the sewing part

in the home stretch finally! i feel that i must get this one finished asap, for the good of toronto. we've had some really cold weather lately, and i know that as soon as this sweater is ready for me to wear, it will suddenly get too hot for it. so.
here it is with the elements laid out for sewing:

and here's a closer look at a finished bit, and how i've pinned down th i-cord - it's tricky to pin down without everything bunching up, so i've just put the pins through the sweater and not actually through the i-cord:

argh

so last night as i was leaving work, i kept feeling i was forgetting something. it wasn't until i was on the subway that i realised what it was - my knitting! bah.

so here i am at work, on my lunch break, thinking i can finish the endless in the mood for love sweater. i dig in, and discover there is no yarn needle (so i can't finish the blanket-stitch edging) and no regular thread (so i can't sew the finished flowers etc. on the body).

bah! will this never end? at least i am geting the centres for the flowers done...

every time i get close to finishing, things take a little longer

ok... flowers are done, leaves are done, i was ready to sew them on to the in the mood for love sweater and do some chain-stitch for the stems and whatnot, and then i thought - i-cord! so now i've just made a ton of i-cord for stems and swirls, all branching off in different directions and tapering at the ends, and finally all i have to do is sew it all down.

unless i think of another way to make this long-term project even more labour intensive.

frogs

woo hoo!

almost there! really!

i've been actually getting things done lately, believe it or not. totally inspired by ravelry i am almost done an argyle cardigan for young marmaduke (just in time for the warm weather!), and have found the long-ago in the mood for love sweater, blocked it, and begun the ornamentation phase! sooo excited.
of course, i have no idea what happened to the flowers i started knitting ages ago, or how i made them. so i've knit more, just making them up as i go along. i'll post the pattern later:

here's a sketch of what i'm trying to do, roughly:

whee!

whee!

i've finished assembling the "i'm in the mood for love" sweater! i used mattress stitch to do up the sides (see ridiculously prideful post below) but to attach the collar i decided to try grafting, to increase stretchability (i have a big head). it fits! i'm so excited! hopefully tonight i'll get the decorations done, and post some photos.

pardon my excitement, but i'm much better at starting projects than i am at finishing them, so i'm very excited to have the first official filmcraft project almost finished!

whatever happened to...

so you may be wondering what happened to the "in the mood for love" cheongsam sweater that i was working on at the start of the filmcraft blog. simple: i got to the boring part, i.e. the part where you stop knitting and start sewing the pieces together.

well, today i started seaming, and it's looking good! i'm quite proud of my little seam, actually.

boredom

well, predictably i got bored with knitting the back of the "in the mood for love" sweater - it's no fun if you have nothing to figure out! - so i decided to take a break from it to try knitting some flowers:



the idea is to decorate the sweater with flowers if when i finish it.

it's more fun to knit flowers than the boring back of a sweater anyway!

p.s. it's official - i have pneumonia!

the upside of sickness

well, i've been sick all week, meaning if i do anything other than sit quietly (as in not speaking to anyone) next to the humidifier, i have a huge coughing fit. not fun. but it does mean i've got a lot of knitting done.

here's the completed front of "i'm in the mood for love":



here's a detail shot:



woo hoo! i thought this would take a lot longer since it's such fine yarn. actually, the back will probably take a lot longer because it will be more boring. c'est la vie...

i'm so excited, and i just can't hide it

i'm working on a cheongsam-style sweater, just making it up as i go along. i've gotten to the part where i want it to look like two separate pieces, without actually being two separate pieces - the diagonal closure that goes from the neckline to under the arm. i'm using knitpicks palette which is fingering weight, so it's so small it's hard to tell what i'm doing. but it seems to be working! check this out:



whee!! here's a close up, where you can see that some stitches look doubled-up on the needle - that's because i'm knitting two pieces at the same time:



just in case you have no idea what it's supposed to end up looking like, here are a couple of pics of cheongsams from in the mood for love, which is an awesome film that you should run out and see. and it was the inspiration for this sweater - all of maggie cheung's dresses are gorgeous: