Fix it ? Friday - New Hem

When I wrote about finishing my cotton striped Vogue dress, I mentioned that I didn't like how the hem line pulled in. I thought it was because of the Kitchener seam.

I knew it would be a tedious job, but the other day, I sat down and pulled out all that stitching.

One stitch at a time was removed and the freed live stitch was put onto a needle.

Once they were all on the needle, I bound off:

Once bound off, I sewed the hem down with a herringbone stitch, like I did the facings (no pic).

When done, I had this nice looking hem:

In case it's not clear, in the bottom of the picture (purple)
is the front of the dress. At the top (pink and red) is where
the dress is folded over to show the inside of the dress. The
hem is the bottom stripe of pink that looks different than
the rest of the pink.

Nice looking from the inside, but let's see about the front side...

So here is the original hem:

And here is the new hem:

Wah wah waaaaah, They look the same, don't they!! I've convinced myself the second finish is a little better, but certainly not a lot. It also improved the look of the hem at the side seams, but they're still a little wonky too.

BUT, I am still satisfied that I did it because if I hadn't, I would have always thought that I should have. Now I can enjoy wearing the dress knowing I did what I could and that I am not going to do any more.

Here are some more pictures I took after the hem was done since the lighting was better than the first day I went out.

Also, no striped tights. Better, no?

Thanks for coming along on the journey!

Fix it Friday: Boro Style

It's Fix it Friday around here and I am using Boro stitching with its original intent--fixing work pants. A pair of mine and a pair of Troy's.

Putting my Squam learning to good use! (Hmm...not that I couldn't mend pants before, but I'm having more fun doing it this way. And that means it's actually getting done!)

Fix it Friday: When I Missed a Stitch

Back when I was working on the yoke of the Mesa, I noticed a mistake rows and rows after it was done. When I got to the next row with increases, there was one section with the wrong number of stitches. After some investigation, I realized I hadn't picked a stitch on the previous increase row or had dropped the yarn over. Same difference: I didn't have the right number stitches.

After briefly considering ripping out the whole wedge, I decided to take a more selective approach. I raveled just the section I need to reknit:

This is one section between consecutive increases. I could have just undone one or two stitches, but since I was adding an additional stitch, I needed extra yarn to make that stitch. If you don't spread that out over a larger area, you can see the column of too-tight stitches.

Once undone, I put the stitches on a dpn of appropriate size (making sure to pick up the yarn over I originally missed!)

and literally started knitting those rows between the existing stitches. Instead of using yarn from the ball to make new stitches, I used one of the long strands between existing stitches. Just make sure to use them in the right order!

Since I was using dpns, at the end of each "row" I could just slide the stitches back to the right end and knit (or purl as appropriate) the next row without turning the work!

This is the middle of a purl row. (Since I was working
garter stitch from one side of the work, I had to
alternate knit and purl rows.) You can just make out
the strand at the front of the work that I am using to
make new stitches.

Keeping going...almost there!

You can see the column of stitches on the left edge
are a little loose and form a noticeable line, but this
will completely disappear with blocking. (Don't we
all love blocking!)

Once I had knit up all the rows, I could transfer the stitches back to the main needles I was using and continue merrily on. I saved myself a lot of knitting!

Fix It Friday: Mending Socks

I learned to darn socks in grade school using the weaving method. It's not exactly something I enjoy and I don't really like the result, but it works. But recently I read a great post about different ways you could mend a sock. One of them involved knitting (as in knitting a patch over the spot). That appealed to me a lot more.

Then I happened to ask my sister how the socks I gave her in December were working out. :significant pause: Then she said that they had a big hole ripped in them and I should never give her socks again because she doesn't deserve them. Since I was coming home soon, I told her to save the socks and I would see what I could do. I tracked down the left over yarn from the socks and took it with me.

After our conversation, I started to think about which particular socks I gave her and I remembered that I had problem with that yarn being moth-eaten in spots. Of course I repaired/extracted all the bad spots I found, but there was a good chance that I just missed one and the hole wasn't my sister's fault at all!

When I got the socks, I discovered that the "huge hole" was not so big. (She was smart enough not to continue wearing them once they were holey.) And it looks to me more likely caused by evil insects and not the wayward nail at her desk at work.

I put a small dessert bowl in the sock so I could see what I was doing and had some room in which to work. I could see a few stitches that had come undone and the two ends of the strand that had been eaten apart. But they were so short, there was nothing I could do with them as they were.

The first thing I did was put the stitches I could see onto some dpns so they didn't ravel further. I then picked one of the strands and undid it as I followed its path exactly with a needle and new strand of yarn:

I'm pulling out the existing strand to the left, but only
after I've inserted the needle so I can follow it with the
mending yarn.

In this way I was able to duplicate the knitting while making the end long enough to work with.

Now I have a long end (held by my fingers) that I can work in.
The other strand is the end of the mending yarn. I've already
threaded the needle on the other end of the mending yarn
so I can begin closing the hole.

