In Which There Are Many Sneak Peaks

Hello again, and welcome to another WAYM Wednesday!

Today I have a lot of little sneaky closeups of things in progress that I can't tell you about yet. Last year I set out to Make All The Christmas Gifts, which was a lot of fun but required started in May. This year I wanted to focus on smaller but still meaningful gifts, as well as knitting for the people I didn't knit for last year.

Closeups of Secret Things!

Pretty pinked edges

Turned corners

My first time knitting with an 'exotic' fiber. It's pretty awesome.

Hmmm, what's that? Coming up next on the needles...

This one is done. Lovely colors.

This one is also done. Fun with GIMP image filters!

In Other News

My sewing room is finally done being painted and is all back in order. The house feels SO much better now - I hadn't realized how much it was affecting me to have my crafty supplies in total disarray, all over the house, falling in and out of bins, and never where I thought they were, but it was apparently stressing me out. All better now! I promise to post pics of the semi-finished workspace as soon as I get it cleaned up again soon. It is currently a very active space.

Here's my latest sewing-garment-in-progress: the Leopard Blouse. Usually I am not a huge fan of animal prints, but leopard is great.

I've had this top for many years, and I've all but worn it out:

The construction is quite simple, so I thought I'd have a go at drafting a pattern from it and remaking it. If it all works out, I'll share what I did as a tutorial, but for now here are a few work-in-progress shots for you!

Front & back pieces, partially finished

Closeup

Closeup: to the left is the back of the top, which is gathered slightly with an elastic casing, and to the right is the front, which is gathered and finished with a hem facing (to which several ruffles will be attached to match the original).

Oshima

Finally, my Oshima's arms are all attached, and the cowl-neck is well underway. I had some missteps with sewing mattress stitch at first, and had to re-do the sewing a couple of times, but I'm quite happy with how it turned out. You can't even see the seam! Magic. Once the cowl is done all I'll need to do is wet-block it and it will be ready to wear. My goal is to have it done by the end of the week, or at the very least in time to wear on Thanksgiving weekend.

Looking Ahead

When I started this whole adventure, I thought I'd have no problem blogging a few times a week. As you can see from my posts so far that's not really happening...but I'm hoping to step it up as I get better at this. Next week, I PROMISE to at the very least do a WIP roundup on Wednesday. I will hereby document and publish for the world to see my entire collection of in-progress items. I have a feeling it will add up to a lot more than I think once I actually pull everything out. I guess that's the whole point of doing the exercise, though, right?

Till then, happy crafting!

What are you making today?