(Spoiler Alert!  Friend for whom I am making the Butterfly Bloomers with Bows!  There will be pictures further down!)

So, the Velveteen Vest.  Velveteen is a bit of a pain to work with, but having fought epic battles with velvet before, it wasn’t quite as bad.  Sure, it squirms its way out of the places you want it to stay, but much less so than its silk/rayon fully napped cousin.  And I can iron it quite safely on the wrong side at high heat, and I use a damp little towel as a pressing cloth for the right side, and so far no ill effects.

It’s looking pretty good!  I still haven’t figured out why the side front piece has that odd join at the underarm.  Don’t know if it was a cutting error on my part, could be a dart miscalculation on the pattern drafter’s part, but I’m not overly worried about it.

It’s a BurdaStyle pattern, and with their new site design, there doesn’t seem to be a way to comment on the patterns anymore.  I’ve had some big problems with them and their new site, but maybe that’s because I know a little more about the behind-the-scenes web design and development work than their average user.  There were some really dumb mistakes, which I gently pointed out to them, and which after weeks they still haven’t corrected.  It’s sad, really.  I had a lot of respect for the old site and community.

Anyway, I also finished up the Butterfly Bloomers with Bows!  I drafted the pattern to my friend’s measurements using this tutorial, which is very straightforward and easy to follow. She picked out this fabulously soft and cute (although wrinkly, I had JUST ironed them and folded them when I decided I should take a couple of pictures) white-on-white butterfly print.

My friend and I both have a similar sensitivity to having elastic around the backs of our knees, so she had the idea to leave a small gap in the elastic at the back, and tie it shut with a bow.  Here’s a detail where you can see, if you look verrrrrry closely, how the 3″ gap is tied shut with the ribbon:

Love that Venetian lace!  It was surprisingly easy to work with.

We watched most of the episodes of Legend of the Seeker while I worked, and it’s not the Best Show Evar (B says they’ve departed wildly from the books), but it’s got great characters, beautiful scenery, lighting, and cinematography, and of course, delicious costumes!

I particularly love Kahlan’s Confessor dress (she can really get that thing flying in the fight sequences), Zedd’s Wizard’s robes, and of COURSE the Mord Sith’s highly impractical yet somehow utilitarian leather getups.

Jane Holland is the costume designer for the show, and if it’s got a familiar feel, well, she did Xena and Hurcules back in the day.  But more recently, she did the costumes for Underworld, and I see a new level of sophistication and detailing in her work on this show that I didn’t notice before.  I think part of it is thematic – Xena and Hercules were both often tongue-in-cheek, but B has been forcing me to watch Xena (yay Neflix watch-it-now!) and I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would.  And I did catch myself lusting after a kimono-style dressing gown she wore in a dream sequence.

1. Goooood Yarn…, 2. Footless Sock, 3. Doing the Happy Tilli Thomas Yarn Dance, 4. Stitches Loot

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

Mom and I got a little high on yarn fumes.

The Stitches Yarn Market took up most of the top floor of the Cobb Galleria Convention Center in Atlanta.   This was probably the same size as all the Dragon*con vendor rooms put together.  Gi-gantic.

Unable to pass up a costuming opportunity, I dressed as Second Sock Syndrome.  (Viva la Single Sock Liberation Movement!)  Still haven’t finished casting on the second footless sock, but I wore my single sock proudly.  Only one person, the genius behind Creatively Dyed, commented.  She was awesome.  The lack of comments I chalk up to 1. visual overstimulus, and 2. polite knitters.

I particularly love that Mom and I apparently wore our favorite colors and then proceeded to buy things that matched what we were wearing, inadvertently.  Creatively Dyed’s SeaWool roving is spectacular.  Zoom in on my photo to really get into the goodness.  The photos on her website are very good, too.  I started spinning it up last night and it’s sooooo soft.  A little slipperyer (yes, that’s a word now) than the coarse Swalesdale I practiced on, so I’m having to get used to it, but the yarn has a gorgeous sheen.

The Loot:

• 8oz Creatively Dyed Seawool roving in the SR3 colorway
• 2 hanks Tilli Thomas Pure and Simple in Jade
• 1 ball Yarn Place Graceful in Violetta
• Pattern for a twisty artsy beret from MissBabs
• Ebony spiral shawl pin
• Magenta felted flower zipper pouch, made by artisans in Nepal

So now I’m obsessing over what to make with my goodies.  I have a few shawl ideas for the Graceful.  There’s 900+ yards in one ball, so there’s lots of it to play with.  I’m thinking Spring Things or Aeolian.

The Tilli Thomas came with a pattern for a fishnetty stole made on big needles.  I started casting on and got annoyed, but it was very hot, and I may give it another try.  The drape on that yarn!  It’s so smooth and soft.  And I LOOOOVE the color.

