First dress ever!

dress11.jpg
Originally uploaded by eusebius24

I sewed this dress on Friday. The pattern is Simplicity 3749 and I used a cotton seersucker from Fabricland. It's a simple pattern, but it's the first dress I've ever done and the first facings I've done since junior high (much more successful, I might add). I have a Flickr set documenting the construction of the dress ... maybe it will be of some use to beginner sewers.

You know you have a blog called PianoKnits when ...

... you're playing the piano part of Schubert's "Gretchen am Spinnrade" and you start wondering how the heck anyone could knit with any fibre spun like that!! And I'm not even a spinner. Yet. (Feel free to convert me.)

Thanks to Non Sequiturville for putting me on to this great image.

Anyone for tennis?

I was very fortunate to be able to attend the Rogers Cup singles and doubles finals yesterday in Toronto. Even though I was in the Fan Zone (read: nosebleed seats) I had a very good view of the action.



I was working on Jaywalker #2 the whole time:



Congrats to Justine Henin, one of my favourite players; Jelena Jankovic, who showed real fight; Ai Sugiyama and Katerina Srebotnik for their first Tour doubles title together; and Cara Black and Liezel Huber, a finely-honed doubles machine!

Claire came home with a cold on Friday and now I'm down with it, but it isn't too bad thanks to Dayquil. I did skip my run ... the first one I've missed in seven weeks, alas. I hope this hiatus won't be nearly as long as the last one.

I did manage to complete a throw pillow, my first ever sewing project to include buttonholes. Again the directions were from the ever-useful Sew Simple magazine. My machine has a super-cool automatic one-step buttonhole feature. Fun times! Zorra graciously agreed to appear in this shot.

Slow and steady

Since we got back from Newfoundland on August 7, things have been pretty crazy. I didn't expect to be playing or coaching nearly as much as I have. So things have progressed slowly on the crafty front. On the Rock I finished the back of DH's pullover:



Rows and rows of stockinette, but the Naturally Tussock DK from New Zealand is lovely, flecked with all kinds of tweedy bits. I also finished my first ever Jaywalker, in Socks that Rock Lightweight. The colourway is Fairgrounds, which is nice and summery:



My first completed sewing project in August is the bag from KwikSew 2320. It was fun, but I probably should have bought some heavier machine needles for sewing through four or more layers of fairly sturdy cotton. My thread kept breaking, which usually doesn't happen with Gütermann thread. Anyway, I learned to install grommets and reviewed a bunch of other construction things, which was nice.



Now on with the second sock, and the front of the pullover. I'll get back to St Brigid when that's done. Sewing projects in the queue: a buttoned pillow cover for our new chair in the living room; matching aprons for me and DD; some pajama pants with contrasting cuffs (this and the pillow are from Sew Simple 1) and a tunic from some African printed cotton I bought from Wazoodle a while back.

Very sad news this week of Richard Bradshaw's passing. The Collaborative Piano Blog has a collection of links to obituaries and memoirs. I still have not visited the new Four Seasons house in Toronto... early childhood and opera houses don't mix too well ... but I do appreciate all Maestro Bradshaw did for our Canadian opera scene. He will be missed.