Knitted Wedding Dresses

As a knitter who is engaged, it was inevitable that I would have passing thoughts of knitting something  for my wedding.  Perhaps a veil?  Flowers?  The whole wedding dress?

But whenever I mention this to Fiance, she gets a panicked look on her face.  I think she is worried I will end up looking like this on our wedding day.

From here.

Which I am totally not opposed to :-)  But I was thinking something like The Gray Swan Dress

Or this pink flamenco dress

If I could crochet, would have a lot more options.  This woman crocheted her wedding dress on her morning commute.  Or there is this beauty from Nixx:

It seems like it might will absolutely be too much work.  But I did download this pattern from Vogue Knitting.

Maybe I will swatch a little and the urge to make a dress will pass....

Sweater Surgery

When I was at the Goodwill picking up a sweater to make into swants, I found an amazing fair isle sweater.  I wish I had taken a picture of it; it was a big, boxy 80's drop shoulder number made of some sort of hearty nordic wool.

But it was a giant men's sweater.

So I ripped it apart and am attempting to change it into a set-in sleeve sweater that will fit me (this is a really good description of the different kinds of shoulders, if you care).  The sweater was serged/overlocked together at the edges, so I just cut away the side seems.

Because it was a drop-sleeve sweater (and I have giant ape arms), I need to add a lot of length to the sleeves.  I happened to have some yarn that matches the yellow and white yarn already in the sweater.  I picked up the stitches where the sleeves were serged to the body of the sweater.  Now I am knitting until they are long enough, adding the proper shaping in as I go.

I also had to change the body of the sweater from a big rectangle into a set-in shape.  I mapped out the middle of the sweater and then how wide I wanted the shoulders and waist to be (in the neon thread you see) based on my measurements.

Then I cut the sleeve holes.  Cutting knitting is nerve-wracking, but the yarn is sticky enough that it doesn't unravel too much.

I left the original collar.  So now I just have to finish knitting the sleeves and then sew it all together on the sewing machine. 

Swants!

Swants = Sweater + Pants

From Urban Dictionary: "Swants occur when you transform a sweater, turn it upside down and seam it into a pair of pants. A Swants tutorial was posted and popularized by knitting designer Westknits."

Stephen West also made a video wearing his swants.

I got a crazy 80's sweater from Goodwill, and my friend and I set out to make a pair of swants.

They look a lot better than I thought they would.

And they are very comfy.  Thinking about adding elastic to the waistband.  

Everyone gets swants for Christmas this year?

Knit Along?

I am not much of a joiner.  Or rather, I like to do my knitting alone so no one can know what terrible TV I watch while crafting.  But lately I've been trying to make my knitting a more social activity.  I've started going to a weekly knitting group hosted by the Emory law librarians.*  I try to teach other people to knit when they let me.

And now I am going to do this knit along with Canadian Living Craft Blog.

No, I don't usually read Canadian Living.  I just happen to really like the pattern they are making and have a sweater's worth of purple Cascade 220 stuffed under my bed just screaming for a purpose. 

The pattern is the Classic Raglan Pull-Over by Jane Richmond.  Doesn't it look like a favorite sweater just waiting to happen?

Joining a knit-along will help me with any trouble I run into and will hopefully give me the motivation I need to get it done.  They've given themselves six weeks to do it.  A sweater in six weeks?  I can do that, right?**

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*For some reason knitting and books just seem to go well together).
**Answer: Probably not.  My current knitting project has been on the needles since last June....