Circular Shrug and Fitting Doll Pictures!

Hooray! I only have 7 cm to go on my circular shrug! I cast on for it in February with the intention to wear it to a wedding in April. Lofty ambitions, indeed. No need to say I was doomed to fail on that goal. It's a small gauge project and quite monotonous too, as it's essentially just one long rectangular piece. A typical "TV-knit" or "bus-knit".


The ribbing is 400 sts wide and the main part is 200 sts wide in mock rib stitch. By know I have knit 53 cm on the 3 mm needles I'm using. But now I can see the end of it, that's what keeps me going.

Just for fun I compared it to one of my other projects, a cabled vest of which I've knit 1/3 in 3 days...

I'm not a big fan of chunky knits, I think they usually turn out too bulky for my taste. But I might be on the verge of expanding my horizons, after all I'm knitting a vest on 6 mm needles. And the othe day I had a look around and found a project that really fell into my liking: http://soknitpickygallery.blogspot.com/2007/05/shopping-tunic.html. Doesn't it look wonderfully warm and cosy? Makes me think of windy autumn days... (:

And just because I've been going on and on about it in previous posts, my duct tape dress form is finished and I have pictures!

We chose the worst day possible to make this. It was the hottest summer day of the year with 32 degrees celsius outside and glaring sunlight flooding in through the windows. Our apartment has no balcony and is very easily heated to a nice sauna temperature. To that, add having duct tape firmly wrapped around your chest and upper body. It's a miracle we didn't pass out!

The dress forms however turned out great and are extremely useful.

Finished Cardigan!

Finally I'm done with my cabled cardigan!

The cables run from shoulder to bottom edge and gather in the waist both on front and back.


I chose vintage looking metal buttons to get the right look ;) . There's picot border around all the edges:


As I mentioned in a previous post I had problems with excess shoulder width, so I "cheated" a bit, there's a good 5 cm of the back piece hidden in parts of the side seams:

Looks like I'm not the only one loving my new sweater!

Burda Binge

The past 3 months I've been buying every new Burda issue. Usually I just frown at them because the style of the clothes tend to be too "mature" for me. But in these mags there are some garments I could really see myself in. I probably won't make many of them, as usual. But I keep thinking that someday when I'm looking for that cute blouse or cool dress, then I'll go get my magazine stash and sewing machine.



Some of the things that caught my liking:

Burda 6

• Blouse 1
• Blouse 2 , I'll try to reconstruct a large white men's shirt to make something like this.
• Top with semi open back, I just need to find some nice jersey! A second hand XL t-shirt in a nice color would be nice.

Burda 5 (The "dress issue", hooray!)

• Dress 1
• Dress 2
• Dress 3
• Skirt
• Jacket

Burda 4

• Waistcoat
• Bag - couldn't find a link :/, but it's a beautiful suede bag.
• Dress

I'll go through my fabric stash some rainy day to see if there's anything useable for the patterns above...

Some updates on my ongoing projects:

Cabled Cardigan - Good news: all the pieces are knit, blocked and seamed. Bad news: it doesn't fit very well. It's way too wide over the shoulders and the sleeves are too big. I made the sleeves short by the way, I liked how it gave the sweater a more contemporary look. The sleeves aren't really a problem though, I'll easily fix them. The excess shoulder width, however, has caused me some trouble. I don't at all feel like unravelling the back piece, which is the piece with the most exaggerated width. I think I'll just take in a couple of centimeters in the seams. That will make the seams lumpy and not as pretty, but I really don't feel like reknitting anything at the moment. Maybe I'll do that at a later point.

And my favorite project at the moment, my duct tape Fitting Doll is just about finished. I only need to stabilize the stand! It turned out quite well and looks like me apart from a slightly larger waist. A few hours of being tightly wrapped in duct tape would probably lead to substantial bloating on any day of the year. The day we chose for our project also happened to be the warmest day of the year this far. Solution to the problem: I didn't stuff the waist as hard as the rest of the doll, so it looks a little floppy and deflated, but the measurements are right at least. I will post better pictures when I can get it to stand on its own.

I made two necklaces from all the lovely beads I've been getting from my Handmade Bead Swap partners. Here they are, green leafy and most wearable! And yes, the white shirt is mounted on Ms Duct Tape.