Unraveled, Week 38/2022

Wednesday again, already? Does anyone else feel like the days are going faster as we get further into the year? It's a good thing I have this day in the middle of every week to pause and link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

Now that my sweater is finished, my main goal for the rest of this month is to finish up this sock:

As I think you can tell from all the twisted stitches and cabling, this is not a quick knit. I got through the first one as fast as I did mainly because I was stuck in a room when the Mister had COVID and I was anxious about him, so I channeled that anxiety into my knitting. I think I should be able to get this done in this last bit of September, though, and I'm looking forward to having a fancy new pair of socks to wear once the temperatures drop.

I've done a bit of sewing recently, too. Rainbow was the impetus for us to stop using paper napkins a while back, though I've still been using them in her lunch. When we went to Michaels last weekend to fill her kitchen cotton needs, she also spotted a bundle of fat quarters of quilter's cotton featuring some sloth prints that she had to have (have I mentioned she has long been obsessed with sloths?), and she asked me to make her some smaller cloth napkins to take in her lunchbox. I did some very basic sewing to whip up five of them over the weekend:

With the exception of the dark blue print on the left, these all have different fabric on each side. They were dead easy to make -- cut out two squares, hold them together with right sides facing and stitch around the edges (leaving a gap on one side), trim the corners, turn them inside out through the gap, press, and top stitch. Are they perfect? No. But they are very functional and very cute, and Rainbow is delighted with them. The fabric cost maybe $12 for five fat quarters, and I think I spent less than two hours measuring, cutting, and sewing. Not bad!

Reading has been a little slower this week; I've only finished one book.

I once again was in need of an audiobook to keep me company while I was exercising and cleaning over the weekend, and luckily the next book I had to read in the Maisie Dobbs series was available with no wait. As the title suggests, Among the Mad deals largely with mental health issues, and they are central to both the case Maisie is pulled into and the the lives of some of the series' peripheral characters. This book takes place at the very end of 1931 and the very beginning of 1932, and there are still echoes of the first World War being felt, even as the rumbling of what will turn into the second are beginning. I enjoyed this a lot and can see that Maisie is likely headed toward less work with the police and more work with intelligence. I gave it 4 stars.

I am still reading The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, though I'm at least more than halfway through. I also now officially own the two other books that I have left to read on the Booker short list, Glory and The Trees. I've got a long weekend coming up (Rosh Hashanah starts Sunday evening), and I hope to make some headway on that list because I'd really like to have all the finalists read by the time the award winner is announced on October 17 -- and there are other books I'd like to read soon, too, like the copy of The Marriage Portrait I picked up at my local bookstore over the weekend!

What are you making and reading this week?

Not Just Yarn Crafts

Phew, it's been a week! I was worried that coming back to work after a week off would be really stressful, but it turns out that I did so much work before my vacation that there hasn't been too much coming in this week, but it's been a long week nevertheless. It's been hot and humid here, and I've run four days in a row in that heat, so I've been falling into bed pretty spent each night and am looking forward to sleeping in a bit this weekend.

Last Friday I shared a peek into how I spent my week off, and you saw a photo of a sewing project. Today I want the share the results of that project, one that had been in the works for more than a year.

You may remember that during the first summer of the pandemic, Rainbow took a sewing class via Zoom. I was sitting with her during the classes so that I could help out if she ran into trouble, and I did a little sewing alongside her. That experience piqued my interest in learning to sew, and certainly I improved my minimal skills a bit when I managed to master cloth masks (remember the good old days when those were sufficient?). Last summer, when Rainbow finished school for the year, we decided we wanted to try another project that was a bit more challenging, and in a case of perfect timing, Juliann had just finished a Pepin Tote and assured me that we had the skills to handle it. So I bought the pattern, and Rainbow and I headed to a local independent fabric store to pick up the supplies. It then took us more than a year to get around to actually doing the sewing. In the end, it was a matter of just a few afternoons (and the third afternoon was because I got cocky and made a mistake that required picking out four seams).

While these bags aren't perfect, we are so pleased with them, and they are functional, which is really what matters most. We sewed these bags side by side, with Rainbow sewing nearly all of hers herself (I did some of the trickier top stitching through multiple layers at the end). I'm sure those of you who are more experienced with sewing will be able to spot some mistakes and irregularities, but I'm feeling very proud of the fact that we made these and they look as they should!

Here's a peek inside the bags. Rainbow's has a floral pattern for the lining:

and mine has a knitting and crochet-themed lining:

The one slight departure we made from the pattern was to make three interior pockets rather than two. Technically the pattern says you can make however many pockets you want, but the illustration shows two. We decided that if we did two, they'd be fairly large pockets, and even the three are fairly sizeable. 

This project taught me a lot, most notably that if I want to continue sewing, I'm going to need to invest in a rotary cutter and cutting board; we made do with a ruler, a Frixion pen, and fabric scissors, but it became clear as we went along that our measuring was less than exact. But the pattern was excellent and the one mistake I made was entirely due to user error. I wouldn't hesitate to use it again or to recommend it. Rainbow has been using her bag nonstop since we finished them. Her bedroom is on the top floor of our house, but she spends a lot of her day downstairs, so she's been using her tote to carry all the stuff she tends to use during the day -- laptop and charger, Nintendo Switch and charger, her crochet project, and sometimes other things. I'm fairly confident that there are more sewing projects in our future!

This weekend we're hoping the thunderstorms hold off for my nephew's third birthday party, and Rainbow and I hope to do a little back-to-school shopping (we've ordered larger uniform pieces online but need to stock up on some school supplies). I hope your weekend is full of good things!

How I Spent My Summer Stay-cation

Isn't it always the case that time goes by faster than normal when you're on vacation? I feel like this week has flown by, but it's been a really good one with a lot of quality time with my kiddo. It hasn't been a complete vacation because I still had to do things like cook meals and stay on top of the laundry, but I haven't checked my work email since last Friday afternoon and have been focused on prioritizing pleasure over obligation. So here's a snapshot of what I've done this past week.

I've finished reading four books.

I knit a baby sweater (still unblocked):

Entrechat by Lisa Chemery

Rainbow and I did some sewing (to be finished this weekend):

Pepin Tote from Noodlehead Sewing Patterns

and some baking (not shown are zucchini bread and homemade pizza dough from earlier in the week:

Fresh raisin challah

All that and I still have two more days off! Be sure to check back on Monday for a long-awaited FO post. Happy weekend!

Not Just Knitting

Despite what you might think based on the name of this here blog, I don't just knit. In fact, in a move that's most uncharacteristic for me, I haven't knit a stitch in at least a couple days! But that doesn't mean I haven't been crafting during my time off. I actually put off my usual Thursday post until today so I could share some craft-related acquisitions today.

You may remember that last summer Rainbow did a virtual learn-to-sew camp and had a great time. We looked into another session this summer, but the groups are very small and all the sessions filled up quickly. So we decided to do our own thing this summer. She has a friend who wants to learn to sew as well, so we're going to have her over next week and revisit some easier projects. We are also planning to sew ourselves some Pepin totes, after Juliann assured me that the pattern was easy enough for a beginning sewist. We have some scraps and fat quarters in the house already, but we really needed to make a trip to the fabric store to get all the needed materials, and yesterday we did just that. Here is what we came home with:

The pairing on the left is mine for my tote. The exterior fabric is a black washed denim and the interior fabric (which is hard to see, so I encourage you to click on the photo to embiggen it) is from Ruby Star Society and is knit and crochet themed. The pairing in the middle is Rainbow's choice for her tote, a navy canvas for the exterior and a floral quilting cotton for the interior. The final pairing is of two quilting cottons that Rainbow is going to use for a new pillow cover (the easiest project from last year's sewing camp that we're going to do with her friend). Not shown but also acquired in yesterday's trip are denim sewing needles for my machine, interfacing, and webbing for the tote bag straps.

I've also been doing a fair bit of crocheting on my nephew's blanket, and it has grown quite a bit since you last saw it:

I have been changing colors at the beginning of a row when it looks like I don't have enough left in a skein to do another row, and you can see how much thinner the stripes are getting. I think I have decided to alter my original plan just a bit. I am a still going to mirror the order of the colors, but rather than having one dark brown stripe in the middle, I am going to reserve that third skein of brown until the end and use it for a thin border around the whole blanket. I expect that when I get to the widest point of the blanket, one 84-yard skein of yarn isn't going to get me a very wide stripe, so I will use the two skeins of the final color back to back at the center. I have already woven in some ends and plan to continue doing so as I go, though it turns out that with this pattern and this yarn, weaving in ends is rather simple. And I'm keeping the leftovers close by as I finish each skein; I think they'll be great for making some dish/washcloths.

