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craft, wool

Completed – Lace chevron scarf

christinahopgood
I finished a project!  My New Year’s Resolution is coming true!
This is a yarn I bought from the Braidwood Alpaca Shop, and it’s a 4ply 100% alpaca wool.
The pattern was free with the yarn!  But it’s a very simple 4 row repeat, using a multiple of 6 stitches plus 2.  I used 44 stitches for mine:

Row 1: K1, *YO, K2, K2tog, K2*, repeat until 1 stitch left, K1.
Row 2: Purl
Row 3: K1, *K2, K2tog, K2, YO*, repeat until 1 stitch left, K1.
Row 4: Purl.

As you can see, rows 1 and 3 are basically the same except moved along 1 stitch.
I did this mostly while we were away in Adelaide recently, and finished it off today.  It seemed to take me a long time, but that may have been because it was kind of tedious.  I also am really looking forward to starting something new, but I still have to finish off something else first!!

The “chevron” is a little hard to see actually, but the K2togs make little chevrons if you look at it the right way.

It’s just as long as my xylophone!  About 185cm.

After I steamed it, it flattened out and looked fantastic.  I love it!  Alpaca wool is so soft and beautiful, it drapes a bit nicer than sheep’s wool in my opinion. 

Now let’s wait for the weather to cool down so I can actually wear it!

Ravelry project notes here!
life

New Year’s Resolutions and Goals!

christinahopgood
Happy New Year everyone!  Gosh what a month it’s been.  Since last time I posted, I’ve been really busy and away!  Christmas happened, then we went down the coast, then New Year happened, then we went on an 11 day trip to Adelaide!  I’ll write a whole new post for that.

New Year’s Resolutions.  I’ve made 7!  Here they are.

1. Floss my teeth DAILY!
This one is self-explanatory.

2. Write in my diary daily.
I don’t mean writing long entries about my feelings and opinions, but I do like to write down what I did each day before I go to sleep.  That way, I can look back and remember each day and they don’t blur together.  I find it really helpful to write things down so I can find out when things happened later.

3. Get up earlier.
I’ve found that we tend to stay up too late and then sleep in, especially on weekends or when I have to go in to work later.  This really knocks me around when I have to get up at 6:30 for percussion ensemble on Monday morning!  So I would like to train my body to generally get up and sleep earlier.  I’m going to schedule my teaching for mornings when I can this term.   Charles also finds that when he goes in to uni earlier he gets more work done and can come home sooner.  Sounds obvious but it’s taken us this long to figure out!

4. Buy less and have less.
I feel like I’ve already started this resolution.  I am just tired of having so much stuff – and in particular, having so many clothes.  Yesterday I went through my clothes and gave away 28 items, and it felt so cleansing.  I still have hundreds of items left, but it’s a start!  Going through, I found lots of clothes I’d just forgotten about.  Also, having a small house and a few big things we need to have (our instruments), space is in short supply.  

This is all the stuff I got rid of: 9 tops, 5 cardigans, 4 skirts, 3 dresses, 1 pair shoes, 1 bra, 2 tights, 1 spencer, 1 dressing gown.

5. Use up a bunch of my stash.
I have a lot of fabric.  Most of it was bought with a purpose in mind, but also a lot was gifted to me or an impulse purchase.  I want to try to get it down to a reasonable size!  This also applies to my yarn stash!


6. Sew more wearable clothes for me.
I know this is against my previous resolution of having less stuff, but I can’t live with the same clothes forever.  They wear out and get old!  So instead of buying I want to make myself wearable clothes.  This means not making another party dress, but instead making a plain blouse to go with my skirts.  Not making an experimental jacket out of blue tartan, but instead making a basic fit-and-flare dress to go with my cardigans.  Make more underpants!  In this way I hope to have a better thought out wardrobe that is easy to mix and match.  You need to put more thought into making a garment than buying one, so this mindfulness will help with my other resolutions.

7. Finish projects before starting new ones.
Sometimes this can’t be helped, like when it’s Christmas coming up and SOMEONE asked for a Dr Who scarf.  Projects can still be put on hold for things like this.  But currently, I have 4 knitting projects on the go, and 4 with wool bought queued, and a bunch of sewing projects ready to start. On top of my crochet and needle felt and everything.  This is too much and it makes me stressed!  So until my current projects are down to a reasonable level, I am NOT ALLOWED to start anything new.  I need to stop getting bored with my projects!  Plus, the feeling of finishing something lovely is so worth the wait.  I’d like more of that and less frustration with myself!


Next, some of my goals for 2014.
1. Start up my custom underpants business!
2. Save up a bunch of money for the future!
3. Design and make some of my own patterns!
4. Become a better teacher!

