Fiber Monday

 

In Which I Have A New Project:

So I have a Ren Faire to attend in September. This means I need an outfit. I have a lovely top from Holy Clothing (a Torvi top in Huntress Green), and I have some tan jeggings that, covered by the top, will look almost like deer suede. I will probably try to wear my boots, but if it's gonna be wet that day, I'll just wear some good hiking shoes and sacrifice fantasy aesthetic in favor of not losing my feet or damaging my good suede boots.

But just a tunic and leggings isn't very... fancy, is it?

No, I want a ridiculous, complicated, lacy skirt.

I admire the designs of a lot of the skirts I've seen, but I wanted to make my own 100% of the way. So far, I'm using white crochet thread and a 1.5mm hook. I've only just started the waistband.

As you can see, it's not that big

I'm hoping to have this skirt be double-fastened with ribbons and some sort of buttons or hooks as well.

I started by chaining 51 and then single-crocheting 25 rows of 50 stitches each, chaining one and turning at the end of each row.

The next row, I single-crocheted 10 stitches, chained 10, skipped 10 stitches, single crocheted into the next 10 stitches, chained 10, skipped 10 stitches, and then single crocheted the last 10 stitches before chaining one and turning.

The next 5 rows are all single crocheted, single crocheting into each chain and stitch across. Then I kept repeating the spaced-rows and the 5 rows of single crochet. I'll keep going like that until I'm satisfied with the way it wraps around my middle, and then I'll probably do another 50 rows of just plain single crochet, just to create a comfy overlap to prevent any gapping (not that anyone will see the waistband at the Ren Faire, but what if I want to wear it elsewhere?!)

My plan after the waistband is done is to create a row of half-double crochet along the bottom edge to which I'll eventually attach the skirt, which will start as wide as my waistband and then I'll keep adding stitches until it's wide enough to be swishy and fun and long enough to qualify as a skirt and not just a flirty little coverup. I already know this girl's gonna be heavy, and I'm debating whether I want to add beads to make it even heavier. 

I'm considering all of the laces and trims that I've found on Ravelry. There's a very old squirrel one I think would be absolutely darling as a feature of the skirt, but we'll see how that goes.

Alright, I think I've said all I can say so far on this project. I'm only maybe 20% done with the waistband. Maximum. We'll see where I'm at next week!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday(ish)

 

In Which I Am Always Late, It Seems...

I was supposed to start working on this blog over 12 hours ago, but I just can't seem to get going right now. How annoying. I will say this, though, my dreams last night were bizarre. I woke up right after having the equivalent of a political style cartoon imprinted on my dreamscape with a guy holding a large mason jar filled with orange tornadoes and bragging that he'd "collected the world's most valuable tornadoes".

What the heck, brain?

So it's been that kind of day - off-kilter and weird.

Also painful because my dumb butt walked 3.2mi (5.15km) in the pouring rain because I love books and there's a new bookstore in town...

It's a really nice bookstore.

I'll be going there a lot.

Unfortunately for me, about 3/4 of the way there, the backs of my ankles got blistered and now we're in the stiff-and-painful stage, so I couldn't take the 3 mile (4.8km) walk to the boardwalk I wanted to take. Today would've been a pretty good day for it - no rain.

Unlike the rest of the week.

But this is not the whining about things blog, that's tomorrow. Er... technically today.

This entry is specifically for my crochet work!

And I FINISHED SOMETING!

A cropped tanktop!

This garment has been in the works for quite a while, and... I'm not 100% pleased with it, but it's a great early effort, if I do say so myself. Which I do. Say so. Myself. uh... moving on.

Closeup on the construction

I feel terrible because I cannot for the life of me find the pattern I used for the yoke on this piece to recommend it to you. I want to say it may have been in another language because I couldn't understand the rest of the pattern and just freestyled the rest after the twisted-stitch yoke... which may have been less of a good idea than I'd hoped...

If you recommend this yoke pattern, please let me know lol

I used a simple V-stitch for most of the garment, though I did interrupt it every 14 rows with another round of the twisted stitch for cohesion. I wish I'd been more diligent about fit-testing as I went, though, because... boy is this revealing.

Like, I understand that croptops are short and meant to be a bit revealing but...

I made it too wide and the armholes WAY too deep.

I cannot wear this in public is what I'm saying.

Makes a wonderful sleep shirt, though, and now that I understand (partly) how I went wrong, I can probably make more tops in a similar vein!

So there you have it: my very belated Fiber Monday :P

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday 305: Slow Growth

In Which Everything Grows Slowly

I knew when I started the Downton Abbey Lady Sibyl Shrug that it would be slow going. I was using the wrong-sized yarn, the wrong-sized hook, and I was starting it at the same time as my novel project (which is going fairly well!). Still...

I'd hoped to have more than a single inch of the garment finished by this week.

Life intervened, however, and now I'm at about 0.75" finished, unblocked. At least I know now that it will take at least 16 pattern repeats to make the garment? Because it's supposed to be 15" wide (38cm). I have very wide arms, however, so it's probably going to be more like 16" (40.6cm) wide.

So it's probably going to be anywhere from 17 to 30 pattern repeats.

Why such a broad range? Because I absolutely stink at eyeballing progress.

Also, because I'll be fitting the garment as I near the end.

But What does all of this mean for future Fiber Mondays? It just means you'll be seeing a whole lot of this color yarn, really.

I've got more rows to complete, words to type, and food to consume and discuss, today, though, so I'll let you all go.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC