Friday, October 25, 2013

Transit and following orders

Here again, today's post is brought to you from windy Wellington, the Capital city of New Zealand. Work brings me here, for two days. A day of listening to people talk about how they see the future in the area I work, and a day of working with others to see if we can make a plan to do something ... thatwill benefit someone and the economy. This is the scary side of education, the side where the outside world wants to see that you are of use, that what you know and what you do is relevant and useful. Scary, but good, and I was so glad that today was preceded by a day of listening to those who have gone before talk about what works.
Wee cubs cardigan goes well, the original pattern had ribbing at the hem and cuffs, and lace around the front band. Little Cub asked if there could be lace at the hem and cuffs too, well she also asked for beads, but I don't have any to hand that feel right. I've switched to a needle size smaller and so far the lace looks good. I am planning for a wide, 10 cm hem, something with enough weight to fall nicely, both visually and physically.
Here is the body all laid out, I'm on the fence about the marl of the pinks, the evidence of yarn dying ... But then again I love the pink, and know little cub does as well. This project travels well at this stage, the lace is repeatable, easy to remember, and the project fits into a sock project bag.
I've left my larger body of work at home, the tambour work.Tambour work is just less portable ....
There has been some frogging, the lines of dark chocolate sequins have been removed ...pending a redo. I amuse myself in that I now go out of my way to fix things that could be done better. There were places where there were do Double sequins instead of singles, an easy rookie mistake when working blind under the fabric. After I frogged the chocolate sequins I realized a simpler fix was simply to cut and remove the doubled sequins ...oh well, this way I get more practice. I also had fun placing bugle beads, and playing with tension and spacing, and working with 3mm seqins. Oh boy, those were too small for me to work blind, and I ended up cheating and using my sight to ensure each sequins was separate before stitching. I guess like with knitting, and forming a stitch, at some point I will be able to do this work by feel, and that will only come through practice.
Home tonight, and back to my own pillow and family ....
Take care, na Stella

1 comment:

Knitting Linguist said...

Your conference sounds very interesting - I'd love to hear more about it. I like that sweater a lot, and I actually appreciate the marled look, it works well with the deep lace border.