Finally, there is, of course, spinning, which I've being doing a lot of lately. The Tour de Fleece starts tomorrow, and it would be great if I could get the current spin off the wheel by then and start something new tomorrow, but that's unlikely. I've completed two bobbins of the current spin -- the Southern Cross Rambouillet (the purple and orange) that I posted on Sunday -- and have started the third, but even if I finish the third bobbin of singles today, I'd still need time to ply, and that isn't likely to happen until tomorrow at the very earliest.

I guess it wouldn't be all that bad to start out the Tour with a finished skein on the first day!

It's going to be a hot and humid and potentially stormy weekend here, so I expect I will spend most of it hiding in the air conditioning. I also expect that I will pick up some knitting again -- because you all know if I go too long without needles in my hands, something has to be seriously wrong! I hope that whatever you have planned for the weekend, it includes ample time for crafting, be it knitting or something else.

A Craftly Long Weekend

After four lovely days off, I am back "at work" today (already dealing with a noisy inbox), but before I get my head totally back into work mode, I wanted to share some results of my long weekend.

As you know, I've been focusing on finishing projects this month, and late last week I finished my oldest active WIP, the C2C crochet blanket.

Started July 3, 2020/Completed February 12, 2021

I used this tutorial (Ravelry link) to get me started with a size E/3.5 mm hook and a giant ball of baby acrylic from Michaels that Rainbow had started crocheting into a granny square blanket and lost interest in. My plan was to increase until I'd used half the yarn (by weight) and then start decreasing, which theoretically should have resulted in having just enough yarn but in practice didn't quite work out that way. So one corner of the blanket was finished with some white Lion Brand Baby Soft that I inherited from my mother awhile back. After I finished the final square, I added a simple border of single crochet around the outside edge to stabilize it, and then I gave the entire blanket a generous steaming with an iron. I'm not sure if I officially "killed" the acrylic, but it's certainly much softer and has more drape. In all, I used 1,185 yards of yarn, which seems like a lot given that the blanket is only about 31 inches by 31 inches square. But it does make a nice lap blanket (I've been putting it over my legs the past few evenings while I knit and watch TV), and more importantly I've now got another way to crochet a blanket in my tool box -- and I'm eyeing my giant bag of sock yarn scraps and pondering another blanket now.

Rainbow and I also did some sewing yesterday, and I used the opportunity to complete another item on my 21 in 2021 list.

I used up the last of the RGB fabric that I ordered from Spoonflower last year for this project bag (I wanted to maximize what I had left, which is why this is so tall). I also felt pretty smug because I repurposed a cloth bag that a piece of luggage came in for the lining and I adapted the basic pattern from the drawstring bag tutorial I'd used in the past. Rainbow made her own bag alongside me as well. Both bags are a bit wonky because we weren't being terribly exact about measurements (or, as is likely apparent in the photo, about pressing the fabric), but they are perfectly functional. All that remains for my bag is to do something about drawstrings; I had some cotton rope that came from the cloth bag we repurposed, but I we used that for Rainbow's bag and there wasn't enough for both. So I'll likely need to make and sew up some bias tape for mine, or perhaps I'll use my lucet and make some cording.

Finally, there was cooking this weekend. On Friday, we successfully baked another challah (thanks in large part to the fact that the Mister was in Zoom meetings all day -- though I did put a sign on the oven warning him not to touch it just in case!):

And we made dinner for Valentine's Day as well. After flipping through quite a few cookbooks, we settled on a menu of baked shrimp scampi with a side of pasta aglio e olio and green beans. The star of the meal, though, was dessert:

These are s'mores brownies that we made more or less following this recipe (we were making a smaller batch, so we used fewer graham crackers and less butter for the crust). I did accidentally burn the marshmallow topping and set off the smoke alarm (oops!), but I actually like that bit of char -- it gives them an authentic flavor! The recipe is quite easy, particularly as it calls for using a boxed brownie mix, but it would be just as easy to use a scratch brownie recipe. My main piece of advice is to watch the pan when you put it in under the broiler to toast the marshmallows, because it happens really quickly! If you have a kitchen torch (like the sort you'd use for creme brulee), it might be safer to use it for this step.

Okay, the work inbox beckons. Stay warm and catch you back here tomorrow!

