Zips and Socks

The illuminated steelweaver came all the way to Eindhoven yesterday to visit me and Eisirt and wrestle zips for an afternoon. She had stated that she never really got around to learning to do zips properly, and I offered to help. She's a wonderful and ingenious sewist, who would rather sew a dress in a knit fabric than try and add a zip. In itself that should not be a problem, but it's nice to keep your options open. I am rather fond of knit fabric dresses, but I always have a problem that the fabric deteriorates really easily in the wash.

We had tea, sewed a lapped zip (hidden a little bit under the seam allowance of the other side) and had more tea and tackled a blind zip. I had never done a lapped zip before but the sewing technique book from school is awesome, so we breezed through. As Steelweaver is no stranger to switching presser feet on the machine, everything went swimmingly. (I have met people who said they didn't need fancy presser feet and they'd just use the regular presser foot for everything, but sewing a blind zip is a thousand times harder without a blind zip foot for the machine. Sometimes a gadget is just what you need to get a beautiful result quickly and easily.)
We ended the afternoon with dinner at the local cafeteria, and I dropped Steelweaver off at the station.

Not only was it fun and interesting, but it was also very inspiring to have her visit! It's been a while since I've geeked about costume projects with someone and to be honest, I don't need to sew so many costumes anymore because I've mostly stopped larping since Easter. Sigunne is very enthusiastic about sewing and costumes, but we never sit down to sew together, so the muse keeps quiet.
Well, my muse Thalia was definitely poking some sensitive bits as Steelweaver was chatting: Why don't I sew that jeans I've been wanting to do? A patern? You rock patterns! You can do patterns! So do the pattern!
And this is how I find myself on Monday morning (after sleeping in), all inspired and with only two days left before I start a new job. Thalia has quite the sense of humour (officially, she's the muse of comedy and tragedy, but I guess I'm her little project on the side).

In other news: I finished another pair of socks!


And the new sock blockers work so well!

This is one of the yarns anemoona gave me for my birthday. It's quite funky, and since one of my resolutions for this year was to learn to knit (socks) properly and I need to burn through some stash, I started on these. The pattern is "Show off stranded socks" from Ravelry, you can find the link to yarn and pattern on my Ravelry project page here.
It was an interesting knit; I still learn new things on every project. This one taught me how to drop yarn-overs over other stitches. It was pretty hard in the beginning to pick the yarn over up with my left-hand needle, but by the time I finished the first sock, I was much more skilled at it. The second sock seemed to go much faster.

Although I had intially cast on the large size, the medium fits me just fine. Even with the delay of frogging and casting on anew, this only took me 3 weeks to knit -- I can knit a sock a week.

I plan to finish My So-called scarf next and then do the glove project, but I've already printed out the Broken Seed Stitch sock pattern. I plan to use the Magico II yarn that I have lying around in a project bag next to the couch, and it's all about clearing the clutter around the couch first, and then decreasing stash. But who knows, I might just make myself a new pair of jeans today.