Knitting! (Not mine.)

Since I have no knitting of my own to show you, I'm going to show you other people's knitting. Bwahaha!

I've been delighted with the response to my Pintuck T-shirt pattern. People are actually knitting it! Who'd a thought? I found some people's projects through Ravelry, and my, are there some talented knitters. Here, then, a mini FO gallery. (All pics from the knitters themselves.)

Alexandra's tee, knit for her daughter. In the original blue I chose for my t-shirt, so of course I think she's got great taste!



Amy's tee, knit in SWTC Bamboo. What a great knitting job. The FO looks fantastic. Srsly, if my stockinette ever looks as good as hers, I'll die happy.


Lauren's Pintuck tank, knit in Schulana Sojabama. She knit this for the Project Spectrum Air category. But maybe it should have been put under Fire, 'cause how smokin' hot does she look in her tank?


Susan's Pintuck tee with proper sleeves. This is such a gorgeous knit, and she put so much thought and work into the modifications that it's nearly unrecognizable from my pattern. I love the lace she chose for the bib portion, and love that she went ahead and figured out the actual sleeves for it. Also, I may have to go buy some orange yarn now.


These are just some of the finished objects on Ravelry. If you've knit this, or know someone who has, let me know! I love to see what people have done with the pattern, and I'll keep putting up FO shots.

Whew, a bit of down time

I've been so busy the last couple of weeks that there's been precious little time to collect my thoughts for any kind of blog post.

I've had friends staying with us. I've spent a weekend at a re-creation of the Battle of Tewkesbury. I've been down in Southampton seeing random people. This next weekend is the first that The Limey and I have nothing planned for out of town. Whew. I haven't even bought any fabric to try out on the sewing machine yet!

Another thing that keeps me from blogging is that I seem to have found my reading mojo again. I went into Daunt Books a couple of weekends ago and, for the first time in a while, found a whole bunch of books I wanted to read. I bargained myself down to just a couple, and then went to the Oxfam shop down the street and bought a couple more. I raced through the first two and am well into the third. And, for me, reading doesn't really make good blog fodder.

The thing that does make good blog fodder- knitting- has been dominated by a project I can't talk about. Suffice it to say that I'm totally over-the-moon excited about it, and even though I'm knitting the damn thing right now, I won't believe it's happening until the whole project is presented to the public.

Being excited about reading and knitting on a deadline does mean that I have to parcel out my time very carefully, though. I like to think I've been pretty good about it.

Well, I have a sewing machine

I've been mulling over getting a sewing machine for a while now. I used to sew a bit, and have one stored away at my father's, but of course that's useless to me. Recently, I've been thinking more and more that it would be useful to be able to make some of my own clothing again. I put off buying one because, honestly, the knitting is taking up enough time as it is.

But a couple of weeks ago, The Limey and I were doing our usual charity shop crawl (apparently Woking is big enough to support half a dozen of them, but not...oh, say, a fishmonger's...or a greengrocer) and he spotted an old Singer. When asked for the price, the lady running the shop said, Oh, well...I don't know if it works, so I couldn't charge you more than GBP7? We took it home.

After taking it apart and spending a few days cleaning and oiling it up...


...We have ourselves a sewing machine:




It works beautifully and perfectly. All the parts are there. And, in fact, we got replacement bobbins at the Singer sewing shop in town that fit perfectly. Only slightly a surprise, because with the machine's serial number, which is helpfully put on a plaque right on the machine:


We can look it up on the Singer website, which we did. And found that it had been made in 1899.

1899.

That would explain why it's completely manually powered. And, according to The Limey, that explains why it still works so well just with a general clean-up.

So it only goes forwards and backwards, and has no fancy stitches programmed into it. And, uh, yeah, buttonholes? Not so much.

Still, it is a joy to see it run. It's smooth, quiet, all perfectly made to fit together *just so*. The Limey is in awe of the engineering.

Now, off to buy fabric. It's good John Lewis is having its summer sale, huh?