Progress, Not Perfection

I have a simple sewing project that will be coming up this week on the blog, but I wanted to interrupt the finished stuff to report on a few in progress items :) I'm in the middle of a new sewing project that has been thrown in the naughty corner for the last week...

This picture was before I ruined it, lol, so don't let its looks deceive you. It's New Look 6150 made up in an ivory stretch lace and underlined with ivory rayon jersey. All was well until I tried to attach the sleeves. Even though I made this shirt once before, the sleeves on that one drive me crazy and I didn't know why. Now I know: the line backer shoulders they grade the larger sizes up to have. Ugh. I didn't realize this until I tried it on sleeveless and saw how far the shoulder drooped off my actual shoulder, so I've been trying random fixes and at the moment I have no idea what to do. It may just end up with crazy dropped shoulders and an added seam to fix how I tried to fix it at this point. I just couldn't look at it anymore last Sunday, and now it's sat on my ironing board for an entire week with no work at all. So what do you do when you've lost your sew-jo and just can't bare looking at your current disaster? Switch to knitting!

Right when the shirt debacle happened, I decided to join in a knit along. Susan B. Anderson just put out a new pattern called the Smooth Operator Socks that is designed specifically for striped yarns so you don't disrupt the striping at the heel. This is an issue I ran into with my Arne & Carlos socks earlier this year, so I was really interested to see what her answer was, and the pattern is currently on sale at a discount for the Knit Along she's hosting on her Ravelry group, Itty Bitty Knits. It's an amazingly simple pattern, but it's beautifully thought out and I ended up with a perfectly fitting sock that still has a striping heel! She gives a great breakdown on how to match up your socks as well as how to match the heels and get a great fit. I don't have all that much self striping yarn in my stash, and I didn't want to use my beloved Le Petit Prince Opal sock yarn until I knew the pattern fit and worked well for me, so I pulled out this Patons Kroy Sock yarn in the Meadow Stripes colorway (which I actually purchased after Susan herself made a pair with the same yarn earlier this year). Since this sock is entirely stockinette stitch, I was able to knit up this sock in just 4 days! Isn't that crazy? I finished it up last night and I'm excited for the second one. Anyway, if you're at all interested in the pattern now is the time to get it at a discount plus you can join the Ravelry group Knit Along to potentially win some prizes :) What's not to love about that?

 Sadly I did set my Alecia Beth cardigan aside for these socks, but I have made significant progress on it in the last month before the socks came around. I'm almost to the waist and I love how the rows of cables start to disappear on the back - see that diagonal at the lower back? So neat.

And here's how it looks on the front. Sorry for the awful pictures - my current phone's camera is horrid and doesn't like color or detail. The yarn here is a nice rich navy color in real life. I'm actually really enjoying knitting this sweater and it seems to go faster than my first fingering weight sweater did. I guess I've just made more things with fingering weight in general and I don't mind it so much anymore. So, I'm slowly plugging away on this as well.

I also have a small smattering of projects that haven't seen light in months (my Fuzzy Mitten KAL project is about 50% done, my Antarktis is also about 50%, and another shawl I started months ago is still just a few inches in overall size, lol), but I'm trying not to be too hard on myself about them. I know I will eventually get back to them, but with the limited crafting time I have right now I try to just go with what I really want to work on to keep that feeling of it being fun. Sewing and knitting are my escapes from the drudgery that is clearing out my house and getting ready for an estate sale (ugh, heavens) which feels like it will never end. I'm glad I have something soothing to help me wind down after hours of unpleasant real life junk each night.

So that's what I'm working on now. What are you working on?