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Making It

Masquerade masks for the spectacled

This year’s ‘to do’ item for fundraising is the masked ball. I don’t know who sent out the memo but there it is. And for those of us who use ‘visual aids’ but who do not wear contact lenses, this is sort of a problem. We could always go with the ‘mask on a stick’ thing which is very popular but since your dear Auntie goes to these sorts of events equipped with a clutch bag filled with everything from a cell phone to a small ziplock(tm) bag of antibiotic ointment, plastic adhesive bandages, a chemical ice pack and an athletic bandage (don’t ask; someday I will tell you the story which includes an icy parking lot, stilettos and a long gown), this will not work. Aunt Toby needs a hand free for the drink or the plate of coy little munchables, whichever comes first. (more…)

Knitting: Shawl Collars

Aunt Toby is a big believer in keeping necks warm. I would argue that for all the ‘wear a hat’ business out there, wearing something around the neck (whether it’s a turtleneck shirt, a scarf, etc.) actually provides more insurance for maintaining body heat than a hat does, especially if you are inside rather than outside. On the other hand, though, wearing a turtleneck sweater can be pretty…sweaty, and there is no way to modify that, which is why most people wear either a cardigan, or a crewneck with a turtleneck shirt underneath. You can always unbutton the top couple of buttons if you get overly warm. But neither of those items covers the neck and if you are in a place where it’s drafty or just downright chilly (ahem, like Chez Siberia where we keep the daytime temps, even when people are in the house, at 60 degrees F. Do not ask what the night time temps are: Does the phrase “can see your breath’ mean anything?), you might want to reach for the scarf. (more…)

(Collar) Stay…just a little bit longer….

(WARNING: PICTURE HEAVY) In the DH’s closet, there are two basic types of shirts: button-down shirts and what he refers to as ‘dress shirts’. Now, I only learned this recently, but the ‘button-down’ shirt (which really refers to there being a collar whose points are secured to the shirt itself with buttons) is actually not a US invention. One of the members of the Brooks Brothers family, on a European trip in the late 1800s, saw how polo players there did this to prevent their shirt collars from flying up into their faces during play; he obviously thought it was a neat idea because he brought it back and convinced the family company to start producing what they called ‘polo(tm) button-down’ dress shirts in 1896. These shirts were always seen as something rather sporty and casual until college boys started wearing them in the 1950s, (more…)

Shirt a la Coop Meets the Gigantic Neckband

One of the things about making men’s shirts is that generally speaking, you must count on observers seeing only about 25% of the shirt unless the shirt is being worn alone, without a jacket or a vest or a sweater. Then, all of it except for the portion tucked into the person’s slacks can be seen. But generally, with a shirt such as this one, it would be worn with a sweater or a sport coat, so at the most, the center 5-6″ of the front, the collar, and the cuffs are going to be seen. (more…)

Making a Man’s Shirt – a la Coop

Once upon a time, I saw a PR photo of Gary Cooper (“Coop”) which struck me strongly in terms of how a) fashionable he was for the period and b) how soft the collar on his shirt looked in comparison to what we are used to today. Now, for the time, unless an actor was being photographed in movie costume as a ‘movie still’ shot for magazines, newspapers and advertising or for the movie posters, that actor was being photographed in street or evening clothing as part of the studio PR campaigns (as you recall, they were under contract to movie studios and were seen as assets to be used to promote the studio itself as well as promote themselves to build a fan base). As a matter of fact, many actors (Cooper included) were used in magazine editorial and in photo advertisements (I think Cooper did advertising not only for Knox Hats but also for a high end men’s shirt company as well). So, the ‘formality’ of the dress (which as I recall was a tweed sport coat, gingham shirt and knit tie, an outfit that would have been seen as ‘high end country house’ clothing at the time. He was probably also wearing wool flannel slacks and suede shoes as well) was really part and parcel of the shot. (more…)

When in doubt – consult the experts

I’m a big believer that if you are looking for something, the best place to go to find it is with people who have the same problems you do, or worse problems than you do. In years past, I looked for wool tights on Canadian internet sites and had good luck there. Winter boots? Ditto. But when it came to clothing to keep little guys warm, I came up with a big ‘meh’. I think manufacturers on this side of the pond believe that all babies are brought up in tropical environments because the warmest thing you can find is fleece blanket sleepers, which kids do not wear all the time. And if you have a little kid who is now ‘going mobile’, then they are sitting or crawling on the floor, which is going to be at the least cooler than the ambient temperatures and if you keep a cool house (the way WE do here at Chez Siberia), we’re talking temperatures at ground level in the 50 degree range. (more…)

Head, Meet Desk.

