A tale of shirts, and of the never-ending bag…

A bit of an update on this week’s projects:

The shirt toile (first draft- let’s call it what it is, shall we?) is coming along nicely, albeit not very fast. I’m taking my time with this project, learning as I go, looking things up, tearing out and redoing seams, etc. The collar has been interfaced, stitched, torn out and re-trimmed already, and I think I’m just going to recut it and try a “stand” as well- camp collars are just not very attractive, are they? (a camp collar is just stitched to the neck edge- a stand collar has another part between the collar and neck edge, giving the more classic “shirt-collar” look). Not very “shirt” looking progress so far:

Front facings with their too-stiff interfacings ironed on (I’ll be ripping that off this weekend, I think), as well as the sleeves with their tailor’s tacks and un-stay-stitched edges ready for the next phase; the troublesome afore mentioned collar in the back, with a pocket all sewn-pressed-ready-to-be-attached off to the right side (only I don’t like that, either- the edges are just pressed over? Not very nice edges left to fray in the wash? I’ll be lining that, too me thinks!),

And the body pieces tacked, marked, ready-to-go:

I did get the neck edges stay-stitched, and remembered to mark the left, right and back wrong sides with my ubiquitous sticky notes (which are stuck to every surface of the house this time of year, reminders of projects-long-past…). So far, so good!

I finally finished my knitted bag (which is just an over-sized hat, grown out of proportion, but I love the yarn so much I just kept going till it was all used up!) Now I’m on to the handle, which is turning out to be full of false-starts, mistakes, dropped stiches, and is a general nuisance!

The Faeries have taken to sitting about the house, snickering at my failed attempts at I-cord, Picking-Up-Stitches, Decreases and overall Lack of Coordination. (I don’t know what’s wrong with my knitting mojo this month, aside from the masses of cold pills I’ve taken trying to gain sway over this horrendous chest cold. I’ve discovered that homemade popcorn seems to help though…ahem.)