Lawks, it only went and snowed again…

It snowed overnight – isn’t that the best thing about snow? Do you remember when you were a kid, going to bed and hoping it would snow through the night because that depended whether or not you went to school in the morning? Ok, maybe not those of you in Texas! But those of us in unpredictable weather land (where it will probably rain instead) it always felt a bit like it was Christmas eve. Will the snow come, won’t it? Will I get to drive my mum mad at home instead of doing sums?

When I woke up this morning it looked like this:

And this…

And this…

At the moment it’s falling like little polystyrene balls, almost hail. I can hear them clattering down the chimney into the fireplace.

Bearing in mind that this is really unseasonable weather – it hasn’t snowed this early in the UK for 17 years. We also live in a valley, ok so it’s a big valley I can’t see the sides of, but it usually snows on the moors, dales or pennines and all we see is a distant cloud passing by that could possibly hold snow for some lucky kid.

All that is why I’m currently banging my palms together like a deranged seal and squealing like a squealy thing.

Beccy

Oh my giddy aunt, it snowed like a monkey…

Raise a glass to unseasonable cold snaps and hail the gods of snow! I love snow, in fact I get unreasonably excited and squealy for a 30 year-old.

Yesterday it looked like this:

Just a sprinkling of dusty whiteness. Then a few hours ago it looked like this:

A little bit more! But now it looks like this:

And this:

 

That second photo was taken with the flash on, look at all the twinkly snowflakes!

I just drove home from my gran’s house in a blizzard (less than 15mph all the way) and I should have been scared but I was way too excited. Excited but cautious. Did I mention I love snow? I love snow. Heeee!

Anyway, it’s mum’s birthday on the 8th and I need to finish that stripy jumper – what better weather to sit and knit behind a window looking out on. Or something.

Beccy

Stripy McStripe

I’ve finished the back, front and half a sleeve of mum’s birthday/Christmas jumper (Bay by Rowan). Phew, it’s a lovely jumper and easy to knit but boy, is it boring! I could have knit a hundred scarves by now.
It’s taken so long that my Ravelry queue is getting pretty long and my planned Christmas knitting is going to get way behind… do you find that sometimes you itch to move to a new project before you’ve finished the current one? Maybe it’s true what they say about attention spans these days…
Anyway, I digress, and this jumper really is beautiful and mum’s wanted me to knit it for her for ages so I’m sure she’s going to love it whether I finish it in time for her birthday (the 8th December!) or Christmas.
Beccy

Kasia skirt number two…

Blimy, are my hips really that big? Haha must be! And I should really use the iron more before I take photos. This is the Burdastyle Kasia skirt I started an age ago, made from some more of those curtains I found in a charity shop for £6. Remember I made Burdastyle’s Coffee Date Dress from the same fabric? That £6 is stretching far and I’ve got loads of the fabric left. Matching hat? :)
  
Don’t you love the buttons? All from stash, I decided to make two buttonholes instead of three – I’ll let you know if it gapes weirdly. I think stacked buttons might just be my new favourite thing. I had all my buttons out and was trying to find something that matched. Mum started looking too, and five minutes later she had come up with this combination. Go ma!
This is my second Kasia, but I don’t think I’ll make any more. I managed the waistband first time round (but I was so involved in getting it right, it didn’t actually fit and was too big), but this time I lost my mojo and botched it together. It’s an arse. Consider that a warning chaps!
Beccy

Thrifty man’s shirt refashion with a mini tutorial

I made this cute shirt-for-that-meeting-with-HR-I-have-next-week…
…from this big old man’s shirt…

Here’s how I did it!
First I removed the sleeves and unpicked the side seams, leaving the shoulder seams intact.

Then I put it inside-out on the dressform and pinned like crazy. I had to add bust darts to the side and front and back darts too to make it fit the form.

I also pinned the sides to make sure the darts were in the right position. I then sewed the darts in place and pressed them flat. This is the time to try on the shirt and check those darts – if they are wrong you’ll have to take the whole shirt apart to put them right!

When I was sure the darts were right I sewed up the side seams. I measured on myself, from shoulder to hem, how long I wanted the shirt to be and transferred these measurements to the shirt. Then I hacked off the bottom hem.

I knew I wanted the sleeves to hit my elbows and that I wanted to turn the cuffs back, so I measured from my shoulder to my elbow and cut the sleeve accordingly, following the line of the existing seam. I then pinned the sleeve to the shirt and used tailors chalk to mark the new armhole. Because I wanted puffed sleeves I gathered the top part of the sleeve and tacked it before pinning it to the shirt. I then pinned and sewed in the sleeves backwards. This meant that the split in the cuff would be at the front instead of at the back and allow easy movement (and maybe look cute?)

 

The cuffs were obviously too small to fasten the buttons at my elbow so I folded them back and pressed them before sewing them down following the line of the existing stitching on the cuff. You can’t quite see on the photo but the cuffs each had two buttonholes so Mr. Man could have the option of using cufflinks. I sewed the extra buttons from the bottom of the shirt onto the extra buttonholes to make it a design feature.
Now I have a shirt for that meeting I ought to try to look smart for (work attire usually consists of jeans and a jumper at this time of year – us ceramicy folk have to wear clothes we don’t mind getting mucky every five minutes)
Beccy