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Knitting, painting and other summer things
Except for a couple rainy days here and there, the weather here this summer has been just wonderful; warm and sunny during the day and usually pretty cool at night. I have been taking advantage of the great weather to go for walks and enjoy the outdoors, but it hasn’t prevented me from making quite a bit of progress on other more “indoorsy” projects that I have been working on recently.
First off, I want to show you guys the Lissome cowl I just finished using a handspun I made just about 5 years ago during the tour de fleece. It’s a 100% merino salmon pink-ish barber pole yarn in a sports-ish weight. At first I really wasn’t sure how this was going to knit up, but I think it turned out beautiful on this gorgeously well structured cowl.
Susan Pandorf is a genius for having designed such a wonderful pattern! It is simple, yet impressively well thought and well written. The first 4 rows were a bit counter-intuitive for me so I had to pay more attention working those, but once I got used to it, this cowl just knits up like a breeze! The texture is absolutely amazing and the finished cowl is delicate enough yet not too lacy – a great balance!
I used all but two yards of the two skeins I had, and was able to work up 14 repeats of the main body. The finished cowl was blocked at about 10” high and 25” long folded, so 50” circumference in total. As usual, all the details can be found on my project page so you can go check it out there.
While this cowl was under construction, I was also lucky enough to have a little photo session with the lovely Emily from Cyclopes photographie. See, I needed a professional portrait done and she does stock photography, so we agreed on an exchange – she would do my portrait for free if I agreed to be used as a model for some stock images. Now I have a lot of hobbies so I had a fun time trying to decide which one I wanted to feature for the stock pictures, but I opted for spinning, knitting and yoga.
As you can see, the pictures turned out simply amazing, I just have no words.
And in other news, I also spent some time last weekend painting an accent wall in my dining room. It took a little bit longer than I expected, but as you can see it was well worth every minute!
That’s all for now folks, wish you all a great week 🙂
Is it spring yet?
Hey guys! A couple weeks ago I wrapped up and reflected on 2018, and now I think it’s time to kick start 2019! To start the year fresh, I decided to start by “refreshing” my home a bit by sewing a cover for a chair in the living room.
It’s a chair I’ve had for quite a long time, and I really like it. The cats really like it to… Which is kind of a problem. My two adorable feline friends, Cassy and Picasso, have both been climbing on that chair for years and the fabric has gotten quite worn and torn with time. Since the chair has a fairly simple shape, I figured it would be pretty easy to make a cover for it, so I decided to give it a try.
I had bought a very nice, textured ivory fabric for this a couple years back, but since it’s kind of an expensive fabric I wanted to draft a pattern and try it out first, so I opted for a combination of coordinated fabric remnants I had in stash. In other words, the chair cover that I’m showing you right now is basically a “wearable muslin” version of the chair cover that I want to make.
There’s a couple things on this pattern I’ll have to fix for the actual project (better fit around the curved edge and the seat, length of the velcro strip, etc.) but I’m actually quite happy with the result! It’s clean and fresh and fun and playful, and more than anything it’s very colorful! Doesn’t it just feels like spring? or fall, maybe… Either way, anything but winter (hopefully)…!
I’ve had both of those fabrics for so many years now thought that I don’t quite remember what they are or where I got them from, but what I can tell you is that the floral is most likely a printed polyester woven fabric, and the solid rust one is a (very wide – 120″?) percale, normally intended for bed sheets. And as you can see, the cats already love it! And having an actual cover on the chair also makes cleaning a lot easier for me, as when the chair gets dusty or dirty, I can simply remove it and wash separately.
Either way, muslin or not, I’ll probably keep this chair cover on for a little longer before I make the other one, but with such a pretty motif I will no doubt keep it and use it again if the color scheme of my living room changes or if I move this chair into a different room.
How about you guys, what have you been up to since the beginning of the year?
Vacation is no time to be lazy!
Guys, I just came back last Sunday from an AMAZING vacation, and I feel totally recharged! It was definitely much much needed after working all summer with no real breaks, covering for everybody else’s vacation.
Today though, I feel like karma really does exist because after waiting patiently all summer for my vacation to come, I ended up with what was (probably) the most beautiful 2 weeks of the summer, weather-wise!
We spent a good 10 days on the go, first visiting friends in Buffalo, NY then driving to Toledo, and then taking the bus there for a short 3-days getaway in Chicago. There, we visited the Art Institute of Chicago, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, the Skydeck at the top of the Willis Tower, we also took a boat ride on lake Michigan, walked the waterfront and ate an awesome deep dish pizza at Uno’s downtown. Here’s a little photo recap of our time there :
After all this, I felt totally revived, and it’s good because… I came back to a real construction site 🙂
Thing is, before leaving for vacation we started renovations at the house, mainly adding a shower to the bathroom and redecorating said bathroom and my craft room. Most of the hard work had been done before leaving for vacation, but not everything is quite functional yet.
The shower works, but the bathroom has not been repainted yet, and I don’t have a towel bar. The sewing room is painted, but the IKEA furniture I bought for it has not been put together yet. Since there’s still a lot to do, I am so glad I came back feeling so energized! I will share with you guys pictures of my bathroom and craft room makeovers when they are complete but in the meantime, I can tell you that I chose a very bright and playful color scheme for my sewing room that uses yellow, white and gray. Most of the room is very basic, but I went all out for the accent wall, with which I had quite a bit of fun. Want to see it? Here it comes…
Drum roll….
Tada! What do you guys think? Yay or nay?
Crafty Effie 