Spinning Ambition

My energy law professors is rather eccentric.  He doesn't like people to take notes during class and the final is whatever you want it to be.  Seriously, whatever you want it to be from writing a paper to drawing a comic book.  He gives no guidance but encourages students to incorporate something that they're interested in or good at.  Well clearly for me that means there has to be knitting involved!

I've been rather intrigued by our discussions that involve how much oil goes into making something.  For example, it takes a gallon of oil to make a gallon of corn based ethanol.  With all my knitting and sewing I've been thinking how much oil goes into making the clothes we wear?  Is making your own clothes an alternative that would use less energy?

As a little experiment I've decided to make an item that uses as little energy as possible to make.  I'm doing this mostly by cutting out all the middle men and trans ocean journeys usually involved.  I bought some wool roving from Contented Butterfly Farm in Vermont on etsy that's from a sheep names Sage.  I plan to spin it, knit it, and do some math to see how much energy I used in this process compared to an item of conventional clothing.  Of course this requires me to spin, something I'm not really experienced in.  However, after a half hour of spinning this morning, I took the picture above and I think its going quite well.  It's at least not as thick and rope like as my first attempt at spinning.

Also, for an idea of what goes into an item of conventional clothing check out Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles.  It tracks the average journey of some of the items they make.  I find it fascinating, this is a company that actually makes an effort to be environmentally responsible but a huge amount of resources still goes into every item of new clothing they make.

Done!

Just in time for what is suppose to be a beautiful spring weekend I have a cute new top to wear.  The pattern is McCalls 5388, which I really liked.  The instructions were clear and the top went together pretty easily.  It just took me forever because I kept running out of stuff that I needed, like thread and elastic, and had to do a couple trips to Joanns before I was done.  The top is quite long.  Its tunic length, that kinda weird length that some people try to wear as a dress even though they really should wear pants.

I'm debating making another one of these tops using some green seersucker I got from fabric.com, or I may make one of the other variations included with the pattern.  If I do I'll probably make it a couple inches shorter and possibly bring in the neckline a tad since sometimes my bra strap showed.  But overall I am very pleased and hopefully I'll get to wear it out this weekend.

Oh la la!

This is a French seam.  Isn't it just perfect?  It's pretty and neat and shows no raw edges, and thus no fraying of the fabric.  This is my first time doing French seams and I am now quite enamored because in addition to all those great features just mentioned its also super easy.  It's basically just 2 seams.  The second one in-cases the first so that the raw edge doesn't show.  I would explain more how this is done, but there are tons of great tutorials out there already.

Wardrobe Refashion

Has anyone else seen the Wardrobe Refashion?  No, its not a spin off of Project Runway.  Its a website where a people have pledged to not buy new clothes for a certain period of time, ranging from 2 month to life.  They'll either make their own or buy used in order to escape the clutches of the fashion industry.  I am quite intrigued by this concept, but I don't think I currently have the time to make this sort of commitment.  It does inspire me to try and make more of my own clothes, as evident by the mini shopping spree I did on fabric.com recently...

I loved the cute little blue flowers on this fabric and think it will make a perfect summer top. (Oh summer, how I miss you...)  The flowers are hard to see in this picture but I assure you they are super cute.  I'm thinking the short sleeved option for McCalls 5388 will be adorable.  This may be what I do tomorrow with first day of my spring break. Though it looks like I'd have to get elastic for the sleeves, but that's a problem easily remedied.

My other potential spring break sewing project is making this green vine fabric into a skirt.

But the problem here is that I can't decide what kind of skirt I want to make.  I'm up in the air if I want to use the tutorial for a full gathered skirt from Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing (One of my favorite sewing blogs) or make a simple wrap skirt.  Decisions, decisions.

FOs and Shifting Focus

At last I have pretty new FOs to post!  My uptown boot socks are a success, especially because I learned how to cable without an extra needle.  I had not intended to do this at first, but after one row of trying to use a cable needle I realized that method was just too slow and cumbersome for a pattern with so many tiny little cables. I did mess up on the cable pattern. I didn't actually read the whole thing before starting (oops!) so I cabled to the back on Row 7 instead of two the front like you're suppose to.  Of course I didn't realize this until I had finished one sock, and didn't seem worth the effort of frogging when the results are still very pretty!

I used Plymouth Happy Feet, the same yarn I used for my Froot Loop socks.  I still love this yarn.  Its squishy, colorful, easy to knit with, and cheap.  My Froot Loop socks have gotten a little fuzzy, but have otherwise held up well and I wear them all the time. I expect I will get tons of use of these pretty cablely socks too.  

I strayed a little bit from knitting recently and made a skirt.  I've been spending a lot of time recently looking around at sewing patterns and fabric and decided that I should test out my rusty sewing skills and the pretty sewing machine my parents gave me last year with a simple project.  I suspect that this is at least partially a result of me imposing a yarn buying moratorium on myself to save money and use up stash.  Rather than actually saving money, however, I've just shifted the focus of my shopping from yarn to fabric.  Oh well, at least I have a pretty new skirt.   

I used Vogue 8606 because I liked the wide waist band on the skirt and pants.  The pattern is also nice because it only used one yard of fabric.  The fabric is a suede I picked up from Joann's.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  I wore it out Friday and I thought it looked great my black boots and purple cardigan, a la above. The fit is good, though there seems to be a bit of extra fabric in the front.  I'm considering making a khaki one for the spring and summer so perhaps next time I'll add some little darts in front.

Don't let anyone tell you...

...that the needle arts are for sissies.  See those little reddish dots below?  That's blood.  I pricked myself while hand stitching down the yoke of a skirt to the zipper.  I actually had no idea I was bleeding until I noticed those strange little dots.  Hardcore, I know.

More on the skirt as well as a finished pair of socks coming soon!

Progress

So I stopped my whining and did some knitting instead, and now my second uptown boot sock has a heel! In addition to having a heel, the gusset has been finished since I took this picture. I'm just a few inched and a toe away from having a new pair of socks. This will place me only one pair of socks away from my goal of having a pair of hand knit sock for everyday of the week.

It helps that in one of my classes the professor doesn't want us to take notes, weird but true. I see this as a perfect excuse to knit during class, and he doesn't seem like the kind of professor who would mind anyway.

For those for you familiar: yes I did take this picture in the law school library. Sometimes I knit there too. I can only take so much case law after all.