Is Sarah Jessica Parker shorter than I thought? Was part of the skirt missing? Anyway, I think the dress looks better on Carrie than on the maniquin.

The rest of the collection looked better than the photos. My pix don't do it justice.

Other guests:

and then this:

not Westwood, but reminds me of the Torii's gradation cardi. Back to knitting...

Carrie's Wedding Dress at Muleh

According to Project Beltway, the Vivienne Westwood wedding dress that Carrie Bradshaw wore in the Sex in the City movie will be on display at Muleh, October 23rd, from 5-8pm.

Westwood's Anglomania collection will be on display too.

Muleh
1831 14th St., SW

The Coat

I finally finished The Coat. I was determined to take it to Moscow because I didn't have much else to wear. So I did the minimum finishing possible, i.e. just enough to hold it together and not have strands of yarn showing (shame, shame!). I have not woven in the yarn on the interior pockets. It still has no buttons and I didn't do the slip-stitch edging as instructed.

I love it, even though I suspect that all the alterations I had to do to it caused my summer-long knitting hiatus. I love it, though I wish the collar would stand up more like this all the time. A little starch maybe?

I love wearing it with slacks, and full skirts, and pencil skirts. It dresses up with a crystal brooch as a closure for the ballet or dresses down swinging open with a pair of jeans. I love it with turtlenecks and v-necks. I love it with pearls and I love it with tiny Russian icon pendants. It travels well and dries nearly overnight.

ETA: It's been so long since I've posted a finished object that I forgot to add some important details:

Pattern: Washi and Tsumugi Coat, Hand-Knit Works, by Setsuko Torii
Yarn: Habu Shosenshi Paper and Habu Tsumugi Silk, knit together.
Needles: US 6 Addi Lace Weights (perfect for the paper and silk)
Mods: I will make it again, but I've learned a few things. I knit the top as one piece, which meant no shoulder seams and makes it more comfortable to wear I think. I knit straight across the back, which would have eliminated grafting had I been more mindful of the size. I will make the sleeves longer next time. It has always been necessary to extend the length of the sleeves on most of my garments and I simply forgot this. As is the sleeves are 3/4 length, which actually works out just fine, but I wish I had been more aware. The pattern was an X-Large, I think, rather than a Large as the pattern was labeled. I will be more mindful of size and fit as I knit next time.

Nicole: I would be happy to help if you have resumed working on your Coat. You can post here or e-mail me at Ava.R.Smith AT Gmail.com. I would be happy to help anyone else too.

I Forgot My Slacks, or Shopping in Moscow

I tried them on, folded them up and laid them on my bed instead of packing them. When I was dressing for our Monday morning meetings, I realized that I only had a black skirt and the black jeans I traveled in. My trip was only a week but still. I needed slacks since it was getting chilly. My friends Natasha and Valeriy were taking me to dinner that evening so also kindly took me to buy slacks at Evropeiskiy Mall.

Natasha and me outside Evropeiskiy Mall

photo by Valeriy aka "SnowHo!"

Wow! Evropeiskiy Mall is across the street from Kievsky Voksal, near the Radisson Hotel, for those of you who know Moscow. I had heard about the shopping possibilities that had cropped up since my visit in 2000, but if you remember like I do the Brezhnev era in the '70s when people risked entanglement with the police just to buy your blue jeans, this was really something to see. In ultra-modern Moscow today, you can get anything you want if you have the money. I bought my slacks at the British-owned Marks and Spencer, quite an out of body experience.

This fully-stocked grocery store, Cedmoi Kontinent (Seventh Continent) was a treat too. There are many of these grocery stores in Moscow and other major Russian cities. I visited the one at Smolenskaya Metro station across the street from my hotel. I like cruising grocery stores. We all have our idiocyncrasies! I spend hours at my Whole Foods looking at the new products. I got as many pix as I could before one of the managers kindly told me to stop.

Love the inclined moving sidewalk from the basement to the first floor. And the Christian Lacroix Evian water. I didn't get pix of the huge cheese, butcher, and liquor, or water sections, the coffee bar or the sushi bar. (There were sushi bars all over town too.)

Smolenskaya Station

Moscow, 2008

I returned from Moscow last night, though my visa had expired and the Russian government wanted me to stay an extra day to get a new one. Long story short, the US embassy intervened and arranged for me to get a new visa while I stood at the Delta check in. I was annoyed, but was already making plans to go yarn shopping that night. Next trip I guess!

I had not been to Moscow for eight years and was pretty stunned by the continued development of its market economy. Moscow is the most expensive city in the world and the wealth resident there is very evident. How ironic to be there while the US is busy nationalizing banks and insurance companies. When Marx wrote about the evolution of economies he was writing about market economies and now I wish I'd read them more closely. To defend myself, Marx is a bit of a slog to say the least, so if I get serious about it, I'll read the summaries. Maybe these kinds of short cuts are why we are heading into the economic abyss...

