Encore!

Another bolero is complete, this one by WG for the four year old. He made the cuffs flare a bit by picking up every stitch and working with the same size needle as for the body. Tomorrow he begins the fifth and tiniest bolero, for the two year old.

RO gives me "his" finished bolero (for the two and a half year old) tomorrow. He will be out of town all next week.

The sleeves of the first bolero are too short. I have plans to cut them off, bind off the edges, make new sleeves and stitch them on. The garment is knit in one piece, so it will be a fiddly project, and one for which I hardly have time.

My second bolero, for the nine and a half year old, is done in the main. It needs to have its body/sleeve seams done, cuffs made and band created. And the i-cord ties. Ne fergittez pas l'i-cord!

I'm stressing about the project due date this coming Saturday (for my purposes, everything should be done Friday night.) I still have to cut two and a half dresses and all five sashes. Is there enough silk organza for the underlining? We'll find out by Monday evening. Stress is spotting the face and disturbing the sleep. It will only get worse. Sew! Sew like the wind.

Fresh figs have disappeared from the fruit stands. September stands triumphant.

Garmenta completa.

The first bolero is done. Next she should get wet-blocked. The second is under way.

RO & WG both have four skeins of yarn and the pattern, with my corrections. These things are to finish shorter than the original. The gauge of this yarn is different than the pattern's suggestion. The two sweaters they're making are smaller, so the pattern must be scaled down. I hope they knit fast & one can be persuaded to make a second, so I won't have to make a third. Hope, hope, hope. (Feathers?)

Today was a long day. Tomorrow is, too, and Friday will be longer. Sleep now.

The bolero got frogged.

(Rip it, rip it...) After considering it for a day I did the right thing: I ripped out the complete-but-for-bind-off finishing band around the body opening, opened up the side seams to the armpits (carefully pulling out each stitch so the yarn can be used for continuous restitching) and ripped two and a half inches off the bottoms of the fronts and back. The back's undoing was tedious; the piece is knit from the back edge up, so it was impossible to pull the end of the yarn to unravel it. I threaded a lifeline across the row that would become the new bottom, snipped the last stitch in the row below and used the tip of a darning needle to pick out each stitch, pulling the tail out by hand. Once that row was undone, the bottom chunk was free. It got unraveled and wound back into a ball which can be reused, perhaps as a cuff on a smaller sweater. I also ripped sixty-plus rows of bolero #2, which was about nine inches long and had all of its sleeve width increases complete. Now it's just eight rows tall.

The process was laborious and rewarding, strangely; several productive hours' work was voided, but the sweater better conforms to MFB's design. My 40-inch #5 Addi Turbo broke during the procedure and must be replaced before the bolero can be completed. I'll leave for work a little earlier tomorrow and stop by The Lion & the Lamb on the Upper East Side. (Having bought some yarn and needles there for a knit-for-pay project back in the spring, I know they carry the rarely found 40-inch circs!)

I took a break, drank a lot of club soda and ate a pint of fresh, juicy black figs with the last of some parmesan that was slowly hardening in the fridge. September is asserting itself and summer fruits will disappear soon.

I feel like I made the right choice, but the time seems a painful loss. Steady....

The other speaker covers

allegedly went on beautifully, too, although I didn't see them myself. (Work.) ERB's right-hand-guy MKMK installed them and says he has photos on his new digital camera. (Shush, you; if he ever sends me the images, I WILL POST THEM. Promise.) Invoices have been sent and now I await payment. No, correct that: my VISA card awaits the checks.... How is it that I find a responsible almost-pleasure in paying off debt? I created it in the first place with the usurious "aid" of that devilish plastic!

Now I'm elbow-deep in flowergirl boleros. The first is nearing completion. Its one-piece body-sleeve unit is done; the sides/sleeves are sewn up (mattress stitch), and the cuffs have been garter-stitched onto the sleeves. I've picked up the 200+ stitches around the neck, front edges and hem (a big loop) and am on the first edging row, out of sixteen. I'm toying with the idea of staying up tonight until I finish the body edging. The second bolero, the largest, was started a few days ago in a fit of efficiency after I discovered I'd left at home an essential component for finishing the first. It's grown respectably but remains in infancy. I've learned quite a bit about the pattern, edges, finishing and myself. Knit-vana, almost. This is why I do it. That, and in this case, the paycheck.

But, oh, my great gay god, I still have the five little dresses to make. I haven't begun. They must be finished by 10/01. I have a little less than three weeks, and a full-time job.

In other news, I just got my first comment-spam in the form of a pair of seemingly unrelated, orthographically unsound, blatantly ungrammatical little notes with irritating links. Henceforth there will be word-veri. *sigh*

The speaker covers were a hit

when they were "installed" (slipped on like socks) earlier tonight. The good-to-mixed news is that I've been asked to make a large white version for another venue's speaker array (M2Ds stacked together vertically, hanging, for total dimensions of about 20" by 3'4" by 6'5") by Thursday. Good: paycheck! more math! Mixed: time crunch! and I have been enjoying the knitting of a flowergirl bolero that I started at work the other day. ERB & his boss RH were cracking jokes about switching from sound design to a Speaker Sock Rental service. Glad they like the product. The set designer of the event asked for my card, too.

Maybe with the proceeds from the Speaker Sock fabrication sideline, I'll finally buy myself a digital camera. Then the Sewing Fool could truly go multimedia! --Or will it just become another obsessive quasi-hobby?