a super colorful sweater body
Each Wednesday, I post little snippets about what’s happening, and what I’m working on.
Super quick update today, because the only knitting I worked on all week was my crazy colorful sweater.
Last week I was at the waist, transitioning my colors, and hoping all of the colors would work together.
I think the colors worked out really well together – even though this wasn’t the original plan.
Unexpected. In the best possible way.
Knitting my “Boring Black Sweater”
I have a love-hate relationship with basics.
I love wearing them.
I hate making them.
This creates a little bit of tension in my self-made wardrobe.
I’ve talked a little bit before about the disconnect between what I love wearing, and what I love making. I love making really complicated & technically challenging, colorful & intricate & interesting things, while I love wearing basics – tank tops, jeans (they’re coming! – eventually…) and straight forward stockinette sweaters.
Sewing basics is pretty boring.
Knitting basics is a nightmare of boredom.
But a nightmare that’s kind of worth it.
I’ve dubbed this sweater the “Boring Black Sweater.”
It’s a solid black, basic pullover, knit in stockinette stitch, in lace weight yarn on a US size 4 (3.5mm) needle. Which, if you don’t knit, is tiny yarn on a not-so-tiny-but-certainly-not-large needles, in a very basic knitting stitch.
The yarn is “Forest Hills” from Cascade in color #3 “Anthracite” (black). I love this yarn for shawls. But I wouldn’t really recommend it for garments because of how much this sweater is pilling.
The pattern is a basic, yoked pullover, worked from the top-down, with a wide neckline, and turned hems on the sleeves and body.
Knitting it was really boring.
It was so boring, in fact, that I knit the sleeves too way short. And once the sweater was all done I cut off the cuff, picked up the stitches on the sleeve, knit a couple more inches, and graphed the cuff back on.
Even so the sleeves ended up being bracelet length, which isn’t what I had in mind, but works fine.
Even though it was kind of a nightmare to knit, I love this sweater. It works with just about everything in my wardrobe, and is the perfect thin layer to wear under or over something.
From now on though, I think I’ll stick to sewing, instead of knitting, my basics.
Graphic Silk Circle Skirt – when what I love to sew meets what I love to wear
This is one of my absolute favorite pieces in my self-made wardrobe. It’s a very versatile piece, without being a true “basic.”
I made it one morning way back in June (during the first try at this project) when I was absolutely sick of everything in my closet.
It’s a two layer, square shaped circle skirt, with an elastic waist, and handkerchief hem, made out of a 100% silk printed fabric.
Meaning:
It has two layers of fabric, one on top of the other. (That I then rotated so they’re offset from one another – more of an explanation.)
A circle skirt is made by laying your fabric flat and cutting two circle, one within the other, the outer circle becomes to the hem of your skirt, while the inner circle becomes your waist. For this skirt, instead of shaping the hem as a circle, I shaped it as a square.
It has an elastic waist, so it’s wonderfully comfortable.
A handkerchief hem is a hem with points which, in this skirt, are created by shaping the hem like a square.
The fabric is a lightweight 100% silk with a really beautiful graphic print.
I picked up this fabric on a whim, mostly because of the print.
I love black & white prints, and it’s one of the places where what I love sewing and what I love wearing meet.
More often than not, what I love making isn’t what I love wearing (lace shawls for example), and what I love wearing isn’t what I love making (mostly because it’s boring).
Black & white graphic prints being one of the exceptions. They’re prints, which make them interesting to sew, and they’re black & white which makes them easy to wear. Love.
This is definitely and absolutely one of my favorite pieces.
