WIP Wednesday: Marion and Estate Sale-ing

 This week has been super crazy and manual-labor filled because I was working on a birthday present for my husband (more on that in a later post). I did still manage to get a bit of knitting done (mostly when I was out and about or for 15 minutes before I went to bed, lol), and it turned into some great progress on my Marion sweater.

I have one sleeve finished! I stayed up a bit late last night to finish it last night, and now I just have the second sleeve and I'm finished :) I decided to go ahead and do the button band this past weekend as a personal experiment. I always wait until the very end to do the button bands (as that's when most patterns tell you to do it), and I always drudge through it. I end up hating the button band at the end and kind of mentally loop it together with "seaming" in my list of knitting woes. I have to say doing it right after you finish the body does help trick my brain to not hate them so much - ha ha - plus it makes it easy to judge if the fit is ok since it does actually mean the body is finished.

I did try it on after finishing the button band and the fit is great :) Basically it was a cabled vest at that point, which my husband said made me look like a gypsy/hipster. I'm not sure what that means, but oh well, lol. I still have to pick out buttons for the final touch, so I look forward to shopping my stash tomorrow and making the official decision.

I just love the ribbing on the sleeves for this sweater - look at the little cables! So cute! I ended up making the sleeves slightly shorter than the pattern tells you (all I did was omit the last set of decrease rows). The sleeve now hits about where my 3/4 sleeve shirts do on my forearm, which I like quite a bit. I'm excited to finish the sleeve this coming week and call this bad boy done!

Since this was kind of a boring post with just progress on my sweater for the millionth time, I decided to also show off some of my awesome estate sale finds from last week! I got the major hook up since a friend of mine was helping her friend set up an estate sale that is set to happen in a week or so. This means I kind of had my own private estate sale viewing, lol, and I got to pick through things before anyone else. It was amazing and so much fun. This house was like a 1960s time capsule with lots of items still in their original packaging. I also snagged some clothes from the 60s and 70s that actually fit me! That never happens, so I was thrilled, but those I will show in another post as I have some still in the wash. Here are some of the other awesome items I grabbed though:

I had a lot of fun with this woman's old sewing notions. I got a pair of Dritz electric scissors - these are like the ideal pair too: they work, the blades are easily visible while you cut, the speed is variable, and they even have a light! They also came in a matching carrying case :) I got a gold colored sleeve board that is still new in the package, a new Dritz eyelet kit, some new hand sewing needles, new pressing cloths, tracing paper (some waxed, some unwaxed), and a Tack-It tool (it's a pattern marker to easily mark tailors tacks - genius!). I only found two patterns, but both are for cute tops. I grabbed quite a few cookbooks from the 40s and 50s (so cool), some pillow cases with galleons and maps on them still in the packages from the 50s or 60s, and some fancy beads for my nephew. The wooden beads are actually doll heads, and I'll be keeping the plastic smurf :)

One of my favorite acquisitions is this crazy apron - look at this fabric! I need a time machine just to get more of this stuff. It's crazy 60s mod colors and a 1700s street scene - crazy! This piece is just a rectangle with the a rolled hem and the top has a tube to fit this plastic headband-like thing to keep it on your waist. I don't know what I will do with this one though - I know it won't be an apron because ... there was another apron with the same fabric! lol There are a few stains that I couldn't get completely out, but I'm telling you I cleaned the daylights out of these. Originally the background color looked like a dark beige - ew. Now it's a natural white color. Anyway .. now I just have to decide what project is worthy of this amazing fabric.

I was also really excited about my new collection of handmade vintage aprons :) The top one is the same weird border fabric as mentioned above, but the border print is cut and the background just has the framed portraits while the pockets have the street scene (this one was nasty dirty as well, but it came almost completely clean with no noticeable stains - yay!), the middle is an amazing 1950s Christmas ball print with bias bound patch pockets, and the bottom one seems older than the others (I'm pretty sure the patterned material is feed sack cloth - so cool).

So, as you can see, I had a blast at this estate sale - and this isn't everything I got! I'll post again later with the clothes and other schtuff.

So, that's it for this week :) Head over to Tami's Amis' blog to see what others are working on as well!