Machine Knitted Baby Blanket #2

Presenting my second baby blanket ever. Finished!

It is knit on a single bed machine in 3 strips of 4 segments and each segment has a finished lining panel behind it. It is called “fully lined” because it is essentially two separate pieces of fabric knitted together at the color changes. The back “lining” hides the floats that result from having more than one color in a row. It is knitted on a single bed and therefore, is not a double knit fabric where those floats would be knitted into the back fabric.

The pattern designer’s intention was for the knitter to leave the second to last needles out of work if I remember correctly, so that those loops at the edges could be joined together by latching. So simple! But the instructions were not really written for a beginner like me and were way over my head. I ended up with raggedy edges and a few dropped stitches, extra long loops at the row ends, etc., all beginner’s mistakes. You can bet I am a wiser beginner now.

A couple of weeks ago I found these strips rolled up in a satchel and I began trying to figure out how to join the three strips of this afghan together. I finally invisibly blanket stitched the two layers together on all sides to “fix” any dropped stitches or uneven edges. Then I hung one section using every other needle on the machine, facing me, e-wrapped in white, and then matched the squares together with a second strip, backside facing me and pushed the whole bundle behind the latches. It was too much thickness for the carriage so I manually knit back the bundle together. This created a single strand of white on the needles and I latched them off. I did the same routine with the 3rd panel.

Here’s the back.

You can see the loops on the back and ladders on the front, a result of the EON (every other needle) latching.

Maybe you can see the stitches better in black and white:

But as I worked I found that my errors were not unsolvable and not as bad as I had imagined. Using the machine to evenly hang and join the strips really helped. I am pretty happy that I finally figured it out in a way that, while not professional looking, still allows the blanket to be serviceable.

And Please Bless Daddy. I think it’s a cute blanket!

I was going to add a crocheted edging but found that the thickness of the two pieces plus the invisible stitching holding the panels together made crocheting uneven and difficult. I felt it was better left as is.

Since this is going into a preschool where I suspect it will not always get the tender loving care it deserves (cold water wash and gentle drying), I needed to reinforce the joins so I used 100% cotton thread, doubled and “invisibly stitched the edges together along each latched edge.

Here’s the pattern booklet I used

Here’s my first blanket finished way back in 2007 when I was setting up the preschool and recovering from chemo and radiation (how did I do all that???). It was smaller and not knitted in strips that required joining so I wasn’t prepared for all the problems I caused myself on this second blanket.

I am slowly moving all the sewing and knitting things that were stored in the garage when I put The Stitchery, my workshop, on the market. I have moved many things in and in order to do that much I have had to sort through almost everything in the house and toss, donate, and rearrange to accomplish it. Nothing is really “set up” yet. I do have the cutting table in the (heated!) sewing room but I can’t yet sit down to a sewing machine. You get the picture?! Of course you do!!

In my beginner’s opinion making an afghan on a single bed was a ton of unnecessary work. I learned lots about the importance of wrapping the end yarns when changing colors, and keeping edge stitches neat and tidy. Oh, I’ve learned a lot because I made a lot of errors!!! I am pretty sure right now that I’d rather knit jacquard (AKA Fair Isle) with the ribber or on a double bed machine like the Passap. Maybe that will be the next project.

It’s nice to take a knitting break from all the heavy monkey work of moving things around and sorting and organizing. I am getting closer to having a knitting area and my sewing room back in service. I’m looking forward to it.

HP 1115 Revisited: Classix Nouveau Dressy Jeans In The Daylight

To be fair to this pattern: here’s the pants, in daylight, without the bulky, cling-y long johns, just a tee and sweater tucked in.

Reminder from my last post: I intentionally cut these pants a size (or 2) large and sewed them using a very stretchy, unlined wool/lycra fabric so I could layer underneath as needed for outdoor work.

The leg shaping is good and work well the cowboy boots without having to resort to “boot cut”, a shape that can make me look, if not feel, shorter and curvier.

I have an exceptionally flat derriere and besides the fact that I get a great deal of extra drape in the upper back leg, I find the pocket shape to be unflattering to my particular configuration.