Anyway, I was there on business and had virtually zero time for tourism. My colleague and I got to our hotel Sunday afternoon, Sept. 14th, and we headed straight for the Kremlin. Safe taxis are hard to come by and the hotel car service was exorbitant so we took the metro. I summoned the little Russian I could remember to ask directions, and was lucky - twice - to encounter Russians who spoke English. The first woman turned out to have participated in a US-sponsored exchange program and was more than happy to walk us to the metro and answer any other questions we had. "Providential," an embassy colleague told me.

St. Basil's Cathedral

For all of the times I've been to Moscow I've never been inside of St. Basil's. It's under major restoration and implementation of measures designed to protect the old structure. It was completed in 1560 and survived Stalinism - someone served serious jail time for refusing to destroy it, but more about political prisons later - and probably neglect for the rest of the Soviet era, so I'm confident that it will be OK, but I applaud their efforts. There's an ancient staircase inside that takes you to the iconstasis pictured here:

Some of the steps were a foot and half high and many of us didn't make it up the staircase. I'm glad I made it, though my gluts were sore for days. Not only was the worship area pictured here quite beautiful, but we also arrived in time to hear a choir singing vespers.

I'm so happy that I discovered that the video component of my camera also includes sound! I love vespers. I find them very soothing.

We had a nice cappuccino at the National Hotel to end our day. I had good coffee everywhere including Moscow's new Starbuckskies.

Are any of you still there?

Thanks to those of you who asked where I've been. I really appreciate your concern. It's been a busy summer - some travel, lots of work, and I was a bit ill for a spell. I'm fine now after changing my diet a bit. I'm eating lots of fresh veggies, no red meat, no refined or processed foods, no sugar, and have radically reduced my caffeine intake. Giving up sugar was surprisingly easy, but harder to cut back on coffee. I love green tea, especially sencha and matcha, but I like my cuppa too.

I thought I ate well, but I didn't eat nearly enough veggies. I've been cooking them from scratch and have really developed a taste for them. My current favorite is Osaka mustards.

Rather than cook them in the traditional southern style, I saute them in a tablespoon or two of olive oil with lots of garlic. They are delish. I've also found a good recipe for vegetable broth that I love to sip throughout the day. It isn't the usual veggie broth, besides the usual carrots, onions, and celery, it also has daikon radish, bok choy, nori seaweed, shiitake mushrooms, garlic, and ginger among other ingredients. I just chop, cover with water and simmer on low for an hour. Cooking from scratch is labor intensive. Fortunately, I like to cook.

The Coat is finished except for weaving in the ends and sewing on the buttons. That's not much to do, but I really didn't have the energy. It didn't help that I was also up all night watching the Olympics for two weeks, then the Democratic Convention last week. You actually had to watch them!

Here it is blocking. After the cutting the back, grafting, and seaming it, I didn't like the way the right front looked, so I took it apart, re-knit the right bottom panel, cut 2-3" from the top panels, and re-seamed. I finally got a garment that I like and fits nicely.

Despite all the alterations, it was really a simple knit. Well, it was easy to knit, but I did have to wrap my mind around the Japanese numbering and charting system. Having learned how to graph the pattern at the Habu trunk show last year made the process easier and more precise in terms of the number of rows one has to knit. The main problem I encountered was that the instructions were for a large size, but it knit up as an extra large. The written instructions didn't always match the guidance on the charts, so when in doubt, I went with the charts.

Nicole, what problems did you have with the pattern?

I'll try to finish it up soon, but I'm taking business trip to Moscow in a couple weeks and don't know how much I'll get done. I'd like to wear it while I'm there so I'll give it a good go.

Frau Weubel, I'd love to come back to Frankfurt! I don't have any plans right now, but since I've made a few knitting friends there and love the city, I will have to arrange something within the year. Please keep in touch.

WIP Wednesday: The Coat

well, it's still Wednesday, though it's late...

I ran out of yellow cashmere for my Habu shawl, so I started the Washi and Tsumugi Coat, which I call simply The Coat.

I started it on my trip to Denver last month and it knit up pretty fast. I nearly finished it - actually completely seamed - when I decided the top was too big. Rather than frog and re-knit I decided to cut it.

I had deviated from Olga's instructions and knit the entire top in one piece in order to avoid grafting the back. The top is knit sideways, so you begin with the cuff. I knit front and back simultaneously, using a stitch marker to mark the shoulder. When I got to the collar, I put the front left stitches on a holder and knit across the back. When I reach the end of the collar, I provisionally cast on stitches for the right front, and knit front and back to end of the sleeve, using another stitch marker to mark the shoulder. Then I picked up the stitches of each front and finished them, first one then the other. My tinkering worked, much to my surprise.

