Wednesday, January 28, 2009

If I start going to the Opera I might as well be ready..

I saw a pair of long gloves the other day and started thinking about how much scope there would be to designing a pair of long gloves. I found some Misti Alpaca Lace (natural dark tan - groovy color name, isn't it? I call it 'camel' colored) in my stash that I’ve been so wanting to make something with and it’s perfect for this project. Soft, elegant, alluring, takes the lace part well and gorgeous!

Don't have photos yet but will try to get those posted tomorrow. The idea is for the gloves to have a lacy pattern on the back of the hand then gently decrease to the wrist. At the wrist will be some open lace and I'm thinking some special beads so that it looks like a bracelet round the wrist. The gloves I saw actually had a sparkly bracelet around them on the wrist but I thought, why not just work them into the glove? Right?!

Then they will continue up the forearm with the lace pattern worked all the way around the glove. I think. Maybe just the top but I think all the way round. I certainly wouldn't need to do any increasing to accommodate the line of the arm as the lace would automatically do that for me.

I love the feel of the laceweight for the glove and the alpaca is super soft and very warm. The glove I'm doing right now is really a "work out the pattern" glove and I will make the real pair once I've got everything worked out here.

I keep telling everyone these are for all those 'black tie' events I go to in Springfield, Illinois! Ha!! Well, I now have an Opera Hood and I'll soon have long gloves so carry on!!

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Ready for the Opera

Done! I’m done!

I thought the “Feather Border” was going to defeat me but I finally got it. I don’t know if this ever happens to you but I can look at something and look and look at it and not get it. But if I put it away and come back to it, often, all of a sudden, it makes sense. That’s what happened here. Once I came back to it, all of a sudden I couldn’t believe why it had seemed so hard.

There was no real instruction for putting it all together so I had to go by the picture to add the ties and pompoms but I think it looks pretty close.

I’ll try to get the pattern written up and posted sometime this week. I definitely have a couple of things I want to riff off of this.