15K Just Hours Away

Friends, I am going to do it -- I'm going to hit my Stash Dash goal! Yesterday I finished spinning the singles from the Finnsheep roving, and last night I used my ball winder to wind a center-pull ball. Today's mission is to ply, which I'll be doing from both ends of the ball. And as soon as I'm done, I'll skein and wash it and hang it to dry outside so I can measure the length and confirm that I have met my goal. I will of course be sharing the finished skein on Sunday (or sooner, if you follow me on Instagram).

Yesterday we had dinner with my brother- and sister-in-law and my nephew, who is now walking and getting into everything. He's also very drooly:

I knew we'd be sitting outside and talking for a while, so I cast on a new pair of socks. These will be for my mother-in-law for the winter holidays:

The yarn is Fibernymph Dye Works Mountain Tweed, which is a superwash BFL/nylon blend. This colorway is Love Notes, which was one of Lisa's Valentine's Day colorways. It's a four-stripe colorway, with three shades of pink separated by gray, and it's the first time I've knit with this fingering-weight tweed base. I really like how it's working up, and it's also nice to have a sock on the needles again. I may or may not have some other FDW sock yarn on its way to me from Lisa's shop update last weekend, so I expect more socks on the needles in the weeks and months to come.

We don't have any big plans for the weekend (really, who does these days anyway?), but I am looking forward to taking a week off from work next week. Due to the pandemic, my employer has temporarily suspended the accrual limits on vacation time, and as I rarely take time off, I've got a lot of it. It looks very unlikely that we'll be making our annual trip to Florida this year, so I figured I might as well take some of that vacation time now. Rainbow starts school on September 1, so next week is about mother/daughter fun time. One item on our to-do list is making her more masks for school, and we've ordered some fun fabric choices, including this one that we splurged on at Spoonflower (you can get it here, if you're so inclined):

If we all have to wear masks, we might as well do it in style, right?

Have a great end to your week! I'll be back on Sunday to do my victory lap.

Coming from Inside the Black Hole

From time to time I find myself in this position, where I feel like I'm working on my projects a lot and yet nothing seems to make any progress. It's the black hole of knitting -- a place I'm sure you've all visited from time to time. I'm in there right now with my current WIPs, which isn't ideal considering that time is running out for Stash Dash and I'm trying to hit 15K. Right now, I have a little more than 1,500 meters to go to get there, so I've really got to get a move on.

Over the past couple of days, I've been trying to focus on my hat design sample, because in addition to trying to get projects finished for Stash Dash, I'm also aware that my design output has suffered this year. Plus, out of all my current WIPs, it's the one that will be fastest to get done. It seemed to be taking forever, but I guess it has grown a bit since you last saw it.

I need to decide just how slouchy I want it to be and then figure out my crown decreases. I think I'm almost there; I just need to stay focused on it.

My sweater hasn't gotten any attention at all in the past several days, but once I'm finished with the hat, I'll get back on it. It has the benefit of being very simple knitting at this point, so it'll be easy to work on while reading or doing something else.

I did take a little break from fiber crafts yesterday afternoon and whipped up a couple more face masks, one to try out a new-to-me pattern and one using my go-to pattern for Rainbow.

I didn't try too hard, but I'm still pretty impressed by how well I got the plaid to work on hers! We ordered a bunch of fabric online over the weekend (mostly bundles of fat quarters from Jo-Ann) so we (well, I) can make her more masks. Her school is still on track for in-person instruction for the fall, so she'll need a bunch of masks in order to have at least a couple to use every day. When I talked last year about wanting to learn to sew, I never anticipated having to learn in order to make piles of face masks, but here we are.

I'll be back tomorrow with a reading update, and let's hope by the time I check in on the knitting projects again on Thursday, I'll have clawed my way out of this black hole!

Off-Kilter but Still Here

Hello, friends. I'm feeling a bit off these days due to, well, everything but also because I got a little off schedule in my blogging. After posting this past Wednesday, I did think it made sense to post again on Thursday because not much had changed in the status of my WIPs. I then thought I'd post on Friday, but I was busy with a big work project all day and it slipped my mind. So I'm trying to get back on track. Rest assured everything here is fine -- I've just been having to double check what day it is!