Then I "sewed" (or Kitchenered) the two sides of the hole together. There were only two or three stitches on each side. I did the best I could matching what I thought should be knit stitches and purl stitches, but it may not have been perfect.

 Here the hole is closed and secure:

 but now I have another too-short end at the other side (held by my fingers).

So I repeated the process of undoing the short end, while following its path with the needle to replace it with the mending yarn. After a few stitches, I had a long enough end to work with on this side too:

I then worked in three of the ends on the inside of the sock. I noticed that the central spine of the sock design didn't quite line up (you can see it in the picture above), so I took the mending yarn still on the needle and duplicate stitched over a short section of the "spine" to correct the mismatched stitch.

Et voila:

You can hardly see the patch and the sock should be good as new.

For some reason darning is a lot more interesting to me when I can knit it, even if the "knitting" is done with a darning needle. I'll try to keep this in mind as I expect more of my own socks will start to wear out.

Fix it Friday: Foray into Dyeing

So you know I buy sweaters in order to harvest the yarn they're made of. And often they're not exactly the colour you want. Or the colour was fine, but it was popular a decade ago and just isn't anymore. I've been intrigued by dyeing with Koolaid for quite a while and hear all about it from the Unravelers group on Ravelry. The main advantages (for me) are that it's readily available and doesn't need to be specially ordered, and it's food-safe so I don't need to have a separate set of pots and utensils for dyeing.

I told my sister that I was finally and definitely going to try a batch Thursday or Friday of this long weekend. I said it out loud, but I didn't really believe it. I have some sort of mental block to dyeing. It seems like lot to set up and do. But I woke up Thursday morning and apparently was determined enough to get it started. It's fun to surprise yourself, isn't it?

My first project was going to be this pale blue cashmere:

The colour isn't really ugly, but the yarn's been around long enough I realized I wasn't going to make anything from it. It's very pale and lifeless. I bought the sweater it came from at a yard sale for $2 so there was very little on the line if this didn't work. (Plus I only dyed the sleeves so I still have yarn from the front and back to try something else.) The yarn itself is very nice so if I could improve the colour, it would be very worth it.

I brushed up on my Koolaid colour theory from this site. (It's well-worth a quick look at that link...135 colours from combos of Koolaid flavours!) This page from the same site had basic instructions for the dyeing process itself. They use a microwave to heat the yarn, but I knew from other reading that you can do it on a stove top. I was doing enough yarn that I didn't want to try to fit it into the microwave.

Step 1: soak the yarn in water for about an hour:

Ok, step 1 isn't so hard.

Once the time was close to finished, I heated some water on the stove (in another pot) and mixed my Koolaid. They recommended 1-2 packets per ounce of yarn. I had 2.6 ounces and used three packets of Black Cherry (the only red flavour I had in the house). I mixed it in 8 ounces of water:

I thought there might be enough light by
the window to let you see the colour,
but there wasn't.

Ok, I can mix Koolaid.

Then I dumped out the water the yarn was soaking in and squeezed most of the water out so I didn't drip all over and added it to the water being heated on the stove.

Um, I can do that.

And then I poured in the Koolaid mix:

And then poked at it with a wooden spoon to mix up the colour and get it all over the yarn. (You shouldn't really stir or agitate as you may well felt the yarn):

That's not hard; I can do that too.

Then I let it stay hot on the stove (but well below boiling). You're supposed to let it go until the water is clear, indicating that all of the dye has been absorbed:

[I think I let it go a lot longer than necessary because the water still looked red. When I finally dumped it out, I realized it was just the colour being reflected. Oh well, no harm done.]

Then you let it cool down. Easy-peasy.

I was so encouraged excited by my apparent success, that I grabbed another yarn I couldn't stand the colour of

and started the process again. Pre-soaking:

I had a lot more of this yarn (3.5 oz x 3) so I needed more Koolaid. I decided to hit this one with purple instead of red. I had only five packs of Grape, though. But then I figured I could use Mixed Berry (blue) and Black Cherry (red) to make my own purple. I had two packs of each, and that would give me a total of nine packets, which would be a good start for that much yarn.

I mixed the Mixed Berry:

and added Black Cherry to make the purple. Here the mixed purple is on the left and the Grape mix is on the right:

I can't see a difference; can you see a difference? I know, I know, this picture isn't very conclusive as you can't really see a thing in the dark jar, but I found it encouraging nonetheless.

Yarn in heated water:

 Pour in Grape:

 and then the mixed purple and then spread it around:

Can you see a problem compared to the other yarn after it was mixed. Yeah, there's a lot of blue not being covered by purple. You can see it even better here:

You can also see that the water is blue. I think the red dye is absorbed more quickly, and I think it all started a little too hot so when I poured the dye on, it took really quickly where it landed and there wasn't enough to dye the rest of the yarn. As I understand it, this is considered normal for "kettle-dyed" yarn, which is essentially what this is. That's why Malabrigo yarns, though beautiful, vary widely from skein to skein, even in the same dye lot. Or it could just be that this is alpaca and the first batch I did was cashmere. I'm not sure.