Even Gaely seems concerned LOL

Shot during the day light, now you all might be better equipped to draw your own conclusions on whether or not this pattern would work for you.

HP 1115 Classix Nouveau Dressy Jeans

I’m not a good cold weather person. The weather generating department doesn’t care what temperatures I prefer to work in and it’s getting to be down right winter, whether I like it or not. Harrumph! Winter is here. At least it will kill off the bugs so next spring and summer will be tolerable.

In fact, it even snowed here today for a number of hours, covering all the yards with a layer of white blanket. It didn’t stick to the roads and by nightfall all the snow was melted away. Tonight it will be in the low 20′s, tomorrow’s highs will make it to the low 40′s.

It’s cold. Too cold. I’ve been dreaming of wearing my fleece power stretch long johns and thick wool pants. And maybe a layer of silk long johns under that, too.

I have to work in the outside temperatures. My cutting room is still in the garage and I have the cabbage and Brussels sprouts out in the Fall garden yet to care for and the dog to walk every day. So I can’t just hibernate, duty calls. Pffft.

Here’s a stretch wool denim fabric I’ve had stashed. I bought it from Nancy Erickson a number of years ago. It’s a fine, hefty fabric and I have enough for two pairs of pants.

I chose to first make over sized jeans, using the HP 1115, Dressy Jeans pattern.

I compared it to my TNT pants block and it looked very close in the shape of both the crotch curve and side seams. But I didn’t want tight, well fitted dress pants, I wanted field-worthy outerwear so I could pile on as many layers of insulation as needed. My next pair will be slim fitted and much more fashionable (I hope)

I cut a size 20 right out of the envelope.

And my fabric is stretchy. Here’s the result with one layer of medium thick fleece backed power stretch long johns under the unlined pants, undershirt and sweater tucked in. The fabric clings to the power stretch long johns and would hang better if they were lined.

The pants are hemmed to work with a higher cowboy boot but are shown with the lower rain boots.

No Belt

With Belt

I hope to make a couple of sweater vests to vary the outfit

I needed the legs to be narrower than trousers so I can walk through grass and not have the fabric flapping about in the wind. And I needed the pant legs to go over my boots.

So that worked.

Here’s the get up, with the warmest coat I have at the moment. It desperately needs to be replaced, too. I guess sensitive neighbors will have cover their eyes for a little while longer until I get it’s replacement made.

There’s one review of this pattern at Pattern Review.com and the seamstress, GlobalMom, did a great job of top stitching. I chose not to recreate the classic jean look and did minimal top stitching. I also cut the back pockets at the size 18, rather than size 20. Those pockets grow incrementally and size 20 would have been .5″ wider. It was getting scary.

I deviated from HP techniques in that I zigzagged the pocket bags on top of the pocket facing rather than having the bulk of a seam at the join

And I also lengthened the pocket bags by 1.25″ by slicing apart the pattern piece in the middle and inserting extra paper. I should have made them 2″ deeper but 1.25″ will suffice. Just barely.

Lengthen the pocket bags if you need real pockets.

In her review, GlobalMom was stumped by the zipper instructions and said Trudy had directed her to their YouTube video on zipper insertion so I went right to YouTube and watched, and installed the zipper with flourish of which Hot Patterns would be proud. Ta Da! A zipper set well back from the front fold of the fly.

Love that traditional Japanese cotton I used for the fly shield, pocket bags, and waistband facing. It was from Silk Road Fabrics in Austin, Texas, another independent fabric store soon to be closed. I have about a yard left after making DH Dave’s yukata kimono

However, the waistband pattern pieces didn’t fit the pant body. Apparently they had been drafted for a different zipper insertion technique. The Left side waistband was too short to provide a finished top of the fly shield and the Right side waistband was a bit too long.

Or maybe I got confused. But neither band fit. Period.

I don’t think I got confused but then anything is possible with my feeble mind….

I had cut and carefully labeled each piece with scotch tape. I am thinking the instructions for the zipper insertion in the pattern directions would have produced Right and Left sides that might have matched the pattern pieces (I’m guessing). But mine didn’t match.