It never fails, does it? I planned to make the skirt out of a pattern that I just KNOW I have in the boxes.
And then I couldn’t find it.

So, I tried to “frankenpattern” with another skirt pattern I had which seemed pretty nice, only as per my usual SOP, I just gave a quick ‘drive by’ through the directions and the lay out diagram and went at it. Big mistake.

And there I was with two huge pieces cut out of the yardage and that horrible sinking feeling of having not only ruined the fabric but also needing to punt with what was left. Punting is not one of my best things.

BUT. Since I had fabric that did not have a directional print, I had one more trick up the proverbial sleeve, which was making a gored skirt. Now, the theory behind a gored skirt, from a ‘getting it all out of the fabric you’ve got’ standpoint, is that the gores (the pieces) are basically triangles with rounded bottoms and flat tops (ok, so they are really trapezoids with rounded bottoms; I’ll concede the point). And that means that you can flip them, like this drawing, and get really tight and efficient use out of the fabric you have to get the pieces out. Now, every formula I’ve seen for drafting the gore says this:
Step 1: Measure your waistline.
Step 2: Measure your hips.
Step 3: Measure the length between your waist and where you want the skirt to end.
Step 4: Draw a vertical line down the center of a piece of paper longer than the length between your waist and where you want the skirt to end. This is your center line; it is also the guide for the straight of the grain of the fabric.
Step 5: Divide your waistline measure by the number of gores you want and using a ruler, put that number at the top of the line. For example: If you waistline is 30″, and you want 6 gores, then put 2 1/2″ right on the top of the line and draw a line, at 90-degrees to that vertical line from the end of the ruler on the left to 5″ on the right. (ok…30 divided by 6 is 5; half of 5 is 2.5″ and you put that figure right in the middle)
Step 6: Measure down from the top along the vertical line, the distance between your waist and your hips and put a mark there. Take your hip measurement and divide that number by the number of gores you want. Take that number and divide that by 2 and put that measurement on the ruler at the intersection of the vertical line and the line you made for the distance between your waist and your hips. So, for example, the distance between your waist and your hips is 7″ and your hip measurement is 40″ (and we are still working with that 6 gore skirt). 40 divided by 6 is 6 2/3″; 6 2/3 divided by two is 3 1/3 which is slightly less than 3 1/2, so put 3 1/2 at that intersection and draw another horizontal line from 0 at the left to 7 on the right.
Step 7: Taking a yardstick, connect up the end of the waistline on the right and the hipline on the right and with the bottom line. Do the same on the left and you will end up with a trapezoid.
Step 8: At the top, where the center vertical line intersects the waist line, measure down 1/2″ and make a mark. Make a gentle curve between both ends of the waistline mark (if you have a French curve, this is a lot easier than free-handing it)
Step 9: At the bottom, where the center vertical line intersects the bottom line, measure down BELOW the bottom line, 1/2″ and make a mark. Mark a gentle curve between both ends of the waistline mark.
Step 10: Add 3/4″ on both sides of the gore and cut out. Cut out as many gores as you figured.

Now, I’m not sure what I did (other than perhaps sucking in my stomach), but I ended up having to cut out another gore. So I would add another step to this:
Step 11: Make a muslin out of your gores and adjust if necessary.

Sheesh. There are moments when there is a part of me which wants to declare this to be a ‘wadder’, but…I’m…not…going…to…give…in.

In Which Aunty Toby and Ilse Lund Become One

I’m a big fan of the movie, Casablanca, and I have the feeling the most people who visit here have seen it at least once (if not a dozen times and I don’t have any images because I think I’d get snagged for copyright infringement if I did a screen capture so you’ll just have to use your imaginations). Do you remember the scene in the film where Ingrid Bergman pulls the gun on Rick? She’s begging him for the letters of transit.

What’s she wearing? Don’t worry, we’ll wait.

She’s wearing a white jacket with big shoulders (no mystery there; the movie was released in 1942 – women had big shoulders in everything, even sweaters), and a blouse, a long skirt and a sash that is being used as a belt. I was thinking about that movie recently and it occurred to me (and I suppose no one wanted anyone to think about this at the time) that if Ilse Lund and Victor Laszlo are on the run, hiding out from the Nazis every moment of the trip from France (“remember when I was sick is Lisle…you didn’t leave me then…”), they must have had someone helping them with the luggage.

