Some inspiration

I love the fresh young leaves of Lady's Mantle. The way water hangs on them, the way they're so neatly pleated from the centre, even the colour of them is just fantastic. Looking at some the other day I pondered whether it would be possible to make anything of similar form by knitting or sewing fabric. The outer edge is much longer than a simple circle of its radius because of all the pleats so I imagine if you were sewing you'd make pleated wedge shapes and then join them up, but the centre would be difficult to keep neat, if not impossible, with all those seams coming together. It might be easier to create that extra volume in a knitted fabric but then you'd probably need some sort of support to keep the shape, although I suppose you could make the knitted fabric so dense it was very stiff. With individual stitches I'd imagine you could build them up in a way that mimics the arrangement of cells.

Am I going to do it? Hell no. You think I have time for that with all the blogging and computer gaming I do?

Sometimes I wonder, just for a moment, whether my priorities aren't a little skew whiff.

(Also, that would require mad crafting skillz which I clearly lack.)

Feminist and Proud!

Well, I know I'm a bit late as Internation Women's Day was earlier this week, but I've been reading a few feminist blogs and just wanted to say...

I'm a Feminist and proud of it!

 

 

Wind in my sails

Well, I'm well and truly out of the doldrums. Since that whingy post I have cast on three items; a pair of plain socks in a funky coloured yarn, a squishy purple toy for a friend who's expecting (shh it's a secret - the toy not the baby) and the lacy jumper Cherie Amour from Knitty in a blue through purple squishy acrylic (yay for machine washable yarn!) although I only got two rows of the latter done before realising I'd twisted as I joined the round and had to frog. Doh!

I also pulled out my sewing pattern and fabric only to find that my blouse really wasn't going to come out of the silk I had. So I zig-zagged the raw edges of my back-up plan red cotton and washed that, so I'm ready to go on cutting the pieces out. Stop me or I'll burn out.

Now I have some delicious purple silk which is hanging around with nothing to be...

Oh and now I remember what I was supposed to be doing with this time! I'm giving a talk to my local Pagan Moot on the Basic of Heathenry next Monday and have I planned? Have I feck.

Goddesses in bikinis

Interesting how we project our current culture onto the gods, isn't it? Do a google image search for Freya, go on I dare you. There's no actual porn on the first page, you're relatively safe. In fact type in the name of pretty much any goddess and you get the same thing. For the less SEXAY ones you get more pretty pretty girliness than T&A, but search for Freya or Aphrodite you get a lot of tits and fake tans. Not that the somewhat wet pretty pretty stuff is much better in my book. At least the bikini goddesses are probably having a good time, not just sitting by a brook and sighing a bit.

Where's the power in all of this? It sure as hell isn't being portrayed by most of these pictures. It's being made safe, neutralised, turned into something our culture can understand with it's teenage-boy understanding of sex. It's so one dimensional. Real life women are so much more than T&A and if it's true for us, how much more true must it be for our goddesses?

A green jumper for Spring

I've finished my very first jumper.

It's loosely based on the Yoked Pullover from Elizabeth Zimmerman's 'Knitting Without Tears' but I heavily modified the design based on the ideas put forward by Amy Herzog in her 'Fit to Flatter' series. If you're a woman who finds the whole bodyshape category system involving fruit (apple? pear? what the sweet crispy fuck?) useless and ridiculous, hers is much more rational and, frankly, less insulting. According to Amy's categories I'm proportional and straight, meaning I am not significantly top or bottom heavy (my shoulder and hip lines are pretty equal) and I don't go in much at the waist.


The 'Fit to Flatter' inspired features of my jumper are, in no particular order, the waist darts, balanced details at bust and hip, the detail at the elbow and the bust detail and bust darts. I go in at the waist more at the back than the front (in other words I have more arse than hip) so I put most of the waist shaping in the back. This eliminates excess bags of fabric sitting above my bum which has the effect of showing off my waist. However I think I should have put more of that shaping in the sides as the view from the front is a little too straight up and down. And I really shouldn't have put in the vertical lines - drawing a rectangle on my already rectangular body just isn't flattering.

