Adding a Third Rule to The Self-Made Wardrobe – Week 31
The Self-Made Wardrobe is a project where I only wear garments I’ve made.
It’s a year long experiment in getting dressed without clothing labels –
it’s a year about noticing patterns, trying things, and observing what happens.
Trying something different this week – photos at the top of the post, commentary at the bottom.
DAY 211 – Friday, February 27th
hand knit sweater dress // black tank top
black leggings // various rings // robot clock necklace
Day 212 – Saturday, February 28th
handspun handknit sweater // basic black tank top // graphic silk circle skirt
black tights // brown boots // long necklace // various rings
Day 213 – Sunday, March 1st
deconstructed sweater // boring black sweater // black tank top // black maxi
black tights // brown boots // various rings // long necklace
Day 214 – Monday, March 2nd
purple sweater // black tank top // graphic silk circle skirt
black tights // brown boots // acorn necklace // various rings
Day 215 – Tuesday, March 3rd
handknit sweater dress // black tank top
black leggings // black scarf // various rings
Day 216 – Wednesday, March 4th
archer button up shirt // birds & wheels circle skirt // black tank top
black leggings // various rings // bead crochet bracelets
Day 217 – Thursday, March 5th
handspun handknit sweater // black tank top // graphic silk circle skirt
black tights // brown boots // long necklace // various rings
I’ve been blogging with varying levels of commitment since 2010(?), and yet, I haven’t quite mastered the “don’t forget to photograph to project at each step” mindset. I find that quite annoying. For example I don’t really have photos of the yarn I used to knit my handspun sweater. I had the yarn sitting on my desk for ages and didn’t take photos before I started knitting with it. The skein of worsted alpaca handspun I used for the sleeves & body was basically the size of my face.
I mean seriously, how do you not take photos of a skein yarn the size of your face – especially when it’s your own handspun!?!?!
Anyway, this rather infuriating habit of not taking photos has prompted me to institute a 3rd rule for the self-made wardrobe.
Rule #3: projects aren’t actually finished until they’ve been photographed. (And since they aren’t done, they shouldn’t really be worn.)
I considered saying “projects aren’t finished until they’ve been blogged” but then I started thinking about how I so often start and finish projects in clusters, and then because I wanted them to be done, finished and wearable, I would end up clumping lots of finished project posts together, and that sounds completely overwhelming – both to write and to read.
For example, I finished & photographed 3 projects this week – a new shawl, a pile of bracelets, and a skein of handspun yarn – I photographed them all at the same time, but am going to spread out the finished object posts.
Side note: I’m kind of annoyed that I finished three projects this weekend, and none of them were clothing – but there we are. I’m comforting myself with the fact that I also finished both sleeves of my purple sweater.
So, projects aren’t “finished” until they’ve been photographed.
This way I can take photos as I finish projects, in clusters if necessary, but I can spread out the writing and the posting.
However. What about the projects that oh so often get caught between almost finished and finished finished?
More often than I’d care to admit, I’ll get a project very closed to finished, and then something will happen and the project will wait for ages until I get back to it. It took awhile for me to recognize this, and I’m still not positive why I do it, but I do.
Remember my first archer button up shirt?
That project sat between wearable and finished for absolutely ages.
But I sill wore it.
In this particular case, it was waiting for buttons, which was waiting for a trip down to the garment district. And, I desperately wanted to wear the shirt.
So I did.
(There’s also the lack of winter coat photos to consider – and I’m certainly not going to stop wearing my coat for the sake of a photo shoot.)
So. I think that since I’m already working with such a limited wardrobe that instances like that are ok.
My hope is that this new “rule” will get me into the habit of thinking about photography as part of the making process, and not just something I do (if I remember) after a project is long finished.
The Not-So-Straightforward Basic Purple Sweater
I have a new sweater! Just in time for more snow.
This should have been the most straight forward of knits, but it wasn’t – at all.
It started as a straight forward enough knit, a top down raglan pullover with long sleeves – just keep knitting, just keep knitting.
But then I decided I didn’t like the neckline, so I cut the whole yoke off.