Because Ilse had SOME wardrobe in that movie (courtesy of Orry-Kelly) – much more than would have fitted into a single suitcase (which would have been, frankly, what one person could have reasonably carried under refugee conditions and we are not talking about a big suitcase here. I sure would not want to have had to walk more than a mile with a big suitcase). We won’t even talk about the hats (quick – how many different hats did she wear in that film? All I can remember right now are the straw hat she wears with the light colored jumper dress with the striped top in the marketplace scene and the felt hat she wears at the end at the airport. Anyone else?) which, given their condition, would have required their own hat box piece of luggage.

They might have been hiding out in a barn, but it was a barn with maid service, a dry cleaner and a very big closet.

But that is NOT the topic of this (see how I get the digression in here?). What IS the topic is the usefulness of a long dark skirt in terms of evening wear.

Now, a couple of years ago, there was a fad for big flooffy (that’s a technical fashion term) ball gown skirts (which of course required big flooffy petticoats underneath them), to be worn with sweaters or even sweater sets. I think that lasted one winter season. It was, in it’s own way, a clever meshing of the casual with the formal and I think it attracted a lot of younger women at the time.

This is NOT the sort of skirt I am talking about. Big and flooffy does NOT compliment Aunt Toby. The last big and flooffy item I had probably dates from when I was in the 6th grade. Actually, the skirt that Ilse Lund wears in the cafe scene is pretty straight down but is not pegged – so it has quite a lot of walking space (which, as we all know, is where ‘the rubber meets the road’ when it comes to evening wear). Now, as everyone knows who comes here, I am very big on being prepared, whether you have in the closet a suit, the little dress, the garment bag all set up for out of town funerals or whatever, but I always get bolluxed up when it comes to the fancy evening out. This is a mine field. Long or short? Black dress or blazing colors? Nice pants and a fancy top? I have an absolute horror of ‘being the only one’ at a party wearing xxx'(must date from my childhood).

And considering how obviously, Ilse Lund was definitely ready to go with her long dark skirt, Aunt Toby has decided to make the investment to put something like that into the closet too. I have in the stash a big chunk of dark blue (not navy) polyester shantung and I’m looking at two patterns, one of which I own already and used to make the skirt for the MOTB suit I wore for Daughter The Younger’s wedding in Scotland a couple of years ago. Which is this:

The other one (and I know there are going to be some readers who will be saying to themselves about now, “mmm, those look almost exactly alike”) is this one:

I’m also sure some people would be saying to themselves, “Why isn’t she making this in black?” Well, it’s true that black would be the standard OP evening wear, but I happen to believe that dark blue is kinder, shall we say, to me than black is; in addition, I feel that there are plenty of other colors and prints that I can wear with it. Thirdly, black is an evening wear cliche and I’m sort of a rebel at heart. Not enough of a rebel to make this skirt forest green or burgundy (those are great colors but definitely limiting), but a bit of a rebel, nonetheless.

So, here we go and production details will follow.

Getting more satisfaction from your knitting – hints and tricks

Aunt Toby has not always been a knitter. My mom tried to teach me how to knit several times when I was quite young and then gave up (given her lack of success teaching me other stuff, I think there was a personality clash there someplace..). I was actually taught how to successfully knit by an elderly lady who was teaching a class at the YWCA for the once-a-week “Y-Teens’ group (which I realize dates me terribly but what the heck). Now, this was a very no-nonsense Italian lady who was not going to fiddle around with scarves or washcloths or anything like that. She started right off with mittens. Two-needle mittens (which meant that we had to learn to also sew them up afterwards), and she had us bring two balls of yarn and cast on both of them at the same time (horrors!) so that we’d finish both of them … at the same time. Clever as all get out. No one left that class with one mitten done and a half a mitten on the needles, nosireee Bob — two mittens, all done, all sewn up, all ready to wear.

I never forgot that. Later on, when I struggled with my own knitting, I realized that one of my biggest problems in terms of getting satisfaction from my knitting was that whenever I did anything that came in twos, I ended up with ones. Mittens, gloves, socks, sleeves. If it came in twos, I ran out of gas and entered Knitters ADD and ended up with one sock, one mitten, one glove and one sleeve. Oh, I’d also have the front and back done on the sweater, but one sleeve. Which meant that I ended up making a LOT of sweater vests and ripping down the one sleeve so that I had extras for hats, which of course only come in ones so I was safe with hats. But my kids and the DH got a lot of vests over the years.

Which made me feel rather unsuccessful with my knitting until I remembered Mrs. Iacovino (remind me sometime to tell you the story about a holiday party at her house which involved a ham left on the open oven door, a kitchen with a swinging door and a very very large white cat) and her trick with the mittens.

