Put down your pencils.

Work on the pencil skirt is ongoing.  After assembling most of the shell on Thursday, I decided that I wanted to pick out the back seam and do it again.  The problem though with finding a very close match between thread and fabric is that it can be difficult to see your stitches to pick them out!  By the time I'd gotten to that point, it was late afternoon and there wasn't enough light to see what I was doing, so I set it aside.

On Friday, I decided that what I really needed right away was some dark brown narrow-leg pants.  It's an item I'd been feeling I was missing for quite a while:  there have been so many times in the last months that I've wanted to wear a top, but felt I needed these pants to make the perfect outfit.  While I was at Vogue last week getting the fabric and notions for the pencil skirt I happened to find some stretch cotton twill in the exact shade of brown I'd been wanting, so I snapped up two yards.  On Friday, I washed it up and made it into my third pair of Clovers.

These aren't any different than the first two pairs I made.  I made the longer length, without the pockets,  using the pattern adjustments I'd made in my muslin.  The only difference this time was that I used the invisible zipper foot on my new sewing machine.  And WOW!  That thing makes a big difference:

And it makes it so easy.  I did discover though that I don't like the normal zipper foot on the Janome at all.  It's quite a bit wider than the one on my Kenmore, which made sewing the seam below the zipper difficult.

Yesterday I finally got around to "fixing" a top I'd bought on sale at Anthropologie maybe three years ago.  I bought it because the fabric is a design by Vera Neumann (whose scarves I collect and love).  I don't think the shape is fantastic for me (it does come with a waist tie, but I opted not to wear it today) but the fabric is so pretty, and it goes with my new pants!  However, like a lot of my tops from Anthropologie, the shoulders were way too high, so the neckline hung too low.  Because we had a lot of sun yesterday morning, I got out my seam ripper and unpicked the binding around the neck, then took each shoulder in by an inch (half inch front and back) and restitched the binding on.  It's still not a perfect fit, but it's a lot better than it was, and I think I'm more likely to wear it now.

I know - it makes me look preggers.

I'm not bothering to show any details of the Clovers because you've all seen a million pairs of these pants by now!  For me, and with my alterations, these are both comfy and flattering.  The only thing I don't like, and haven't yet figured out how to fix, is the amount of bulk where the right waistband seam meets the side seam.  No matter how much fabric I trim away, it's always bulgy there.  Any ideas?

I wore this outfit to go have coffee with Alicia this morning, but since it was chilly, I also had to put on a sweater:

And my new Meandering Vines scarf.  As I was taking pictures, the sunlight was coming and going.  The complete outfit shot was super sunny:

Oooh, the mother ship is here!

There has also been a good bit of progress on the Exeter sweater.  I'm hoping to do an update some time this week.  I've also got a house that could really use a good cleaning.  So I think work on The Pencil is at a temporary standstill.  Good thing I don't really need a pencil skirt.