Earlier in the day I had seen a few booths with a sister yarn to the Pure and Simple, except with beads and sequins, in the same colorway, but I decided I’d rather put the beads into the knitting myself.  So when I found the little kit of Pure and Simple tucked behind a display in another booth, I pounced on it!  And then I wondered if someone else had hidden it there and wanted to come back for it.  The shop ladies teased me that indeed someone had, and that I’d probably have to fight her if she came back and found me buying her yarn.  I’ll have to try to remember where I bought that from, all the ladies there were very funny!

I had no idea how much fun it would be to spend the entire day in the market.  So many ideas, so many sample knits to feel and analyze, so many pretty colors!  I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day.

I did manage to finish my handspun beret around dinnertime though.  I think the Guinness 250 helped.  Yum.

So, conclusion?  It’s definitely worth $6 to get into the Yarn Market at Stitches South.  This was my first fiber convention, and I think one of the bigger ones would be a really fun weekend trip.  Might be even more fun if there are people to chat with at lunchtime, but who wouldn’t mind if we broke off into smaller groups to browse.  It would be way too difficult to wrangle more than 2 or 3 in a group with all the shiny around.

This guy gets it.

“Well, you could quit, because it’s too hard to make stuff you aren’t already great at. You could convert all that pointless effort and practice back into MySpace updates and the production of funny cat pictures. No, it’s not technically the worst thing that could happen, but it’s a damned common pathway for fear to molder back into an emotional impulse to put on jammies and watch Judge Judy.”

Read Merlin Mann’s essay on Courageous Sucking. Go ahead, read it. I’ll wait.

It’s the perfectionist trap. “I can’t start that project now, I have to research every possible combination first.” That’s what often happens in my head, when I should just dive in and screw up a few times. I always remember the pain of failure, but I forget the valuable lessons you learn from it. I gritted my teeth and dove into making the polonaise, and just look at all the stuff I learned from Polonaise 0.1.  It seriously sucked, but I feel like I emerged from beginner to intermediate seamstress along the way.

I’m going to make a more conscious effort to run and jump, nay, cannonball into new ideas.

Come on in, the water’s fine.

Mermaids Aqua ~ Mendocino

That is all.

Photo by w_dinkel on sxc.hu

I’ve started planning and budgeting for winter holiday stuff, which gets me thinking about the most efficient, elegant way to do things.

• I don’t really do the Santa/Christ thing.
• I’m a Unitarian and that means I can pretty much do whatever I want as long as I’m not infringing on anyone else and it enlightens me.
• I like fire, trees, snow, and ornaments.  Especially birds!
• I LOVE giving presents!
• Getting them isn’t bad either.
• An excuse to tell people how much you love them is always a positive thing.

So, I’m converting to Solsticeareanism this year.  I just made that word up.  You can use it too.  We Solsticeareans surround ourselves with bright, warm, pretty things and share our blessings with others.  Made by hand, if at all possible.

Join my cult of awesome.

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Originally uploaded by d1g1t1ze

I originally posted this in my personal LiveJournal, but I want to share my experience with you, as well as introduce you, if you haven’t been introduced before, to the music of Nine Inch Nails.  They have some really intensely beautiful pieces in their newest 4 albums, so if you haven’t heard of them since “Closer” came out on The Downward Spiral, I heartily recommend that you take a listen to the newer stuff.

I’m still absolutely in the thrall of NIN. Everything about their stage show entrances me – the excellent quality of the music and lyrics, the groundbreaking lighting design that pushes the boundary between lights and sets, and the consummate performers that all of the musicians are.

We prepped well with our gel insoles, earplugs, and bottles of water. There were several points where I forgot I was wearing the earplugs, panicked slightly, then was overwhelmingly relieved that I was indeed wearing them. It was so loud and the bass so deep that the tiny hairs on my face could feel the bass drums. Going from sound to silence and back into the song was a physical thing, a pop of air in my face, a rumble in my chest. It’s quite possibly the best thing ever.

The opening band wasn’t great. I think they would be quite good in the right venue, but sleepy psychedelic jam wasn’t a good warmup for the onslaught of NIN.

The setlist was great. A good mixture of songs from all the albums, and the pacing was excellent. If they’d played everything from Broken all at once, I probably would have gotten kicked in the face more than once, and you KNOW how that pisses me off. The interlude from Ghosts was pure magic.

I still have “In This Twilight” stuck in my head. They’ve gotten the whole sticky sweet hook over rhythmic industrial noise thing down to a science and I love it. It’s like a lullaby for rivetheads.

Which is making it hard to wake up this morning. But that’s ok. Today’s going to be a good day.

I don’t get out much in knitting blogs and forums, mostly because I’m trying to keep up with SO MANY different areas of the blogosphere (web design/standards/development, life hacks, fashion, authors, webcomics, etc). But I just stumbled across Presents Knits and her DIY Masters Program, an alternative to the Knitting Guild Association’s pay-to-play program.

It’s a fantastic idea, as I’m always interested in learning more techniques, and you know I love structure and planning. I just hate OTHER people telling me what to do!

And so I don’t leave you pictureless, here’s Presents Knits’ pretty Noro hat, Phoncible, available for download from Etsy.

Aww. So cute. And he picked crappy yarn I don’t like. Very considerate.

