At Her Leisure

I finished the circus train yesterday.

Here's the last car:


Here's the whole thing:


Now I'm back down to three projects in progress, and they're all knitting, which is unusual. The beaded knitting almost doesn't seem like a knitting project since it feels like there's almost as much time stringing beads as there is knitting.

The whole set of bookmarks is finished!

I'm making good progress on a beaded knit purse from a pattern published in 1924.



The beads catch the light as they move, and I'm very happy with how it's coming along. Stringing the beads is tedious, but the knitting is mindless.

I finally took a few pictures of the 1907 duster I finished a few weeks ago. Someday I'll wear it to something and get pictures on me. I'll also get pictures of my automobiling hat on me instead of laid flat on a table.



I originally thought it was just one cape, but it turns out to be one over each shoulder.





The sleeve is a really big piece with an armscye that goes down nearly to the waist.



It's a little under four yards of linen with horn buttons. The pattern is from 1907 and included in The Edwardian Modiste. The hem is not well drafted; it doesn't have much curve at all and needed plenty of evening. When the draft calls for a length of skirt measure, I thought they meant the usual waist to floor measure and started out drafting it that way. I held up the first body piece and saw it went to the floor so I shortened that dramatically. It's not truly double-breasted because I didn't put in buttonholes on the right side, but I did put a big snap behind the top button to keep the inside from flopping down. It was fairly quick to put together, though I ended up stretching it out over a few weeks because I had to figure out buttons and then couldn't get excited about marking the hem when my cross-stitch piece was moving along so nicely.

It’s a tiny step, but I scaled up the pattern for the bathing cap to go with my 1878 bathing suit tonight. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get excited enough about it to cut it out. Now back to my book.

Here's the back of my current 1930's sweater project after blocking. It's feels so nice.

There is a lot of outlining on this picture, way more than I realized. I have finished the bottom half and part of the top half, but there's still a fair bit left to do.

Here's where I left off last week:


I forgot to take a picture before I switched frames, but the bottom half or so of the hidden side is in fact finished.
Here's where I left off this week, at least the right side of it:

I've been working on a shawl off and on since April. I've finally got nine repeats of the pattern and thought I should measure it to see how it's actually coming out and estimate how many repeats I'll need in total. The shawl is supposed to be about a yard square, and I thought I was probably a little over - maybe more like a meter wide than a yard. That would be fine. It turns out to be fully 55" wide.

I really did swatch it. I had no idea how big the pattern would come out so I knit a few repeats wide by a couple of repeats tall and came up with about 1" per repeat so I cast on 36 repeats. I guess I didn't open out the pattern enough in the swatch.

I really don't want a shawl that big. I have a giant wool shawl in garter stitch so it's nice and thick. This is supposed to be a lightweight and airy summery silk shawl. Now I have to work myself up to ripping it all out. At least now it will only take 10-15 minutes to knit a patterned row and a little under 10 minutes to purl back instead of taking 15-20 minutes for a patterned row and 10-15 minutes to purl back. And there will be a lot fewer rows than I would need to knit the extra 19" in length.

It was looking nice and felt lovely so I still want to make it.


Victorian knitting sure knows how to throw curve balls.

I'm finished except for outlining, and that is started.

Here's where I left off last week:


And here's where I left off this week:

I think I got carried away cross-stitching this week.

Here's where I left off last week:


And here's where I left off this week:


I think I'll finish the cross-stitching this week but might not get through the back-stitching until next week. We'll see. Then I'll get back to that duster that's been hanging on the dummy for a couple of weeks.