to decrease b/c I had such trouble with these swatches. Made them both in KnitPicks Shine Sport b/c the heavier yarn made it easier to watch the stitches as I was knitting as opposed to waiting til after blocking to see that they looked like crap.

Wednesday night was the left leaning swatch, all knit 2 togethers and knit 3 togethers for the most part. I unraveled this thing about six times, but finally ended up with something I was very happy with. If you look at the pic of both swatches you can see how the decreases work with the natural swoop of the pattern and it looks quite pretty.

Thursday night was the right leaning swatch, all slip slip knits and passing slipped stitches over. This I'm less than thrilled with. I'm on the right track, but obviously didn't get enough stitches decreased in time (see how much wider it is at the top than the other swatch?) But I'd hit the wall at the end of the night and opted to stop rather than get all cranky. In the end though I think this side will never be as pretty as the other, it just doesn't integrate with the lace's pattern as well as the other decreases do. I'm going to get this better, but I'm not going to sweat it. Quite frankly, no one should be looking so closely at my butt that they notice and are bothered by this. Can you tell I'm still a little annoyed about this swatch? Ah well...

Sorry this pic is a little dark - there's exactly one spot in our apartment that gets nice natural light in the morning and as anyone in NYC can tell you, it's raining today. Not too much natural light to go around.

So today I'm charting out what I did and then I'm going to knit this swatch again. Then the decreasing will all be planned and it'll be all about the yarn selections. And finding a good pattern. Oh and actually deciding where and when were getting married. That might be nice too.

A Bigger Swatch

2009-04-01T17:55:00.000-04:00

So look at the new swatch. Isn't it pretty? And large!?!?!

Look how tiny it was at the beginning of yesterday! It grew! A lot! Who thought I'd get so excited about an unblocked lace swatch?!?!

Since the verdict was definitely towards sizing up the needles, I threw caution to the minds and whipped out a pair of 8's. The point of this swatch was to see the lace on the bigger needles and to try decreasing the pattern.

Last night was a mini-knit night with Jenny, Tegan and wine in my living room. I had a very basic idea of how I was going to do the decreasing - just knit 2 together on the right and slip slip knit on the left for every right side row. This sort of worked. For one thing, it was more complicated than I'd thought it would be and I probably should have sat with the chart and planned it out rather than winging it. For another, winging it while chatting with the girls, watching a movie (Twilight - eh) and working my way through a bottle of wine was perhaps not the most efficient or wise way to go about it. Whatever, it was fun and that is part of the idea behind this whole thing - that I might enjoy myself and maybe even learn something! Plus, what is the likelihood of me knitting the whole thing without a single glass of wine (or vodka)? Very small.

But still - it more or less worked! The repeats got smaller (duh) and since the pattern is a square, 16 stitches x 16 rows, knitting through the chart one time fully decreases out one repeat of the pattern. Basically I cast on five repeats, worked through the chart once, then marked off the repeats on each end. I decreased at the beginning of the repeat to the left of the first marker and at the end of the decrease to the right of the second marker. So if the repeats were numbered 1,2,3,4,5 I was decreasing on 2 & 4. By the time I worked through the chart once I had repeats 1,3 & 5 remaining. Tonight I'm going to work through again and eliminate repeat 3, currently neatly bracketed by my stitch markers.

This is how I plan to create a train. Or what passes for a train and what may just be some fullness in the back. Nutella Nutterson said in the comments for my first post that the dress seems very Regency. And although I wasn't thinking Regency when I had the idea, it is a Regency kind of look. In fact when I was trolling the Internet looking for patterns for the fabric portion of the dress, I found Sensibility Patterns. Some very nice patterns, from which I lifted the idea of having back fullness. But I still kind of want a train. I'm trying to think that if I cast on and then start decreasing, will that automatically make a train since the part between the markers will be longer? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this.

