Getting Your Wardrobe Ready for Fall and Looking Forward to Winter
Fall is very firmly here, so I have sweaters, sewing, autumn, and upcoming winter, on the brain. I’m certainly not the only one.
Andi at Untangling-Knots, asked her readers to show off their favorite fall sweaters, and the response was some seriously beautiful sweaters.
Faith at Faithfully Geeky, listed her criteria for her ideal fall sweater – including “was it enjoyable to knit” – which made me think some more about the gap that sometimes appears between what we like to make, and what we like to wear.
Caroline at Sew Caroline, gathered up some fall sewing inspiration.
Including this coat from Vogue (#V8930), which looks amazingly cozy, and simple to sew. And the Cascade Skirt from Megan Nielsen, in my opinion you can never have too many long flowing skirtsā¦ luckily, pairing boots & tights with your skirts is an easy fall update.
Kate at Design Diary, has some interesting thoughts on dressing for fall, even while the temperatures remain warm.
Elise Blaha, is doing an autumn capsule wardrobe project/challenge for the next three months, that I can’t wait to follow along with. (If you don’t know, a capsule wardrobe is, it’s a very small wardrobe, made up of very versatile pieces – Unfancy has a great page explaining capsule wardrobes here.)
Mandy at The Wardrobe Project, is planning her fall sewing, and is working on garments that will get worn all year around. I love that!
Heather at Closet Case Files, has an excellent round up of easy to knit fall sweaters, and it’s making me want to knit Beaubourg by Julie Hoover.
And Into-Mind has an amazing list of resources for updating your fall wardrobe.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go bury myself back under my pile of half finished sweaters…
…and stock up on tights…
…and try not to panic that winter is coming…
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A sweater that took 3 years to knit. And some thoughts on making teeny tiny steps forward.
I’m working on my transitional weather sweater (hopefully). This sweater took 3 years to knit, and it has prompted some thoughts on making teen-tiny-itty-bitty steps forward.
I knit a lot.
I have a handful of unfinished sweaters hanging about, and thanks to a swift kick in the butt from the self-made wardrobe project I’m finishing a bunch of them up.
This particular sweater has taken me 3 years and 1 month to finish.
As far as sweaters go, this one is pretty straightforward.
But the interesting thing about it, is how much my knitting has changed since I started it.
My actual gauge hasn’t changed (thankfully), the actual number of stitches per inch is the same as it was three years ago. But my knitting has changed.
My stitches are straighter.
My tension is more even.
You can definitely feel the difference.
And up close you can see the difference.
The fabric looks and feels smoother.
If you had asked me, before I picked up this sweater, if my knitting had changed in the last three years I would probably have said “yea, but not a whole lot.”
But it did.
I did some quick guesstimates of the number of stitches in most of the shawls I’ve published patterns for between starting and finishing this sweater, and the total comes out around 788,000 stitches.
I can knit about 30 stitches a minute. (In a lace pattern, relaxed, and following a chart. Averaged over a couple hours with breaks, pauses, etc.)
788,000 stitches.
437 hours.
16 shawls.
When you think about the fact that that’s only the knitting I’ve done for the patterns I’ve published, (no swatches, no sweaters, no unpublished shawls), that’s a lot of stitches, and a decent amount of time.
Turns out my knitting has changed quite a bit over three years.
One stitch at a time.
Over 788,000 stitches later.
two sweaters and a shawl
Each Wednesday I post little snippets about the projects Iām working on.
You can see all of the Wednesday posts here.
I’m working on the last two rows of my lace shawl!!! Working with Julie Asselin’s “merletto” was absolutely amazing as always, I can’t wait to work with it again.
My boring black sweater is moving along with some help from “Downton Abbey.” I know that I’m going to love wearing it, I just hope knitting the sleeves isn’t too awful.
My Versio sweater is blocking! Yay! I can’t wait to clip all the ends, thread the cording, and start wearing it!
