Category Archives: life

cables&squish + wearable art show

I’ve done a lot of knitting this summer (don’t ask me to explain that one) and my goal for the next several months is to slowly work through my yarn stash. Some of that means finding new homes or new projects that I lost interest in and some of it means finally getting to certain projects that have been in my Ravelry queue for ages. In the interest of making this happen I went through and cleaned out my queue and removed a bunch of projects that I know I’ll never get to or just no longer have any interest in doing. I also couldn’t resist looking around at patterns and adding a few to the list. Only a few! Anyway, here’s a few of my favorites that I moved to the top of the list. You’ll notice a theme.


Chateau by Melissa Schaschwary


Lila by Carrie Bostick Hoge


Boxy by Joji Locatelli


Speckled Shrug by Lion Brand Yarn Patterns


Oshima by Jared Flood


Chainlink by Norah Gaughan


Fisherman’s Daughter by Carol Sunday


Sperry by Amy Miller 

This might actually all realistically happen this winter too. I have a half-finished green, navy, and white Sperry lying around somewhere. I have a cream Fisherman’s Daughter that just needs sleeves. Plus between starting this list and actually posting it, I’ve managed to get a ton of knitting done. I started a Lila. I have a Boxy sweater who’s only missing a neckline and some faith that I didn’t knit the wrong size, and I finished a Chateau and a Speckled Shrug that is huge and so cozy and I want six of them.

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Meet my extremely squishy Chateau.

Funny story about the Chateau. It was SO fun to knit and so quick that I did the “Just one more row..” thing until it was completely done and about 2am. At that point I completely passed out with my finished Chateau in bed with me, and at some point during the night it fell in the crack between the wall and my bed and I completely forgot about its existence until about three days later. Surprise new sweater!

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If you follow me on Instagram you’ve seen the blanket and tiger Archer I now live in.

Sidenote: I have a feeling I’m going to be feeling very smug about completing so much of my knitting wishlist until the next time I go on the Brooklyn Tweed website again and add six complicated cabley sweaters to my list.

Another sidenote: I’m really really bad at culling my Ravelry queue. In my defense half of it is things like a chart for the Tree of Gondor which you just never know if you’re going to need.

Completely knitting-unrelated, but I also wanted to mention a really cool  contest/fashion show a reader (thanks Holly!) emailed me about. Uncommon Threads is a wearable art show that takes place in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Every year a theme is chosen and artists submit crazy artistic garments that fall under their interpretation of the theme.

This year’s theme is “Epilogue”, and here is how juror Wylie Garcia explains it: “This year’s theme asks artists to meditate on notable books, authors, or literary characters and use wearable art as means of opening up a conversation about these influences. By revisiting the stories and writers that have made a personal impact, artists are encourage to create a garment that serves as an epilogue to a single novel or an entire writing career. Comments on genres, the dynamic between the physical and electronic medium of books, and the cultural implications of works of fiction and nonfiction are also appropriate ways to interpret this theme.”

How awesome does that sound? I seriously debated making something to enter but between getting ready to move (yes, again!) this weekend and still being in the midst of Cinderella and ruffles, I couldn’t see starting a large scale project like this and keeping my sanity. Maybe next year! For anyone who is interested, submissions (not actual finished pieces) are due November 16th and the show is December 5th.

Below are some photos* of past shows and you can find out more by visiting their website here.

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2011

*Photos used with permission.

Hello again

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I don’t ever plan on taking the summer off from blogging and somehow it always seems to happen. This year was partially due to a move across the country and partially due to losing my camera remote, but also just wanting to enjoy summer and sewing for hours and not worrying about (mostly self-imposed) blogging deadlines and whatnot.

But now I’m missing it again so hello from California!

Things I’ve been up to:

