Craft: along July : Not too shabby

I'm sure you expected this when I announced this month's totally unbiased Craft: along projects.

I mean, you do know me to be something of a Tshirt makeover psycho, and well, this was a project just calling out for the bottom dresser drawer (that's where the Tshirts live, dontchaknow).

Of course, I hit something of a mental design block when actually sitting down to craft my swimsuit cover-up because the contest example is pretty much exactly what I had in mind to make as it's a near duplicate of my favorite swimsuit cover-up but I couldn't just go making exactly what they have in the example, that'd be lame.

Even though it'd be awesome. And I'd totally wear it. And I might make it anyway and just not add it to the contest pool.

But let's walk away from that obsessive behavior for a moment.

After some careful culling of the bottom dresser drawer and then inquiring within Bubba's superior stash of giant Tshirts, I unearthed (or rather Bubba handed me) this gem.

And while, at first, I was super excited to use this particular shirt for my project, I was at the same time sad and afraid because this shirt is from our friends' now-shuttered pizza joint and the thought of totally jacking up this blissful memory (oh tiled pepperoni pizza, how I loved thee) made me queasy.

Typical understatement. This pizza is THE best pizza. I swear it.

But I forged ahead (obviously) with my rotary cutter and Bubba turned away while I started slicing off sleeves and things.

We'll not go into how I tried my hand at creating a shirred dress from this shirt because the complete FAIL that occurred was nothing short of soul-crushing and has lead me to believe that it is my machine's fault that I can't perform this particular sewing Magic because of its stitch lengthening limitations.

ie. The longest stitch length is 4, and I do not believe this to be adequate. I think I need 8, as noted by a random tutorial I found on the innernets.

ANYWAY, not to worry, I only tried shirring the bust OH THREE TIMES before I gave up in a rage and went to my sewing box for the elastic.

Frankly, that might have been the best decision I made all weekend. Because I can say that the best decision was not the one I made on Friday night when I chose to fill my body with a wide variety of booze with the knowledge that I'd be running 7 miles in the morning. That's right folks, the genius moves don't stop coming.

Anyway, after making the move from elastic thread to elastic band, the transition from Enormo Tshirt to useful Swimsuit Cover-up was rather swift. Like, 5 minutes swift.

The only other mods I made were to cut in some shaping along the sides so that I didn't 100% appear to be wearing a shapeless grocery sack and then I cut some side slits in there which are reminiscent of my favorite, albeit not pictured, swimsuit cover-up that I'll have to show y'all sometime.

It's got this great throwbacky "Hawaii" screenprint on the front that makes me think of the Blue Hawaii days and what not. Plus, it's super comfy, not too dowdy with its side tie and spaghetti straps and despite this awful description of mine, it's way beach cute.

I should just delete that whole last paragraph, shouldn't I?

Anyway. This is my entry for the Singer Swimsuit Cover-up Contest and also one of my contributions to this month's Craft: along challenge.

Notice that I said "..one.." because I did them both. OH YES.

So I took this picture in the bathroom after a particularly hot day that rendered my hair so annoying that I had to pull it away from my face no matter how ridiculous it made look? SO WHAT?

After much noted soul-searching, I managed to make peace with this "super easy" lace pattern and actually produce a lacy summer scarf sans shimmer. Because I find shimmery knitted items somewhat barftastic. Sorry if you're a shimmer person. I just am not.

And since I've spent much time already boring you with the mind-numbing details of how this scarf came to be, I will spare you further detail except to tell you that the tip Zarah gave me in the comments was crucial to its success.

So, if you're going to knit this fucker and you start losing stitches, just make sure that you're adding that crucial YO at the beginning or end of the line. And, if you're not sure which end should have the YO, just check to see which direction your stitches are slanting because that's where your YO should go. If you're on a Slant Right row, put your YO on the right end of the row. If you're on a Slant Left row, put your YO at the left end of the row.

Then knit for a while until it's long enough and you're done.

Then you, too, can go to your bathroom and take a photo in inadequate lighting so that you can put this project to rest even though the photo doesn't do the lace pattern justice because it actually came out quite nice.

It was 90 degrees in our house, people, whaddya want? I'm already wearing a scarf in summer, isn't that enough? I think so.

On a separate note then, how are your projects going? I see some of you have been mighty busy.