I’ve worn it drinking coffee in Berlin….

… going to concerts in Chicago….

…. theater performances….

 ….. and to boat christenings. (Yep, that’s my mom. I even think she’s wearing the same yellow scarf from one of those pictures up there! And yep, we look a lot alike!)

It’s been a perfect not-too-heavy, not-too-light jacket that has travelled with me and seen me through summers, falls, winters, and spring-seasons alike.

Except now I don’t have it anymore!

I left it on an airplane visiting my parents a couple of weekends ago, and despite all my efforts, I cannot make it resurface again. One the one hand I’m desperately noticing the gap in my wardrobe from such a versatile and classic piece, and sad that I so absent-mindedly left it on a plane. On the other hand, I had most definitely noticed the increasing fading around all the edges, the buttons that have been falling off – even one of the epaulettes on the shoulders fell off, and when I was ready to sew it back on I couldn’t for the life of me find it again! So it’s definitely seen better days, and needed to be replaced at some point after 5 years of near constant use.

In some ways the timing is perfect. I seem to have seen a certain Canadian independent pattern designer come out with a certain trench coat pattern recently – does this look familiar?

Yep, I do think a Robson coat is in my future. Hopefully I get at least 5 years out of it before stupidly leaving it somewhere or it falls apart from constant use!

Left to right: Inov-8 Roclite 275 GTX Trail, New Balance WR00 Minimus Running shoe, and New Balance WT10 Minimus Trail Running Shoe. P.S. Thanks to John for setting up a mini-studio and taking pictures of my shoes for me.

I started running in earnest about a year ago. To begin with I ran in my old and tattered hiking shoes, and the first run was on a cold and rainy January night. I was exhausted by the end, I didn’t run very fast, and I was sort of wet despite my rain gear and hiking shoes. However, it set the bar so any run after that couldn’t be as bad as the first!

After a couple of months I decided I was staying with this running things, and sprung for a pair of real running shoes. Heavily influenced by Elise’s posts on running and her experiences with different brands, I decided on New Balance. Unlike her road running shoes, I really felt the trail running style would suit me best. These are forefoot running shoes, which is the style of running I had started with in the first place as well.

I love my trail running shoes (NB Minimus WT10). They’re black and pink (which matches my rain pants and their crazy pink zippers), and they are incredibly flexible. The day they arrived I just wore them around the house, and I remember being blown away that I could *feel the details of the threshold through my shoes*! Even walking with them for a few days before running was an interesting experience. I was noticing so much more of the surface I was walking on, and was way more aware of how I was moving my foot, and in turn – how I was moving my body. Following that up with running was more of the same – much more of an awareness of the ground, and especially when running I was experiencing a bigger capacity of adjusting my balance in reaction to the surface. For example, I was running in the woods one day and hit a largeish rock towards the side instead of straight at the top, but it was ok! I just adjusted my foot and my ankle and the rest of my body, and that off-balance step didn’t throw me off balance.

Right after I bought my next pair of shoes, my chiropractor told me my body wouldn’t handle running long-term very well, since a childhood hip-thing led to a knee-pain, and so my running career was over as I was getting into it. I’m replacing it with biking, which means much less impact on the knees and hips, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sorry about not being able to be a runner. In the big picture it’s pretty insignificant, so I’m not remorseful though.

The second pair I bought was another New Balance minimus pair, this time a road style (NB Minimus WR00). We went to the New Balance store in Boston, and I was expecting a Target-sized store with millions of pairs of shoes lining the walls (well, maybe not Target-sized, but pretty big. Everything in the US is big, right?). That store in Boston is not big. It does not have a million pairs of shoes. Unfortunately, I wasn’t too into the trail styles they had there. I tried a super-minimal style, where the amount of material between the foot and the surface was almost nothing, and definitely on the extreme end of minimal style running shoes), but that was too minimal for me. I was quite set on buying shoes that day though, so I left with the road style pair. The biggest difference I notice from the trail to the road style is that the negative space at your arch is filled in on the road style. To me that means that the flexibility in the middle of the shoe is somewhat limited, as in I don’t rotate or roll as easily from side to side while running since the direction is definitely guided forward from heel to front. It makes sense for the surface its intended for: With running on trails there will be a lot of variety in where you step, but the smooth surface of roads and pavements doesn’t encourage the foot touching down in a myriad of ways. With the repetition, some more stability and support is probably needed. Of course, I’m saying this as a complete novice, based only on my own experiences using these shoes.

Side notes: the Minimus Trail is somewhat water-resistant, but the mesh at the top will eventually get wet. The Road is not waterproof or water-resistant what so ever – even wet streets are too much for them. They are very breezy, so I’d think they’d be excellent in warmer weather, just not so good in cold weather. Finally, I’ve used both pairs sockless without issues. I don’t think I would try several hours in them without socks, since there are spots that do rub, but generally, sockless is fairly painless.