How about you?  What are your New Year’s Resolutions?

culottes, sewing

Finished! Tania Culottes!

christinahopgood
Can you guess what I’ve been making?  
Aww it looks like a lovely skirt.
…
NOPE PANTS! TRICKED YOU!
These are the Tania Culottes by Megan Nielsen.  This is the first pattern I’ve tried by her and it’s just great.  Such a clear, simple pattern to follow, and the way she uses those pleats to hide the crotch is amazing!  This totally looks like a skirt even in action.
My fabric is some kind of cotton/linen suiting.  The only reason I know what it is, is because it doesn’t melt under a very hot iron.  And it feels like a natural fibre.
This is me not being very good at invisible zips.  I only had a white one, and I thought “it’ll be fine!  It’s an invisible zip”.  I don’t have an invisible zipper foot on my machine so I blame that.  I’m also not too happy with my hem, it went all crinkled.  I can’t get the hang of hemming curved things.
The only alteration I made is that I lengthened the skirt about 10cm.  It was super short before!  Apart from that I made a straight XS.
I’d give this pattern two thumbs up! It’s extremely comfortable and cute, and I’ve been wearing it pretty much nonstop.  Totes happy!

christmas, present

Finished! Dr Who Scarf

christinahopgood
Finally a blog post about something I made!  Ravelry page here!
This is a Christmas present for my brother.  I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have time to look at my blog so I’m safe.  He also asked for it so I think he’d already have an inkling about it!
My brother (who is quite a bit older than me) loved Dr Who as a kid, especially Tom Baker as the 4th Doctor.  
This doctor’s “thing” was his enormous scarf!  Each season it was different.  The scarf I chose to replicate is the one from seasaon 14.  I chose this one because I loved the colour combinations, they seemed the most like Dr Who to me.  
There is a website that’s entirely devoted to the scarves of the 4th Doctor, where I got my pattern from.  I found it through Ravelry.  Someone has gone through and counted all the rows in all of the scarves and figured out all the patterns!  It’s incredibly detailed.  Here’s my pattern:

And here’s the finished object!
No loops
One loop around my neck.
Two loops
Three loops!
It’s much bigger than me!  The fringe on the ends is made of all of the colours.  I couldn’t find the exact colours the pattern required, my brown and grey are both too light, and my red is not quite right either.  But I’m so happy with the way it looks, the colours blend beautifully.  Paul had better wear it every day!

Ravelry page here!
CIT, life, sewing

What happened to me??

christinahopgood
So my last post is from the end of Frocktober!  That’s quite a while ago.  I ended up making $641 for Frocktober, which is pretty good!  So why haven’t I posted for like a month?  

Firstly, Frocktober totally burnt me out.  I haven’t taken any photos of myself in this whole time, no photos of my projects, no instagrams!  I’ve just been going along doing my normal work things and home things.  After sharing so much I just wanted a bit of privacy, you know?

Then Charles went away to America for 2 weeks to go to PASIC – a percussion convention.  During that time, I had one good night’s sleep.  I don’t know what came over me, it was stupid.  Also he’s my photographer, so even if I’d wanted to take photos I couldn’t!

Last Saturday we performed at Voices in the Forest, a huge opera pops concert at the National Arboretum.  Right now it’s more like “Voices in the Saplings” because of course the trees all burnt down 10 years ago and are still little.  It’s a fantastic place though – high above the rest of Canberra, you can see for miles and miles.  It’s spectacular.  The concert was good too!

Then on Sunday I woke up with this terrible pain in my stomach.  It was so bad I couldn’t get out of bed.  On Sunday night Charles took me to emergency at Calvary hospital and I stayed overnight for observation.  It’s pretty traumatic staying in Emergency because everyone’s so terribly sick.  People were much sicker than me.  And gosh!  Hospitals go through a lot of sick bags.  Everyone was so spewy (except me).  Charles left around 1am, I felt so bad for him, he had to get up at 6 for school!


The entire time I was in there I was hooked up to this heartbeat monitor, which beeps annoyingly when your heartrate either stops or goes too high.  Because I was of a slightly nervous disposition (i.e. totally flipping the heck out) my machine was beeping pretty much all the time, the nurse had to set it to a higher tolerance! My heartrate was almost always over 100, and in the day almost always over 110. For musicians, that’s a fairly moderate march tempo.
Mum and dad came to be with me first thing in the morning.  Everyone thought I had appendicitis, but some things didn’t fit.  I wasn’t nauseous or feverish and I didn’t have reboud pain (more pain when you release pressure than when you press on the spot), and I was hungry.  I just had pain.  They put several litres of water in me via a canular so I could have an ultrasound on a full bladder (they press so hard in the ultrasound I’m surprised I didn’t wet my pants, sorry TMI).  
So they were about to operate on Monday afternoon when the radiology report came back from my ultrasound, saying that I have an inflammation in my terminal ileum.  So your terminal ileum is close to your appendix, it’s the last part of your small intestine. And mine was all swollen and tender.  So they said “go home and come back if it gets worse”.  With some assisstance I walked out of there.  They don’t know why it was sore.
I took two days off teaching (which is a total pain in the butt when you’re self-employed) and now I’m mostly back to normal.  I’m pretty tired still from the ordeal, and my tummy hurts a little still.

I have been doing projects – I made another Miette cardigan (this time in black – which attracts every piece of dust in my vicinity), I’ve been working on another jumper, finished my two assessment garments for CIT… and haven’t blogged any of it.  Here are some dodgy phone photos of my projects!

Hope you’ve been having a good month!  Bring on Christmas!