atherleisure: (reader)
This ended up seeming to be a year of little pieces more than full garments, though I did make costumes from the skin out for the 1690's and 1910's. I did a lot of knitting this year. One of my goals for the year was to do better with my hair for events, and I think I succeeded. There were some hairdos that I was very proud of. I got to go to a lot of events in different periods and had some opportunities to wear things that I had never really gotten to wear. One of the best parts was getting to meet a couple of LJ friends in real life in July.

I finally made the Le Baiser dress I had been planning for years.
Le Baiser

The rest is behind the cut: )

Finished!

Jan. 7th, 2016 03:45 pm
atherleisure: (reader)
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.

1936 Sweater

1870 Underskirt Untrimmed

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.
atherleisure: (reader)
I pressed the pieces for my sweater. It's amazing how different the fabric is after pressing. While I was pressing, it occurred to me that all three 1930's knitted items I've made have called for lightly pressing the pieces under a damp cloth. I guess it was a popular finish at the time. Now the shoulder seams are sewn, I've picked up the stitches around the neck, and I'm about 1/4 of the way through the neck ribbing.

Sunday night I blocked another thirty repeats of my lace, and I measured it yesterday. The forty blocked repeats work out to 1.5yd. Since I'm going for three yards, I'll only need to do about 80 repeats instead of 100, which will save about 20 hours of knitting. I've done 51 so I only have about 30 more!
atherleisure: (reader)
The underskirt is nearly finished. It needs two eyes (which means I need to put on my corset, and I'm having trouble getting worked up to do that right now) and a band of trim at the hem. I don't think I'm going to put lace around the hem like the picture has, but I think it will still be nice. (I accidentally hemmed it too long and don't have the lace on hand anyway. I don't really feel like ripping off 180" of hem facing and redoing it.)

I've been doing a lot of knitting while I've been with the family, and I'm up to the armscye shaping on my sweater sleeve. Maybe by this time next week I'll have a finished sweater to show off.

I've also worked a dozen repeats on my petticoat lace. That's about an eighth of what I need so I'm about 3/8 finished. It's not a short-term project.
atherleisure: (reader)
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 [livejournal.com profile] 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.
atherleisure: (reader)
After one of the ornaments gave me fits, I managed to wrestle it into submission. It's not the greatest, and the backs of the two cross-stitched ornaments really don't look as nice as past ones have (which is a direct effect of the difficulties they gave me getting themselves assembled). Still, they're finished, and they're on the tree. The tree is getting very full. I actually didn't put up any of the glass ornaments that come in packages of four this year because I didn't know where they could go.

2015 Christmas Ornaments

In more interesting news (because, let's face it, Christmas ornaments aren't actually very interesting, even if kittens are cute), I finished my new 1800's spencer last night. I'll photograph it at some point, but I think I can guarantee that it won't be in the next couple of days. The things I actually need to do were being extremely disagreeable (as in no discernible progress toward the goal after three hours) this morning so it's looking like they're going to take all my time for the rest of the week. Hmph. At least I have a pretty spencer now. And I'm up to the neckline of my sweater so there are things to be pleased about even if my work is disgruntling me.

I think I've decided to keep the butter-colored wool, but I'm not going to work on the Harper's Bazar dress right now. I'll continue to keep an eye out for white/off-white wool and plan to do something Edwardian with this because we all need more costume plans without event plans in our lives. Or maybe I'll eventually give up on white and do this one after all. Time will tell.

A Sleeve

Nov. 16th, 2015 01:16 pm
atherleisure: (reader)
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:
Turreted Sweater Sleeve

Ravelry page

This makes me nearly half-finished with the sweater.

Patterned

Oct. 21st, 2015 05:24 pm
atherleisure: (reader)
I finished patterning a spencer last night, but I didn't feel like cutting so I just knit instead. Still, having a pattern is good. Maybe I'll cut it out tonight. I'll probably have to feel a bit more ambitious than I am at present, though. Knitting is good too...

Knitting

Oct. 19th, 2015 10:31 am
atherleisure: (reader)
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.

1936 Sweater with "Turreted" Collar - Back
atherleisure: (reader)
I finished setting the sleeves and started putting the ribbon ties on my 1610's jacket last night. I've got five ties sewn on and five pinned so my hopes are high of finishing tonight! I'd be done now, if I hadn't goofed when cutting out the jacket and forgotten to leave a little overlap so i could pin it shut. Still, the ribbons are pretty and will add a little interest to an otherwise plain jacket. I'll try to remember to leave a little more fabric next time. this is what I get for trying to modify my usual method of cutting out 18th century bodices.

Due to a lot of reading the last few days, I've caught up to where I was on my 1936 sweater. I still have lot more reading to do so it's actually likely to see more progress in the next few days. The ship pinball is inching along; I've been working at it at odd moments, but it's not moving very fast.

Frogging

Sep. 20th, 2015 05:44 pm
atherleisure: (reader)
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.
atherleisure: (reader)
Obviously I'm not that excited about the lace I'm knitting because I started another pinball today. What can I say? They're the epitome of portability.

This one will have a ship on the front and crowns and initials on the back. Crowns seemed to go with ships - "royal navy" and all. Originals that it will be based on: front and back. Okay, the back is actually based on a cross-stitch pattern that's supposed to be based on a knitted original. I've seen patterns on originals that had a similar feel so it should do nicely.

I do want the lace for a petticoat, but I'm not that interested in making the petticoat right now and the ball of thread is actually quite big, maybe 4" in diameter. I did test out that I can knit it while riding in the car so I'm not completely abandoning it for the present. (Though the 1930's sweater seems to be falling by the wayside. I did what? 3 rows?)

UPS is supposed to deliver my copy of The Tudor Tailor tomorrow so I'll get back to the whole 1610's thing soon. For now, I think I'll be making a smock, petticoat with upperbodies, jacket, and some kind of cap. After I review the book, I'll probably have some specific questions. (Actually, I have some specific questions now, but the book may address at least some of them. I don't remember all the details from when I read it before since at that time this stuff was still in the "I want to make this at some point but don't really have any place to wear it" category.)

In the meantime I've been discovering that trimming bonnets requires a level of artistry that I do not have. I am the first one to admit that I am not even remotely artistic. I am a technician, and that's fine by me. Building the bonnet base and covering it - okay. Decorating it - the pits. I'm still hoping to finish it up this week, but the trimming is irritating me.

Gauging

Aug. 4th, 2015 06:02 pm
atherleisure: (reader)
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?

1892 Knitted Lace

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.

1892 Lace

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.

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