Which led to a whole slew of complications, out of order knitting, and ends to weave in. (More about that here.)
And on top of that, I spent the whole process wondering if I was going to run out of yarn. It was close, but between the two yarns, I had 7 grams leftover.
Materials
The yarn is two skeins of Madeline Tosh Lace held together (which they’ve discontinued! That makes me a super sad panda.) The colors are “flashdance” and “magenta,” which when held together make an amazing marled purple color that sends my camera into fits of confusion.
I used a needle size 9 (5.5mm) because I wanted thin fabric, so that the sweater could work as a layer under other pieces, or on it’s own, but I wanted to hold the yarn double to make the knitting go faster (because lace weight sweaters take forever, as confirmed by the Boring Black Sweater) so large needles were a must.
Pattern
I didn’t use a pattern, since it’s just a straight forward top down raglan (or at least that’s what it was when I started), and it’s all stockinette, with decreasing for the waist, increasing for the hips, and decreases for the sleeves. I really let the yarn do the work to make the final sweater interesting.
The body & sleeve hems are just bound off using a regular bind off and a relaxing cup of tea. At the neckline I worked an i-cord bind off, which is quickly becoming my favorite finishing for sweater necklines. It’s fast, painless, and looks good – I’m sold.
What Worked Well
Sleeves!!! My sleeves are well and truly long enough! They come down to my knuckles and I love them! Most of the other sweaters I’ve knit have had no sleeves, short sleeves, magically shrinking sleeves, or sleeves that were not quite as long as I’d like them to be but would do.
My unconventional knitting order worked out, and you can’t tell from the final garment. I guess provisional cast ons and knitting from live stitches are techniques that really are seamless.
What I’d Do Differently
The stitches along the raglan shoulder shaping got kind of wonky & wide, probably due to a combination of the loose gauge & the direction I leaned my decreases, don’t love that, but can live with it.
There’s some funky bunching at the underarm, I think caused when I was reknitting the yoke, but hadn’t reworked the math. Don’t love this either, but can live with it too.
I’m really glad to know that the knitting out of order sweaters works in real life and in my brain. However it did lead to a lot of stops and starts, while I waited for enough time/brain power to start a new sweater piece, work out some math, chop the yoke off, etc.
Next time I’d rather go with my gut from the beginning and have a smoother knitting process. Because the funny thing is, that this is the sweater I wanted from the beginning. But I second guessed myself and cast on a different neck, which I then didn’t like, which led to me cutting it off, which led to knitting the sweater in a wonky order, and you know the rest of that story.
I guess there’s something to be learned there.
Aside! How in the world do I only have 5 long sleeve sweaters?!?! No wonder I’m cold & want more. (Sweater 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 is this one.)
this week, I’m knitting a sweater completely out of order
Each Wednesday, I post little snippets about what’s happening, and what I’m working on.
This week I focused my knitting time on my super simple raglan pullover. And what should have been a straightforward sweater, turned into a not-so-straightforward project.
Because, I’m knitting this thing completely out of order.
I started at the neck, planning a basic top down raglan sweater.
I knit the neckline, the yoke, the waist decreases and got to the waist.
Then I tried it on, and hated how the neckline looked.
So I put the sweater on hold until I decided what to do.
Eventually, I decided to cut the entire yoke off.
So I cut off the yoke, and wound that yarn back into a ball.
I put those stitches on waste yarn, and worked through the hip increases.
The body was done. (Maybe. I might decide it’s not actually done.)
Then I put the body of the sweater, (without it’s yoke), aside.
Using a provisional cast on, I cast on for the bicep circumference of the first sleeve, and knit three inches. Then I did the same for the second sleeve.
I put the lives stitches for both sleeve stumps on extra circular needles,
then picked out both provisional cast ons and put those on 2 more needles.
I picked the torso of the sweater back up,
removed the waste yarn that I inserted after cutting off the yoke,
slipped the underarm stitches onto (yet more) waste yarn,
and knit the sleeves to the sweater body.
Now I’m knitting the yoke. Again.
Then the plan is to knit the rest of the sleeves, and maybe add length to the body.
Because why should a straightforward sweater be straightforward.
