A Lovely Gift

The other day I had coffee with Alicia.  We've been getting together about once a week for the last few months, for knitting and conversation.  We were even lucky enough to find a small coffee shop halfway between our houses that is nice and quiet, so we can talk without screaming at each other!

Well, this week, Alicia surprised me with a very lovely and unexpected gift.

Gah!  A vintage pattern and two pieces of fabric!  Take a closer look at this pattern:

Isn't this top adorable?  I'm hoping you can see that on the back of the envelope, at the bottom, someone has written "1954" - so cool!  Alicia said she checked to make sure all the pieces are there, and they are - they haven't even been cut out!  I'm definitely planning on making this one up.  It's one size larger than me, so it will be good practice for me with grading a pattern down - something I've been wanting to try out for a while.  However:  I WILL measure the pattern pieces first to see what kind of ease there is!

She also gave me two lovely pieces of fabric:

This one is a polyester, but it is actual vintage fabric.  This will make such a cute little top for spring, don't you think?  Perhaps even in the pattern above!

And this one is siiiiiiiilk.  Mmmmmmm!  She bought this in the garment district in NYC!  So cool!  She said there's quite a bit of yardage - about 2.5.  Sadly, I wasn't able to capture its true color - it's more of a wine red.  Really beautiful.   I've been musing about making this into another Pattern Runway Pussy Bow Blouse, because I'd been thinking I wanted to make a solid-colored silk one.


What makes these gifts even more special to me is that they all came from Alicia's personal stash.  I don't know about you guys, but I have a hard time giving away the stuff I've bought for myself!  Yes, I'm a little ashamed of that!

I'm so glad the world didn't end today.  I have a lot of sewing to do!

BFF Cowl, part 2

I finished the first part of my BFF Cowl project with Evelyn last night, and have already sent it off to her.  This morning I couldn't wait to start the second part, so I grabbed another ball of yarn and got going.

Now, I woke up with a huge sinus headache, and when I get like that, I often have a hard time thinking straight.  BUT, I think this pattern is trickier than it needs to be. 

I'm used to knitting from a chart, if there is one, so I started knitting away, assuming that the first row was the right side.  But when I got to row 8 - uh oh!  I realized all might not be well.  I went back and looked at the written instructions, and discovered that there's a little problem. 

There are three separate sets of directions you need to follow when knitting this pattern:  the chart, the line-by-line instructions for each stitch pattern, and the "set up" instructions for each cowl.  I didn't have any problems with the "Stepanie's Link," but for this piece - "Ysolda's Link" - the instructions don't correlate!  The "set-up" instructions say that row 1 is a right side row, while the stitch pattern instructions say it's a wrong side row.  The chart doesn't give any hint at all.

After reading all the instructions closely (something I rarely do), I decided that I would be better off working from the chart and starting with row 1 as a wrong side row.  Once I got that sorted, I was able to knit happily away, and finished the first repeat of the pattern.

I'm very happy with how it's coming along.  The Cascade Cloud knits up with fantastic stitch definition, and I love the ruffled quality of the seed pods.

And how do you like that background?  That's my new knitting chair!  I spent all day Tuesday driving out to Ikea, getting the chairs, driving back and then putting them together, but it was worth it.  The POÄNG makes a great knitting chair.

I met Eileen!

I had my third blogger meet-up yesterday!  I got to meet the lovely Eileen of Eileen's Basement.  She was in town for a work seminar, but forced herself to stay an extra day to do a little fabric shopping, tee hee hee!

I've been reading Eileen's blog for quite a while, and she and I have corresponded a bit as well over the last several months, so she wasn't completely unknown to me before yesterday.  So it was great to finally meet her in the flesh.  She is a truly lovely and very interesting person, and I had a great time spending the day with her.  The fact that we were indulging our inner fabric geeks was icing on the cake!

She came over to my house early and we headed off to Starbuck's first, to fortify ourselves with coffee.  (Also, the fabric store wasn't open yet!)  Our first stop was Fishman's Fabrics. 

