At Her Leisure

I'm rather pleased with myself right now for finishing up two garments this week. My 1936 sweater with the (not) turreted collar and the underskirt for the Le Baiser dress are both finished.





The skirt picture isn't actually the finished skirt, but the only difference is a band of trim around the hem that I don't think will actually show up well in a picture - it's the same fabric with the stripes running horizontally. I think it's a nice touch, but it's not significant enough to redress the dummy to take a picture. Next up will be the bodice, I think.

I made quite a bit this year, including four knit pinballs.



The rest is behind the cut.

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1. The front of my 1930's sweater is finished! I'm not going to post a picture because it looks just like the back except that the neck is lower.

2. If you like pork, apples, and pie, you should try this recipe for Cheshire Pork Pie. It's really good. (It doesn't reheat all that well, but that's because of the crust - no pie reheats very well.) It's also pretty easy. When I do it again, I'll cut the pork into bite-size pieces instead of slices because eating a pie with a knife and fork is a bit weird. I'll also skip the olive oil, which is an alteration to the Williamsburg recipe. I really didn't need two tablespoons of butter/oil to brown the pork. I couldn't find any McIntosh apples at the store so I did three Granny Smiths but could have stood to do four. I don't have a sensitive enough sense of taste to tell the difference. I don't tend to rave about food, but this was really, really good.

3. My current pinball project has been slowly idling along, but I'm halfway finished with the second side. If I do it at night, I'll have it finished before Christmas, which I've kind of set as a goal. After all, I've been working on it a little at a time since August.

4. I finally bought false hair to work with for historical events. One of my goals for the year was to get better with hair. I've done a bit throughout the year, and jenthompson helped me figure out what color I needed so now I've got something to work with.

5. My white Regency dress doesn't fit over my 1790's stays. The stays are too high in the back for it. I had hoped...oh, well, I guess I can't retire the silly ones just yet.

6. I took pictures of my new spencer today, but I'll post about it separately in a bit (or tomorrow or whenever I get a chance).

7. Kaycee has posted lots of events for the Houston Area Regency Society. If anyone wants to come play with us, check out the Facebook page. I would particularly like to draw your attention to the archery event on 4/23 since it seems to have been really popular last March with the DFWCG.

I finished the first sleeve for my 1936 sweater. I got excited because it looks like I might have just enough yarn to finish the sweater...until I realized that I wasn't accounting for any neck treatment. While I don't think I'm going to be bold enough to go with the turreted collar, I'll still need to do something at the neck, probably some ribbing. Whatever it is, it will be in keeping with the 1930's style of the sweater but fit in with modern wear. I'll probably borrow something from another 1930's pattern; it just remains to be seen what.

Picture proof:


Ravelry page

This makes me nearly half-finished with the sweater.

Things have been busy lately, though there is a slow-down in sight. Since I finished the 17th century things, I'm mostly been knitting. It's easy to pick up and put down with just a little time to work on it.

I did a few repeats of my 1892 lace but have mostly worked on my 1936 sweater. I finished the back of it and started a sleeve. I suspect I'm going to be short on yarn because I actually bought the yarn for a different pattern from the one I eventually decided on. I bought the yarn based on a short-sleeved pattern, and now I'm making a long-sleeved sweater, realizing that I'm never going to wear a short-sleeved sweater with a normal sweater-weight body in Houston. Once I have the back and sleeve finished, I'll know whether I need more yarn and how much.

Frogging is not fun. After finishing the ribbing at the waist of my 1930's sweater and knitting a few rows of the main body, I decided that I had used the wrong needle size on the ribbing. I had to go down a size for gauge in the pattern section so I went down a size for the ribbing too. Bad choice. Of course, I decide this after 3.5" of ribbing and 1" of pattern. It's sad to rewind all that yarn back onto the ball. It was only about 40-45 rows so I guess it could have been worse. On the plus-side it's now completely brainless knitting again - knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one........and there will be fewer rows to get to 3.5".

In happier news, I've nearly finished one of the sleeves for my 1610's jacket and have started on the second one. Would it be finished by now if I were machine-sewing it? Yes. Do I care? Not in the slightest. There really is something soothing about hand-sewing.

I tried the 1892 lace pattern again with size 000 needles, and after blocking, I like it better. Ignoring the dropped stitch that ran, how does it look?



There's nothing to show how big it is in the picture, but the knitting needle is 1.5mm in diameter, if that helps.

Here's the old 4-0 gauge for comparison.



I also gauged my next sizeable knitting project. The pattern calls for size 4 needles and a 7 st/in gauge, but size 3 gave me gauge. I was actually good and knit a 3"x5" swatch with each of the two needle sizes. Now, I am apparently incapable of measuring knitting properly so it may or may not come out, but I'm hoping that virtue will be rewarded so that my sweater comes out reasonably. I'll probably cast that project on tomorrow while listening to my daughters read.