Win some, lose some

Since my last update, I've been reading... and taking notes... and knitting... at the same time! This has resulted in amazing progress on both a sock and Soleil - excellent! What wasn't so excellent was spending Friday night unknitting seagulls: my second-to-last seagull rows on the shawl looked odd, and I wanted to fix them, but (I know, lesson learned) didn't have a life line, so I unknit about 10 rows of shawl. Ugh. Haven't picked it up since.

On the other hand, the recent heat wave (up into the upper 90s) has convinced me to shorten a linen skirt. It's really nice to wear in the summer, but also rather frumpy (looking at the photo... ugh! Wow, does it look frumpy!). I'd been thinking about shortening it to knee-length and decided that last night was the night to do it. It took me maybe an hour and a half to go from this...

... to this, with plenty of careful measuring and safety-pinning and trying-on.

As Coffeeboy could tell you, I'm not always a friend of measuring: when planning a garden, I go for the messy, eyeballed look over the carefully calculated look. But with knitwear, I definitely measure carefully, and I probably measure even more carefully when sewing, because it's important to get that new hemline right. I think it looks so much better, don't you!

What didn't go so well last night was steek a summer cami that I knit a couple summers back. I hardly ever wear it because it's too big around, and when I lean over, flops in a singularly unattractive manner (unless one is keen on looking down my shirt, that is). Thus, I decided to steek it up the sides and cut, thereby making it smaller around. All went well until I steeked a straight line up the sides - and into the armholes. Oops! Suddenly the armhole was pretty much too small for my arm. I forgot to do that calculation right! I tried to rip out some of the steeking, but I think I ripped some of the knitting. Now, I think it might be the end of my Summer Tweed tank, unless I can fix the armholes. But that's for another day, as Juniper could warn you.


You'll have to ask her if she's on the attack, meowing, or yawning; at the time she was stalking a ceiling-bound ladybug which fell to its doom in the light fixture.