I tried it on several times as I knit it, and it seemed to be a good fit. It wasn't until I seamed it that I decided I wanted closer fit. I want to wear it to a conference in Reno next week, so I decided to take Olga's advice and cut rather than frog it. I would be grafting after all.

I pinned the back, measuring how much to I wanted to take it up; cut down the middle after "ungrafting the collar; ran life lines on each side. I unraveled one side back to the life line easily, but was difficult to unravel the ends of the other side since I was unraveling in the same direction as the knitting, so I cut out another chunk.

I'm becoming fearless with those scissors!
I tried it on one last time, then grafted it.

I hope to finish The Coat this weekend. I haven't found any buttons yet but may hold it closed with a brooch until I find some.

Then I shall begin a cashmere search...

"Toyko Style Beads Collection" by Uta Ono

Toyko Style Beads Collection by Uta Ohno is a beading book containing some unique styles. No knitting involved.

Jyuzukakebato Ring

Mizakura Necklaces

Hatsunagi Wire Necklace

Souda Turquoise Jewelery

Lovely stuff. Now to tear myself away from knitting!

Deb, who hosted a few of us for a lovely knitting and stitching one Saturday afternoon, tagged me for a meme.

1) What was I doing 10 years ago? the same thing I'm doing now: managing an international exchange program for the federal government.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today? Laundry; swatch some Jaeger Aqua for a tank top; spend 5 mins purging magazines; pare down what I pack so that I travel lighter; continue working on The Coat;

3) Snacks I enjoy: Popcorn, chocolate, potato chips, popcorn, chocolate, potato chips!

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Pay off my debts; give some to family and charities; buy homes in New York, Seattle, and Santa Fe, each with a craft room; invest the rest; create a charitable or environmental foundation of some kind.

5) Places I have lived: Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, France, Germany (I'm an army brat.)

6) Jobs I have had: Sales person, Giftware buyer for a jewelery store; Teacher, Program Manager.

Please consider yourself tagged!

Can't believe an entire month has gone by since I last posted. I've been to Denver since then and I just returned from Seattle last night. I've been there three times in the last twelve months. It's rapidly becoming my favorite American city. There 's so much to say about it that I don't know where to start. I know that I have a narrow view of it: I stay at one of the hotels downtown a few blocks from Pike Place Market, I never have to endure the apparently horrific traffic, and it's usually sunny when I'm there with only occasional showers. But given that there is a coffee shop on every corner, some of the best food I've ever eaten (I'm a salmon and steel head trout fiend!), great boutiques, lively cultural life, great yarn shops, great museums, and a Jimi Hendrix exhibit at the Experience Music Project, I sometimes wonder why I'm still in DC...

This time I visited Kinokuniya Bookstore in the International District. They have a large craft section containing lots of interesting quilting, crochet, embroidery, sewing, and of course, knitting books. I picked up these pictured below.

I went to Kinokuniya specifically to look for Aran Knit
(ISBN978-4-277-11401-1) after seeing this sweater on Tricot Methode Frankenstein:

Cable Sweater

Love these too:

Bolero

Room Shoes

Aran Knit has no English text, but like other Japanese knitting books it is full of helpful charts. The other books are Crochet Accessories (ISBN978-4-277-43080-7), Tokyo Style Beads Collection (ISBN4-05-402717-2). The fourth book has no English title but it's been blogged a lot and I'm sure you recognize it. The ISBN number is ISBN978-4-529-04140-9. I'll post photos from these later.

Oh, and be sure to check out the stationary supplies! They lots of notebooks, plastic sleeves, and loads of colored gel pens, for which I have a weakness.

I know some of you plan to visit Seattle soon, so don't hesitate to go to the International District though on a map it looks like it's a long way from the city center. It's a short cab ride away and an interesting long walk if you're up for it. Be sure to visit the huge Asian grocery store next door, Uwajimaya. I picked up some interesting looking tea, they had some tasty looking candy treats and a large selection of bento boxes.

Seattle Art Museum

YPF: My First Handspun

Yarn: Tussah Silk Roving, bought a couple of years ago at Uniquities in Vienna, Virginia (they don't appear to have a website), but I was afraid to ruin it.
Spindle: Plain wooden top-whorl drop spindle
Comments: I just taught myself last night by watching YouTube videos and links I found on Ravelry. The Joy of Handspinning is a great site. Clearly, I need a lot more practice, but I'm really enjoying this.

Happy Earth Day!

I just happened to finish these brown/green Dashing fingerless mitts in time for Earth Day.

Yarn: Lana Grossa Furetto (wool, alpaca, and acrylic), bought at Wolle Rodel, Frankfurt
Pattern: Dashing, Knitty.com
Needles: US 6 DPNS
Mods: They are a "thank you" gift for our friend in Berlin who showed us around Frankfurt. Though she has large hands, I shortened the mitts by a few rows, but don't remember how many.