I had to redraft the waistbands to fit and am not pleased with the way I dutifully followed the grain line markings on the pattern pieces. As drafted, you will end up with a waistband on the bias at the front and back of the pant.

No, that is just not right. It’s messy looking, for one. And the garment doesn’t need bias stretch at the fastening area in front or at the back where the pant will be pulled when you sit down.

I knew it wasn’t right but I was salvaging as much of the original HP pattern as I could. And I didn’t fix it. Next pair I’ll change it. In fact, on the next pair I might have seams in the waistband at the side seams so there’s more of a chance to adjust the fit. I won’t want my smaller version of this jean to be falling down.

So I cut a size 20, and sewed out 3/8″ of each side seam at the hip. In a non-stretch fabric this should have been the size that most closely matched my measurements with my medium thick fleece long johns. I think it is a bit too big. However, I used a stretch fabric when the pattern is for woven, non-stretch fabric. The next pair should be more of an adventure as I try to get a skinnier fit in my stretch wool denim.

ReDo: HP 1090 Classic Nouveau Uptown Downtown Dress

Ever since I made this dress in 2009 it has become a Winter favorite. The wool jersey is warm, like a hug, and I’m always cold these days.

I really didn’t like the ribbing that I had tried to make work with this wool jersey dress, it doesn’t hold the heat like wool does. I didn’t like the back of my neck being exposed to drafts. The band at the bottom of the dress keep my knees cold when I sit down. The ribbing has no lycra so it stretches out and creates a funny bagging out at the elbow. And it takes a lot longer to dry than the wool, too.

How irritating!

Besides all that, the style is wrong for me. It breaks many rules for my body type and shape. For example: the raglan sleeves make narrow sloping shoulders more narrow and sloping, the circular shape of the neckline is unflattering to a square shaped face and is too high, it should be lower. The flipping outward of the sleeve ribbing draws the eye down to my waist, away from the face.

The bloused waistline is good for me but the pattern is not a good one for stripes as there is no adjustments for the slanted front waistline I have and the extra wight I carry at the high hip. And last but not least, the stripes make my a$$ look gigantic. Until I lose weight the slanted front waist and wide body behind are not things a simple remodel will remedy.

You can make these photos bigger by clicking on the photo and hopping through the hoops at Flikr

There were so many details that bothered me that I didn’t wear this dress very much. And the color of the fabric, dark navy and silvery dark blue, were difficult to mix with hose and coat. Grey should work with the heathered blue but in certain lights it was a glaring mistake. Silver seemed the best accompaniment.

There are a few problems I can fix in re-stylng this dress. I need to have more drape at the neckline and redo the sleeve to drawn the eye upward, away from my waist.

Recently I found some small stripped wool jersey that looked like it matched the odd silvery tones of the original fabric and when it came in, YES! It would work well! How many times I have wished to find a coordinating fabric and how unusual that my wish had been granted!

And a quick search of the stash revealed 2+ more yards of the original fabric. Comparing the sewn up fabric with the washed but un-sewn fabric revealed little change, maybe because I didn’t wear the dress as much as I would have liked.

So, I cut off all the rayon ribbing as well as the front panel of the skit because it had developed a hole not long after the dress was originally constructed. Following the HP 1090 pattern, I turned the elbow length sleeves into “cap” sleeves and applied a band, cut a rectangle slightly less the length of the now naked neckline and created a cowl neck, and installed a bottom band, all in the same fabric.

The remodeled top and dress.

Using the new narrow striped fabric I made the funnel necked top by Christine Jonson, Travel Trio 2. I am debating whether or not to recut the sleeves of the top to full length. I have just enough fabric left for the exchange.

Ahhhhh, but I’m now warm all over. No more cold spots Sewing with wool and wearing wool is one of my favorite things about winter.

Many people can’t wear wool. I’m sensitive, too, but not allergic. I believe I have a secret weapon, well, not so secret, but a weapon in the fight against itchies.

I use Eucalan Wool Wash (in the Lavender scent) (I adore lavender) which contains lanolin and is left in the wet fabric, making the fibers softer than if it were rinsed out. It allows me to wear the wool next to my skin.

