Sabrina

Look! It's the back of a sweater. I casted on the front yesterday and have started the ribbing.


I also made a belt the other day out of grosgrain ribbon to go with my cotton dress. It has a tuxedo bow to conceal the snap closure. Considering that the ribbon only cost me $0.45 and I had snaps on hand, it was pretty much the cheapest belt ever. :)

Just finished my 1908 corset and am sitting here with it on. Hurrah!

In other creative news, I cast on the pink blanket for Cadence, the big sister of the new baby. The blanket is going to have a garter stitch border and a moss stitch centre. I'm not going to work on this one so intensely because I have lots of time to get it done. It's more of an in-between projects type of project. Now that I'm done the corset, it's back to the corded petticoat. Oh, and taking in the side seams of a shirt that I bought a while ago but don't really like the fit of. Considering it only cost me $5, and it has a cute retro vibe to it, I'm happy to make minor adjustments on it to make it wearable.

List of my July projects planned: corded petticoat, plaid pants (Smooth Sailing pattern), corset cover (using Jenni's pattern), top petticoat, and sweater (from A Stitch in Time Vol. 2). I don't really expect to get the sweater done, and I may only get the top petticoat started, but the other three things are totally doable. I was planning on making the plaid pants with straight legs, but after trying on a really old pair of my dad's pants (like pants that were probably older than me), I've decided that I need a wide-leg pair of pants. They looked really cool, very Annie Hall. So there's all my plans for the coming month!

I went out with two people from my book club. We headed out to a nearby small town on Thursday to visit with the third person who lives there. There's an awesome museum there: a Mennonite village. Some of the buildings and things are original, while others have been moved there to preserve them. It's so neat! You get to walk through these old buildings dating from the 1870s to the 19-teens. There are houses and schools and barns and stores. One of them was even the school that my friend's grandmother had attended. We had a delicious lunch too. It was so good I returned on Saturday with my family.

I finished the baby blanket on Saturday and was so glad to have it done. (Don't tell anyone, but one side is slightly wider than the other by about 2 inches. As I went on my tension got tighter.) I got some nice compliments on it from my aunt and uncle. A picture will be forthcoming. The baby shower/one-month party was pretty big. It took up several big tables at a restaurant and there was tons of food. It was a very food-filled day for me since my dad and I went to the local farmer's market that morning and bought pie, local honey (farmed by a former professor of mine), carrots, and tomatoes. Then we went to that small town for lunch with my mom to eat some fabulous borsht, doenaers, and cake, all made in-house. I somehow managed to have a dessert with every meal that day. Yay!

A couple days ago I started my new sweater. The stitches are definitely far from perfect at the beginning, but they are slowly improving, although they are still a bit squidgy. Maybe it's my tension, or maybe it's just the nature of the yarn, or maybe it just needs blocking, but my Vs (knit stitches) don't look like nice Vs. Instead, there's a definite separation where the next stitch loops through. It's not terrible and it may fix itself, so I'm not going to let it bother me too much. Ravelry link here.

The 1908 corset is still being worked on. I skipped several days of my schedule last week and am making up for it now. I'm at the point where I have the boning channels sewn in. Up next is cutting the boning and then setting grommets. Not too much to go now!