I'm holding a reusable fabric shopping bag, still in its case, that I bought in Frankfurt at a Rossmann Drugstore. When open, it is the size of a large plastic grocery bag. It looks like these Envirosax, but was much cheaper, even after factoring in the exchange rate. I keep it in my handbag for small purchases. It's a small step, but I swear plastic "grows" under my kitchen sink, and some bags taken back for recycling find their way to landfills if recycling becomes too expensive for local governments, so a small step that reduces consumption is better than none. Whole Foods will stop purchasing plastic shopping bags today; they will give out those remaining until they run out. They will supply paper bags instead, and will have reusable grocery bags available for purchase. I've purchased several reusable bags, but always get one or two plastic bags to carry my lunch to work, and wondered what I would do. (I realize other stores have plastic bags but they are frequently full of holes at the bottom.) I read last night on the Ravelry Greencraft forum that some have knit their own lunch bags. I should have thought of that long ago. I've never felted anything, but have some Lambspride somewhere around here. It's washable and cheap. Another WIP is born! (Does anyone have recommendations for yarn that will felt into a thinner fabric than Lambspride?) WF will still have smaller, thin plastic bags in the meat and veggie sections, but did you know that some people use tulle vegetable bags? I just read about these last night. These are expensive but you could make your own.

I bought the green polish at the same drugstore. The brand is Manhattan, #85. I'm a drugstore junky. I loved browsing the aisles of Rossmann looking at stuff we don't have here. I bought several bottles of polish and some lip liner.

Nicole, are you on Ravelry? Did you know that there is a Frankfurt group there?

Kusha Kusha Scarf

Pattern: Habu Kusha Kusha, Kit-78

Yarn: a-177 Super Fine Merino and A-20 Silk Stainless in White

Needles: Addi Turbu Lace US8, 6, 4, and 3

Mods: None. Simplest of knits.

YPF: Dream in Color Smooshy

Green! It's Dream in Color Smooshy Sock Yarn in Spring Tickle. I bought it at So Much Yarn in Seattle last year. (I still need to blog that store. It's great!)

On my drive in to work Monday, I regretted not having brought any coffee with me and thought "wouldn't it be great if there was a parking space in front of that Starbucks?" Not only was there a parking space right out front, there were 30 minutes on the meter! Got my triple grande capp, and got to my meeting on time too. Isn't that a great way to start the week?

So, did you know that I'm going to cooking school??? Well not really, but Francesca is. Our own Fluffbuff is blogging her cooking school experience on her new blog Tanta Robina. Kudos to her! I'm going to enjoy following her progress and learning a thing or two. I thought about going to cooking school many years ago, but nixed it. I still cook though. I bought this last week at Williams-Sonoma. I've been trying to get one for years but it was always sold out.

Broiled asparagus. Yum!

Habu Paper and Cashmere Spring Shawl

I've been obsessing over this shawl for a few years now. I think I visited the Habu site at least once a week to admire it. I discovered too late that Habu discontinued the cashmere in the color I wanted. It can be made with Geelong lambswool, but only the cashmere came in the screaming neon lime/yellow that I wanted. I was crestfallen. I found it on sale at Purlsoho, luckily. I hope I have enough.

The shawl consists of alternating panels: one knit with one strand of A-60 shosenshi paper knit together with one strand of cashmere in straight stockinette, the other panel is three strands of cashmere knit into a leaf design. The panels are knit together using a 3-needle bind off and one strand of cashmere with beads strung on. Should be interesting. I bought the beads for it yesterday at Bead Obsessions in Old Town Alexandria.

It should be a fairly simple knit except the leaf and stockinette panels require different needle sizes and it took a while for me to get gauge and for each piece to be of equal length. This is supposed to be the project I turn to when I’m in “process knitting” mode - which is fairly often, instead of dishcloths, since I have no more room for the latter! Stay tuned.

Salvatore Restaurant, Frankfurt

Almost FO: Parrotfish/Pomatomus Hat

I got some knitting done while I was in Frankfurt. I started the Parrotfish/Pomatomus hat on the flight over and finished it while I was there.

It still has 2 US3 circs holding six stitches in the top. I have two fur cuffs that when fastened together, go around my head. I thought I would use them as a band, to make a Russian-style fur hat, but I don't like this look for me. I'm not used to looking at hats that flatten my hair like a skull cap.

So though I think it's a cute hat, and it was a fun knit, I'm frogging it. I used Sundara "Black over Violet," which will now become a pair of socks.

Nicole, Thanks for the offer! I'd love to go on yarn "crawl" in Frankfurt. If you go to Unikat, please say hello to Claudia, and let me know what you buy and plan to make.

Palm Garden, Frankfurt