In any case, I decided to finish the process and evaluate things then. I didn't get a picture, but the yarn is more even than I expected, but still shows a lot of blue through the purple. Troy likes it, but it's not what I want. I'll be buying more Koolaid and overdying it to even out the tone and maybe darken it.

By the time the second batch was done "cooking," the first batch was cool enough that I could finish it up. I dumped it out:

 and squeezed out all the water, and then hung it over the bathtub to dry. That's when I found a problem:

In the places where the skein was tied too tightly, the dye did not make it to the yarn and I was left with blue spots. I made sure to tie the skeins very loosely and I think this was from the original ties that I left on the yarn. That was a mistake.

As a side note, here are the ties that I used:

Some are acrylic and some are cotton. You can see that Koolaid has no effect on them. As far as I know, it works on animal hair/wool and silk only.

I was surprised that the cashmere was dry by evening and I could twist up the skeins and compare it to the original colour:

Big improvement, don't you think? I wasn't aiming for any particular colour and I figured any kind of red would be good. I'm very happy with it. Except these blue spots:

I guess I'll be buying more red Koolaid with my grape and then I can do a second Fix it to this particular Fix it Friday. But now I know, it's not hard and I can do it. (And tie it loosely!)

Bag Lady

I've been itching for a weaving project but was held back by things like not knowing what to make (first) and not having supplies to make it. Do I buy more cotton, or silk, or wool? Where do I get it? I finally decided just to start and get on with it already. That was when I was in front of the crochet cotton at Joann's and they had some nice reds, black and white. (Well, I already had the white.)

I thought, those are some colours I can live with. So I bought one of each: black, "victory" red, and a darker red. Then I remembered my Red Purl bag was getting shabby and it could use some new handles. It was a white bag (now a little more dingy from much loving use) with a black and red design. I can match that.

And this Saturday (tomorrow) is another "Bag Lady" event. A deadline!!

First, what's a bag lady? It's Amy's affectionate nickname for the customers who have purchased a Red Purl bag and then are privileged with monthly discounts and the occasional special event. Not the sort of thing I usually pony up for, but this was a club I wanted in on (all the prestige, you know). I bought one of the bags the first year she did it. And you can kind of tell.

There's no washing it back to like-new condition any more, but the worn handles were something I could do something about!

Through the tablet weaving group on Ravelry, I discovered an incredible collection of patterns that are available from someone named Babette on a website. No matter that it's in German; one can figure it out. (Thanks to the hints posted on Ravelry, I did.)

I am fascinated by the warp threads
coming off of the weaving as if they
are streaming away...but in a very
orderly fashion.

I chose a pattern, threaded the cards, and tried it out. After about an inch, I could tell it was about half as wide as I needed. So I printed a second copy of the pattern, cut and pasted it next to the first copy so that they were mirror images, and threaded some more cards. I put them together and started weaving the pattern.

The first strap was a little rough with quite a bit of unweaving from not following the pattern closely enough. But I learned a lot. One night when I did make progress despite spending more time unweaving than weaving, I learned a couple of things repeatedly. I guess I'm a slow learner.

But ever I got better, and the second band went a lot smoother. I think I was also a little more diligent about keeping my place in the chart by moving the post-it note! :)

Once woven, I gave the bands a good soak and then pressed them with a hot iron. The second band came off the loom a little longer than the first, even though they had the same number of pattern repeats. I made sure to stretch them out to the same length while ironing, and then also pinned them in place as they dried:

Once dry, they were the same length. I cut the ends even with my rotary cutters. (I'll have to remember scissors really don't work well enough for it. Or if I don't, I'll learn that lesson again too!)

Then I cut off the original straps and sewed these ones in their place:

Just a simple outline of a square to hold everything in place.

When I initially measured the length I thought I was going to sew the woven band over the old strap so I didn't allow for the overlap with the bag. After being sewn on, they feel just a little short to wear over my shoulder:

They could use an inch or two more in length. But I don't look like I mind, do I!

Project Stats
Started: 11 Aug '13
Finished: 15 Aug '13
Pattern: Muster von Lira nur verkürzt (doubled--24 cards)
Materials: Aunt Lydia's Classic Crochet 10--white, black, victory red
Tomorrow's event at Red Purl is the pre-sale of what she calls her Green Sale--The sale of "second hand" craft items (wool and other knitting tools/books, and this year she added fabric and quilting tools/books). You can hit the sale this Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I'll be there at 8:30 tomorrow morning for the "Bag Lady" only pre-sale.

Hey, I just realized it's Friday, and this is like a "fix it" so we're going to file this under Fix It Friday and pretend I intended that all along!

Enjoy your weekend, all. And if I find any great stuff tomorrow, you know I'll tell you about it!