this is fashion because i say so

Folks, this was a blanket.
It's a great medium weight felt sandwich one side black ant the other stone grey with parts of black peeking through. i fell madly in love with it and had visions of myself swaddled in it.
Very little of what i see in stores attracts me.I mean i still like Marc Jacobs ( do check his fall 007 collection), but there's a big problem with his clothes$$$$$.
And i'm much more into creating my style than following someone else's dictum :)

My husband, sweet soul, gave me the blanket for Christmas and coyly asked if i was going to walk around town like a Pashtun wrapped in a blanket. i thought the remark was hysterically funny, but he had a point there.
So i made up my mind to cut it up and sew something out of it. Looking through my patterns i found an old Vogue pattern, a seven eights length jacket in a rather timeless style. Got the sewing machine out and got down to it. i really wanted to make the jacket reversible taking advantage that the blanket itself was reversible. And wanted red zigzag stitching on the black, but it didn't work out because the seams were too bulky. As a result the garment went totally shapeless.

Therefore i 've settled for this look. There are no facings, only a zigzag stitch finishing the edges. i'm thinking about stitching around the black spots, or maybe stitching the whole number with straight stitch, thus creating the Japanese boro textile look that i like so much. Jude?

neki desu

Serendipitious TIF

i started working this week on the TIF with the intention of simplifying the photo a bit more, but other than that i was pretty much open. In other words i had no clear design plan. Working on the last photo erasing some sections to simplify it, i inadvertently selected a layer and pasted it as new. Liked it! liked it! Maybe because i'm currently going through a phase of simplifying and decluttering life and its environs the image spoke to me, so i decided to continue working on it.

Here i just added a color background.

And here i changed the background color and added some elements in light green. i like the two very short dark gree lines on the center left of the image.i think they provoke some tension in the image, although they might be unnecesary. Opinions?
i have to decide yet what textile treatment i'll give the image, but i'm almost certain that the background won't be light green. That for me would be a challenge :)

While at the computer i came up with 2 fun ideas for the challenge. Will blog about them next week.


neki desu

knitting 101

i was beginning to feel confident with the basic sitch- stocking is it called? and turned the page to lesson 2- using punch cards!!One can do many things in that lesson which help you hide knitting mistakes, how clever.Take the skip pattern. By using a card and pressing the two keys on the carriage i can automatically drop stitches! Just to think that i was doing that on my very own and feeling klutzy about it, well, well.

i was having a jolly old time, too good to be true, when the carriage started getting jammed. A jammed carriage is a highly stressful situation. Can't use brute force to move it because you can wreck the whole number.You have to turn the knob to the CR position and it breaks free from the knitting bed. Sort of.

The operation also means unraveling the the pass, controlling all that yarn that you suddenly have in front of you and keeping the card in coordination or the needle selection, thus the pattern, goes wonky. Ask me how i know.
Now i was getting jammed carriage in both directions, whereas at first it was just in one direction.
I was heading into desperation direction when my fairy godmother, working overtime poor soul, appeared with a checklist of suggestions.

Of all it appeared to be bent needles and what the heck, i went for it. How does one change the needles? It has to be a pretty simple operation because i refuse to believe bent needles only happen to me. Looked in the book. NADA!!trouble shooting page, NIET!! kept on turning pages NIENTE!! By the i was sweating, cold sweating i mean, thinking i'd have to send the Gizmo to the nearest repair post which happens to be in the UK.

Went for a walk and a Magners. A sense and sensibility walk.
Cold air clears heads and helps brain cells. Magners numb the senses. The sense of feeling incompetent, that is.
When i came back home i took the instruction book and went page by page. And there it was. Beginning in a corner of page 106 and continuing in 107 the instructions on how to change needles!! People are really slow, man. They start bending needles on page 106 in the how to shape garments lesson.
How accomplished and advanced i was, already bending needles in lesson 2, my, my.

Well i won't go into details of how to change needles because apparently it's common knowledge. It will only suffice to say that when the book says push them down there are various ways of doing so.

Changed needles and i am automatically dropping stitches, no effort.


neki desu