So to go back to last night, poor Justin came home to fine three women, two open bottles of wine and Twilight playing on his 50" TV. He took one look at Robert Pattinson's red lips and pale face and said "Oh god, I know what movie this is." At which point we all giggled hysterically, knowing that due to some Amazon website confusion, Amazon thought that HE was the one who had ordered a 24 hour download of Twilight. You know that link at the top of Amazon where it says "Hi Justin! If you're not Justin, click here..." I didn't click there. Someone's going to be getting some interesting Amazon recommendations off of this one. Trying to distract Justin from the vampires I said,
Me: Oh hon, we ordered pizza.
Justin:I know.
Me: How? (General surprise from all the ladies)
Justin: I got an email from Domino's about my order. (Pause) It came right after the email from Amazon congratulating me on my order for the online version of Twilight.

I really should watch the defaults on our browser.

When the girls left he turned to me and said "that was a lot of estrogen"

Of course then we watched The Room on Cartoon Network. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the dress, but it was so bizarre that I felt I must mention it. It's the worst movie I've ever seen. And I've seen Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Oh and to go back to the dress, someone asked if I was open to other lace patterns. I am.

Finally, I enlisted a lovely assistant to help me showcase the swatch. Enjoy!

Wow. People read my blog

2009-03-30T19:37:00.000-04:00

There are people following my blog! People besides Jenny! This is very novel for me.

So I felt that the main thing I should do is give some info on the dress vision. So scroll down read the "Inspirations" post. It wasn't up yesterday, but I fought with the scanner, Photoshop and Blogger for awhile and now it is. Hopefully that'll clarify things as many people justifiably said that they couldn't picture the dress.

Second, we've done more talking about wedding dates and it could go as late as May or June now. That decision will be made in about a month when we visit our sites down in Baltimore.

Third and by far the biggest thing is the fact that it has been implied and in some cases stated quite clearly that I am a) delusional, b) misguided, c) in need of a realistic talking to or failing that, a slap in the face (Jenny, presumably you are supposed to administer the slap) or that d) I am flat out insane.

To which I say: Maybe.

But I will say first and foremost that I am so onboard with my own insanity here. Every dress I've worn to every semi-formal occasion since I was 15 years old has been homemade. First by my mom and later by me. My taste has always been a bit off and I come from a very crafty line of women. Am I saying that I won't be crying, swearing and/or throwing the cat? No I am not. I'm just saying that I've cried, sworn and thrown the cat before. We're all used to it here.

Witness the ensembles that I wore to the weddings I attended last year:
Winter wedding - Homemade velvet dress, handknitted shrug.

Destination wedding - homemade sundress, knitted shawl (this dress, oddly caused the most crying and cat throwing)

Future bro & sis in law's wedding - homemade dress - love this one! Inspired by a Barbie doll. Made a little drawstring purse to match and everyone was amazed that I made my purse. I was like "I'm wearing a boned corset! I hemmed ruffles for 10-20 hours! And you're commenting on a purse I made in 20 minutes!" Gracious as always, I kept that though to myself. Also, this is perhaps, the worst picture ever taken of Justin & I, but it shows off the outfit really well, so c'est la vie.

Handknitted shrug - my cousin's wedding - she requested we all wear red and I already had this awesome red dress. (There's my mom with us in the pic - Hi Mom!)

And a final wedding, to which the only handmade thing I wore was a necklace made by my Nana. And I tried to make a sweater and to remake a dress I'd made years ago. Neither worked. I ditched both and it turned out to be such a warm November day that I never could have worn the sweater even if it had turned out.

That being said I have a few safety mechanisms in mind. First off - the sewn portion of the dress will be a perfectly fine wedding dress all on its own. If something horrible happens to the knitting, I will not be nekkid on the wedding day. Or beating down the door of David's Bridal. While I'm relatively new to knitting, I've been sewing since I was 6 years old. That's 25 years of sewing (crap! 25 years???) so I feel pretty confident about that. The plan is to start knitting, then make the fabric dress, then continue knitting and attach the knitting to the dress. The knit parts will be the overskirt and the cap sleeves.

