Pardon me….

For the two people that read my blog, I apologize for the constant changes in the layout… I’m still deciding on what I like best. I think this is pretty close.

The Hundred Sweaters

One of my favorite books when I was little was “The Hundred Dresses” by Eleanor Estes. The book is about a girl who gets teased for wearing the same ratty blue dress to school everyday – though she claims to have a hundred dresses at home. In the end she gets teased to the point that she doesn’t go back to school, but sends the one hundred drawings of her dresses to the mean girls at school. The girls feel bad and nothing actually gets resolved.

moral of the story: Don’t tease polish immigrants – they’ll send you pictures of dresses.

Well this is a crappy transition, but I remembered this story earlier tonight while I was sketching some sweater designs I want to try this year, hopefully the mean sorority girls won’t tease me for wearing the same ratty Michigan hoodie to school.

The first sweater is incorporates a few of the ideas I’ve gotten from fashion lately. I’ve seen a hole bunch of empire waist sweaters on the market that go down to the mid thigh. I think the empire waist looks flattering on pretty much any body type.  I’m going to have slightly flared out sleeves and about 2-3 inches of garter stitch on the bottom of the sleeves/hem of the sweater to help it keep its shape.  I thought I’d mix this with the kimono neckline that was really hot last summer but use braided cabling to give it a more Nordic look. Which reminds me of one of my neighbors from home, “You look nothing like the rest of your family! You look so much more [dramatic pause] Scandinavian!”

Anyways, here’s the idea – Nordic Pin-up hoodie, knit in a crappy purple cheap wool tweed from fiber fest. (Since, as I’m sure my mom will note – this sweater probably won’t be stylish ten years from now)

The next sweater is my “Intelligentsia Raglan” Its going to be a pretty basic top-down raglan with just enough shaping to make it a lazy-but-cute-because-I-have-way-too-much-studying-to-do-to-care-what-I-look-like-even-though-I-spent-an-hour-making-my-hair-look-perfectly-messy sweater…

I’m using some brown yummy donegal tweed my mom gave me few weeks ago. I think I’m going to make this sweater first, because I can’t wait to wear it while sipping tea and simultaneously flirting with the grad-school hipsters at cafe ambrosia. Well, at least I’m honest. I guess.

And now for the projects I’m actually working on; here’s my progress on the ribbed shrug from fitted knits:

And here are my poor neglected fingerless mittens. With a little more than a month left of band, and cold weather on its way you’d think I’d buckle down for an hour and finish up the thumbs. But my motivation is null. Ech, I should really finish these up, unless I’m planning on giving them to Allie when she inevitably joins the band next year.

Well I think that’s all for now. I guess I’ll have plenty of stuff to keep me warm when I become a homeless history major next year. (AHHHHHHH!) This job hunt is making me understand why my friends postpone the inevitable by going straight to grad school. Go straight to grad school, do not pass go, do not collect cash – for a long long time.

Oh P.S. thank you Aunt JuJu for the umbrella swift. BALLA!

-Sweatergirl

Unknitting

I was a rather gifted unknitter as a two year old. Mom finally dug up this picture which I think is pretty hilarious. Luckily she didn’t get mad at me – and chose to reach for the camera.

I’m getting pretty far on the ribbed shrug which I decided will be Allie’s Christmas present (somehow she’s gone from tomboy science nerd to lover of everything pink?!) Because its a bit two small for me and I don’t feel like frogging it to make it bigger.

Just got my invitation to ravelry, so I’ll have to check it out later when I have the time. My name is thesweatergirl – because sweatergirl was already taken.

Umm… what else? The video is finished and it was great so now after working a total of 41 hours last week on the video I can move on to smaller projects. Oh, Michele, my drawing professor (Nancy Thayer) teaches at CCS and she’s pushing me to go to Cranbrook for grad school in product/industrial design so I won’t have to repeat my undergraduate. She thinks I can get in with potential for scholarships. Today for class we had a field trip to the Frankel’s art collection which was pretty cool.

Other then that I’m out the door to go lifeguard.

Cya, Sweatergirl

Stress induced anuerisms.

Well I’ll start out with a happy thing before I start freaking out. Above is my senior picture that will be in the Senior Video for the MMB’s Senior Band Parent’s Banquet next weekend. I’m working on my pink ribbed shrug – the goal is to wear it TO the banquet. Originally I was hoping to use a picture of me as a two year old – happily unraveling one of my mom’s sweaters. But the picture seems to be lost so isntead my baby picture is:

which I think captures the same thing – I’m domestic… get it?

Anyways, here is the progress of my little pink shrug

I’ve finished both sleeves and now I’m adding the ribbing. I’m in love with the simplicity of this pattern. Definitly an absent minded-knit, which is great, considering that I’m about to blow my brains out over the senior band video. The video mentioned above…? Yeah I’m kind of in charge of it. I spent six hours yesterday editing, all of which I found out today wasn’t saved properly, so I lost everything and had to start from scratch. I just about cried. So this morning at 7 am until noon I brought myself back to the point I was at last night – this time double and triple checking that it was saved correctly.

The only thing that keeps me from having a complete breakdown is that Macs are really terrific computers. The video editing software is easy, and all the programs are interfaced brilliantly so it makes importing pictures yada yada yada insanely easy. Easy – but still time consuming.

I have another ten hours of work cut out for me on this video easy, not to mention a ten page research paper on papal infallibility due Tuesday, a huuge midterm on Thursday, and enough reading and various assignments to ensure that I won’t be getting sleep anytime soon.

