First Attempts at Sewing

Lately I've been doing something a little different, and have been trying my hand at sewing. I have always wanted to sew, and can even envision maybe sewing halloween costumes for if I have kids one day, but I started to think that it was never going to happen because all of my past attempts have been really unsuccessful. Really, I had given up on sewing, and if it wasn't for my sister who can both knit and sew incredibly well, I don't think I would have tried sewing again. 

My sister is both incredibly supportive, and persuasive, she mentioned that if I knew how to sew I would be able to make cozy wool skirts that really wouldn't look the same at all if they were knit, and that was enough for me. We went to the fabric store and picked up some wool fabric, and then she helped me with every step of making this skirt, and now it's done! I'm so incredibly excited that I actually sewed a garment, and it worked out.

The finished skirt!! While I was making the skirt I figured that it would look like a learning project and that I would never wear it, but it turned out so well that I actually think I will wear it quite often!

While sewing this skirt my sister and I also realized that my aging, very basic sewing machine was probably reaching the end of it's life. At least the end of it's life with me. The fabric just wasn't feeding very nicely, and certain things were just not possible to do with that machine, so we did a little research and I ended up getting a new machine! 

This is the Singer Fashion Mate 7256, and I absolutely love it. It is much quieter and smoother than my last machine an it has a ton of fun stitches to choose from as an added bonus. I think I'll be using this machine for a really long time.

Playing around, trying out some of the decorative stitches.

It's actually been really nice to kind of have a second hobby so that I can walk away from knitting for a few hours, and then come back to it refreshed. Not that I can take too many breaks though as Christmas is fast approaching. I'm hoping though to have enough time to make a cute Christmas-y skirt soon so I can wear it when the Christmas season really kicks off. 

Different ways to De-Pill a Sweater

Now that it's Fall I've started making soups, and lighting candles, and pulling out my sweaters. I basically lived in one cardigan that I made last year and I didn't realize how rough it looked when I put it away. I used a yarn that was a little bit delicate so it pills fairly easily and I guess I must have got used to it or something cause I really didn't realize that it was totally covered in little fuzz balls when I put it away.

Now that I'm actually seeing how bad it really is I wanted to de-pill the sweater before I started wearing it. I brought out a little machine that says "Dritz" on it that my Mom gave me and, even though I only used it once last year, it was totally dead when I tried to turn it on. I was a little hesitant to shell out and buy two new C batteries to bring it back to life and ended up finding a little pumice stone that was advertised to remove pills from sweaters which I thought would be nice because then it wouldn't take batteries and it couldn't die at inopportune times.

I must say I was a little disappointed because the pumice stone really grabbed and pulled the whole sweater, not just the little pills. I ended up holding the sweater with one hand while gently swiping the stone just above the sweater to catch the pills, which seemed to work okay, but I wasn't as impressed as I guess I was hoping to be.

I gave in and paid the $5 for the batteries (not as bad as I thought it would be) and tried using the little de-fuzzing machine. Just wow, I think when my Mom gave me the little machine it must have had mostly dead batteries because it was for sure working better than it did before. I was just gliding it over the sweater, kind of like a tiny iron, and it would quickly whisk away the little fuzz balls collecting them in a tiny lint trap like a dryer (which the pumice stone also had no way of doing). So, while I wanted to like the natural one-time-expense option, I guess I'm going to be using the little "Dritz" machine from now on, and I'll pretty happily buy batteries for it.

Anyway, that was just my experience with a couple different ways to de-pill sweaters that I just wanted to share. Hopefully it was somewhat interesting or a tiny bit helpful for someone who might be considering picking up something to de-fuzz their own sweaters for Fall.

Fall Time Hat Knitting

Yesterday was actually the first day of Fall, which is absolutely my favourite season. I do really love summer because it's the only time that we get reasonably warm weather but watching all of the leaves changing, getting to light fall candles, wear cozy wooly layers, and make fall type foods is totally worth the brisk mornings. 

To be fair, so far this has been the warmest fall I can remember. Yesterday we actually got to 26 degrees celsius which is like a hot summer day and, while I really hope that this lovely warm first week of fall is the foreshadowing of an uncharacteristically mild winter, I also do realize that the weather is going to cool off a little bit in the near future so I've decided to knit a quick wooly project for my husband to enjoy.

He's recently mentioned that he really doesn't have a winter hat for this year, and I figured that rather than buying one, I would make him one. I went through my yarn stash and found some "Briggs and Little" worsted weight yarn to make a striped winter hat for him and I've been following Jared Flood's "Turn a Square" pattern that is actually free on Ravelry, and it's turning out really well so far! I think I'm at least as excited as he is to see how the hat turns out, but it's kind of a nice feeling that he's also excited to be getting the handmade hat once it's finished.

Working with Cables

I definitely go through phases when it comes to the different kinds of knitting that I love, for instance I went through a really long lace phase where for months I would knit nothing unless it was in a lace pattern, and made a crazy long worsted weight lace scarf. Then I went through a colorwork phase where I was literally not interested in texture at all and could only be happy if I was using two or more colours at a time.

The phase I'm currently in has probably been the longest yet, with no real foreseeable end in sight. For the past six months I have been entirely caught up in cables. I've been making cabled socks, working on my braid hills cardigan, and have been staring shamelessly at all kinds of lovely cables on pinterest. I've even been going through stitch dictionaries to pick out different cables that I really like to swatch up just to see how they look.

These were both done up in Louet 'gems' which I loved using and was really happy with the stitch definition. I loved the middle panel on the first one so much I used it again in the second swatch to see how it looked with different stitches. Playing around with these cables has got me really inspired and I'm even considering the idea of trying to make my very own cabled pullover design. Hopefully that will be in the works over the next little while.

Thanks for reading!

Starting My Braid Hills Cardigan

This summer has absolutely been flying by! I'm shocked at how quickly both July and August have gone, and can't believe we're staring down September and the start of Autumn. Lately I've been trying to get out as much as possible to go camping or to the beach to enjoy the warm weather while we have it. I recently finished spinning that yarn I was talking about a couple posts ago and so I got to start my new cardigan while we were camping recently. I'm so excited with how my handspun yarn is knitting up, and I'm in love with this "Braid Hills" cardigan by Kate Davies. I can't wait to see how the finished sweater looks.

I'm so loving the cables beside the button band! Although summer is coming to an end faster than I'd like, hopefully I'll have this new cardigan done by the time it starts cooling off.