Sew Distracted

Garment District shopping 2 -- Mood

I haven't forgotten that I promised to post all my fabric from my trip to the garment district last month.  

To tell the truth I wasn't prepared for the "new" Mood.  I have shopped at Mood for years, but it was always a huge disorganized, almost higgledy-piggledy place.  I found great pieces there, but it was difficult if you were looking for something in particular.  Well that has changed.  Now things are well lighted and beautifully arranged with signs pointing you to particular fabrics.    I fell in love with far more pieces than I anticipated, but I regret nothing.

There was a fabulous selection of silk knits in solids and prints -- fabulous fabulous prints.  I was pulling them out and sighing with pleasure, but when I saw the one pictured above I knew I had to have it.  While my friends talked I rapidly took it in hand and had it cut before I could change my mind (or anyone could steal it out from under me).

Here it is draped over the fabulous Matilda.  This will be a dress, although not in the immediate future.  Although I want to sew things that I can wear now at the weight I am now, this piece will wait.  Besides it says Spring to me far more than it cries out for Autumn wear. 

Although I told myself that was "it", I said that before I went upstairs to look at the wools.  I found my favorite salesperson from my years at shopping Mood, and I found an entire collection of lightweight wool challis and gauze, which just took my breath away.  

There was this dusky-mauve-rose which just took my breath away.  This is the perfect soft neutral color for me and this fabric is a lovely dress weight.  

That was before I saw the plaid wool gauze.

My immediate thought was for a dress, so I purchased ample.  I was originally thinking something inspired by Vivienne Westwood, but even before the fabric arrived I was wondering if I would wear a plaid dress or if it should become something else -- a skirt and a vest perhaps, things I could wear with other pieces.  

I could wear the pieces together but I probably wouldn't.  I tend to like mixing my dramatic pieces with my more classic and neutral pieces.

Here is the plaid on Matilda.  Having seen it on the dressform I am once again uncertain about what I will actually make. It actually is not as "much" as I feared, although I am still leaning more towards pieces than a whole head-to-toe look. 

I adore the combination of browns and greys and wine colors.  This could go with almost anything.  

And yes, there is still more.

This piece was also found with the wool gauzes and it is only a remnant, about 3/4 of a yard.  I don't know what it will be, it will need a supporting fabric and I am thinking it may end up being the front of a cardigan or short jacket.   As you can see it is a very sheer netting or gauze with a pattern made from a thick and thin yarn that has been stitched to the background fabric.

 I just had to buy it. You can see the detail better in this second photo (without Moisés.)

As you can see I went to town. 

There is one more fabric, a beautiful blue and red super 130s menswear suiting with which I intend to make a dress.  This is the only fabric in the group for which I have a specific vision, although I haven't picked the pattern yet.

Garment district shopping 1 -- Metro Textiles

I promised to reveal the fruits of my shopping trip to NYC.   

The fabrics arrived from Metro Textile on Wednesday last week, a week ago today, and I just now got a chance to really look at them beyond a cursory glance.  For the most part these are basic fabrics that I intend to be making up fairly soon.

This first fabric is a woven, a lovely deep gray wool, which will become a pair of pants, once I work out the details of refitting my TNT pants pattern that is.  The shiny fabric underneath it is bemberg lining, a lovely weight of bemberg lining which seemed very reasonable at $5.00 a yard, reasonable enough that I bought a few yards even though I don't always line pants.

The remainder of my purchases from Kashi were knits.  A charcoal grey wool double knit is on the left.  It looks beautiful with the wool above which means it might make a lovely sweater set, or perhaps I will use it for a dress.  I am sorely feeling the need for dresses about now, so we will see what it becomes.

The blue and black is also a wool double knit.  It is a blue/black marl on one side with black on the other side.  You can see both the blue and black yarns on the blue side.  I don't quite know what I am doing with this one yet either, but I am sure the right pattern will materialize.

This lovely deep plum knit is another wool, this one much lighter in weight, almost sheer, but not quite, with more of a hint of translucence than transparence.   This will be some kind of top.  

