It is exhilarating.

You can’t tell me I’m doing it wrong!  There are no directions!

So, I began with the binding, because I have a particular way I want it to sit off the shoulder.

Working with the muslin is really informative.  I can see through multiple layers to add seam allowances.

It’s also really soft and fun to rip along the grainline!

I draped/drafted the front panel first:

Looking at it again, I think I need to nudge it up a little and carve out the armscye a bit, instead of the traditional straight lines.  This is Punk Rock!  I don’t have to be traditional unless I want to.

It’s a little hard to tell in the pictures, but this is also a knee-length garment.

Next I drafted some sleeves.  Very blocky sleeves.  I’m not really sure how modern Western sleeves work, I’ve just cut them out and fitted them into bodices.  They can be tricksy.  In this project, I’ve decided to be OK with the idea that the underarms may not connect with the sides.  This is not entirely untraditional, and definitely is Punk Rock, and might be nice if I get a little warm!

I also discovered a great place to put pins.  Can you see where in the pictures above?  No?

In my dressform’s neck!

Next time, I will show you how the back works, and I’ll work on a distinctly non-traditional obi.  It’s a hybrid between a corset and an obi, and is designed to enhance rather than hide curves.

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.

I’m not sure what it is.  Maybe having a beverage means it’s time to relax and enjoy the scenery for a few minutes.

I’ve started a few other projects lately.  One of them is a super secret birthday gift!  The other two are a slouchy beret I’m making from some handspun my Mom gave me, which is about the same color as the turquoise in the footless sock above.  You may notice that there’s really just one at the moment.  And that Stitches South is this week.  Well.  That’s what happens when you decide to suddenly start knitting with size 00 needles.  Stuff takes longer.  Did I get the memo?  No, I did not.  That’s ok though!  With legwarmers footless socks this crazy, you can wear them however you want.

The other is an experiment with no real expectation for the outcome, other than playing with yarn scraps.

Spiral knitting!  It’s all done with carefully orchestrated short rows, and I dig it.  I think I may be able to work it into all sorts of things.   The pattern is called Ten Stitch Twist and it’s on Ravelry as a free download.

Look at all this yarn!  I made it!

I even learned to Navajo ply* for the roving I dyed.   It’s fun and I like the three-ply yarn it makes.  It’s tricky to manage how twisty it gets, though, but I’m learning.

I used the Lazy Kate to double-ply the gray, and that was really easy.   So much easier than when I would do odd things to shoeboxes to ply with my spindle.

I haven’t set the twist on any of this yet, and I still haven’t finished spinning  all the dyed roving yet.  After I ply this bobbin, I’ll probably get another 1/2-3/4 bobbin full.  It’s interesting that the colors’ saturation vary quite a bit, but I really like that.

One of my challenges has been getting the whorl speed ratio thingie through my head.  Finally, after much reiteration and B’s help, I can tentatively say that smaller whorls make the wheel twist more without my having to treadle like crazy.  Very helpful for the tiny yarn I keep spinning.  I can’t seem to make a larger yarn evenly, but that’s ok.  I like little yarns, and it keeps me out of trouble.

*I kind of learned.  I watched some videos on YouTube, was mystified, went through the steps very closely, and figured out how to do it in a way that made sense to me.  The idea is that you start with a loop of your yarn tied to itself, then pass the yarn through the loop, making a subsequent loop.  Over and over.  FAST.  And if you want to preserve your color changes, you can slow down the wheel and make the loop end where the color changes.  It’s very cool!

And here’s a photo collage of the unpacking and assembling process:

1. Opening the Box!, 2. The Ladybug Emerges, 3. Little Box of Accessories, 4. Detailed Assembly Instructions, 5. Accessories Unwrapped, 6. Double Treadle All Sunggled in its Blanket, 7. Double Treadle Yin and Yang. Kinda., 8. Getting the Wheel Out of the Box, 9. Getting Ready for Feet, 10. Unwrapping the Mother of All, 11. Am I Missing Pieces?, 12. Attaching the Treadles to the, um, Thingies. Footmen., 13. Attaching the Bobbin and Flyer.