Because it's Sunday, I'm getting back to the normal schedule by talking about spinning today. I am still working on the first bobbin of my current sweater spin, the purple Rambouillet. The aforementioned big work project got in the way of some progress on it, but that happens. I'm really enjoying the spin and am not trying to rush it too much.

I am noticing some very definite color changes in my singles as I'm spinning, so when it comes time to split up the next bag of fiber, I'll be dividing it up into much smaller, shorter segments. I really want all the shades of purple to blend together and give an overall semisolid look when plied, so I want to ensure that there aren't long stretches of the different shades in all of the bobbins.

If I need some motivation to finish this spin, I can find it in the most recent club shipment, which finally arrived on Friday after taking quite a journey to get to me. Obviously shipping is slowed down worldwide due to the pandemic, and shipping from Australia is now coming by boat (rather than airmail) through San Francisco instead of New York. It now seems to take longer to go through customs, and this time it took an extra trip back and forth between the regional distribution center and my local post office. It was well worth the wait, though. I mean, look at it!

As if the colors weren't amazing enough, this month's fiber is Polwarth, which is my absolute favorite fiber to spin. I'm thinking that this is just begging to be a barber-poling two ply.

I would have been happy to spend yesterday afternoon spinning, once I finished up all the cleaning and laundry that are my usual Saturday chores, but Rainbow asked if we could do a little sewing together, and who am I to turn down a request like that? She wanted to make another drawstring project bag, so we gathered some scraps together and got stitching (well, I mostly did the stitching -- she lost interest about 10 minutes in but at least sat in the same room to watch me finish).

I've turned up the bottom here so you can see that while the llamas' heads got cut off at the top of the bag (we were working from a scrap of fabric and had to cut out the pieces where we had room, so there wasn't much flexibility to think about pattern placement), they are popping up unexpectedly on the bottom!

This attempt went much better than our first. For one thing, I'm much more comfortable using the sewing machine now, and I also have a better understanding of how the bag is constructed. I also brought down and used the iron while sewing this time to press open seams, press the bias tape, and so on for a much more professional finish. The inside of the bag isn't much to look at -- it's just white with some pale colored triangles printed on it -- so I didn't bother taking a photo. It's clear, though, that using some better quality fabric made a bit difference, so I expect Rainbow and I will be doing some online fabric shopping soon for some additional options.

(Side note: I have no idea why, but Blogger is not letting me center my photos today. It's also doing weird things with spacing. Just in case you were wondering why this post doesn't look like my typical ones!)

Plodding Along

I had hoped to have more done by today, but it's been an odd week -- not in a bad way, just slightly out of the ordinary. Rainbow has been attending a virtual sewing camp this week that meets for two hours each morning, and I've been sitting in the room with her to help out when she needs it (while keeping an eye on my work email at the same time). Work has been pretty light this week, but because I'm helping her out with pinning and such periodically, I haven't been able to sustain my attention on much during those two hours. It's been great to watch her sew, though, and she's doing a fantastic job. We ordered fabric and notions ahead of time (there's a fabric store next door to the sewing studio, and they're doing online ordering and curbside pickup right now) and the sewing studio supplied the pattern pieces they'd need for the class. Yesterday she completed her first project, a pillow cover. I think you can see from her smile just how excited she was:

The back of the pillow is two panels of the two fabrics that overlap so it can easily be removed from the pillow form for washing. Today the class will focus on finishing up the second project, a drawstring backpack, and begin the third, a zippered pouch. I'm learning alongside her, and I'm excited to work on some other projects with her when the week is over (I may have ordered some extra fabric from the store for just this purpose!).

I'm still working on my Torbellino and although it doesn't look very different from the last time you saw it, I have added to the yoke. I've completed the final increase round and am now working through the last handful of rounds to add the necessary remaining length and final colorwork. I expect that I'll be ready to split for sleeves and body by the weekend.

While no new knitting projects have been cast on -- yet -- I am preparing to start a new crochet project. My nephew is turning 1 in about two weeks, so I thought I'd try my hand at making some crochet amigurumi figures. I did a Ravelry search and kept coming back to this sweet little alpaca. I also pulled out some yarn from the giant bag of Knit Picks Dishie:

I'm planning to start with one and, if it goes well, make a second. The bright colors will be used for the body and the cream for the face, legs, and ears.

