Woa, you are all so fabulously switched on and fashion-icon-savvy!! hehe, might I just add; far more so than my husband, who had no idea … đ
Yes, of course, everyone was correct, I was Annie Hall. My husband went Hawaii 5-O; in a loud Hawaiian shirt, his bright red jeans, boaters and a straw hat. And thank you, we had an absolute ball! we stayed alive; celebrating raining men, proclaiming our will to survive and asking to be taken to FunkyTown until the wee small hours….
Naturally one of the fun-nest parts of any dress-up party is checking out and discussing everyone’s costumes… there was a Bianca Jagger, and some Abba’s and more afros, bellbottoms, safari suits, psychedelic minis and gogo boots than I’ve ever seen in one spot. Giving me an illogical desire to hunt down a pair of glossy plastic gogo boots, ahem…. must resist…
There is one guy in the group who, for every single fancy dress party, no matter what the theme; wears a fat-Santa suit… He adds some accessory that is a token nod to the theme, this time it was a peace sign necklace … đ
For those who wanted to enter into the draw… ElleC, I will be contacting you to send you the pattern.
Now, while I was digging through my stuff trying to settle on a costume, I found and initially thought I might wear this old thing… and you’d think surely I must have shown all my “old things” by now, hopefully this is the very last!
I’m pretty embarrassed to show it here, it is a rather hideous waistcoat, that I knitted during my teenage years. I was pretty into Kaffe Fasset knits back then, and this was one of my earliest attempts at his style of colour mixing and matching. The triangles design is his but I made up the knitting pattern myself… it has no side seams, but was knitted in one piece in the round, and just joined at the shoulder seams; then I picked up stitches around the armholes and the front to knit up the ribbed bands. It was knitted in the intarsia method, and sadly has a few moth holes now đ but that’s OK since it’s not as though I was actually going to start wearing it again, except if we got invited to a bad taste party, maybe đ
I have made a “new thing” though, a gloriously fashion-forward piece of haute couture…
kidding...!
My old peg bag finally had the richard and I made another one. It is all leftover fabrics; a small piece of rust-red upholstery fabric (from my friend C) for the outer shell, and lined with some of the blue-grey knit leftovers from this little jacket; so it is double layer for extra durability, and exactly the same shape and style as my old one (which I also made). I re-used the same old clothes hanger for the top. Both my grandmothers and my mother always made their peg bags just like this one, and I have inherited a preference for the style. Mum goes the extra step of hand embroidering “PEGS” onto hers in beautiful script; if I had half her talent and patience then maybe my peg bag would be a bit more visually stimulating! Mine has more of a slapped together rustic-chic look about it… hehe
(and I know the accounting is boring and I kinda half-wish I had not started, but I said I would so I will see the year out! :S)
…so, some judicious jottings for July
Peg Bag
all leftover free fabric and a re-cycled hanger
purchased:
$3.95
With impeccable timing I have finished a toasty warm little knitted jacket.  Yeaah, just in time for these really hot hot summer days ahead, hehe…   I’m a bit sad about having to pack it away for a while, but that’s my own silly fault for starting my new winter cardi during winter. đ It is the shorter (version 1) Garter Jacket from Jo Sharp Knit 6…  As soon as I laid eyes on this design I loved the boxy shape and interesting stitch arrangement but when I saw an actual made-up example in real life I thought it was a bit bulky and a bit big in the body for my tastes.  So I took a punt that using a finer gauge yarn could work out quite good…. and I think it did!  Basically instead of using the thicker gauge Aran Tweed recommended in the instructions I used the thinner DK Tweed, knitted up to its own recommended tension (not the one in the pattern instructions for the thicker yarn) and I also knitted up the very smallest size.  I still followed all the instructions for number of stitches and rows etc… but the smaller scale gauge of the thinner yarn resulted in a smaller and finer cardi; not too thick and just right in my opinion. Another bonus to this approach was that I needed only 9 balls, as opposed to the 11 balls required in the thicker yarn.