I started another swatch on MUCH bigger needles as I was sitting here watching the blogger progress bar spin on my pics and that had me thinking about Kay's awesome laceweight. It is some cool stuff and the possibility of having a green fabric dress with ivory knitted lace is very tempting. Not the least of which reason is b/c I'm lazy and if I wanted to do some dyeing I'd have to do it on our back fire escape. I'll spare you the visual, it probably wouldn't be pretty. But although I can envision a green dress with ivory, and it's a very nice vision, has a green sash and everything, it's not my wedding dress.

It's not the vision that I had that prompted me to take off on this crazy project. And when you're used to sewing and going totally off the reservation like I am, and when you have less than stellar skills with a pencil (again, read the Inspirations post), that mental vision is the most important thing. Remember those pictures above of my that I wore to the future bro & sis in law's wedding? It started as these two patterns.

My mother asked me: do you ever just make a pattern as it was intended?
Um. No.

Justin & I had this conversation last night:
Me: Honey, Jenny's friend posted about the dress on her blog yesterday and now apparently a lot of people on the internet think I'm insane
Justin: Huh. (pause) Well you know they're kind of right.

But really - I did all that work to look good at other peoples' weddings? How can I not work at least as hard to look good at mine?

Kay's Lace Swatch

2009-03-30T10:47:00.001-04:00

So, um - hi Mason Dixon Knitters!

I had this whole plan and in fact have a blog entry waiting about all my inspirations, hopes & dreams... but time kind of got away from me and I didn't scan the things I meant to scan and then this morning Jenny emailed me to let me know that Kay had blogged about me!

So here's just a little bit of Kay's lovely yarn knitted into a swatch. Actually, it's the swatch in the act of being blocked (the post blocking pic didn't turn out so good).

This was on size 3 needles. Too tiny I think... had an original vision of kind of chunky lace, but as the wedding date moves further back into spring and I think about it more, I think lighter & airier is the way to go. So tonight I'll try on something larger...

Inspirations

2009-03-22T14:56:00.000-04:00

All right - this the inspiration post which I wrote last week, but which needed some serious scanner time to be made whole. Anyway, I didn't really edit it other than to add the photos, so here it is, just a little late.

So enough with the swatches. Here are my inspirations for the dress.

First - this lovely sketch that I made of my dress only a couple days after the engagement. I think we can all agree that my talents run more towards the fiber and less towards the graphic arts.

So second is this sketch that I made using the StyleShake website. Not exactly what I want, but they are capable of indicating a small train sweeping below the feet. See how the right side of the dress is wider than the left? That's my attempt to convey a train and/or extra fullness in the back.

Third - my Dayflower Lace Cami - which remains a huge inspiration. This is the color I want. Do you hear me world? (shakes her fist at the skies) Give me this color!
Pictured with my are my awesome, although non-crafty Aunt C, my grandmother, former mistress of pretty much all fiber related arts (blame arthritis for the "former" in her title) and my cousin Cary, knitter extraordinaire.

Although in terms of color, if we end up with a March wedding date, I might consider more of a forest green. I've also considered making myself some matching fingerless lace gloves. I've even considered hooking them to the sleeves a la Camden from last fall's Knitty. (Okay, let the bitching about the badness of that idea begin. You cannot stop me though! I am Bridezilla and your resistance only makes me stronger!)

Finally, the awesome designs of Kitty Chen. I saw this dress and was immediately won over. It came at a time when I had started to doubt my vision a little bit. When I was starting to think not that making the dress was a bad idea, but that maybe my design concept was a little blah, a little to little girly and a little too precious. Then I saw this dress and knew that the concept could be awesome.

Oh and did I mention that I'll have a green veil? Just made of netting thank you - I think the dress will be more than enough knitting for this girl.

The Beginning

2009-03-22T14:13:00.000-04:00

So not long after Justin proposed (like within 24 hours) I decided that I wanted to make my own wedding dress. It was the one thing that right away I felt very sure about. Initially we were wrangling over whether we wanted a destination wedding or to be married in Baltimore (home for both of us) and a whole bunch of other things. So the dress was the one sure thing from the beginning. Surprisingly, given the number of sewing related breakdowns he's seen, Justin was fully supportive of this idea.