So, here’s my first tip: Finishing projects is Job One when it comes to gaining satisfaction with your knitting. It doesn’t matter if you do perfect gauge blocks, follow patterns to the nth degree or anything like that. If the item is not completed, you will not feel successful with your knitting. So. See the picture at the top? Those are the cuffs from two sleeves for a sweater for my grandson which are on one large circular needle (you don’t have to use circular needles, but it might help). I already did the body in one big strip that I am going to sew up on the side. When I get to the point on the sleeves at the underarm, I will stop, sew up the seam in the sleeves, and put the sleeves in the appropriate places on the big circular needle with the rest of the body (see Elizabeth Zimmerman Percentage System – just search on that one and there are a zillion hits on that). Then I will knit the rest of the sweater in one big piece, getting smaller as I go. At the end, I will have a whole sweater with two sleeves attached with a teeny bit of sewing at the armpits. No sweating, no guilt about one sleeve and no finished sweater. I recommend this method highly. It also will work for mittens, gloves (yes, there are two-needle glove patterns out there), and socks (ditto on the socks but you will have a seam up the back). And for those of us who don’t want to diddle around with knitting on 4 (or, if you following the European needles, 5) needles with the paralyzing worry about ‘do not twist the first stitch’, doing it this way is the answer to a knitter’s prayer.

Second Tip: For those folks out there who are diving into the whole vintage styles/clothing thing and are interested in vintage knits, you will notice (and everyone does – it’s the first thing that smacks you in the eye) that between the mid-30s and mid-50s, sweaters were rather, ahem, close fitting. There are several reasons for that. First, there were two sorts of sweaters at that time – sweaters that were worn right over an undershirt or slip like the knit tops we wear today and sweaters that were worn right over those or were worn over some sort of shirt or blouse. Central heating as we know it today was very different during that period which also coincided with not only the Great Depression but also the Second World War and ‘The New Look”. Shorter, fitted styles were not only in fashion but also took less yarn to knit up and therefore were more thrifty.

If you are going for a vintage look, you can find vintage and vintage style patterns but many times they are not designed for the bodies that people have today. Not only were people shorter and smaller in that period than we are today, they also were thinner primarily for two reasons: The Great Depression and the rationing during WWII. So, finding a vintage sweater pattern if your bust measures 40″+ at its widest point is a challenge. It’s easier to work with sweater patterns of today in lighter weight yarns and put in some features that give them that vintage look. The two biggest are shoulder pads (no biggie there; you can find shoulder pads to either Velcro(tm) attach or sew in) and shaping, particularly at the waist.

Now, there are multiple ways of making a sweater ‘suck in’ between the hips and the bust line:
1) Make the sweater actually smaller there by either putting in knitted darts or binding off a series of stitches at the edges on the front and back sides of the sweater as you knit the waist area. Of course, once you’ve done that and have knitted 3-6″ of waist area (depending on how tall you are and how long or short waisted your are), you have to put them back so that you have room for your bust and shoulder blades.
2) Make the fabric of the sweater smaller in that area by using a smaller size needle for the waist area and then switching back to a larger size needle. A good rule of thumb on that is using a needle 2-3 sizes smaller.
3) Make the fabric of the sweater ‘smaller’ in that area by using some crafty knitting stitches which suck the fabric in but which, when needed, will be flexible. The most common method of doing this is by using ribbing. And that is what is being demonstrated in that photo. The yarn which I used for this has a bit of alpaca in it, which is not the springiest yarn in the world. Which is another thing – certain yarns have more spring and elasticity to them – wool and wool blends are very good for this; alpaca, mohair, silk, linen, cotton, raimie, and hemp are not.

At the bottom of the swatch, I did garter stitch to show you just how wide 24 stitches on this needle are. The next bit is 2 knit/2 purl ribbing, which is a very popular ribbing scheme. See how you can see both the 2 purls and the 2 knits. They are on the same plane. And you can also see from the bending in at the edges that this sucks in the fabric a bit.

Then, I did some stocking stitch to separate this from the next ribbing scheme, which is frankly my favorite: 2 knits and 1 purl. You will see that you can’t see the purl in this ribbing the way you can with the 2 knit 2 purl (2K2P) ribbing, can you? That’s because it’s sucked down to the back side of the swatch. The reason for this is that every time you switch directions on the stitches (from the knit to the purl, you are flipping the yarn to the front or the back of the needle), this increases the tension in the knitting, which pulls it in. This is the same 24 stitches for the garter stitch, the 2K2P ribbing, and the 2K1P ribbing. In those 24 stitches, we get 6 changes of direction in the 2K2P ribbing and 8 changes of direction in the 2K1P ribbing, a 33% increase in changes of direction and therefore in tension in the knitting in the piece. I find 2K1P ribbing to be much more stretchy and elastic than 2K2P but also much more springy even after being stretched out. So, if I want to build in a vintage look to the waist of a sweater, I put in a panel of 2K1P into the waist area and then when I want to go back to regular stocking stitch once I get to area just below the bust, I just change to the stocking stitch. No decreasing the stitches, no increasing the stitches, just go back to stocking stitch.