I had so much fun taking each piece out and trying to figure out what it was.  The instructions are very detailed and have fantastic pictures to help you figure out what they’re talking about.  The lingo reminds me of sailor jargon.  “Stow the jib in the fo’c’sle, Matey!”

I was a little worried that I was missing some parts, as I matched up what I had with the list, but it turned out that they had already assembled one of the pieces of hardware, which was a relief.

Then I got to spinnin’!

I can’t believe how much faster this is.  I mean, sure, intellectually I understand the idea of gear ratios, etc.  But the wool, nay the YARN flies through my fingers.  It’s so fast I can hardly see it happening.  And I’ve worked on the long-draw drafting method a bit.  It definitely takes a leap of faith from inchworming.

I do want to get a Woolee Winder eventually.  The hooks are kinda annoying, but only because I get hypnotized by the spinning and get a giant lump in one place before I remember to switch hooks.

I’ve since plied the two bobbins of natural gray Swalesdale.  I’ll post pictures next time.  Next up - the dyed roving!  The Swalesdale wool is fairly coarse, so I haven’t decided what I’ll do with it yet.  It may make a pretty and sturdy knitting bag…

I also received my 7 pounds of wool to begin making dreadfalls, and it is SO SOFT.

Lastly, I have 3 new scents to play with for the lotion bars and I’m also working on a kitchen salt scrub (gets the onion/garlic smell right off) and a scalp massage oil. Wool dreadfalls are really light and soft, but I always have to pull my own hair pretty tight, and I thought a muscle-relaxing scalp massage oil would be just the thing after I take out the dreads. And if I like it, I bet some of you will too!

On Saturday, to keep myself busy and my mind off of “Whyfore NO WHEEL?” I dyed up some of the gray Swalesdale fiber I ordered at the same time as the wheel. *ahem* Focusing on not being bitter.

It’s a simple but time consuming process.

Here we have the dry roving on the left, and the 20 minute room-temperature soak on the right.

Gloves really are essential, even with food safe dyes.  For roughly 3oz of fiber, I mixed up about 1/2 tsp of Wilton’s icing dye in a cup of hot water.  The amount of water isn’t really important, you need enough to cover the fiber, but not so much that it moves around and starts to felt.  Pour the dye solution into a pot of room-temperature water (the same temperature, roughly, as the soaking fiber.)

This is where it gets interesting.  Get the dyepot up to 160F and keep it there for about 10 minutes.  This should help the dye get into the fiber really thoroughly.

Then!  Add 1/4c vinegar to the dyepot.  I like to pour it into a glass of lukewarm or hot water to dilute it a bit so it spreads out into the dyebath better. The color will change almost immediately as the dye starts to stick to the fiber.

Juice it up to 180F and keep it there for about 30 to really tell that fiber who’s boss.  I was very successful with the amount of water I had keeping the fiber from twisting when the water could have been at a rolling boil.

Let the fiber cool naturally.  You can drain off some of the (now mostly clear) dyebath to speed it up a tad, but anything drastic will make your gorgeous new colored fiber go all felty-felty.  Once it’s close to room temperature (you can handle it comfortably with your bare hands) run a sink full of similarly-temperatured water and dunk it to rinse.  This gets the vinegar out, even if there’s no more dye.

I did this two more times to get 8oz of dyed fiber.  Small batches seem safer to keep the felt demons at bay.

I call the colorway, “Waiting.”

Speaking of which, I need a name for the wheel.  “Godot” springs to mind…  ha ha.  And since she’s a ladybug, I thought about going literal with, “Lady Bug.”  But yeah, literal.  Maybe, “Spinderella…”  Oooo ooo or, “Charlotte!”  Any ideas?

