This was possibly a misguided attempt to save time and money on new curtains. Seriously, it's not easy to find fabric that comes 60" wide like a tablecloth does, and $8/yard for The Perfect Print (it's the crazy yellow floral on the left; the other two went back to the store) is also not to be sneezed at, especially when the home decor store is 3 minutes away and the fabric store is 30. But now I'm running into technical difficulties and trying not to tally up the time I will spend on preparing and sewing all that fabric.
Even worse: there is a roll of 14 yards of red twill leaning up on the wall behind me (deep cherry red, matches the floral perfectly and also dampens the yellow a bit which is all to the good.) That stuff I still have to preshrink before I can iron it and prep it for a sofa slipcover.
Which, as I recall, is never quite as quick or easy as I like to think it is. In fact I'm pretty sure that's why I paid for real upholstery the last time my sofa got too worn to clean any more.
At this point I would like to say WAIT, this post should be over at my Procrastination Diary. It's all sewing all the time! Except that now I'm going to switch over to knitting, so we should be okay.
* * * * *
After I went crazy at the discount fabric store yesterday, I came home and worked some more on my Easter shawl. Which is still not done but is now I think less than 10 (very long) rows from castoff.
I had a brief fantasy that I would be blocking it today, and posting pictures of how it looks pinned out in this very space, but then I realized that is crazy. Just casting off all those stitches would take me an hour, and there is a Leaning Tower of Tablecloth in the corner of my knitting office which is hard not to notice and be pressured by.
Think there's any chance now I'll be sporting it on Easter Sunday? You know, without it actually being wet at the time? Maybe I could run the dehumidifier near the blocking mats.
When I went out this morning it was cold and I tucked a cashmere blend shawl (which, as I recall, did not take nearly as long to make, possibly because I had designed the lace myself and therefore didn't keep mixing up the stitches and having to rip back) into the scratchy collar of my storebought cardi.
I like that cardi because it's mostly boiled wool, but the designer used blanket stitch at the raw edges to anchor a ribbed knit border in very rustic looking wool yarn. It was hard not to think about how awesome it would be if I made myself a linen tunic (got linen yesterday too) and did the same trick with some cashmere blend yarn.
Let's not discuss how long that would take. Instead, let's take a moment to honour all the opportunities there are to sneak the knitting we love into the everyday stuff we live with. Like,
trim on linen tunic tops
skirts on slipcovers
throw pillows
tiebacks for new curtains
rustic-looking handles for dresser drawers
lace curtains
trouser clips for bike riding (do chains still eat pantlegs?)
and even tea cosies. Because did you notice over at the Diary? the cottage where the humble yet adorable cosy I mentioned last summer is now my cottage. And my cottage is the cause of all this crazy fabric spilling out into the hallways at home. But who's gonna complain about a new place to knit and spin and (sorry Kathi) (and also, ahem) weave?
Not to mention all the driving trips it'll take to go and come back - bonus knitting time! Let's just hope I don't need the flying visit I'm taking there next weekend to finish the Easter shawl. Because if I do, it is totally gonna be wet when I wear it.
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