What I've been knitting

I have not been doing nothing, but since I chose a lacy feather-and-fan pattern for my first serious knitting project, it's slow going. I'm working on the Old Shale Scarf pattern and it's going well, now that I'm past the early episode where I messed up a row, tried to pick out my stitches, totally lost my place and decided that the only thing to do was frog it all, crying the whole time. So really, I guess this is Old Shale 2.0. I'm about halfway done, judging by the yarn I have left, so no frogging now.

Next time I do something like this, I'm picking a light-colored yarn. The pattern doesn't really show up with this yarn, plus it makes me feel like I'm old and going blind when I try to work on it in the evening.

Second sewing machine adventure of the year

Here is my greatest recent accomplishment:

A hem. It's not much to brag about, except that it's the only thing I've gotten finished in what feels like a very long time.

I ended up making this dress shorter by over three inches, so it was definitely necessary - obviously I bought it knowing it would be unwearable if I didn't hem it. After dithering for many weeks after buying it, I decided that yes, I wanted to try to do it myself rather than taking it to a dry cleaner. A little bit of research led me to believe that the best approach, with my very simple sewing machine, was to use the reinforced straight stitch and a jersey needle. And, it worked! It's still got enough stretch that I don't think the hem is going to break, and it's exactly the length I wanted, and it's even. What a surprise!

Donut tower

I seem to have forgotten that I have this blog. I have a few projects I've been working on, but my main project has been trying to relocate my brain after summer slowness and two weeks of grad school seminar have caused me to pretty much lose track of where I am in space and time. I'm usually mildly surprised by how quickly months pass, but today I was sure I was somehow mistaken in my suspicion that this is the beginning of July.

Anyway, to get back to what matters (donuts), I will resume the tradition I never really got underway of posting about donuts on Fridays. Here is a collection of photos of a tower of donuts for a baby shower, via Craft. To be honest, I'm slightly torn on this. I prefer my donuts without naked babies, but it's a tower of donuts. I would not turn that down.