Not Aune

Norah Gaughan mused on her blog about how many/few knitters were actually using Berroco yarns for her designs. After all, her job is to sell yarn. I am guilty. I have knit several of her designs, but never in Berroco yarns.

However, does it count if I tried to use her yarn with her design, but it didn't work out?

My sister made two trips to a yarn shop for me to find enough Ultra Alpaca (600 g) to make the Aune skirt from Norah Gaughan Volume 1. I wanted a medium dark color and I love this teal/mallard heather that Iris and Ann picked out. But look how little all that effort (this is a fiddly pattern) shows in this color.

I tried, I really tried. Three pentagons later, I cried uncle and cast on for a simple pencil skirt in the round.

I highlighted the four darts using the small star stitch from Kira's Bell Curve skirt (free pattern from Knitty Winter 2007).

I made ruffles at the bottom using the directions from Flirty Skirty (free pattern from Knitting Daily). This picture is closest to the actual color.

Here it is on my double*.

* I have not gotten around to the final adjustments on my Uniquely You dress dummy yet. They tell you to zip the cover on the foam figure and let it rest for at least two days. The cover will stretch and the dummy will expand. Measure yourself and the dummy and compute the difference. Divide by four and take it in at the four princess seams. They are not kidding about the stretching. The dummy is now 1.5-2" bigger than me at the bust, waist and hips.

The morning scrum

In front of my daughter's elementary school.
More in this thread:
Madness
Walking and Biking
What's your superpower?

Button Man

Eric Hebert has accumulated more old buttons than anyone in a country where people like to accumulate old things, and every weekend he sells them from his stall at the Puces de Vanves on the southern edge of the city.

OMG, that looks like heaven--if I could stand the cigarette smoke and get to Paris.

Until my second year at Cal, I used to go for the cheapest buttons that sufficed. But, a roommate and fellow sewist taught me that buttons are the details that set custom-made apart from RTW. Because I often buy bargain fabric left over from factories, it is not unusual for me to spend more on buttons than fabric for a garment. Viva la difference!

What's up with the button store that used to be near the intersection of Wilshire and La Cienega in West Los Angeles? It's gone. Is the Button Store on nearby 3rd street any relation to the one I used to frequent? Thankfully, my neighborhood Cotton Shop has an excellent selection of not your run of the mill buttons.

Links:
The Button Man of France obsesses in sets of 12
Slide show accompanying the article (see more photos, including the ones above)