  • Saying goodbye to Boston and the lovely Crafty Foxes and moving back home to California. Hello drought and heat waves and having a backyard!
  • Sewing all the things. ALL the things. I have such a backlog it’s ridiculous. Forgive me if my next 15 blog posts start with “So I sewed this back in xxx month so I don’t remember how I did it.” If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen that my mom got sick of my sewing stuff rapidly infecting the entire house so she cleared out our storage cottage thing in the backyard and I now have a tiny little sewing studio. It’s small but so easy to disappear into for hours. If the lighting weren’t so terrible in there I think I’d sew through the night.
  • Visiting Boston because my sister now lives there. No joke, she moved there for school a week before I moved back here. We own all the same furniture and appliances though, so we pretty much just traded.
  • Taking a flat pattern class at a local CC. This has been SO much fun. I was introduced to the sewing machine by my mom and then mostly self-taught from there so it’s been so refreshing to learn “the right way” to do a lot of things that I’ve just sort of guessed at. Also I’ve learned that darts aren’t scary. And that it’s super fun to move them around, especially to weird places. (And no, there will not be a Peneloping pattern line anytime soon. Talk to me in many years when I get tired of my day job. This is purely for fun!)
  • Getting ready to move again! Boyfriend and I decided we’re finally going to tolerate each others’ presence (just kidding) and move in together. Just as soon as we find an apartment. Which is super fun and not at all difficult in the Bay Area. Nope.

I also sewed this skirt! I bought Simplicity 1366 when it came out because it has a giant bow across the crotch, and when Boyfriend *finally* graduated from his program I decided it was the perfect occasion to wear it to. I was also deep into my “I’m about to move so I can’t start sewing a dress that will probably require a total of upwards of 50 yards of fabric” angst so I chose a very Cinderella-esque periwinkle for it. It’s coming off more blue in the photos but in person it’s more purpley and a bit paler.

I was originally going to do the top in the pattern too but all the fabrics I found that had the right stiffness looked too polyestery. Plus there was the issue of the one skirt fabric I fell in love with also being sheer, and me not wanting to deal with drafting a lining, which led to me deciding to just make a Nettie dress to wear under the damn thing. It worked out great! (It’s usually not quite as obscenely short as it looks in the photos..) The only downside is that I can now only wear this skirt with that dress, unless I decide to go back and make some sort of slip, which I kind of want to do just so I can wear it with some kind of cropped top.

Anyway, it’s super fun to wear (I felt slightly like a peacock with all that extra fabric hanging off my bum) and I definitely want to make another one but it’s one of those skirts where you have to stop yourself and think, do I really need this in two different colors? And then the answer is always yes. But hesitantly yes.

 

Lately

1. The Crafty Foxes said a sad goodbye to two Sarahs and an Emily who all moved away resulting in #horribletimes.

2. I made a pair of Prefontaine shorts! I have a cute idea for a matching top so fingers crossed that this works out.

3. Fiiinally finished that stupid dotted Archer and now it’s my favorite damn shirt. Also finished up another pair of Jamie Jeans. I think I’ve figured out the perfect combination of fabric and pattern alterations for the perfect pair of jeans!

4. I randomly decided to pick up knitting again and finished my second Effortless cardigan. Ruv.

5. I’m visiting California briefly and have spent most of the past few days taking luxuriously long naps with this babby. She is very appropriately named Kaylee and has an elusive and bratty does-what-he-wants brother also appropriately named Malcolm.

6. Oh and I also sort of bought a sewing machine. I’ll post a review soon — we’re still getting to know each other but I’m already smitten!

And lastly, Michal Golan is having an end of summer sale! Plus they’re offering an extra $10 off if you use the code “ping014” so if there are any handmade sparklies you’ve been eyeing make sure you go snag ’em before the end of the month!

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Me Made May ’14

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Yayyy it’s May! I participated in Me Made May last year but it ended up being a bit of a failure. Technically I pretty much wore my Madeline mini-bloomers most days so that was me-made, but that’s not really the point, is it?

This year I’m going to try to do something a little different. My closet is getting a little out of hand. There are so many garments that I either never wear or are hidden under things that I never wear and have been forgotten. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of having a mostly handmade wardrobe and I think the first step is going through and getting rid of all of the stuff I have made that I never wear. (Or the stuff that I should probably stop wearing because I made it ages ago and my sewing standards are higher now.)

So this month I’m going to make a point of trying to wear everything I’ve made that’s currently taking up space in my closet. If I feel icky wearing it or if  I just don’t find the occasion to wear it, it’s out. Depending on what it is that means recycling the materials, donation, or putting it in a box to be stored.

Sidenote: I think a huge part of the reason I failed last year was because I had planned on taking actual fancy-camera photos of my outfit every day and that just wasn’t feasible. So this year I’m just going to go with Instagrammed mirror photos and maybe a roundup on the blog once a week.

 ‘I, Ping of peneloping.com, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May ’14. I endeavor to wear at least one piece of me-made clothing each day for the duration of May 2014’

Wish me luck!