I think I wish the vendor had given me a tracking number, but then I would have slashdotted the mail carrier’s site with my compulsive page refreshing.  It’s just as well for all concerned.  Friday is when I’ll start to expect it on the doorstep.  Tomorrow!

In the meantime, I’ve been amusing myself with my new Noro Sock yarn, by making some, ahem, “footless socks.”  Yes.  They are indeed legwarmers.  I ride public transportation!  I have to stand outside a lot!  No one will see my cheeto-colored stripey legwarmers!

I really believe that brighter colors make you feel warmer.  Or heathery gray.  I know that makes no sense.

And the narrow striping of a yarn with long color changes really is addictive and interesting.  I’m not 2×2 ribbing’s biggest fan, but I can knit on this for an hour or more and not get bored.  The yarn definitely has a rustic feel to it, which may be why it gets mixed reviews on its Ravelry page.  There’s lots of thick and thin going on, and odd little knots  and twists sometimes, but I think it gives it character.

It bores the crap out of the dog:

But he’s not much of a knitter.  And who asked him, anyway?

Last weekend, while I was casting on the Noro footless sock, again and again and again (I finally looked up the length trick for the long-tail cast on.  1/2″ - 1″ per stitch you’re casting on.) I popped over to TribalCon to sit at the Shimmy-A-Thon booth for a few hours.

That’s my bellydance teacher, Kira, on the right.  She is much more relaxed having her picture taken than I am!  I’ve learned lots and lots from her, and I’m really happy to be involved in Shimmy-A-Thon.  It’s a weekend event in September, with workshops and shows and a shimmy endurance challenge that raises money for Cystic Fibrosis.

Stay tuned for spinning wheel unpacking action!  I’ve always been curious about how they ship them, so I’ll be taking pictures as I unpack it.

Part mini-bustle, part bellydance coin belt, part sassy underwear-as-outerwear.

Materials

I used some leftover medium-weight woven cotton and plastic lumber ties cut to size and rounded on the edges.  You can’t see them, which is good because they are green and have black numbers printed on them.  In a not terribly interesting way.

Successes

The front edge is curved up from the hem to the long sash ties.  I solved the problem by cutting two of the curved pieces for each side, then sewed them together along the curved edge, turned, pressed, and stay-stitched the other edges inside the seam allowance and treated the resulting piece as one piece of fabric.  That’s one of the reasons I was sewing through so many layers.

I think the sash is the perfect length and width.  I also liked making the angled tips.

Improvements

I think I’d like to make the front/side curves more obvious.

I may take a small dart at the back center of the sash to keep it from tilting so far down, which looks OK but wasn’t exactly what I was going for and might not work on all body types.

The fabric was WAY too heavy for the ruffles.  Good to know.  The last time I made ruffles, it was from a very light cotton fabric, so I’ll experiment with that, which gives fairly perky ruffles, and drapier fabrics like satin and velvet.  This fabric sort of makes it feel like a utili-bustle.

It’s not immediately obvious, but I’ve got some length issues at the side hem.  Chalk it up to my first pattern drafting attempt, and the complexity of construction.  My current idea for altering this is to shorten the ruffles, which allows the entire thing to be shorter.  Shorter is cuter.

Looking Forward

I have a lot of ideas for theming these bustle belts.  Of course, I’d like to do some up in various bellydance styles (American Tribal, Turkish, Eastern European, Egyptian), but I also want to do some in steampunk styles (Safari Adventuress, Naturalist, Cthulhu Enthusiast) and goth/industrial too.  I envision lots of jingly bits and yummy fabrics combined.

A trail of pins marches off into the distance…  What strange construction is this?

At least 8 layers of fabric, all at once.  Plus, I hadn’t noticed til now that my thread isn’t through the last tension bit.   Good to know.

Extreme closeup!

And finally, a tantalizingly large photo of project and workspace.  Peacock feathers make everything better.

I should be able to get it finished soon, but there will still be lots of tweaks to make.  But that’s why we make mockups of our New and Interesting Ideas, right?