Perhaps the real reason I haven't made a ton of knitting progress is because I'm still doing a lot of spinning. It's the last week of the Tour de Fleece, and I'm also back to my usual method of spinning, which I can do without looking. That means I can spin while I read ebooks again. I'm trying to finish up this skein of Southern Cross Fibre mystery wool this week:

Thanks to this spinning-while-reading practice, I finished up Wild Fire yesterday afternoon, and thanks to an after-dinner walk and listening while folding laundry, I also finished Song Yet Sung. Both books earned 4 stars from me, though I still need to write formal reviews on Goodreads. I'm now reading Between the World and Me, which I expect should be a very quick read as it's only about 150 pages and I'm already 15% through it just from about 20 minutes of reading time last night. I'm getting very close to a cover-all on my first bingo card!

I'm off to help Rainbow with sewing. I hope that whatever you're doing as you plod along during these strange times is bringing you some joy and fulfillment. See you here on Sunday!

A Different Kind of Stitching

It's Wednesday, not one of my usual days for blogging, but I felt like putting up a post today, so why not? I'm joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday.

Usually the stitching I talk about here is in the form of knitting, though occasionally there's some crochet or embroidery. But the times being what they are, I decided to try some stitching of another variety over this past weekend and pulled out my very old sewing machine (not quite antique, but I've had it since I was in high school, I think, so it's certainly not from this century). I wanted to try my hand at making face masks, for obvious reasons, but I'd also been meaning to try sewing a project bag for about two years.

For the face mask, I followed this pattern/tutorial, which I'd thought looked pretty straightforward for a non-sewist like me but which I've since been informed is actually not very easy. I guess that's why the first attempt looks so amateurish:

The first one was made in Rainbow's size and used some quilting cotton (the white with polka dots) and some old pants of mine that no longer fit. The white fabric was meant to be the outside originally, but the black ended up being larger and so we flipped it the other way. Because I was still figuring things out, there wasn't enough fabric at the sides to make channels for the ties, so I cut out extra pieces of fabric and added them after the fact. The tie is actually a strip of an old T-shirt that had holes in it. The end result of this sewing, which took longer than I'd like to admit, is serviceable but not very attractive.

Last night I was ready for a do-over. I'd come to the conclusion that part of the difficulty in the first attempt was my fabric choice; both fabrics were on the floppy side, and the black was especially difficult to work with because I couldn't see any lines I'd drawn on it to cut out the pieces. So for attempt number two, I pulled out an old ripped bed sheet and a pillowcase from a sheet set from my teen years (one I never liked, mind you). The sheet was plain white, so I told Rainbow to have fun with some fabric markers to make it a bit more cheerful.

Can you see the improvement? I knew what I was doing this time and also how to adapt to the issues I had with the first mask. Instead of straps, I used hair elastics for this mask (though I can always do straps later). I also added a little pouch to the inside so I can add a nose wire if I want, and the sides are still open, giving me the option of sliding in some sort of filter. I'm pretty proud of myself for doing this, even though I know there's still plenty of room for improvement. I plan to make some more for the immediate family, and though Rainbow can't do that much to help with the actual sewing, she can still help by prettying up the fabric, which she seemed to enjoy.

After the first mask, we also worked on a project bag using this tutorial. (And when I say "we," what I really mean is that Rainbow told me which fabric she wanted where and I did the measuring, cutting, and sewing.) This project was much more successful.

This bag uses three different fabrics. The purple at the top of the exterior has the same unicorn and rainbows design as the bottom, just in white outlines, and the interior is pink with gray hearts (it's the same as the fabric used for the scraps). Though the fabric I used is probably not the highest quality or the best for this sort of thing, it worked well enough, and I am really happy with this bag -- especially considering that I measured and cut it all in a rather haphazard way (with a ruler, pencil, and scissors). I'm particularly proud of the drawstrings, which were probably the most challenging piece. I can definitely see myself making more of these in the future, though I'll probably wait until I can get my hands on some better fabrics. Rainbow has naturally claimed the first one and is using it for a gift she is knitting for one of her teachers.

These sewing successes (because while they're amateurish and sloppy to those of you who know what you're doing, they're still successes for me) have really grown my interest in learning to sew properly. I've been interested in making clothing for a while, but I really want to do it right, by taking classes and learning about fabric and techniques. I know there is a sewing studio not far from my house, so I'm definitely going to look into some classes once we're able to do that kind of thing again. If you are a more experienced sewer and have any recommendations for me in the mean time, let me know!