Utility Versus Time Invested.

Well, after several successes, I think it's time to report a tragic and crushing failure:
I am ripping out the sweater -- The Sweater, the beast I've been working on for almost a year.

First of all, I really don't believe it's going to fit. I still think, despite my care and my swatch making, that it will be too big in the neckline. I know it fits under the arms (I tried it on), but the neckline was almost off the shoulder. Why I didn't frog it then, I don't know. It was obvious that something was way off, since I only had to do about 2/3 of the required increases for my size. I won't wear a neckline that wide, it's as simple as that. Also, it's a pullover and I don't even own any pullovers -- not a one. I don't wear them. What the hell was I thinking?

The only thing keeping me going was the psychology of previous investment. (If you've never heard the term, look it up.)

In the end, would it be better to have spent endless hours on an ill-fitting and unworn garment? Or to admit defeat and start over with something that will actually be useful to me?

I'm choosing the second path, as awful as it may be. But in the end I will have a nice, soft, climate-suitable cropped cotton cardigan -- that fits.

But I'm still probably going to cry...

Flingable Baby Hat.

Well, my impending cousin has arrived, and everyone knows infants need hats -- and not just for warmth. They also need to fling them off, causing much consternation among their childcare providers and much joy for the babies.

With that in mind, I figure a good baby hat should be soft, durable, washable, and most of all, easily flung. I think the following hat covers all of these bases.

I adapted the Children's Cotton Hat from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I omitted the eyelets and the i-cord tie, because those were there specifically to prevent flinging. I also slightly altered the number of rounds between decreases to make the hat little less pointy.

Here's how it turned out in Ty-Dy (100% cotton from Knit One Crochet Too):


I love the way to decreases look from the top.


I hope my new cousin gets a lot of good use out of this little hat -- and that he doesn't throw it so well that he loses it!

I Heart Recycling T-Shirts.

I had a terrible flu or something in January, so not only was I not posting here...I was also not making anything. Or doing anything. Literally. I was very, very busy just being sick.

Anyway, after I finally started feeling better, I realized that I was low on kitschy t-shirts. (Sadly, I "outgrew" most of my old ones.) I had purchased a clearance t-shirt from Old Navy that fit really nicely -- for 99 cents, no less -- though I didn't much care for the silver foil Halloween cat and the big "Old Navy" logo below it. You really have to overlook those things when something both fits well and costs less than a dollar, you know?


But I just don't care for brand-pimping, so I planned to cover the design and the logo with some sort of applique. I threw it in my "potential" pile (a nice pile of clothes saved for refashioning in my closet) and forgot all about it.

After my long convalescence, I needed a simple project that would still yield results. A t-shirt project fit the bill.

I dug out my 99 cent wonder and an old, ill-fitting sweatshirt. I measured the original design and cut a shape out of scrap paper just large enough to cover it. Then I cut the shape from a piece of the old sweatshirt.


I pinned the fleece shape over the foil design and began to outline it in uneven black running stitches.


And here is the completed refashion, easy and seasonally appropriate!