The Little Things

There is nothing better than a 3-day weekend full of friends, good food, and a doing the small things that make you happy. For me this weekend, that included baking a bienenstich (a German cake that is my new dessert obsession), playing Mario Kart Wii, and logging some time on my sewing machine.

On the sewing front, I finished a Peony dress. This is actually the second time I've made this pattern (the first Peony is blogged here), but it's such a classic silhouette and a straightforward pattern that I'd be happy sewing 100 Peonies. This time, I changed it up with a fun print and short sleeves.

I'm still having trouble with zippers. I've finally gotten over my confusion about inserting an invisible zip (Colette's invisible zipper tutorial helped) and am now working on inserting one, well, invisibly. You can see below how the blue zipper tape shows down the back of the dress. I think the key is ironing the zipper flat before sewing to put the seam line as close to the edge of the zipper teeth as possible. We'll see how my next invisible zip goes using this trick.

The zipper exemplifies where my current sewing skills are: I feel comfortable with a lot of the techniques of sewing, but I'm still working on the small details of the execution. For example, I'm not fazed by bust darts but need to remember that there is bust awkwardness if you accidentally end them in the wrong place (ask me how I know that one). So yeah, good with the mechanics, need to work on the execution.

It's not that my execution is bad, it's just that getting the details right is one of my goals going forward. In the meantime, I'm creating clothing that I love and am happy wearing. This dress is definitely in both of those categories.

Celebrations

It's been quieter than usual on this blog for the past few months while I've been finishing up my master's degree, but I'm happy to say that I officially graduated on Sunday!

I enjoyed a low-key celebration with dinner and a special ceremony just for my program. It was nice to mark the occasion, but I'm really looking froward to getting back to normal life.

Hopefully, normal life includes an uptick of crafting and of blogging about it here. I'm really looking forward to the next chapter of my life and sharing it here with you!

Rosary

I'm so excited to show you the super secret project I was working on last week, a rosary:

Husband and I made this rosary for our goddaughter's baptism, him creating the olive wood cross and me doing all of the bead work. We don't usually do joint crafting projects but this rosary was a perfect alignment of our skill sets and the need for a special and religious gift. I can honestly say that this is one of the best things I've ever made.

While I've done quite a few wire projects previously, this one has some special details that make it stand out. First, I used a different wire than normal: stainless steel. Not only will this wire not tarnish, but it's also strong enough to stay in place without needing the more complex wrap for each loop. (With well over 100 loops to make, doing a simpler wrap saved me so much time.) The other detail I love is the Y-connector near the cross, which has the Virgin Mary on one side and Jesus on the other. It was pure luck to find it at the bead shop as it's the perfect connector for a rosary.

This rosary is also the biggest wire project I have done to date. It took several evenings to put together but I found the work quite meditative. Thankfully, I have plenty of beads leftover from my trip to the local bead shop, so I'm looking forward future evenings of meditative wire-work.

My goddaughter is still a little too young to appreciate this gift, but I hope she grows to love her rosary in time. And I'm also hoping that some day she will hang out with her godparents without crying.

Well Hello There

I'm so happy to be back blogging today because it means that I'm feeling human again. There's nothing quite like a cold followed by a flu to make you appreciate normalcy. Thankfully, I'm on the mend and feeling up to doing things other than laying on the couch all day.

I didn't make it out of the house much in the last two weeks, but I did manage a visit to a local bead shop, Planet Bead, to purchase supplies for two new projects. It is a lovely little store in downtown Milwaukee with a great selection of beads and beading materials. While I ended up spending more on beads that I had planned, I'm really happy with what I got and how the first project is coming together.

I can't show off too much of this project yet, but I will say that it is probably my favorite wire and bead project ever. It's beautiful and special and almost finished. I promise full pictures next week!

Knitspiration (or Lack Thereof)

I have no inspiration to knit at the moment. The only project on my needles, a fair isle sweater, is currently languishing in a corner and I am lacking desire to start anything new. We all got through periods like this and I think it's helpful to be honest about these natural lulls. So the question is, what does one do when her knitting inspiration is gone?

First, I find it helpful not to force things. If I don't feel like knitting, then I don't knit. Instead, I play with my other craft supplies. I pull out craft books that I haven't perused in a while and go through my craft supplies to see what looks interesting. There's usually no plan or goal in mind, I just pick up whatever strikes my fancy.

I also like to whip out small projects when I'm feeling uninspired. Small projects are great because you get the joy of creating something without the large devotion of time and effort. Small projects feel more like trying things out and play, which is exactly what I need to make crafting feel enjoyable and fun again.

Lulls in knitting inspiration can be hard to deal with, but they are also opportunities to branch out and try new things. They're a chance to remind myself about all the other crafts that I enjoy doing. Taking a little break from knitting and playing with other things is usually the best cure for being excited about knitting when I pick my needles up again.

Try Then Improve

One thing that I love about knitting is the ability to try then improve at challenging techniques like fair isle, lace, or pattern designing. But I realized that this love of a challenge also extends to my other hobbies of sewing and baking. A good example of this is my recent endeavors to make homemade crumpets, marshmallows, and macarons (shown here).

Marshmallows are surprisingly the easiest of the three to make while macarons are the fussiest (there are thankfully blog posts and YouTube videos dedicated to getting these cookies just right). Crumpets, on the other hand, are the baked good I'm still trying to improve upon. It's not that my crumpets taste bad, but I'm still in search of a recipe that will yields those lovely holes for soaking up butter and jam. Definitely a case of try then improve.

You know, I think this theme of 'try then improve' should be my motto for tackling life in general. And if I get tasty-but-imperfect crumpets or warm-but-imperfect knitwear out of it, so much the better.

Geek Dog

A friend of mine sent me an interesting request a few weeks ago: could I create a dog collar with the Balmer series on it? My friend, a chemist, had just got a new dog and wanted to deck him out in something geeky. Always up for a nerdy challenge, I considered the best way to install the hydrogen emission spectrum on a small dog collar.

I thought of several options for putting an emission spectrum on a collar, including fabric paint and machine sewing, but eventually settled on using embroidery floss. The floss would make the lines stand out more than simply sewing back and forth over the collar and I won't have to worry about the pup ingesting paint. The hardest part was actually picking colors of floss to match the emission lines!

Part of the reason my friend asked me to do this project was because I'm anal-retentive detail-oriented about spectra being correct. I had to calculate the scale of the collar in nanometers per inch and then where, in inches, this would place each of the lines. It isn't perfect, but it's pretty darn close.

For each line, I used 3 strands of floss and went over the line 1 to 3 times, depending on its relative spectral intensity. Hopefully this embroidery stands up to the exuberance of a puppy.

I'm really happy with how this project turned out and I hope my friend (and his dog) also like it. It was an interesting challenge and a different project from the ones I normally craft.