Now, if you want to make this area fancier and get even MORE ‘suck in’ on it, you can build in cables. Rule of thumb on this one is this: The more ribs you put into the individual cable, the more ‘suck in’ you get. For example, a simple two-rib cable has less ‘suck in’ than a three or four rib cable and so on.

Don’t be afraid to do up swatches to see what the combinations of needs and your yarns do in terms of stocking stitch and then ribbing. This will give you a better idea of what the result will be. But it’s an easy and simple way to get a vintage look for your sweater and still have it be comfortable to wear.

Good Morning, Irene

UPDATE THREE:
Sunday, 7:30 a.m.:
71 degrees F, 75% humidity, winds, 6 mph with gusts in the 10 mph range, foggy, raining hard and steadily, Barometric Pressure 28.20.
When I went to sleep last night, it had not started raining yet but it’s obviously been raining for most of the midnight-7:00 period because we have a pretty well-developed stream in the driveway. Now, we get that when we have a really hard sustained rain here, so this, so far is not a huge disaster but we are just starting in, in terms of our exposure to Irene’s effects. Later, it will get worse. The DH went up to do chores and everyone is a little annoyed at being inside (the turkeys are basically outdoors all the time in their yard and only come in to roost or get food and water), but and ounce of prevention and all that. We debated getting them in last night and now I’m glad we did because chasing them around to get them inside in wind and rain would be absolutely no fun. Looking at the radar, basically the entire state of New York except for perhaps Buffalo is completely engulfed in the storm which is yellow. No red. We’ll see how fast this storm moves now.

UPDATE FOUR:
Sunday:
9:00 a.m., 71 Degrees F, 76% humidity, winds: 5-10 mph with gusts WNW, Barometric pressure 28.14. Raining hard. Lost power at 8:30. Wanted a second bucket of water for flushing…just in case. Ran around the outside of the house to find… one of the downspouts did not have an extension on it to take the water away from the foundation (not a good thing in general but good for the purpose of putting a bucket underneath it), so I put a five gallon bucket under it, which filled to the top in less than 5 minutes. Now, a downspout extension will go on the hardware store list NOW.

9:30 a.m, 71 degrees F., 75% humidity, winds 5-10 mph with gusts WNW, Barometric pressure 28.11. The DH and our son out in the garage finally able to get the generator to work. The choke needed adjustment. Lesson learned: Having a generator in a box ‘just in case’ is great until you have to use it and don’t know how to make the thing run. Note to self: Next time we have this sort of warning, let’s all not only clean things up, tie things down and get the animals inside, but also do the drill on systems such as a generator.
Regular utility power came on at 9:35. Lucky us.

10:00 a.m., 70 degrees F, 76% humidity, winds 13 mph with gusts WNW, Barometric pressure 28.11.

One of the things I’ve been keeping myself busy with this weekend is making some winter fleece clothes for my grandson. Our house is a lot cooler than his house and he spends a lot of time here with us, so I need to make sure we have plenty of snuggly clothing for him here, especially because he will be starting to walk this winter. I already finished a black set with a sailboat on it. Our son came up with this ‘Buck Rogers’ space ship design for an applique. I put this on by hand, with a buttonhole stitch, which worked out really well, considering we lost the power and I wouldn’t have been able to finish the front if I had been depending on my sewing machine. The zigzag power lines at the bottom are done with doubled up sewing thread, in a chain stitch.
LAST UPDATE:
7:30 p.m., 67 degrees F, 71% humidity, winds out of the SW at 2.9 mph, Barometric pressure: 28.50. Little bits of rain still around. We were lucky here; others in the county and nearby were not so lucky. Lots of flash flooding of the ‘usual suspects’ in terms of streams. Police were evacuating some roads in rural areas. About 50 miles from us, in the Catskill Mountains, a little village, Margaretville, was completely flooded and Governor Cuomo went down there. The water was up to the fenders in his SUV. Margaretville is in a valley which drains from the Hudson, Delaware and Susquehanna rivers so they have had more than their share of massive floods over the years. Everyone will have a big job cleaning up in the coming week. For the moment, though, we’re done here.

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