Crafting Progress for a Warm Week
Summer has certainly arrived here in Pittsburgh–it was up in the 90s yesterday! Still, I'm holding out on the A/C for as long as I can–sort of a reversed version of the Yarn Harlot's thermostat wars, I suppose. All of this warm weather means that I'm super lazy when I'm home–I don't want to do anything particularly productive and tend to take my evenings off when I'm not in class.
This week's evenings have been take up with season 3 of Downton Abbey and knitting away on my Rivel cardigan. I don't think I've mentioned this project here yet despite the fact that I've been working on it bits at a time all year and am now nearly finished. It's just the very wide button band and some seams to go:
Check out that cable detail–it's so lovely!
Sorry for the color discrepancy between the two pictures. In real life, it's somewhere between the two, but it looks like my phone won't quite capture it today. This sweater doesn't even need buttons–it's meant to be worn open or pinned closed. I'm a big fan of this, as I always struggle to find the perfect buttons for the sweaters I've spent hours and hours knitting.
I've also spent some time on my gray dress. Actually, I sort of spent most of the day working on it–hehe. My summer job allows me to get a lot of class work done while I'm there, so it seemed reasonable to take the weekend off.
My first task was inserting that invisible zipper, and I was satisfied with it by my third try. The first try was a lighter gray zip–apparently they didn't have black ones in stock when I first got my materials. That was hardly invisible, so I picked up a black one last weekend. Attempt #2 was invisible, but too crooked for my taste:
(Let's ignore the fact that I seem to have cut the waistband a bit off grain.) Attempt #3 was only a little better, but I think it will do.
Once that was in, I got to work on these sweet little sleeves:
Aren't those tucks adorable? There are three sets of them on each sleeve. I also managed to install the sleeves tonight, so all that's left is a hem! I'll take care of that, and perhaps a new little top, tomorrow. Hooray for the weekend!
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The cable detail is lovely, how is working with naturespun? I’ve never tried it but I love other Brown Sheep yarns!
Naturespun is lovely! What else have you worked with from Brown Sheep? If you’ve tried Lamb’s Pride, you’ll find Naturespun to be a little different since it’s a plied yarn instead of a single. I think it’s a good basic wool–nothing too flashy, not particularly soft, but it gets the job done.
My only complaint is that I tend to find a lot of knots. As in, I started a new ball at some point in my buttonband and it had two knots within the first few rows after joining it. Sure, you could spit-splice, but regularly having that many knots in a ball is not cool!
Thanks for stopping by my corner of the blogosphere!