MMM'13 - Final Week and Recap

The whole undertaking of MMM'13 would feel incomplete to me, if I didn't report the last three days of the month. So here's what I chose - two repeats and the new cardi you saw only yesterday :)

Day 29 - Anais Cropped Cardigan by Kim Hargreaves. Nice yarn, fabulous color, beautiful pattern, a favourite knit. The RTW dress however is in disgrace with me and I'm thinking of cutting a Tshirt of a kind out of it, it's a nice silk jersey, begging for refashioning.

Day 30 - My linen shrug, in combination with a wooden necklace I made from ready-made parts and a RTW striped Tshirt. I need more striped Tshirts. May be I'll sew one myself.

Day 31 - Gardenia cardigan. This one might go to Gaby as a light cotton cardigan for the summer evenings, when she hangs out with her friends. She tried it on yesterday and it fits her well, but more importantly, these are her colors, they really suit her complexion.

So, Me-Made-May 2013 is over, hurray! Wearing all of my weather appropriate self-made clothes was not so difficult, but taking a picture of that every day was the real challenge and it got a bit old in the end. What I appreciate about such self-inflicted tasks is that they push you over the limits and the experience is usually educational. The last challenge made me change entirely my concept of photo shooting outfits. This year I dared myself to take most of the pictures with a timer and a tripod. I still have issues with relaxing, acting natural and smiling to the camera, but I'm working on that. And though tiring, taking the picture was at the same time the most interesting part of the game.

As for the outfit lessons - I need more dresses and skirts, especially for the summer. I'm a jeans girl, but looking at my pictures, I see that jeans every day is boring and at least during the summer I should wear my dresses more often.

Clothes making plans - I'll continue knitting summer cardigans, because I love wearing them. I might crochet another bag. And I'll try to sew a few wearable things too. The accomplished seamstresses at the MMM'13 flickr group were a true inspiration and I sincerely admired their collections of dresses and Tshirts. If I ever decide to take part in the monthly challenges again, it will probably be in at least three or four seasons, when I have accumulated enough new clothes :)

Gardenia

Pattern: Gardenia by Tina Hees from Verena 01 / 2013
Yarn: Alize Bella 100% cotton, 80g white colorway 01 and 110 g coral colorway 38
Needles: 2.5 mm rib, 3 mm body
Time to knit: one month

So, this is Gardenia - so much struggle for such a little cardi. I knitted it to my own proportions and gauge, changed (three times :))) the white neckband and button bands and omitted the ribbons.
I'm still not sure how I feel about it and I don't have many clothes to match it with. The yarn however is very soft and pleasant, I might use it again.

With this cardi I tried to step outside my comfort zone - a bit of vintage look, and I'm usually not into vintage and coral and off white - definitely not my colors. As a result I struggled with the process and feel doubtful about the result. Now I'm not sure should I urge myself to stray from the colors and style I've found to suit me in the course of four decades. Anyway and probably because of these doubts my next project is in a "safe" beige color and from a beloved designer.

Linked to Linda's Creative Friday for an abundance of this week's finished objects.

Cutting Through and Grafting

Seems I spoke too soon when I set my goals for May - two finished knitted projects and a wearable self-sewn garment. I'm still struggling with my first project - Gardenia from Verena 01 2013, which I began almost a month ago. I had my doubts from the start - beginning with the need for and the wearability of a new cotton cardigan/blouse and finishing with the choice of colors. Mine are coral (which looks tomato red on the photos, but it's coral, trust me) and off-white - a lovely combination, which made me pick this pattern in the first place, but I don't think these colors look good on me.
Working slowly on 2.5 mm and 3 mm needles, mostly for lack of enthusiasm, I still got to finishing the body and picking up the stitches for the neckband. I even found the perfect buttons and having attached three of them, I decided to try the cardigan again properly on me. And I found that it was too short.
Here's what happened - the stripes after the white band at the waist were planned to be four before the next white band (as usual I'm following my own calculations and not the pattern). But having knitted three stripes I measured something and decided that I had enough length and the fourth stripe would not be necessary. Wrong!
So, sitting on it for two days, wondering if the best decision was not to frog it all and forget about it, I finally decided to fix it and finish it. I'll admit that it was my daughter's insistence that the pattern is lovely and the colors are nice that outweighed my doubts. Unravelling and reknitting the upper part was out of the question, so I settled for grafting. My first instinct was to do the grafting in one of the garter stitch white sections, as it would best hide the grafted row, but in the end decided to do it where the additional fourth stripe should have been, not to mess with the increases. Wrong decision again, I'm sure, but it's over now.
So, here's how I proceeded after unraveling the button bands (inevitable), if these steps could be of help to other people, facing similar length problems:

1. Run two circular needles through the rows, that will be grafted, leaving in between the row, that will be removed:

 2. Run the needles only through the right leg of each stitch:

 3. Cut the thread and carefully remove the medial row of stitches:

 4. The two parts are now separate:

 5. The fourth stripe has been knitted:

 6. Graft the two parts with a long enough thread and a needle. I calculated the length I would need in advance, added 15 cm to it and it worked just fine.

 7. To even things out I went back and regulated the size of the grafted stitches:

8. So here it is lengthened and ready to be submerged in wet blocking. I hope wetting the stitches will even the grafted row and make it less visible:

And a picture of the morning sky I took this morning, just because. 
Light at the end of the tunnel :)) ?