halloween 15

Ok. So at this time of year, I usually take much needed sewing breaks from my making of halloween costumes to blog about sewing on said costumes. This year? Ok this year was both easier and harder.

It was easier because one girl decided to be sadness from Inside Out. And if you follow that link you'll understand the ease of this. We found some blue leggings at Kohl's for $7 and a fleece blue cowl necked shirt at the thrift store ($3!) and I bought some blue and white face paint and a blue wig. Due to my policy on not showing kids faces on the blog, I may not actually post the finished photo here. In essence this costume is more about the face, than the clothes.

But it was harder because the other girl had trouble making up her mind. First she wanted to be a three headed monster, than a princess, then finally a minion. But not just any minion--A cute minion. She declared a need for goggles, a tutu and overalls. I'd love to say that hey I have all that done and am basking slightly in the glow of the tealights in the pumpkins.

No

I have in fact purchased at thrift store a shirt the right color and was told it a) smelled like old man (Before I washed it--I wanted her to try it on so I could return it! if it didn't fit) and b) had a turtleneck. So I washed it and removed turtleneck. Then she said she wanted to wear her blue leggings so ok. But then she wanted a tutu that "stuck out" and overalls with a Grue symbol.

This is what I have come up with:

A photo posted by Jodie (@ja_gardner) on Oct 29, 2015 at 11:11am PDT

I created the overall part, managed a buttonhole! and used fusible web to create a Grue eymbol. She thinks the tutu is too long but eh.

Goggles might be the end of me. I saw a tutorial on Pinterest that used canning lids and wiffle balls, but I thought I'd use very large googly eyes instead. BIG MISTAKE. Those googly eyes are too big for ANYTHING. and nothing I've been able to work out has satisfied her.

So basically I am waiting for her to come home from school and approve the latest incarnation which is a wide mouth canning lid and said eye. She can go as one eye or I can glue a second one on. Maybe. I don't have the rivet tool from the pinterest tutorial I found, and so I bought elmers brand super glue and I'm hoping there is enough surface between two lids to glue.

A photo posted by Jodie (@ja_gardner) on Oct 29, 2015 at 11:11am PDT

So here I am basically last minute (wearing these to school Friday) throwing stuff together. I hate that feeling! But I have a coffee date planned for after everyone is off and I plan on sleeping that extra hour out over the weekend, and come back with more knitting in November!

my aching wrist

finished my socks, and while I don't have a picture of them, trust me, they are fun fun fun. And in September when the weather cools and I feel like wearing ANY socks again, I'll have to model them.
I;ve started in on my next project, which is a shrug that I've modeled on a sweater from Interweave knits. Details later mainly because I don't have them at hand--except to know that I'm using Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino and US size 3 needles mainly because of the color the baby cashmerino came in--it is a dead ringer for the purple in my dress.

I'm excited about it, and working through the technical issues I'm encountering--like for example, the original pattern calls for a hemmed edge, which I've never done, but I couldn't figure it out from the instructions, so I had to do it differently following instructions from my very handy Knitter's book of Finishing techniques. And so far so good--I'm only on step 4 of 5 steps. What's bothering me, quite literally is my wrist.

A few years ago, I had this weird thing that when I was knitting (or more when I was sewing up) my pinkie and ring finger would go numb. After many tests later, it was determined that I "wrenched" my elbow picking up one of my "babies" who were 3 or 4 and weighed in the neighborhood of 35-40 pounds. After I stopped lifting them and slept for 6 months with a hand brace on, I gradually got better. This is different.

It started a few weeks ago, by feeling that I'd slept wrong on my hand an that my wrist needed to pop. Like you'd pop your knuckles. Except it won't. Steadily it has gotten worse. Nothing seems to make it better--I've even had days when (gasp) I haven't knitted anything. In fact on vacation, I went days without knitting and all the while that pain was still there. I should also note that it does not hurt to knit, but it does to scrub sinks. It does not hurt to sew up, although writing anything longer than my name is painful. Yoga has been excruciating at times. Mornings are worse than evenings. The hand brace does not seem to make a difference one way or another. And tomorrow, I'll be having it checked out. I'm hoping that it doesn't take weeks of (painful) tests to decide that I'm doing something stupid like lifting a 35 pound child regularly and calling her a baby (and scaring the doctor who wanted to know how old my "baby" was). I'm also hoping that I don't get the kibosh on knitting.