The wool wash can be found at Amazon dot com. I’ve used it for years and can definitely recommend it to you for your wools and delicates.

Oil Cans

Industrial sewing machines need to be oiled and to have a reservoir of oil inside the case at all times. It’s time to refill the reservoir of one of my Babies, er, machines.

I’ve cut my product line down to only 2 items since my illness and the passage of the wrong-headed, anti-scientific, tomfoolery called the CPSIA. My commercial sewing is very limited these days, not like the old days when I sewed full time for months on end. Now I sew up a mess of products 3 or 4 times a year. Anyone who has sewn the same thing over and over (AKA production sewing) all day long knows that it is quite a different experience from home garment sewing. I am so relieved to be free of the production pressures, but I do miss having the challenges of designing new materials.

But I won’t do it in light of the CPSIA and the unsettled guidelines, rules and regulations. The Gov has put me out of business which is awful at my age (over 60) and in this depression economy. I thought we needed more jobs, right? Go figure.

(Google the CPSIA if you don’t know what it is. It was passed at the end of the Bush administration by an almost unanimous vote so it can’t be blamed on any specific political party, but on hysteria over [finding] lead in [imported Matel] toys. Enough said.)

I currently have 4 machines in the commercial workroom: 2 Merrow overlocking machines, an early 1950′s Singer Featherweight for it’s even top stitching, and a “semi” industrial, super fast and portable Janome 1600P straight stitch. Each one has a specific use and purpose.

Of the 2 Merrows one is the MG-2DNR-1 purl edge serger and the other is an older, used, MG-3DW-2 that is set to serge 2 or 3 layers of cloth tightly together.

The older machine, one of my first ever ebay purchases, needed to have replacement parts and adjustments after a few years, so it was sent off to the mechanic for repair. It came back to me full of Merrow oil and ready to go.

Now it needs more oil and I could not find a way to get the thick oil into those tiny holes without emptying another oiler, which I didn’t want to do. Online I found this company: Dutton-Lainson and their wonderful old time-y oil cans.

Do you remember being a child and playing with the tiny oil can that operates by pressing against the bottom of the can? I couldn’t find one in the local hardware stores and all the other oil cans came with oil already in them.

Other Merrow owners may have their own solutions but I use only the Merrow oil for my machines due to the “throwing” of oil in the tray at the bottom of the case and I was so glad to finally find a spring bottom oiler.

Call me “Easily Pleased” or “Overly Particular”: I love my new Goldenrod oil cans

Fabric on The Road, Seriously

Last night we returned from our last sales trip of the year 2011, this one to Troy, Michigan. I didn’t find the right fabric to bring home but

Fabric found me,

Road Fabric, that is.

Friday night, this truck was parked outside our motel room. Really. I had to blink twice.

What the heck is a GeoTextile?

Up at 6:30 the next morning and the trucks were gone!  However later that morning a couple of trucks returned and I was able to document the rolls of netting and mysterious fabrics and bundles on the flatbeds

How curious. The trucks were pulling machines with spray nozzles that were covered in drippy, gooey, tarry looking black stuff. So this is what the future of textiles looks like? I was too shy to interrupt the crew members and interrogate ask them about the process.

So Gaely and her shadow just circled the wagons

puttering around, doing what a woman and a dog do on a sunny morning and trying to mind our own business. Gaely had no trouble with this.

That afternoon I tried to buy fabric, really I did, at Haberman’s in Royal Oak, MI. I found the perfect piece, a smooth, hard, gray wool jersey knit by Michael Kors but there was only 1.25 yards left, not enough. The store is fabulous, the fabrics are great, ohhhh, the buttons, the patterns, the boning! but nothing was exactly what I was looking for. I walked out of a fabric store empty handed. That’s right. It happened.

I’m home and there are no more sales trips on the 2011 calendar. I think it’s safe to unpack the suitcase until 2012.

And I will have time to sew. Most likely sewing will happen.

Promise!

Milwaukee Trip

Travel has its benefits! I finally got to meet up with the talented and lovely Linda (AKA MamaFitz)

at her beautiful home across the street from a city park and Lake Michigan.