I have included details at the bust/neck and the hip/cuff to maintain the balance of my proportional frame. People whose hip and shoulder/bust lines aren't roughly equal might want to bring things more into balance visually by using details more on the smaller half. Apparently elbow length sleeves enhance the waist curve (don't ask me how but they do, no really) but I wanted to have full length sleeves for a cozy jumper. So I tried putting in that purl ridge just below my elbows in the hope of creating a similar effect. I can't really tell if it worked! Also being, er, delicate of bust, I put a purl ridge at my full bust line in the hopes of making it seem more of a full bust line and less of a half-full bust line. Bust darts ensure a close fit here too which helps.

Overall I'm really pleased with the final results. It's not perfect, but it's my very first jumper and I pretty close to designed it myself. I chose plain stockinette stitch with garter stitch details in order to keep the knitting simple but I think it works really well with this beautifully rustic yarn too, which is JC Rennie's confusingly named Chunky Lambswool (confusing because it's aran weight, not chunky). I love this yarn. It has a wonderful texture (which sensitive skins might find rough - fortunately it doesn't bother me), softens beautifully on the first wash and comes in some seriously gorgeous colours. It will probably be the yarn I go to for a rustic aran-weight wool in the future.

Doldrums

I'm feeling in the doldrums a bit craft wise. I just finished a major knitting project in the form of my jumper and don't feel like putting any time in on either of the current ongoing projects. First up is a moss green mohair shawl which has very long rows in a very boring stitch. It'll be lovely when it's finished, if I can ever face the monotony of those huge rows. Also it's a mohair/silk blend yarn and on metal needles it's somewhat slippery and although it's boring knit-in-your-sleep stuff, it therefore requires concentration. Argh! There is also a lovely scarf knit in one of Mara's gorgeous yarns in a simple but pretty lace pattern. I just don't feel like knitting it right now. For the first time in months I'm sitting in tea-break at work and not knitting. Most odd.

I have made a mock-up of the blouse I'm planning on sewing and it fits really well. So now all that's left to do is take my chosen fabric (beautiful plummy purple silk), check I can get the blouse from the yardage I have (backup plan is a nice deep red cotton), pre-shrink the fabric, cut out the pattern pieces and sew it all up. I just don't feel like doing it. Specifically I don't feel like doing all the preamble; if I had the bits of fabric cut out already I'd be sewing away merrily.

Part of the preamble is the fuss of getting my machine out and set up, clearing space etc. Fortunately MrK and I have just become a 0-PC household, both having laptops, which has freed up some space for a crafty-corner for Maythe. Having some space specially set aside will make it much easier to tap into the fleeting feeling of 'oh I fancy doing X' which at the moment is often shut down by 'oh but I'll have to clear the table and get out the stuff which is under the other stuff and oh I can't be bothered'. 

Of course we actually have to get round to clearing the space, buying a table, moving the bookshelves, ferrying my stuff upstairs... so maybe by next winter I'll have a craft corner.

Crafty bits

I've finished my very first ever jumper! Hurrah!

I can't get decent pics indoors so it'll have to wait until the weekend. Boo!

At the weekend I will waffle about it until you are bored to tears. Hurrah for me! Boo for you!

In the meantime ... Mara and I went to a beading fair at the weekend and I managed to only spend moderately too much money. I got two of these lovely pendants:

They are pretty amazing and my crappy little digital camera in indoors light just can't do them justice I'm afraid. Somehow there's a real aspen leaf in there. It's like magic only more precise.

Unfortunately matching findings (for non jewellery makers - findings are the functional bits, the earring hooks, clasps etc) are hideously expensive so I bought some gold plated earring hooks for them. When I got home I cobbled together a pair of earrings with some gold wire and a couple of garnets:

I'm going to keep my eye out for some beads that work with both the colours of the leaf and the gold findings. I suspect that, even if I could find decent ones, copper earring wires would irritate my ears so I'll be sticking with gold and I feel the need to bridge the colour gap between leaf and findings. The red garnets aren't doing a bad job for the time being but this definitely feels like a temporary solution.