Fast forward to the near past, and I was finally ready to upgrade my hiking shoes. I’m pretty sure they were well over 10 years old, and they’ve been great, but are no longer any kind of waterproof. Which is something I now desperately needed since there was a gap between my running shoes that were great for hiking when nothing was wet, and my rainproof Wellies that were not so good for hiking. I went in to the store and declared my needs (waterproof hiking shoes I can hike the surrounding mountains with, that are flexible like my forefoot running shoes), and this is what I landed with (Inov-8 Roclite 275 GTX Trail). They look like funky 80s neon space silver sami shoes to me, but they are all goretexed and pretty light and flexible as far as hiking shoes goes – and that really was what I was looking for. Annnnnd… that was the tale of my shoes. Riveting, I know!

From Me-made-may last year, taking the trail running shoes for their first real hike. The me-made part were the bright lime-green yoga-ish pants.

Wool scarves are still welcome in the pretty chilly May mornings, but I’ll admit I really didn’t need it for these dusk pictures. It maybe looks familiar, since it used to be another cowl I made. In my collection of cowls it was the least functioning one, being so skinny that even three loops around my neck wasn’t quite satisfying enough. I let it sit unwound for a while before I realized that doubling the yarn and making it all about texture would be the way to let the yarn shine (and, to be honest, serve me best). It took me a couple of tries and a tired wrist (the chopstick-sized needles are not the easiest to knit with!) but half a season of Gossip Girl was plenty for this yarn refashion.

I was planning on just having a single picture for this quick alteration, but then John went and took so many good pictures that I had to add some more.

P.S. There will probably will be some random, non-sewing-related posts for a while until the interest is sparked again. I really want to write about my running shoes, so I think I’ll do that. And I don’t even run anymore.

After a spring best characterized as an extended winter, summer has all of a sudden appeared. I’m under no illusions that it will last, so with a glorious 4-day weekend (Constitution day fell on a Friday, followed by Pentecost weekend, with Monday being a public holiday), we’ve dropped everything and are spending as much time outside on our patio as possible.

These past few weeks, I have been…
- looking for the details while trying to find refuge from a day-to-day lacking routine.
- eating fresh bread for “kveldsmat” and wrapping cheese in cloth instead of plastic. So far, some hardened edges, but way better than mold.
- wearing sandals and sporting bare legs, oh my!
- collecting little moments of summer preparations, a marching band in front of the university museum, colors, and random tableaus.
- bouncing from sewing project to sewing project, and not really feeling too inspired by any of them. It will come back. In the meanwhile, mending, patching, and little fixes.

Sorry for the kind of blurry photo – the rest of them are better! We were in a slight hurry to get to a birthday party, and since this picture best shows the shape of the Beignet skirt I’m running with it rather than retake the photos. The birthday party was lovely, and I got to wear my very recently finished Beignet (so recent I, ahem, didn’t finish the self-tie or the beltloops. They’re coming soon).

Fabric: Pinwale cotton corduroy from Fishman’s Fabrics in Chicago. Beautiful quality fabric, like everything from that store (though often on the expensive side by US standards). I cut the pieces out so long ago, I don’t know how much I’ve used, but I think at least 3/4 yards of a full 58″ width, possibly a little more for the odd facing piece. I still have fabric left over, though no plans for it yet! For lining I used remnants of kimono silk left over from a theater production. Beautiful stuff!
Pattern: Colette Patterns Beignet. I’ve had this pattern for a long time, so it actually has the watercolor illustrations of the first round, which I sort of prefer anyways. First, but not last time making this, for sure.
Techniques: In-seam pockets, fully lined, bound buttonholes, twill tape for stabilizing waistline.

I started this skirt over a year ago, and meant to finish it for a Sew Weekly challenge on buttons. For someone who enjoys the process of sewing very much, and in her perfectionist tendencies decided that all twelve buttonholes must be *bound*, it was a bit of a foolish endeavor to undertake in a week. So – the night before the challenge deadline I conceded I would not in fact have time to attach lining to shell, hem it all, and construct the 9 remaining buttonholes. And so it was put away.

Clearly I finished them eventually, but my goodness, there is a lot of fiddly steps to the bound buttonholes! After you’ve actually measured out and attached all the little pieces (which I decided would have the wales running in a horizontal direction and therefore needed much precision in applying) and then sliced and turned and steamed and stitched down flaps…. Then you have to make all the corresponding windows for the backsides! They did turn out lovely though, and in many ways I enjoy doing these fiddly bits – making corners for myself, as Kristen called it – but definitely best done not under time constraints.

