The Rational Seamstress

 As mentioned in my last post, there have been two themes in my knitting recently: babies and Weekend Knitting . I have now made four patterns from Weekend Knitting ; now, I think, I'm qualified to write a preliminary review. I have an issue with cookbooks and knitting books. I love to read them, but I find I rarely use them to their full potential. I own several cookbooks, and have cooked through none of them.  (For The Joy of Cooking , I think I can be excused given the sheer volume of recipes, but my neglect of some of my other cookbooks is absolutely shameful.) I don't own as many knitting books, but I don't really use many of the ones I do own except my Knitter's Almanac by Elizabeth Zimmermann. There are a couple of forces at play here. The first is that, while I cook myself dinner several times a week, I don't make myself a new knitting project that often. When I knit for myself, I already know what sort of socks I like and don't need a pattern, and when

The computer is fixed, and now I can deal with the backlog of chores that are so much more difficult on a phone!   First off, an update on the Baby Sweater of Doom: As you can see, the left sleeve was sewn on inside out. The yarn is KnitPicks Shine Sport in Green Apple. The color is much brighter than it appears on the website; it really is almost the color of a granny smith. In the photo above, the sweater is very washed-out; the green embroidery floss is a much truer representation of the sweater's actual color. This is my third project from Weekend Knitting , and, so far, I've had trouble following all of the patterns. (I did make a fourth project while the sweater was sitting in purgatory, waiting for my anger to cool, but it deserves its own post.) I like the idea behind the book, but I've been disappointed in the pattern instructions. More on that later. Over last weekend, I made myself sit down, rip out the sleeve, and sew it back on, correctly. Here it is, with but

 Due to some computer issues, I'm writing on my phone. I'm not quite done with the tea cozy -- other things, such as the titular sweater, have taken precedence. But it is coming along, and my muslin (made of green flannel scraps from an old project) fits the teapot pretty well. More details on that note should be available soon. In the meantime, let's talk about baby things. At this point in my life, a large proportion of my friends have gotten married in the last three years, and most of those are now having children. My advice to all those whose friends are starting to go get married (or are now in long-term relationships): start making tiny sweaters and adding Richard Scarry books to your Amazon cart now. The tiny sweaters take longer than you think, and it's surprisingly difficult to figure out which baby book you want to give people. The main challenge in making baby things is that babies grow faster than you think, and making small clothes takes longer than you th

In the cold depths of winter, the harsh truths of thermodynamics are brought home to us more starkly than at other times. In other words, my tea has been cooling far too quickly of late. Obviously, it's time to make a tea cozy! A tea cozy has one purpose: to keep the tea in a teapot warm. As long as that criterion is met, all other attributes of the thing are secondary, and so there are a plethora of designs, ranging from the simple semi-circular quilted cover, to the cozies designed to look like little cottages, to the ribbed, knitted sort, tied at the top with I-cords. A Pinterest search will reveal a multitude of tea cozies in a wealth of innovative design. I want to make the sort that allows the tea to be poured without removing the cozy. In practical terms, this is a bit of a trade-off, since the handle and spout must be exposed to the cold air. (There is probably a pattern somewhere for a tea cozy with a buttoning flap over the spout to avoid this problem, like those converti