Crunch time

So, um, this needs to be a coat by next Sunday.



This week: pinning and sewing and cutting and sewing and pinning and stabbing underneath my thumbnail while pinning and sewing and cutting and pinning.

Yesterday, I spent two hours staring at my fabric to make sure that both of my sleeves were the exact same size and placement on pattern. I measured eighty billion times from eighty billion different guiding marks to make sure that the curves of the sleeve caps were the same on both sides and on both sleeves. People started making fun of me because I just couldn't stop obsessing with the pins before sewing in the guide threads.


I feel vaguely as though this process should involve calculus.

Well anyhow, today, I did the same thing, but with the easing of the sleeve caps into the shoulders of the coat. I finished at 6ish, after pretty much doing the same dance of pin, sew, cut, furrow eyebrows at fabric for an hour and a half, for five hours. Sheesh. But tonight, the shoulders were sewn and sleeve set in - a great success after much contemplation and consumption of cookie bars.


And, luckily there are still enough hours in the day for fun - yay for housemates returning!

I'm going in this weekend, too. With any luck, this baby will be finished, with a lining and a proper hem, a little more than a week from now.

Hahahah. Sob.

I feel so much more kinship with Project Runway contestants than I used to.

Progressing

First off, I finished the Five-Dollar Hat. It was Ella Rae Silkience that I got in a $5 grab-bag from Smith's this last fall. As with so many other people on Ravelry, I found that the cuff is way too loose. I might end up stringing some elastic through it so it will actually stay on my head. It's probably partially my yarn choice, since cotton is not very bouncy, but I mean... it cost five dollars. I'm not gonna complain.


And what is that cardigan you see? Why yes, it's my Fair Isle Cardigan from Winter Term of two years ago - in fact, the reason that I started this blog in the first place. Hooray!

On a side note, I have yet to knit a beret that doesn't make me look like a dork wearing a shower cap. Maybe my head is not properly shaped for a beret? Perhaps it's because my hair is too straight? Who knows. They keep my head relatively warm, and today that's all I'm gonna ask for.


But on to the weaving! Today I made some serious progress on the fabric for my coat, which may have a name eventually but doesn't yet. The pattern is turning out differently than I had expected; I guess I'm used to color dominance in knitting, when the main color really pops from the background color. I think it's also because my warp is Pearl, and the only Navy introduced into the pattern are the lozenge shapes.


Towards the end of the day, I did a pattern repeat (which is 24 rows, I think?) in about four minutes. In between my groove periods were flying bobbins, broken warp threads, and me cursing very emphatically under my breath. During the groove periods, though.... oh wow. I sat down at 2 pm and didn't get up until 5:30 except to wind more bobbins and advance my fabric.
It helps, of course, that long stretches of grooviness were punctuated by conversations about homeschooling, fabric, and circus. (Oberlin's circus community, conveniently called OCircus, is quite impressive and at least one of the 10 weavers in this month's class participate.)


Today I also had a chance to get lunch with a PhD candidate who is interviewing for a non-tenure faculty position as a Japanese history professor in the East Asian studies department. It was interesting because the other students were two junior history majors and a sophomore East Asian studies major who seemed to have very different ideas about the stages of their life after Oberlin. The candidate asked what we thought we would be doing in ten years, and other students shrugged. I thought about mentioning my current plan: to work at a conservation institute working on Asian textiles after spending two to three years in Japan and then getting a masters in historical fashion and textiles at FIT. Then I felt like a jerk, and didn't. But it's nice to know that even though I'm not sure where I'm going to go abroad and for how long, I finally have an idea of what my "I become a five-year-old whenever I get to go to work because it makes me so excited about life" job is.

Yay.


Anyhoo! Just another 3 yards to weave! Can I do it by next week? Stay tuned...

Dressing the loom does not involve pants

This week I pretty much spent dressing my loom. I started off by measuring out my warp on a warping board, which is a big rectangular frame with pegs on the sides that are spaced to be just about a yard across - very handy! That took Monday and Tuesday, after which the instructor helped me get the bulk of the warp onto the warp beam, which is the big roll of yarn behind my heddles above. Because of the way we wound the warp on the warping board, there was a handy little cross that helped the threading process immensely. Wednesday and Thursday I worked on threading my heddles.


The threader that I used looks kinda like a modified crochet hook. And, as with a crochet hook, I am not terribly fast or skilled at using it. I also decided to take my ring off, since I was reaching around in the guts of the loom with my feet on all of the pedals to keep the heddle frames up at a reasonable level for working.


By the end of Thursday, I had all of my heddle threaded. Now I'm just hoping that I got all of my pattern right... I made a really dumb mistake early on, by calculating 14 full repeats that came out to a lovely 312 warp threads. Then I read "300" as the final number and didn't get enough warp threads for my beautiful full repeat. However, at the point at which I realized this, like hell I was going to go back... so 13.5 repeats will have to do. Grr.


And, finally, Friday I threaded the warp through the reed and tied it off. Now I'm just waiting for more yarn so that I can start making fabric.


And in the meantime, of course, I'm making fabric in other ways.

bits and pieces

With my hair the longest it's been in my adult life, I've been struggling a little to find ways to keep it out of my face. I discovered the Dutch braid this summer, which is basically an inside-out French braid, and that has saved me a lot of times, but I have this problem where my hair is really, really straight and slippery when it's dry. This means that I pretty much have to braid it when it's wet, and it also means that cute little Heidi braids (pigtails pinned over the head) and other hairstyles that use bobby pins and regular pins for support just don't work. Enter the amazing hairclip of doom. This morning, I did Dutch braided pigtails and put them in this clip, and it hasn't slipped all day. Hooray!


My other recent favorite is what I think of as the Lara Croft braid: high ponytail with plain old braid.


And, braids aside, I dressed up this morning so that I could wear my new Miz Mooz boots and felt incredibly cute all day despite the wool long underwear necessary to step outside. Like, it was 24 F this afternoon and everybody was like, "Mmm, balmy!" To think that at this time last year, I was in frickin' Bali.


The yarn is Socks That Rock lightweight in Oregon Clover Honey, bought at the amazing Churchmouse Yarn and Tea on Bainbridge Island with my dear mother. Right now I'm so incredibly obsessed with grey, a particular shade of olivey green, and the orange/red/browns like Oregon Clover Honey. Another color jag strikes again.

Except in my weaving project. Some of our yarn came today and I started measuring out my warp in Harrisville Highland wool. I'll have more pictures later in the week when we start weaving, but for now we just have our cones of beautiful, beautiful yarn. These are Highland wool in colors Pearl and Navy.


And hopefully with a little math


And a little work


I'll have more to share on that soon.