Now, Fishman's is my LFS* - it's so near my house that I could walk there if I wished.  But I don't often shop there!  I went several times when I first moved here, and while they had some lovely fabrics, it wasn't very well organized and the prices were somewhat higher than I'd hoped for.  About a year later, they started a massive re-organization and things were even harder to find.  So Vogue became my default fabric shop, and I really only ever went into Fishman's for buttons to put on sweaters.

Oh. My. Word.  I did not know what I was missing!  The shop is so well-organized and well-lit now, and they have a vast array of gorgeous fabrics - the sort I've been reading about but have never actually put my hands on.  Yes, the prices are higher than Vogue, often by quite a bit.  But these fabrics are something special, truly quality materials.  I had expected to pop in and maybe spend a half hour before moving on, but we spent at least an hour and a half drooling and exclaiming and pawing at fabric.  I also remembered to ask one of the employees to take our picture:

Notice how we can't take our hands off the fabric.

Of course, for the rest of the day I got so involved in chatting away with Eileen that I forgot to take any more pictures!

After we left Fishman's, we took the scenic route north to Evanston along Lake Shore Drive.  Our first order of business was lunch, although we got slightly distracted by a thrift shop along the way!  And as we were heading to the "big Vogue" after lunch, we found another antique shop, this one with loads of antique buttons.  Eileen knows a lot more about antiques than I do, so it was fun to see what she was drawn to.

Of course, we spent a couple more hours in Vogue, and Eileen was able to find a lot of the fabrics on her list, as well as a few extras.  It will be great to watch her sew these up over the next several months; Eileen is a more advanced seamstress than I am, and I learned a lot just by talking with her and watching her shop for fabric and notions.  She's got several vintage patterns she's planning on working up, so if you're into vintage sewing, do check out her blog.

My one purchase for the day was a pair of applique scissors.  I had just read about them in Gertie's new book, so when I saw them at Vogue for ten dollars, I snapped them up!

However, I also got a present.  Look at this gorgeous hank of sock yarn Eileen brought me from the wool festival she'd been to the weekend before:

I think this is going to have to become come cable-y socks.

So, all in all a lovely day spent with a new friend.  Isn't the internet grand?


*Local Fabric Shop

Yesterday . . .

I spent another lovely day with Andrea and Mr. Stitch.  We started out at "The Bean," where Mr. Stitch took a few pictures of us.  Here we are, two ladies in their hand-made tops:

Andrea is wearing a Sorbetto she made with Nani Iro double gauze.  It's so soft and pretty!  I'm wearing my second Butterick blouse - the wacky paisley one.  Since I never got around to taking modeled pictures of it after I made it, I got Mr. Stitch to take a few yesterday.  He was cracking me up:

I liked how it looked with the white skirt, and if I hadn't been doing a lot of walking, I would have worn the outfit with my orange and pink espadrilles.  Next time!  And here's the silly outtake shot:

 

I was trying to blow a kiss, but I really just look like a turtle making some kind of obscene Italian gesture!

After hanging around at the Bean, we headed over to the Art Institute, where we took a look at the new Roy Lichtenstein exhibit.  If you find yourself in Chicago in the next few months, I really recommend it!  We all liked it a lot.

After the museum, we grabbed some banh mi for lunch and then headed out to Oak Park to take a look at the Frank Lloyd Wright homes.  I got so caught up I didn't take any pictures, but here are some from a couple years ago:

We wrapped up the afternoon with coffee and cookies at a cute little dessert cafe in downtown Oak Park.  Perfect!

I had such a great time hanging out with Andrea and Mr. Stitch over the last few days.  They are truly warm, wonderful people.  Now they're on their way back to Toronto, and I'm sad to see them go, but confident that we'll see each other again.  I'm just blown away by their generosity, coming all the way to Chicago so we could finally meet.  Andrea also very generously gave me a fabulous gift.  Take a look:

A beautiful card which she made herself, a lovely pair of tiny snipping scissors, and 2 meters of Liberty Tana Lawn in Landis B!  She knows how much I drool over Liberty fabrics, and I had mentioned I'm fascinated by architecture - can you see the little buildings in the print?  So perfect!  I'm having a lot of fun daydreaming about what this gorgeous yardage should become.

For those of you who followed Andrea's blog and miss it as much as I do while she's on break, she did mention that she's planning to put up a few posts over the summer, so watch out for those!