Gaely got her first view of Lake Michigan and wanted to explore the Break Water ASAP

so we walked out on the huge concert blocks to see the crystal clear waters

and gaze across the bay

In spite of the No Dogs Allowed sign this is a popular place for dog walkers and every person and animal we met were warm and friendly

Linda joined us with her dogs Randal and Esperanza. This is the bright and tiny Esperanza, posing for a photo.

There’s a really excellent photo of them on Linda’s blog Told you she was talented, didn’t I? How’d she get them to sit like that Must be Magic!

We ladies chatted while the animals investigated the beach and finally bonded into a pint sized pack

It was a gorgeous day to be at the Lake and over too soon.

Back in the City Gaely liked to watch the goings on in the street from atop a suitcase

although there were no squirrels she could always hope for some excitement

Everyone in Milwaukee was quite friendly and happy to see Gaely and she made friends wherever we went. I just was not inspired to photograph the city in spite of the great architecture and beautiful River. I felt frustrated at not being able to go to the Milwaukee Art Museum as I didn’t want to lock Gaely up in the truck. She didn’t even want to go near the vehicle when I had to go get something out of it and I just couldn’t do that to her. So we walked around the city and endured the cold and wind and some light rain while Dave manned the tables at the Montessori conference. I hate that dogs are not allowed into most buildings!

Gee, the first Westie I ever saw came into a bar in Scotland with her black Scottie housemate and her lovely Scottish gentleman owner where the dogs curled under the table while himself sipped his pint of beer. We in US are just too uptight about dogs. Harrumph!

The trip home was uneventful, thank goodness. Dave’s new iPhone GPS gave us a new route through the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee that included a one lane road and bridge. That was surprising and we were very glad we were not towing the 20′ trailer as it probably would have been too wide to pass across that bridge! But Fall colors were quite beautiful all along the trip and especially in the back woods. At our first rest area stop on the way home Gaely rolled and rolled to get the city grim off her coat and she came up looking quite a bit more white. Smart dog!

We are so glad to be home now and we will be here for another 11 days. Wow, a weekend at home. Excellent. We’ll just go quite wild, I imagine.

Trip to Sarasota

The latest journey of 1450 miles was to Sarasota, FL. Click on any photo below to see a larger size

A quick stop in Valdosta, Georgia, to procure some items for a Montessori product let me take a few photos

Massive quantities of Spanish moss in an old dogwood tree

Magnolia seed pod on the ground

We had lunch at the Old South BBQ House where this sign took up the whole wall of the dining patio. The ubiquitous Southern drag races, born of the bootlegger’s mad race to make deliveries and avoid the “Revenuers” enforcing Federal liquor laws, are the precursors of today’s multimillion dollar NASCAR enterprises.

After getting settled in at our Sarasota hotel and setting up the display for the Montessori conference, Gaely and I had a day together to do “dog things”.  We walked forever in the soft mild ocean breezes. The temperature was almost too cool, only warming up to the mid 70′s in the afternoons.

We visited the dog-friendly Bird Key Park and Bay Front Park where dogs are required to be on a leash. Gaely sniffed and investigated every trace left by prior canine visitors and looked for lizards to chase. West Highland White Terriers are terriers to the max and they live to hunt and chase and have great adventures. I’m not able to run as much as Gaely wanted, so we traveled north to visit the De Soto Memorial Park, a beach where she could go without a leash and explore the beach unfettered.

We arrived just as high tide was abating

The Park has a wonderful nature trail where signs tell the story

and life size images show the dress and habits of the De Soto expedition

and the Native Americans living there at the time. The De Soto crew took slaves and forced them to work in the service of the expedition. In the lower right hand corner of the photo you can see a pig brought to Florida by the expedition. These pigs ran free and many escaped to start the colonies of wild boars that are now ravaging much of the South, growing to huge sizes after interbreeding with Russian boars, also escapees from wild game hunting camps.

These images are so realistic I almost jumped out of my skin when one would pop up along the trail unexpectedly! Yikes!!

