The Ex-Sweater Bag: Almost Finished!

So the Ex-Sweater Bag is very close to completion:

 

The only thing it needs now is to be felted, but since that's a technique that requires a washing machine, the whole project is on hold until I visit my Mom next.

P.S. This will be my first felted piece ever. I'm very excited.

An Update on the Ex-Sweater Bag

So the sweater yielded this beauty:

 

That's right: a yarn ball the size of my head. I'll show you the new creations soon!

Tiny Scarf

So after my previous lace projects, I still had some lace yarn left over. I decided to use them for this mini scarf pattern, which originally was in garter stitch with stripes in it.

The first problem I ran into was the cast-on. The pattern called for a cable cast-on, which I had never heard of. So I learned how to do it, hated it, and redid it in my regular long tail method, on two sizes bigger needles (which allows it to stretch with the rest of the piece).

Next, I decided to skip working in garter, because it is so much harder to work in garter with lace than stockinette.

And of course, I skipped the stripes, because I only have one color of lace and don't want to buy more.

The last problem I had was with blocking. I've always wet blocked my pieces before, but I had a really hard time wet-blocking the Emily Shawl, so I decided to take the pattern's advice and steam block instead.

And, it really didn't work. I'm not sure if I did it wrong, or if my yarn isn't suited to steam blocking, but the stupid thing still curls.

 

Honestly, I wonder if the problem isn't that I just don't enjoy working with lace. Which is a shame, really, because lace ends up being some of the prettiest pieces! I think if someone buys me lace, I'll use it and love it, but I probably won't buy any myself for awhile.

Top Shoulders

So here's another sewing project that went awry. My Mom gave me this top, which was a little big for me. So I decided to just take in the shoulders by about an inch, which was going to be super easy. This resulted in...:

Yup, seams on the outside. Stupid, stupid move on my part. Later, I might take the stitches out and redo it, but for now I'm too irritated with myself to fix it. I feel smart.

Skirt Band

Not all sewing jobs are glamorous :p I just wanted to show you this one (and one other) because of the stupid things I did thinking it would be an easy project and not doing a lot of thinking. This skirt was about two sizes too big for me, so I was just going to open up the waist band, pull in the elastic, sew up an inch or so of it, and then sew the waist band back up.

Turns out, the skirt was made really well, and not only was the elastic tacked down every few inches to prevent it from buckling, it was also stitched into the edge of the waist band, so I would have had to undo the whole thing to get at the elastic. So (out of frustration-- as usually happens with my sewing) I just folded the waist band and sewed it down.

 

It doesn't look that great, but since I wear long shirts it will never show, so I'm fine with it. I just wanted you to see that not all sewing projects are successful, and that that's ok!

The Ex-Sweater Bag

I hope you don't hate in progress project posts, but I thought this was kind of fun. My Aunt brought my Mom a sweater home from Greece when she was studying abroad in the 80s, so of course Mom can't wear it anymore, but also won't throw it away (of course).

So in order that she keep the gift still, I'm going to unravel the sweater and make her a bag with it :) Here's the sweater mid-unravel:

I really love the idea of unraveling sweaters to reuse the yarn, especially when the piece can't be worn, is stained, or torn and can't be fixed. The offending yarn can be cut away and the rest reused for other projects. I even found a knitted beanie on the ground the other day-- free yarn! It's a really nice way to reuse pieces that you either can't or won't give away :)

Disaster Cake

Now, everyone has been trying very hard to convince me that Disaster Cake isn't so disastrous after all, but that's the name I gave it while I was working on it, so that's the name that stuck.

Here's how it went: It was my birthday, and I wanted to bake a cake (I really like baking). I didn't want to bake a cake so badly that I wanted to do it from scratch, though, so I decided to use a boxed cake mix and canned frosting. So I baked the cakes and set them to cool while I walked over to Whole Foods to buy a can of frosting (Whole Foods is only two blocks from home, so it's pretty logical. When I got the frosting home and the cakes were cooled, I cut each tier in half to fill with preserves, and then stacked them to frost with what Whole Foods apparently thinks is frosting.

 

But I was not fooled by Whole Foods trying to tell me that this was frosting. It is clearly (clearly) glaze. And why they would market glaze as frosting is beyond me.

So I was pretty dissipointed, but I figured I could save the looks of the cake by buying regular white frosting and spreading it over the weirdness to disguise it, so I walked to Walgreens (about six blocks from home). Then I discovered the Walgreens only sells chocolate frosting (really?).

So here is the finished, "saved" birthday cake: