A Problem of Fit

In the evenings, I’ve been sitting in the fading light, watching Bones on my computer and working on my sweater. Which will be done long before October, and therefore long before I can wear it. But I ran into a problem that might make it take longer than expected.

The Fit Part

I like this project, but remember how I said I was going to try to make this sweater more fitted?  Yeah, well, that part is testing my patience with making clothing.

Fit is the reason I don’t make clothing. It’s hard. It’s not easy to wrestle with your particular body type and its oddities. And the truth is that ready-made clothing is wonderful, but it leads to most people making do with a fit that is less than desirable. In my case, I discovered just how it is that I’m making up for the fact that most clothing is meant for women who are rather less generously endowed than I in the bust region.

So what really I meant by “making the sweater more fitted” was in reality my code for trying to give myself an adequate amount of bust room. The blue sweater that I made last year was great, mostly, but there wasn’t enough bust room, and it made for a weird fit. I wanted to fix that this time around.

I figured that I simply needed to add some stitches toward the top of the front.  I even added them in a clever manner that spaced them out.  I figured it was better to give myself extra room where, anatomically, I seem to need it most.  The red triangles are my increases from just under the bust to the top.

So far so good.  I held it up to myself and behold!  The edges came just to where they should!  It worked!

Then I pinned the front to the back and discovered a problem I had not expected. When I add room specially for the bust, it means the rest of the garment doesn’t have to try to make up for a lack of room.  It turns out I am not actually an extra large. I’m more like a medium.  I am just used to whatever extra fabric I have on the back of the shirts I buy making up for the fabric the manufacturer didn’t put on the front of the shirt. So when I made the back piece my “usual” (and wrong!) size it was just plain too wide.  I’ve got nearly three inches of room I don’t need.

But … how in the world do I do that without re-crocheting the whole thing?  Can I?  ::sigh::

I have decided, for the moment, to persevere with what I have.  I spent too much time crocheting the back to just frog it right now.  If it’s too awful, I will re-crochet the back, although the prospect does not delight me.  One thing I know, though, is that I will crochet my clothing projects differently in the future.

Purple Heat Fest

Happy blogoversary to me! A commenter wished me well, but to be honest I let the second anniversary of my blog drift by unnoticed.  It was apparently 6 days ago. Wow. I’ve done a fair bit of  writing here in that time, posted quite a number of pictures. I have made 346 posts, in fact. Given how voluble I am in most of them, that’s a whole lotta words, eh? You know, it amazes me that there are still people in this world who don’t think I talk that much.

A bit over a week ago I ventured out to Blanco (west of Austin in the Hill Country) to go to their Lavender Festival. In recent years people have noticed that the semi-arid limestone hills of Central Texas are fairly Mediterranean in character, soil- and climate-wise. What that means is that we have a pretty fair time growing wine and grapes and lavender near here, and a number of people are actually making a living out of those things now.  It’s different from the usual ranching and farming operations that are traditional in Texas, but alternate crops (and animals like emu) are starting to take hold.

As the poster (from the craft fair)  indicates, that does not mean the area has somehow become any less, um, resolutely Texan.

This was, in fact, one of the best small town fairs I’ve ever been to (and I’ve been to a lot of them). It was even good enough for me to forgive the 100+ heat index, which I fought with copious bottles of water, frequent shade, watermelon gazpacho and a very liberal coating of sunscreen.  Whoever set this fair up actually found some good local crafters to come sell handmade things at the craft fair instead of what I usually see (which is resellers of crappy boring things made in China). All the local lavender farms were there selling things, plus people with everything from intricate handmade baskets to lovely strings of china chili peppers to inventive kitchen towels in the shape of dresses to spiralled handmade jewelry to … well, you get the idea. And of course my favorite is all the food vendors and their samples (I shall gain much weight now).

I bought a bunch of stuff. I got hot sauce, pasta and habanero honey mustard from Shayne Sauce, chili fixins from Blanco Valley Farms, lavendar bath things (oversized tea bags!) from Farm Fresh Soaps, and lavender linen spray and other things (pictured above) from one of the lavender farms, Heron’s Nest Herb Farm. My dad even got my pup Audrey special lavender and tea tree shampoo (which she tries to eat). Do you know how awesome it smells to be at a lavender festival? Where almost everyone has something lavender-themed?  Oh yes, it’s quite lovely.

Of course, it’s not really a proper festival without a Texas blues band, right? This guy is Bobby Mack and his band, and he was followed up by Zydeco Blanco.  They did an enjoyable job with the music. The organizers of this festival really knew what they were doing. And it is the first festival I’ve been to where everybody ignored the cheap not-really-beer. The Real Ale Brewing Company is located in Blanco, and it’s a great little microbrewery with a beer called Firemans #4 that you have to try if you’re ever here, and of course there was a whole bunch of wine tasting from the local vineyards that people seemed to be enjoying.

After the festival, we went to one of the lavender farms, the Blanco River Lavender Company, where they had a few more things to look at and a guy who was demonstrating flint-knapping.  All the farms were having special events, but mostly they were things on making girly sachets and wands or similar. I chose flint-knapping because my dad and husband were there. The guy was good. The farm was pretty. My dad, of course, found the owner and talked to him (my dad always finds someone to talk to and learn from. He is the king of 1,000,000 Facts You Never Knew Existed).

There was a painter there under the live oak trees by the hay storage, I believe the same one selling paintings there.  The tree grove was also housing an amazing collection of very old and rusted things, like a stove.  You could sit in the shade and have lavender lemonade. The farm had a sense of suspended time about it, which I guess fits because it’s been in existence for a century.

And then there were these Adirondack chairs, which sparked my imagination as a Connoisseur of Sitting Comfortably in Atmospheric Surroundings, and made me think that in spring and fall, when it’s not so perishing hot out, it’s probably pretty nice to sit out here when it’s cool in the dusk, overlooking the fields and pasture.  Needs footrests, though.

As a last stop to our day, we went to Luckenbach, which is purportedly a town of three that relies on the mythos of its Texan roots, and is where Willie and Waylon used to go to sing on the Fourth of July.  I say mythos because among other things, I noted that the roof of the rusted post office/general store was not really rusted, the paint was not quite the right color. However, it is still very modern Texan, and it was apparently Harley motorcycle weekend in the hill country, and the place was packed with bikers.  Squawking through all this were about a dozen chickens.  And this guy …

Who is my hero for riding a longhorn through the place, and yelling at the bikers.  Who, really, wants to mess with a guy who rides a longhorn?

It was a very Texas weekend.

Sunday Afternoon Laurus nobilis

That’s bay laurel to you.

So my MIL has a bay tree. A big one. So it was that one day, she gave me a gallon and a half of dried bay laurel leaves (and three more gallons of other herbs from her garden!).

I thought to myself, “Self, what ARE you going to do with all those? You cook a lot, but not nearly THAT much.”

And so I made a wreath.

It was one of those lazy Sunday evenings. The day was nearly done but it was not yet time to make dinner. I had reserved an hour or so to plant myself on the couch with some tea and a movie.

Supplies were simple. A green foam florist’s wreath, a thin needle, green thread, and some very tiny needle-like tacks.  And patience.

For an hour, it was (1) thread five leaves (2) tack to foam (3) repeat.

At the end the whole from was covered in a continuous stack of leaves, and I just tacked a few extra on the inside and outside to finish covering the foam.  Add a simple gingham ribbon for hanging, and there you go. Bay Laurel wreath for about $4.

Doesn’t Pottery Barn sell fresh versions of these things at the holidays for some ridiculous amount of money?

Did you know? Bay laurel wreaths, in the medieval period, were used in people’s houses because they were supposed to ward off evil. Pretty fancy. Bay laurel is really just a small evergreen tree, usually used decoratively in the Mediterranean places from which it hails. It’s also one of my favorite herbs, has various well-known symbolism, a common usage in architecture and a notable place in Greek history.  I also just learned it’s the 2009 Herb of the Year of the International Herb Association. I’ve read it has applications in witchcraft as well as in herbal medicine, but I’ve never tried.

I mostly think having a dried version around smells nice and looks pretty.