I already had a vision in mind - almost a year ago I had made So & So's Dayflower Lace Cami and even then I thought it would translate into a beautiful wedding dress. This was what I wanted - empire waist, cap sleeves, square cut bodice and a knitted lace overskirt that would split up the front to reveal a fabric underskirt. The knitting would all be green and the fabric would all be white (or ivory).

And that is where I still am today. I immediately began swatching all of the random bits of yarn that were laying around in my stash.
First - Caron Naturals Spa Yarn. Really, I'm not sure why I did this. I initially toyed with the idea of using a sport or DK weight yarn, but having made a shrug with this yarn, I knew it was splitty and would drive me crazy if I made a whole dress out of it. It's also largely synthetic and very floppy - would not hold up the pattern well at all. Still it was something to do while I look at yarns online and tried to find the perfect string. And it was practice on the Dayflower Lace.

Second I knitted a much larger swatch out of KnitPicks Shine Sport yarn. I love this yarn. This is quite frankly still a contender, even though it's cheap and I don't know how well it would stand the test of time. Still - I will only be wearing this dress once. Anyway - it held the pattern surprisingly well even after having been hung up for several days. Granted, the dress will be a lot heavier, but I still like this as a chunkier alternative to laceweight. For some reason this makes me think of tapestry. It's also the same weight as the yarn I used for my original Dayflower Lace Cami.

I made this swatch out of some leftover sock yarn - ignoring the fact that the striping would make the lace nearly impossible to see. Still - practice.

And then I made a final swatch out of some lightweight sock yarn - Trekking Something Something. This turned out quite well and I was able to block all the lovely little swoops in pretty well. I think this will warrant investment in blocking wires for the real thing though.

Finally my dear friend Jenny Gill told me her grand vision - the vision that leads me to writing this blog today. She wanted to make me and my dress internet famous. I said "what the hell?" you only live once and who doesn't want to be internet famous? Jenny reached out to Kay Gardiner of Mason Dixon knitting for guidance. Told her my main requirements: green, preferably a natural fiber and that it couldn't be too pricey. The budget for this dress (and the whole wedding) is loooow. Kay immediately came back with linen - a fiber that had never crossed either Jenny's or my mind. It dealt so well with the fact that the wedding is planned for spring - making wool, etc a slightly dicey proposition. Furthermore, Kay had a full, enormous cone of Euroflax laceweight in a nice ivory. She suggested dyeing it and so generously offered it up to me for swatching or possibly even dress making. An Upper West Sider like myself, Kay left the yarn at our LYS, Knitty City on Friday night and Saturday afternoon Justin & I walked down to pick it up. It is a huge cone of insanely delicate lace. I am in awe of it.

While we were walking back home we had this discussion. Justin had actually been pretty quiet about the fact that I was taking him on a walk to a yarn store on a Saturday afternoon. The fact that it was a really nice day probably helped in this regard.
"So," I said, "Jenny has this plan for making the dress internet famous."
"Oh," he said. "Jenny is knitting famous?"
"Not Jenny, but a friend of hers is actually a pretty famous knit blogger and has written a couple of books."
It's a testament to how much knitting knowledge he has inadvertently absorbed that Justin took in "knit blogger" without a second thought.
"Jenny asked her for advice and help for me and she left this yarn so I can see if I want to make the dress from it. So I'm going to start a blog and put pictures of the dress on the Internet."

I cannot recall the man's exact response. I believe it was somewhere between "Cool" and "Huh" with a health dose of "whatever the hell you want to do Amy" thrown in for good measure.

"Really, the whole knitting a dress thing is kind of unique. Most knitters if they're going to make something, they make themselves a shawl."

"Yeah, if you were 70 or something." Now Justin's ignorance of knitting culture begins to show.

"Knitted lace shawls are a HUGE thing in the knitting world. People loooove them. But it's not quite my thing. I mean, maybe if the wedding was going to be in January and there was a real need for a shawl. But even if we end up in March, I think I'll deal."

"Huh. Okay then."