Thank GOD on Saturday night (the banquet) this will all be over. And then I can just curl up into a dark corner and rock back and forth until the demons disappear.

So now I’m off to the Mac lab to work on this paper/video until it closes at midnight. For those of you I’ve failed to get in touch with (I mean YOU Michelle) I’m so sorry! I’ll write back, promise.

Love, Sweatergirl

Home again home again.

I just got back from Holland for a great weekend of sitting around, knitting, and enjoying life in general. Now that I’m back at school I’ve resumed my life of being insanely stressed out with more papers and exams then should be permissable.

ech.

While I was home I got to see a few of my friends at Lizzie Anne’s who I’ve missed a lot since going back to school. Over the summer I stopped at Lizzie Anne’s nearly every day on my way back from work to sit and knit. I attribute the complete loss of my summer earnings to this somewhat expensive habit – but as I told my mom, at least now I won’t have to buy yarn for the whole next year! (hah!)

Speaking of yarn my mom gave me a really pretty brown tweed that I can’t wait to use in a slouchy comfy sweater I designed. I’m going to attempt a top-down raglan pullover with a cable in the center. It looks fairly easy, and if I can get the bust dart decreases to work it might even be cute enough to submit to knitty. Too bad I have to knit it first…

The other day I had a moment of realization when I realized the only reason I hate fashion is because I can’t afford it. Given the opportunity I would probably be as soulless as the next with big acrylic beads and a patent leather purse. That being said, I really should scan in the designs I come up with on the margins of my notes.

Pictures from the weekend to come – after I commit to writing a paper on Papal Infallibility (6 pages due tomorrow with an in class exam in the same class)

ech.

Ongoing projects

Just a quick point by point summary of what’s going on in my knitting projectory right now.

Fingerless Mittens:

I’m in the marching band as a clarinet player so I really need fingerless mittens that will keep my fingers toasty when its rainy and miserable in October and November of the marching band season. I made up the pattern myself using Socks that Rock fingering yarn – with perfectly appropriate maize and blue stripes. The top of the mitten flips over to make your fingers usable (because I wasn’t motivated enough to chart out individual fingers and/or use a real pattern :0) I also reverse purled a block M on the back of the hand and on the front of the flap. Last week when the temperature soared to 95 (105 in the stadium on Saturday) I lost all motivation to finish off the thumbs, but now that the temperature is steadily dropping it looks like I’ll have to salvage that motivation.

Last but not least, here is the humble beginning to my ribbed shrug, another pattern from “Fitted Knits”. It will be cute, pink and if all goes well will hopefully pair perfectly with my homemade 50’s housewife sundress.

All of this will of course call for another 50’s esque appliance photo shoot in my crap heap of a college kitchen.

Hopefully I’ll make a lot of progress this weekend on my ride to and from Holland. I’m ready for this extended weekend!

-Sweatergirl

Square Neck Vest

To start off: I am absolutely in love with Stephanie Japel. Not only is she 6′ tall, but she is a knitting genius, as well the author of Fitted Knits. Fitted knits is glorious, the projects are cute (I would knit each one if I had the $$$) and they are FITTED! Which means, for tall girls like me, that you can knit projects that not only fit your bust, but are long enough. Praise Jebus.

So this is my first project, well second actually, after I had to frog the rectangle tunic. I got the yarn from this vest at a yarn shop in holland that was going out of business. I got the Noro for 70% off – a steal, if I will. So I bought everything they had in stock and it turned out that the five skeins were exactly enough to make this little number.

Cheers! Sweatergirl

Time to start blogging.

This morning I woke up at 7 am with the inspiration to finish of my Little Red Riding Hoodie from the book “Dominitrix”. You see, I had knit the sweater over the course of the summer when my goal had been to knit entirely out of my mom’s absolutely insane knitting stash. This venture later failed when I found insanely cheap Noro (see square neck sweater vest above), however, at the beginning I was relatively successful. My mom had 24 skeins of this absolutely luscious Rowan Artic. She was originally making a poncho for my Aunt Julie, but she got busy in the heat of spinning. Note: I come from a long line of strong crafty women. Anywhoo, the Rowan Polar is a bulky yarn alpaca wool blend, and for the course of a year I was trying to figure out how to use this beautiful yarn to make my first sweater. Finally last summer Lyndi at Lizzie Ann’s Wool showed me the book “Dominitrix” and I instantly fell in love. I knit the sweater during my lunch breaks at my internship much to the amusement of the other engineers.

However, when I finished, I had forgotten to stretch out the ribbing while piecing together the sweater. And so, my beautiful bulky comfy sweater was a bit sloppy, and it got thrown in the back of my closet to be sad and forgotten…

Until this morning! I woke up in my chilly student housing crack den this morning with a cough so obnoxious that I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I embarked on the hour long journey to finish this sweater off right.

On the front there are some pretty sweet buttons that Nancy and Lyndie helped me pick out.

And if you squint really hard you can make out the shadow of a flour de lis I knit onto the back.

And the peasants rejoiced!
The end – Sweatergirl

Standard Blog Intro

After having blogs – deleting them – starting new blogs – and forgetting about them, I’ve decided its time to commit. And rather than confine it to knitting, cooking, sewing, and ranting about being the most domestic “equalist” I know… This time I’m going to throw it all into one combined mess.

Hooray!

Until next time, Sweatergirl