I enjoyed the De Soto Memorial Park more than my poor, solitary dog did, I’m afraid.  I just can’t take the place of her having another animal’s companionship. She had more fun there in 2009 when we visited with Patch and she had another dog to stimulate her natural curiosities

She could almost disappear against the white sand beach

She wanted to go hunting in the red mangrove swamp and I really didn’t want that to happen. The mangroves near the beach are very dense and completely impossible for a human to walk through. I don’t know how De Soto and his crew did it. I certainly didn’t want to have to go rescue her in the middle of the swamp! I think this Westie actually grew bored and bothered by the sun and wind. She is 14 years old now and maybe entitled to a grumpy mood now and then.

At home Gaely loves to jump in to our rivers and lakes and have a cool drink while she’s wading around but jumping into the ocean and taking a lap of salt water was not what she was expecting.

Her face says it all: Ick, salty!!!!

I had planned to lie on the beach and spend a couple of hours taking photos and had lugged a water jug, the dog’s water bowl and a fruit drink for me, a towel, my purse and the camera in it’s case. Gaely hates being photographed and I don’t know how she knows that I’m trying to take her picture but she always turns her head away unless I’m very very stealthy.

I got no cooperation with my plans to relax and shoot beautiful dog photos

so I gave up and we moved to the grass covered entrance to the park and lay under the trees, no doubt waiting for something to chase. Again, no lizards! How can that be? There are lizards everywhere in Florida, in fact there must be more reptiles in Florida than there are humans, and there’s way too many humans in Florida. So we walked to the thatched huts the Park service has erected to demonstrate the type of housing of the Native Americans

and there we found the missing lizards! Yay! Plenty . of . lizards. At last.

Back in Sarasota in the late afternoon I discovered a small, partly fenced area that might have been an unpaved parking area. There were hickory trees and date palms and sand right next to the back entrance to a Yacht club and no cars were using the road at all so it was quiet, safe and perfect and absolutely full of SQUIRRELS!

Ahhhhh, a place I could let Gaely off lead to chase, hunt, stalk, and harass the little creatures that were greedily eating up the new crop of hickory nuts.

The squirrels immediately raced up the trees to safety. So, for the next hour Gaely patiently stared up the tree trunks, waiting for the squirrels to give up and come on down, but in spite of a young squirrel’s attempts to reach the ground, she wasn’t given the chance to chase them. But she was happy, very happy.

Even though we all enjoyed being together on this trip and meeting our friends of many years at the conference we’re glad to be home. While we were gone the cucumber and basil plants have been nipped by frost. The fall season is upon us.

Before we left on this trip I found this 1960 photo of Suzy Parker

and saved it because her jacket is longer than the Edit Head pattern I sewed up last year but so similar in the strapped sleeves, peter pan collar and even the number of buttons

Two more sales trips and then we’re home for the rest of 2011. Excellent!

Rocky Mtn Trip & HP 1003: The Perfect Traveling Jacket

My new uniform! Enough room for multiple layers and sweaters but style enough for just a cami underneath. Easy to slide into and out of, those huge sleeves make perfect sense. And the pockets, Oh My Gosh, made keeping keys and necessaries so easy.

Seriously, I wore this jacket last week almost constantly on a driving trip to the Rockies. That is 4 days in the truck and 3 days in Estes Park, going with the flow from hot weather to snow.

We rented a tiny cabin

with a fantastic view

and explored the local surrounds after making breakfast, packing lunches and cleaning the cabin

while David Lee showed his Hello Wood Products Montessori materials and furniture to a wonderful group of teachers attending the Montessori in the Mountains conference put on by the Montessori Education Center of the Rockies.

It’s the time of year when elk come down from the high mountain to graze the lower meadows

and they wandered everywhere through the grounds of the site of the conference, the fabulous YMCA of the Rockies.

Gaely GoLightly kept vigilant watch for smaller things she could understand, like squirrels and and chipmunks.  She’s 14 now and her eyesight is poor enough that she doesn’t wander far from my side.  She’s a much more prudent dog than she was as a wild Westie youngster when nothing could stop her

We dined out only one night and mostly ate in the cabin which had a tiny kitchen. We were able to keep costs down and avoid the rich foods served in restaurants. These sales trips can be plenty fattening if we have to eat out all the time.

