Sunday, November 25, 2007

Go Rudy Go

Rudy participated in the space coast marathon today and managed to bring home a plaque.


He finished second in his age group.

Our long weekend is coming to a close and boy did I enjoy it. We all had Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off. I can tell you I really needed that break.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Ruffle jacket

The ruffled jacket is finished, yeah. I did frog it and redo the cables. I can honestly say that next time I will just leave it. It didn’t make that big of a difference.


So here are the specs.
Pattern: Ruffled Jacket from Vogue Knitting magazine Fall 2007
Needle size: US size 10 (6mm) 24” Addi turbo cables


Yarn: Elsebeth lavold chunky AL 50% Alpaca, 50% wool


Modifications: Other then fixing the correction on the pattern not much. I did have to do another section for the ruffled bell pattern that borders the sweater. I had to cast on another 231 stitches to have enough to go around. Here's a picture showing how short I was of the border reaching all the way around.


I also knitted the front and back in the round. There was a lot of seaming in this sweater. In addition to the usual seaming at the sleeves and shoulder, you have to also seam the cable border on and then the ruffled bell border. A button on the front might be nice to have to. All in all I am very pleased with the sweater and I think I will get a lot of use out of it.

I hope everybody has a great weekend.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

costume

Dax wanted to be Elizabeth Swan as a pirate this year for Halloween. Here is a picture of the costume used for the movie.


This is what we ended up with.


We used a combination of simplicity pattern 0527 and Simplicity pattern 0627. There were a lot of modifications done. The 0527 pattern was a children’s pattern and it was a little too small. The 0627 was an adult pattern and it was too big.

For the shirt I used the adult pattern. Since the arm length was already long I did not add the cuff per the pattern directions and just gathered up what was already there. The v in the neck was also to low so I cut it a considerable amount less.

The adult pattern was also used for the pants, but I did not use the elastic waist band. I had to cut the size down a good bit because they were to baggy then I used darts to pull in the waist and used a button down fly. I should have taken the leg part of the pants in more because they are still a good bit baggy in that area.


The vest was from the children’s pattern. The length was fine but I had to add a little bit to the width. I also changed the tab on the back to lace up instead of button. I used buttons that you cover with fabric. I have never used these kinds of buttons and was very impressed with them. I got mine at Hancock fabrics but saw that wal-mart sells them to. Here is a picture of the buttons I’m talking about. Dax also wore the vest to school for homecoming week. They are the Minutemen and it tied into the theme very well.



The adult pattern was used for the coat. I had to take in the sleeves a good bit and did not add the cuff part of the sleeves. I also did not add any buttons to the coat. I didn’t have buttons in the stash for this project and it wasn’t in the budget to buy more buttons. I thought the braiding did a good job at hiding the fact that there are no buttons.

The boots are from the children’s pattern. The boots was one of the few things that we didn’t alter very much. The only change we did was that we tacked the boots down to some old flip flops so they wouldn’t shift around on the feet. We used the directions from here to make the hat. We took a buckle off an old belt for the belt that holds the sword and just cut some scrap upholstery fabric to fit the buckle. The sword is a rubber sword we picked up from wal-mart.

Most of the fabric came from my stash. We had to buy the braid for the coat, the sword, the fabric for the boots and buttons for the vest.

Tyde was a dementor and did not want to pose for me. His costume was pretty easy. It was basically a black hooded sheet that was ripped up.

Rohan didn't want to be left out of the picture taken so here he is showing he can be a pirate to.



Take what you can give nothing back.



Arrrrrrrr

I'm going to try and catch up on reading blogs now. I hope everybody has a great week.