Some endings and some beginnings

 A lot has changed since my last post. I moved in with my boyfriend Sean to a new place. It's goodbye to my carefree days of living on my own, but we decided it was time.

One of the most exciting things about the new place, apart from the garden, is that I have a space to claim as my crafts room! I can leave things all over the place and don't have to clean up every time after sewing.

Thanks to the new space, I already finished two dresses since I moved in mid-March. 

It's the ever famous McCall's 6696 which deserves its reputation. It was my first time to sew shirt collars with a stand, and the instruction was easy to follow and things worked out perfectly! Next time I'll shorten the bodice just a tad, but otherwise I'm chuffed with this one. 

Next is based on the shirt dress pattern from Gertie's book of better sewing.

This one wasn't as successful. I don't know what I did, but the bottom of the skirt button band keeps rolling back. The instruction was also more difficult to follow due to the rough hand-drawn illustrations. I'd still wear it but this I'll get less use out of this one. 

And one day I might even get a dress form so that I can model it on something other than a cloth hanger.

Even though picking sewing back up means I'm spending less time knitting, it doesn't mean I've been completely neglecting it.

It was Sean's birthday just two days ago, and I finished this slip-on just in time! Once again I used the free Mens fair isle slip-on knitting pattern, but this time I knitted it in round. Now I know why people swear by knitting fair isle in round. It's so much less hassle.

I created the fair isle pattern based on a project I saw on Ravelry. It's quite straightforward and the simple geometry appealed to me. I named the project Escher, because it reminded me of his work Sky and Water I. You can see more details of this work on my Ravelry post.

As soon as I finished with the slip-on I moved on to another project. It's Bestway Tea Time jumper, something I have had in my queue for quite some time.

I'm using old Cascade Heritage Solid yarn for this. It was the 2nd yarn I bought years ago when I first started knitting. It was first knitted into a cardigan, then frogged, knitted into another cardigan, and then frogged again. Hopefully this time it will finally find its purpose because I'm not sure if it can stand another frogging.