Dave had originally planned to pack up quickly and return to Tennessee ASAP to get back to work but Jane, a very wise woman who owns Montessori Services convinced me to plead for a quick trip through the National Park.

OMG!

You can see the trip photos here on my Flikr set  I must apologize (even tho some will tell me not to apologize, this I already know) in advance for the darkness of the photos. It was difficult to use a point and shoot camera, even with amazing telephoto lens, to shoot across such light and dark and deep landscape. The colors were amazing, changing constantly with the snow storm and then clear mountain light in the afternoon.

I wish we had more time to spend in Rocky Mountain National Park. Maybe some day I can go back and hike and camp and do all the things that I wish to do.

I am reading A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird. You can read it online here or download an audio version here I highly recommend getting to know her life and work.

What a delightful time this has been and is continuing to be, thanks to the book. More access to it is available at LibriVox

I was scheduled to join Dave on this weekend’s travel to South Carolina Montessori Alliance conference in Columbia tonight and Saturday, but I reneged on my driver’s responsibilities in order to stay home and process the jalapenos and bell peppers which are bending their bushes to the ground. The Santa Ana pole bean plants are still producing as are some of the heirloom tomato plants and okra. The fall plantings of sugar snaps and sweet peas are coming in and the cole crops are being enjoyed by caterpillars that I mercilessly pick off and smash under my toe. For the first time in my gardening life I used Sevin, sprayed before our trip, to protect the plants from aphids and those caterpillars while I was gone. I really don’t know if I’ll do that again. While it helped the Brassicas to thrive (except for one row that was being munched when I got home and I can’t explain why) I am afraid I’ve done more damage than good. My wasps are gone and aphids have invaded the okra. Oh dear, I do hope I didn’t upset the balance of nature there! Ah, well the okra is over 12′ tall now and slowing down it’s production of pods in the cooling Fall temps.

One beet has been pulled by me (yay!) and a number of carrots have been pulled by what I suspect are voles tunneling under the row! That’s a funny thing to see: the carrot tops slowly disappearing into the ground. Yeah, I’m easily amused.

By Wednesday I’ll be on the road again, this time to Sarasota, Florida’s beautiful beaches and perhaps a dinner with the Hot Pattern crew if we can match up our schedules. Sadly, Patch won’t be with us this trip but it’s fun to see the pictures of him and Gaely enjoying the Beach from our Nov 8, 2009 trip.  Click this link, to see my fav shot of Patch on the Beach, looking so happy after such a long life at the end of a short chain.  Ah, that was a grand trip, too!

Isn’t it great to be able to sew and have a wardrobe that will work in all these different climates? What a luxury, I couldn’t have matched it back when I worked in a corporate environment and had to travel.

After Sarasota, Florida, we will be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From the warm beach to the cold beach. Ahhhhhh! I will have my new jacket with me for sure

I clearly wasn’t ready for this last shot, LOL!

Hot Patterns 1003 Metro Seriously Stylin Jacket

This started out as an ordinary photo shoot of my finished jacket but something happened and I just couldn’t do the serious part of this stylin’ jacket any more.

Maybe it was the non existent moon

or my old cowboy boots

but suddenly I just couldn’t take it any more

I gave what I was doing a little thought

and I had to DANCE!

I guess there’s only so many years of these photo shoots a person can take before they realize how ridiculous it can be

showing off the details

and trying to style it just right

but, this time I turned my back on the extraordinary

regained my composure

and fit back into the mold. Here’s the proper version

Details: I cut a 14 throughout the chest and sleeves and a 20 from the waistband on down. I lined it with a well aged poly crepe and added the patch pockets from Vogue 1225. I made up my own instructions on that part.

If you’re interested in this Hot patterns jacket it’s on clearance at the HP site.

Get a good jacket construction book and follow it. Space the peplum gathers and panels so they look good on you. I kept the peplum sides ungathered and had to remove some fabric to do that. I didn’t add the shoulder pads nor did I use a chest piece. If you’re going to do something more formal then you might want to.

I won’t be sewing for the rest of the month. See you when I get home from a whirl wind round of sales trips.