The fit of this skirt is lovely. It curves beautifully over the lower back, and I think it’s a flattering shape. I will definitely make more of this – I’m thinking a sturdier cotton drill, unlined, with fun bias binding on all the seams for the next one. At the same time, I will probably also make some pattern changes, and also deviate from the instructions in the same way I did this time. For example, the width of the skirt front facing is absolutely killing me. I realized it when constructing the inside windows for the bound buttonholes, and then remembered that I’d seen this problem with other people’s skirts: the facing is too narrow. If you notice in the second buttonhole picture up there, the buttonholes should not be that close to the seamline attaching the lining. Not only did it make it very difficult to properly construct those little windows, but it’s not structurally very good.

I also made steps to reduce bulk over how the pattern is written. For example, all my seams are pressed open instead of to one side, including by the pocket where I just snipped in to the seamline above and under where the pocket is attached. Since the corduroy doesn’t fray super crazy, I also turned up just once for the hem. It won’t really show since the lining hem covers it. Finally, though the pattern doesn’t specify how to attach the twill tape, I chose to butt it up against the waist seamline, but only be caught in the understitching, as I thought it would get too bulky to have it sewn into the actual waist seam and folded back on itself. Oh! I changed my mind – here’s the new “finally”: Finally, I anchored the pocket seam allowance to a skirt panel seam allowance, since the pockets kept flipping back in the wrong direction while I was trying this on. I just laid the skirt flat, and pinned where the pocket could be attached to a vertical seam allowance – if that makes sense?

As mentioned, I used remnants of kimono silk from a theater production to line this skirt. I had to piece several of the panels in order to have enough fabric, but look how lovely it is! I think it was a good choice for the soft corduroy since it provides some body (the silk being a little on the sturdier side). Unfortunately it also makes the skirt just a little lumpy in a way, since the corduroy is so very soft. That’s why for the next Beignet I want to try a sturdier fabric and not line it.

Criticisms aside, I really do like the shape of this skirt, and look forward to making it again. Not to mention how happy I am to have both this fabric out of my stash, and finally – this skirt out of the UFO-pile!

Pinwale Corduroy

Wow, what a couple of weeks it’s been. Very random, all over the place, and filled with moments. I worked a lot on the costumes I shared in my last post, and John has been (and still is) working on big projects at his job. Between the two of us, we’ve been exhausted, sick, and both. It feels like we haven’t had much “normal” time together, of doing household chores and making and eating dinner together like we normally do (um, to be fair – the eating is what we do together. John deserves all the credit for his default-chef status). In place of that, there has been work-night concerts (my awesome bassist friend was in town performing!), lego-playing, costume-modelling, and screw-this-I’ll-meet-you-for-sushi-or-popcorn-for-dinner-in-town. We’ve had the options of letting the apartment and the laundry and the dishes be left un-done, and just do something together instead, and I’m really glad that’s what we choose.

Photo by Ina Cyrus

I’ve been working for this pretty cool project: This traditional folk dance foundation does a three-year project in a municipality, ending in a final project performance. It’s very much shaped by the folk music and dance material traditional to each municipality, so every project takes on a unique life and progression. I got involved to make costumes for one of these final performances, and it was a really nice experience!

The setting for the performance was a chess-game, and the concept revolved around what happens if the pieces starts breaking the rules. This show is an expansion of the version they did last year, and part of my job was to expand on the costumes they had used. This meant I was making a lot of pieces that needed to supplement the tunics they already had in place. It also meant that the silhouette was more or less already given, but anything I added also needed to be very dance-friendly.

The main pieces I worked on were the vests for the kings and the queens. They already had beautiful hand crocheted crowns, but they needed something to make them more visibly different. I gave them vests with exaggerated collars (they queens more so than the kings, as you can see), and to make sure they were dance-friendly, the closures were made up of elastics in the front.

I also made four skirts for the rooks. I really wanted a straight, column-like shape in the skirts for the stoic rooks, but you can’t dance and roll around on the floor in a pencil skirt! The solution was to use stiffer and heavier fabric for the main portion of the skirt, and to insert cheese-cloth-like thin fabric in between the panels. When the dancer moved and twirled and stuff, the panels opened up to full skirt shape, in line with how the other skirts were moving on stage.

Photo by Ina Cyrus

There were of course more chess-pieces to identify, and we used hats and collars to do so. The pawns had simple tunics and hats, the knights had flat shoulder-collars, and the bishops were given neck ruffles. And, being costumes, lots of velcro as closures!

A recurrent inspiration was the medieval times, for several reasons: The previous performance was based on the old norse royal game of chess, so the existing tunics were very much medieval in style, and also – with my background in medieval studies I do jump at a chance to draw source material from the era. Several of the patterns were even based on medieval clothing, and I think it does show! In a good way, of course. For instance, the late medieval period saw a lot of collars attached to the bodice in the back with a diagonal seamline. It’s not really done much anymore, but it makes attaching the collar much easier, and I think, also more stable.

