Blackwater Park

But where is the inspiration anyway?

Oh dear, oh dear, Oh Dear!  

The last time I posted, I had the best intentions about making something again--something, anything.  It's not as if I don't have a whole fabric store in the closet, including some very lovely jersey.  Well, sad to say, the least said about that, the better, apparently.  There's just been No time.  Bah.

Not a lot of inspiration, either.  I recently cracked open the latest Threads only to be confronted with this:

It's awfully reminiscent of the padding you'd wrap around a piano while moving it--and that's on a thin person posed at the slimming 3/4 angle.  It's cloddish.  Art to wear'ish. 

And by no means the only horrible offering up for contemplation in this issue.

I don't know about Threads.  My subscription ran out this summer and I did nothing for several months.  Then, in a fit of something--remorse over not sewing, I guess--I resubscribed.  But I haven't been impressed.  Maybe I'm blind, but I'm not seeing how they are going to help me make clothes that are as good and interesting as the ones for sale at Barneys or on Net-a-Porter.  Better sewn, maybe, but where is the style?  

It's depressing.

It's too bad designers can't be in the business of selling their clothes AND the patterns to make them.

 

Gstaad, Switzerland, c. 1968  

Lace up leather ankle ski boots, ski pants that tucked into your boots, and big fake fur mittens and matching hats.  

Oh so long ago now, but I remember it well.  

Happy Holidays everyone!

the long & the short of it

I've been mulling over what to make.  What direction in which to strike out.  You may have noticed, I had that long Gunex skirt out again to go with the North Sea Sweater.  Partly because I haven't made anything in months, so my wardrobe, always sparse at best, needs refurbishing, but I also love it's length.  I'm like the Olsen twins: I like long things better than short things--skirts that is.  I just love the long line of a long lean a-line skirt (on the other hand, I cannot stomach a long FULL skirt of the sort we all wore in the 90s. I cannot bear the fit or cut of anything from the 90s.  So dowdy).  I can't help it somehow.  AND I've been looking at so much short that long somehow seems fresher.  Oh, long has bobbed up as an option these last few years, but no one seems to be taking it seriously, at least not here in the US (except for those maxi summer dresses, and, of course, the Olsen twins). 

That early 70's silhouette is totally on my mind:

And:

 

I won't make these; my feelings about Vogue Couture patterns haven't changed (still thoroughly disgusted with them), but the silhouettes are on my mind.

So's this, though:

Remind you of anything?

The suit Maggie Evans wore when she went to see Elizabeth Collins Stoddard?  Why yes!  Not identical, 'tis true, but quite similar:

 

 

I have a terrible fondness for these mid 60s' boxy suits (though I'd skip the bit of yarn tied around my hair).  I'm sure I don't know why, but I do.  I'd really like one.  As I said, I won't make a Vogue pattern ever again, but maybe there's something in Burda that can be morphed? 

A slightly older Burda, that is.  Poor Burda.  The last three months have been, well, disappointing (the nicest word I can come up with).  I suppose the economic situation has hit them hard in that they don't seem to be spending as much as before on development.  The offerings, aside from a piece here and there, have been rather on the sorry side. Hideous, even--at times.

But anyway, long, short, I don't know.  I feel torn.  No clear direction.  Just two contradictory poles of appeal I guess.

The North Sea Sweater

Mirror, mirror. It's always a good day when you look thin in a photograph.  Ha.

This is the North Sea sweater I started, oh, a good more than a year ago--in March or April of 2008?  When we were selling the house etc., and I had ALL my stuff packed away, and we had workmen constantly in and out, not to mention buyers.  NOT the best time to start a new knitting project (I managed to lose the sweater schematic in the process of moving, which sucked).   But, I got the body done, and then the poor thing sat undisturbed in a bin until this summer, when I did the sleeves, then let it sit again till a couple of weeks ago, while the last design details worked themselves out in my unconscious. 

  

It's a cropped fair isle with a non-functional wrap front, shaped shoulders, set in sleeves, and an untraditional arrangement of traditional patterning.  The cuffs are not traditional at all.  Once again, no peasant shaping.

This project was rife with experimental steeking--I think I steeked things no one's ever heard of steeking, plus I did the usual re-engineering when shaping the sleeve caps and armholes (actually more so than with the green cardigan I showed previously).

Here is is under construction, looking rather miserable:

It was really a lovely, absorbing, interesting project to work on, & I'm so glad I pushed the boundaries.  One is hesitant to do so because of the small gauge, which means reknitting bits is a terrible labor.  Plus you have to break yarn during rounds, so ripping out  means a lot of waste.  However, the only way to get ahead is to go forward, so....

 

Despite the year and a half interval between starting and finishing, it was also a short project, being cropped!  But cropped is good.  Initially I'd planned a long rib, but something inside just wouldn't let me execute that, hence the sweater sitting for so long.  Cropped is better--it makes it into a layering piece rather than just a sweater.  Layering pieces give you more options I think.  At any rate, it's what's interesting to me at the moment.

This time, I wouldn't change a stitch.  Actually, the poor dear had an accident about a week ago that necessitated taking off & replacing the ribbing and making some repairs in the fabric.  What a nightmare.  All the steeks had been finished off, tacked down, & the piece washed and blocked.  But what remarkable wool shetland is, is all I can say.  I can't imagine any other kind of wool letting you undo finished & washed steeks without unraveling into dismay.  Shetland also permits repairs.  It's all those grippy little hairs, you see.  They hold on. I would defy anyone to tell that anything had gone wrong at all with the sweater. In fact, it's better than it was before, since I had to opportunity to alter the ribbing a little when I redid it.  Anyway, all's well that ends well.

Yay! :)

My shoes are Vivienne Westwood.  They're made of rubber.  I love them.