Polonaise Muslin – This’ll be a test run made out of a coppery light upholstery fabric that will work for my Steampunk costume for Dragon*Con (Labor Day).  I’m altering the neckline to be more V-shaped, and adding more trim probably.  “Trim the trim!” is what the pattern told me to do.  Honestly.

It’s meant to be worn over a corset, but I’m going to try to get it to work without.  It does get a lining, and I may add another layer of lining/interfacing to get it to lie smoothly against my body.  Honestly, I don’t know exactly how wearing a corset underneath changes the fit other than the smaller amount of ease.

I also have some really cool broochesque jewelry findings that I can sew on, maybe do a mock pocketwatch fob.  I’m toying with the idea of sewing on a golden filigreed keyhole just for fun and mechanical mystery.

Underbust Corset Muslin – I found some wacky Japanese fabric.  Behold its awesomeness!  God I love unexpected details.

I am calling this a muslin because I haven’t successfully made a Victorian style corset before, and I think this plain cotton woven fabric will take out a whole pile of complexity that may have led me to failure before.

This isn’t the kind of corset meant to be worn under the polonaise, of COURSE.  Because I am that stubborn.  But I suppose if it’s finished before Dragon*Con it could help with the fit.  Or not.

I think I’ll just use simple black cotton for the inside.  I don’t think I can make it reversible since I’m using a busk closure in the front and those have sticky outy pegs, but my mind is working on it.

Final Polonaise – We’re attending a black-tie wedding in Canada in November, for a particularly creative and fabulous couple.  I am cold all the time, even when I lived in Florida, and still even in Hotlanta.  I’ve been eyeing the polonaise pattern ever since I sewed up one of Truly Victorian’s skirt patterns – very easy and gorgeous, by the way.  It was tragically wounded in a naively unexpected everyone-and-their-mother-steps-on-trains accident.

Ahem.  Back to the polonaise.  It’s a really fancy jacket, it’s got lots of couture details, and will probably keep me warm(er).  I managed to find a photo of a historical gown that matches what I see in my mind’s eye.  Please click on it to see the larger image.  See what they mean about trimming the trim?  I’m drooling the drool just looking at it.

I love the deep, dark shade of the color.  Purple or teal is what I’m hoping for, but it has been really hard to find colors I like, even on teh interwebs.  I’m tempted to dye my own silk taffeta, but the pressure of silk is way too much for me.  And I really want to sew with actual silk.  And I think I can handle the velvet trim.  Maybe.  It’s such a pain in the ass but so pretty.  Haven’t decided yet whether I’ll wear a dress underneath or go ahead and make a matching skirt.  Leaning towards the latter.  Insane, clearly.

Fascinator - Yeah.  I can’t resist an awesome hat.  And I’d like to give this one a try in my own colors and style.  I don’t know where it came from originally in order to give the artist credit, but I’ll link it back to where I found it on the craftster.org message boards.

I am particularly in love with the netting.  Love the quasi-birdcage veil look.  All that texture — the soft feathers, shiny beads, floaty netting — just makes me so happy.   If I can pull it off, yay.  But it might be really hard getting the colors right.  In which case I’ll probably fall back on one of my tiny top hats.  I should take some pictures of them!

I’m kinda stuck in the middle of a bunch of projects at the moment.  Mom picked up the pattern book Brooklyn Tweed used for his cardigan version of the Urban Aran, so that’s good.  Now I’m going to have to choose yarn.  I think I want some of the stuff he used from elann.  We’re thinking we’ll both knit one for ourselves first to get the hang of it, since it is a pattern intended for women, then we’ll know better how to alter them for Dad and B.

I’ve got a third baby booty about halfway done, but I’m stalling out on it because the baby is so far from being born, and the needles are so tiny.  So I’m putting that project to sleep for a little while.

There’s the trip to Canada in November peeking over the horizon that has me anxious to knit a pile of toasty warm goodness.  Most of my Ravelry queue is for that purpose.   I really hate being cold.  I think I need some gorgeous mittens, too, but I haven’t found any that leapt out at me quite yet.

And I’ve got the yarn for the Hemlock Ring blanket (Yes, I am stalking Brooklyn Tweed.) and can start any second, if only the vintage doily instructions weren’t so horrid.  I’ve tried charting them out twice now, and I know there was an error in the first chart, and I got so confused doing the second one that I just couldn’t keep it up.  My next attempt will be to print out the written instructions and highlight every separate “maneuver.”  I get lost in all the k2sl1pssok2tog crap.  I don’t think that exists, but I refuse to look at the pattern right now.  It ANGERS me.

In an effort to jumpstart the old creativity machine, I ran across this FANTASTIC collection of sketchbook prompts.  They suggest going through and altering all the pages of the sketchbook before doing any artwork in it to counteract blank page syndrome.  I really like the idea of doing some washes or textures on the pages – seems like a relaxing process.  There’s a big group campout coming up in a few weeks, and I am putting together some activities that will help me cope with all that togetherness.  I think a couple of knitting projects, a sketchbook, pencils, and watercolors will be just the thing.  Oh, and some books!