In addition to working with costumes and getting a lot of freedom in picking fun fabric combinations, I got to meet a great group of kids who did a wonderful job on stage. They were a dedicated and fun bunch, and I’m glad to have met them!

Photo by Ina Cyrus

This picture was supposed to show how far I got before I ripped it back all the way to the hem, but it doesn’t really show anything at all, except a yarnbomb in my lap. And my water bottle in the seat-back pocket on the flight to Amsterdam. Anyways, the story doesn’t start there. It starts here:

Or, you know, it starts further back. I made John a Seamless hybrid sweater (Elizabeth Zimmerman style) back in 2009. Since I keep borrowing it, I figured I should probably just make one for myself. So I started, with some lovely tweed yarn in a seafoam green that I bought in Portland, Maine, and I knit all of the stockinette of the body before deciding that yes, I really did need to buy two more skeins to have enough yarn, and no, I could not find a dye lot match.

So, I ripped back to the hem and now I’m knitting this sweater – again – but now with alternating new yarn and old yarn every row. I considered just doing the one color and then the other, but I knew the color difference would be too much for even a transition blending to camouflage this one. You can see the difference in the color if you look hard; the hem actually is a different color being just the old yarn, and there are striations in the stockinette. I don’t mind (at least I mind a lot less than very subtle, but not subtle enough colorblocking would have).

And, this sweater got to go back to Italy being exactly as much knit as it was last time, despite the hours put into it in the meanwhile.

I’m glad it’s all stockinette though. I am travelling to spend this coming weekend doing a final fitting (and then opening night!) for the costumes I’ve worked on the last several months, and I’m bringing a book and this sweater to keep me company in transit. Here’s to smooth sailing from now on out!

These past few weeks, I have been…
- travelling for my easter vacation. First a few days in the Netherlands and Brussels, and then on to Italy. Brussels was absolutely lovely, and I hope to go back and spend more time there! It’s charming and new and old and people are nice, and there is a huge beer selection. Good things.
- eating fresh artichoke for the first time – they’re in season!
- reading about historical (fictional) Venice in “The Glassblower of Murano” for two days while sipping wine. Ok, so half of the time it was raining so I sat inside. Lest I make this too idyllic-sounding (though it was delightful, and exactly what I needed in my vacation).
- sawing and hauling and stacking wood. Burning wood. Sweeping. There is a rhythm to the days at this place in Italy, and it revolves a lot around manual labor, followed by eating, and then more of the same. It’s quite lovely, and a huge reason we travel down there in the first place. Last time the visit was so short I didn’t really fall in to this familiar rhythm, but this time I eventually did, and it made me remember why I enjoy spending time there. Much needed.
- knitting on the same sweater as I did last time. Except, in the meanwhile I’ve ripped it back to the hem band and now I’m doing every other row of not quite identical colors. I’ll save the details for a separate post, but it felt ironic, yet appropriate to be redoing the work in the same geographical place.
- making quick art to hang out with the printer, the aloe plant, and the receipt pile. (after coming home, rummaging to find my resumes, and stumbling across this font excercise and having a frame on hand in the right size. Perfect.)

Yarn: Fingering weight “Tynn Alpakka” yarn from “Du Store Alpakka”, in a dark brown.
Pattern: Heritage Pretty Mallory by Cascade Yarns. By the way, I came across an early discussion where the designer was settling on the name of the pattern, and I liked the first iteration of “Renegade Mallory”. See more of my notes on my ravelry project page.
Techniques: Lace on the sleeves, top-down raglan construction. Did shaping at sides instead of in middle. I used twisted knit stitches on all the rib, and it helps it not stretch out too badly, and looks very neat. The rib doesn’t lay totally flat though, but I’m not quite sure what to do about that.

I started knitting this last april, and got about 4 inches past the neckband into the raglan construction, and then I put it away for almost a year. I’m not sure why I did, but after picking it up in January, it’s been pretty much a breeze! I mentioned here that I was flying through the sleeves, and they really did go so much faster than I expected once I had memorized the lace repeats. Of course, all I had left then was half a sweater worth of stockinette knitting! Slow and steady, and finally I was done with that too.

The pattern has some slight shaping at the princess lines in the front and the back, but I wasn’t crazy about potentially seeing that shaping, so I moved it to the sides. I also decreased a little extra on the front only, to shape for the bust a little better. This means that the sweater isn’t actually the same front to back, but you can’t *see* the difference easily! During my easter travelling I kept having to hold up the sweater to the light to see where the shaping was. So, this morning I took some scrap yarn and wove in a couple of rows of contrasting color to act as a sort of label. I thought that was quite clever!

I call this one a success. Also, pretty sunsets and clear skies, and warm, thin sweaters for spring days that I believe are here.