Summer Sewing

As usual in the spring, my attention turns to sewing clothing. In this case, pants. Summer weight fabrics are easy to find, work with, and wear. The colors are fun. I have difficulty finding pants since I like pull-on styles that come to my waist. I am a combination of sizes.

Earlier this spring, I took apart my favorite, worn-out pants and made a pattern. I can whip up a pair now in about two hours. Have ordered quite a bit of fabric at www.fabric.com and for the first time in years actually have a choice of pants in my closet to wear. Linen, cotton, silk noile, microfiber.......

My interest in knitting has waned as my interest in sewing has grown. I tend to have a one track mind and concentrate on one thing at a time. My knitting mood right now is to knit mindless things; no lace!!!

I do still love knitting socks and have a pair on the needles; great for knitting in the car! My daughter-in-law told me to knit my son a pair of socks, so will do that when I spend a week with them at the beach this summer. I need the foot with me when I knit socks, since I knit from the toe up and do a mitered heel, if the foot part is too long, it is too long. My daughter's second pair of socks is too long. Sigh.

Spring Knitting

I have drifted away from knitting recently. I fell in love with knitting socks and now that it is too warm to wear them, I am at a bit of a loss what I want to knit. Have several things started, nothing enticing.

I was at Biltmore Village in Asheville, NC a few weeks ago and a knit shop was right across from the restaurant I had eaten lunch with on a tour of Asheville. We had free time so I made a beeline for it. The proprietors were very nice and upstairs was a table full of yarn bags, discontinued lines and colors. Since I am a bargain hunter at heart, I could not leave without a bag! I chose a bag of Debbie Bliss' Cotton Cashmere in a khaki color. And since I have trouble buying yarn without casting on something immediately, am working on a shrug.

I also decided I needed a new small drawstring purse and had some cotton yarn in a beige and a khaki color; I strung some wooden beads on one of the yarns and began the purse, will knit the beads into it in some sort of pattern.

I got out the pink shawl I completed last year and have been enjoying it this spring; it is still the one item I have knitted that I adore and continue to get compliments. In fact, I was just tossing it over my shoulders at the end of our shopping break on my Asheville tour and one of the woman gasped and asked me if I had just bought it in one of the shops! The yarn was a German mercerized cotton yarn that I bought from elann.com and it turned out to be on closeout and the entire line discontinued. This is the nicest feeling cotton yarn (it is a very upscale version of the crochet cotton on the cardboard tube we find at discount stores)and I wish I had known it was discontinued; I would have bought more in every color!