This is a pair of Fawkes socks I knit for May sockdown. The pattern was written by the late Gigi Silva and at the moment is available as a download on Ravelry.
This, my hearties, is my coatee - the uniform jacket I am supposed to wear on parade and for battle. I don’t want to complain, but I’ve been dragging it around Europe for years now and
as you can see, it’s threadbare, patched and almost coming apart at the seams. It’s about time the good King George buys me a new one. Unfortunately that won’t happen before Christmas, so I guess it has to hold out for another season.
The pattern is Twinkleberry, designed by Beth LaPensee for Knitzi.com. I substituted a stockinette heel and flat toe for the short row versions in the original pattern. The yarn is Lana Grossa Meilenweit 100 Cotton Stretch in colour 8006. It was the first time I knit with stretch yarn and it took me some getting used to it. I was continually worried I might overstretch the yarn and end up with tiny, bulletproof socks, but in the end I’m quite happy with the results.
Part of these socks was knitted in the back of various Jordanian taxis during my vacation. If you plan to ride a taxi in Jordan I can only recommend to bring some knitting to distract you from the style of driving cultivated there as well as from the fact that seat belts are only mandatory for the driver and because of that often non-existent in the back seat…
Last Friday morning, just when I was starting to feel at home again, having unpacked everything and done the laundry, it turned out that I had mixed up the dates in my calendar and the first early Medieval event for this year was starting the very same evening. So I made an emergency take-off to the FFC event at Herzberg, where I found out that I definitely need more warm clothes! Back home I raided the stash and found some nice woollen herringbone twill to make me a dress.
The dress is already almost finished, only waiting for me to finish the seam allowances. For the record, here’s the measurements:
Body: 64 cm wide, 152 cm long, cut one each for front and back (normally I’d cut back and front in one piece, as the dress does not have any shoulder shaping, but you may have noticed that the horizontal overstripes have a direction and I’m obsessed with having things symmetrical)
Side gores: 64 cm wide, 107 cm long, cut two
Sleeves: 44 cm wide, 57 cm long, cut two
Sleeve gussets: 14 cm square, cut two
All pieces contain seam allowances (2 cm) and hem allowances (5 cm).
Considering that I am busy finalising a translation which I promised to have at the publisher’s by Friday, I am only grateful for an excuse not to go outside and tend to the garden but spend the day cuddled up on the sofa instead.
Actually, Napoleonic soldiers’ haversacks are not too complicated to make. They consist of a large piece that is folded and seamed at the sides and hemmed around the edges to become the bag
and a long strap that is sewn into a tube, turned inside out, ironed flat and connected to the upper ends.
Up to now the whole process took me about 5 hours, and I still have to connect the strap to the bag and make the buttons and buttonholes for closure. On the other hand, most of my time was spent on hemming the flap and upper edge and finishing the seam allowances on the bag.
The latter of the two would not be necessary if the linen was woven to the correct width, which is not unlikely for the period in question. So an early 19th century seamstress, who would have been far more proficient at hand sewing than I am, might have finished two of these in a day. But if you consider that the commissariat accounts cited in “Soldiers’ Accoutrements” name a stock of 10.000, that’s still a lot of work.
But what’s really amazing about this haversack is its size. According to the commissariat list, the finished bags were 21 inches wide and 12 inches high, so that is what I based my reconstruction on. This thing is really huge, you could hide whole armies in it. I wonder how heavy it will become when it is filled up with three days worth of food.
Ann Budd’s “Undulating Rib Socks” from Favorite Socks, finished yesterday. The yarn is Regia 4-ply Cotton Color in col. 5405. I was worried about the color changes obfuscating the pattern, but the socks turned out quite nice, except that the picture doesn’t do them justice as the flashlight definitely did obfuscate the pattern.
Right now I’m down to one knitting work in progress, and I’m starting to note withdrawal symptoms. I obviously need to start something new urgently, perhaps (horror!) something other than socks? Something larger? A sweater? A cardigan? On the other hand - my lone knitting WIP already is a cardigan. Can you have two large knitting projects going on at once? And what am I going to knit in the car now, if there’s no sock in progress?
Yesterday I spent the afternoon following the instructions for creating a skirt block in The Costume Technician’s Handbook.
First I made a draft
then a paper pattern
and a mock-up
only to find that I completely misjudged the positioning of the side seams, which are almost an inch further back than they should be. The upside: Apart from the side seam issue the skirt block fits nicely, so the next version should be fine.
Of course, typing this I realise that I’m certainly not the first person around to have this figured out. Never mind, I’m feeling smart anyhow.
Ann Budd’s Seduction Socks in Regia silk 4-ply, col. 098. So I guess it’s a draw between me and the stash, at least for today.