Last but by no means least is this gorgeous knit.  This was my "inspiration" purchase at Kashi's.  The other pieces were all lovely functional basics that I knew I could use.  This piece was purchased just because it is beautiful.  It will be a dress.  Did I say I am yearning for dresses?  Hopefully this will be a dress that makes my heart sing.

Meltdown

It seems that the line between just right and too much is very very fine.

Now I have a stash, and I love my stash.  I am happy to have my stash and I am very very rarely overwhelmed by it.  It is all put away, I love looking at it, absorbing the colors, and I love playing with my stash too.  I never purchased any yarn with the intention that it should go in a stash although it all too often happened that way.  Every skein came with a dream, a vision of what I might knit.  Its just that my eyes are obviously way bigger than my ability to knit up those visions and turn them into reality.

But something happened this weekend that just tipped me over the edge.  Actually it was a couple of small things.

Remember how I said I was organizing a queue of projects, that I had them all together, but I didn't yet have a coherent list.  Well, I thought I would work on that.  I knew there were a few stray projects hiding in corners of my office, and a few small bags of yarn, but I knew what they were and I thought I knew what they wanted to be.

That is I thought I knew what I was doing with all my yarn. That was until I came to this pile of Cascade 220.  I remember buying it.  I remember talking to some friends in knitting group about which color would be best for a particular sweater, I just don't remember what that sweater was.

And it was driving me crazy.  Suddenly it was all too much.  I had yarn that I knew I bought for a particular purpose, the fact that I can log on to ravelry and find all kinds of wonderful ideas that would be perfect for this yarn was beside the point.  I wanted to know why I bought this yarn,this yarn which was sitting in my yarn closet, this yarn that I had no place to store.

You will be happy to know that I did not start tearing the sewing/yarn room apart.  I am particularly proud of myself about that.  And I did, by browsing through this blog and my lists of sweaters I liked, remember what I wanted to knit with this yarn, or at least I think I remember.  I haven't actually pulled the pattern out.

But suddenly, I had too much yarn.

Now I haven't bought new yarn for a couple of months, or almost a couple of months.  Some yarn came in December that I ordered way back in the summer, but that was bought months ago, and I have some yarn on hold at Yarn Central, which I actually meant to buy 6 weeks ago, but I haven't been to the store during that time.  But I haven't bought yarn.  And I am not sure I want to buy yarn because I really need to knit some of the yarn in that yarn closet to make more room, and I have more UFO's than I even care to think about.

But I also looked in my stash for yarn to possibly make some mittens.  I found two perfect colors of yarn.  I can imagine mittens out of each yarn.  I looked in the Selbuvotter book and I looked on Ravelry and I know exactly what I want to knit.  But the yarns don't go together.  I can envision a mitten with each one of them, but not the same mitten.  To fulfill these dreams I need to buy two more colors of yarn to go with the yarns already in my stash, so I can make two pairs of mittens.

There is a kind of odd logic to it, isn't there?

Once upon a time I would have said that buying yarn to finish a project from stash yarn doesn't really count as buying "new" yarn.  Self delusion is an important human survival tactic, no?

I do want to knit the mittens, and we are talking about very small quantities of yarn here.  But I just can't quite do it.  I am still in full overload mode.  

Perhaps next week.

A storage place for the knitting queue

I am still working on Granite slowly but surely.  There is nothing really to show at this point, although I am almost finished with the back.

I have also spent some time cleaning out an old junk closet with the purpose of turning it into a yarn and fabric storage area.

I have been partially successful.  I have managed to move some things into the closet and have been happily spending bits of time here and there organizing them.  

One of the more successful endeavors has been getting a pile of yarn off my sewing room floor and organized so that now I have an actual queue with yarn and patterns organized and grouped together so that I can find them.  That should avoid those "I have a house full of yarn and nothing to knit" panic attacks that tend to hit me occasionally.

The closet has not been completely reclaimed yet.  There are still several shelves full of stuff to sell on Ebay or otherwise recycle, but I am making good progress.

Don't the colors just look so pretty?  Just looking at them makes me smile.