Norwegian sweater and other stuff

Adult size sweaters knit with fine yarn take quite a bit of time! I've finally finished the 61 row yoke pattern for my Ethnic Knits Norwegian sweater. I then started the peerie pattern exactly like it was below the larger pattern. ARRGGGGHH!! It should have been mirrored. At least this time it was only 2 1/2 rows. Next are the sleeves. After I knit one sleeve, I can sew the steeks. I'll know exactly how wide the top of the sleeve is. I'm doing a "Cut and sew" neckline. I'll baste where I want the neck to be, machine stitch and cut. The raw edge will be enclosed in the neckband. Here's a better view of the yoke pattern.

Life has been fairly quiet this week. I got up earlier than usual Thursday morning because it was time to see my doctor for a physical. Early appointment to get it over with means a really early dog walk. There was a light dusting of snow which looked like it had a sprinkling of glitter on it. The street lights were still on and it was beautiful. I saw the same thing this morning for a short time when the sun caught the snow just right.

We went to a hockey game Thursday night. Our Lake Erie Monsters won in an overtime shootout. Sunday I made white chili in the crockpot, using left over turkey because DH doesn't like chicken. I cooked the dry beans in the microwave (cover with water and cook for 15 min.) I've been doing this since I burned beans in one of my pans.

We have a new little neighbor. Mike and Sarah, our new neighbors snuk a baby boy into their house when no one was looking. Well that's not quite right. The baby was actually delivered by the nieghbor across the street, who is a midwife. She was working at the hospital when delivery help was needed. I had a white baby set of sweater, hat and booties on the shelf, so wrapped it up and took it over. I wrapped it in the Sunday comics, since both parents work for the newspaper. No pictures. I forgot to take them when I sewed the buttons on just before package delivery.

Speaking of sewing, I do have pictures of a couple of projects from work. A light blue dress with black sash and black binding on the top edge was taken in to be smaller and a sparkly crystal organza overlay was added. Mom loved how it looked when she picked it up. It was hard to sew neatly, because of the plastic sparkles on the fabric. My machine sewed through them easily, but the bumps made the seams wobbly. You can see the shiny bits as diagonal lines in the fabric.

Another project was a performance dress for a 15 yr. old violinist. She has been my customer for at least 4 years. She does a lot of solo work and needs age appropriate long dresses. It doesn't help that that she's petite. I think she's shot up to almost 5 feet tall now. This dress is black stretch velvet with a stretch lining. All went well except for the zipper. I finally basted it in by hand before machine sewing. A non-stretch zipper and a stretch fabric with nap made a bad combination. I also made a long sash in off white dupioni silk. It's about 7 feet long. She can tie it around her waist with a big bow and still have the ends go down to the dress hem. If she wants, she can wrap it around twice and knot it for a similar effect.