Slowly, but surely, the Estonian Garden Wrap is coming along…

While the pattern is not terribly exciting to knit, the yarn I’m using makes it so very worthwhile.� There’s really nothing like knitting with 100% pure silk.� One reason this is taking me so long is that I am compelled to�stop after every few rows and fondle my knitting.��

I’m curious what’s going to happen when it comes time to block this piece.� The lace is already fairly open, and it isn’t all bunchy like lace knit with animal fiber (wool, alpaca, etc).� I don’t plan to block it to within an inch of its life, like I did with the alpaca�paisley lace shawl.� A gentle steam blocking and pinning should do the trick, I think.��

On a completely different subject - have any of you seen Glampyre’s latest pattern yet?� This is the first must-knit pattern that I’ve come across in a long time.� Unfortunately (or, perhaps fortunately) the pattern isn’t available yet.� Soon, though, I hope!

In lieu of another lace picture (which I’m sure the world is *dying* to see… ha!), I’m posting about a much more important, and potentially life saving topic - Blood donation.

Martha’s mom is in the hospital and is in need of a blood donation.� It sounds like there is no blood of her type available for her at this time, which must be very scary for both Martha and her mom.�

Martha’s post today was the kick in the pants that I needed to make a blood donation appointment for this afternoon.� While I was in law school, I donated regularly at the Stanford Blood Center.� [If you’re in the Bay Area, I highly recommend donating there - they are super nice, and have the best post-donation cookies and juice!]� Since moving back to the Sacramento area, I’ve been putting off finding a donation center - it just wasn’t convenient for me, and I always had more important things to take care of.� Or, so I thought.� The truth is that donating blood is a minor inconvenience compared to the benefit it can bring to the recipient of the donation.� After reading Martha’s post this morning, I went online and found a Blood Source donation center right down the street from work.� I’ll be going in later this afternoon to donate.�

I’m sure that a lot of people who don’t donate blood are afraid of needles, or the pain.� I’m afraid of needles too.� Deathly afraid.� In fact, I started donating blood a few years ago in an attempt to get over my fear of needles.� It didn’t work - I’m still deathly afraid of needles, and can’t even look in the direction of my arm while the needle is in it.� But, after I donated the first time, the blood center sent me a letter that said that I was a universal donor and that my blood was a rare kind that they can use for premature babies.� And who can deny a premature baby of blood?� Not I!� So, I force myself to get over the fear every few months, because my minor inconvenience and discomfort can potentially save another person’s life.�

If you’re eligible to donate blood, I highly encourage you to find your nearest blood center and make an appointment as soon as you can.� If you’ve been making excuses for why you don’t do it, please reconsider - it is such a simple way to make a huge difference in someone’s life.�

Ah, back to California, land of millions of people and exceedingly hot weather.� Although it is home, nothing about living here feels “homey” to me after a trip to the state where supper is dinner and bars are a dessert.

If you had asked me ten years ago if I’d ever want to move back to North Dakota, my answer would have been “never in a million years!”� Now, after two trips home in the past year, I’m longing for the wide open spaces, friendly people, and slow, easygoing lifestyle that I was so eager to get away from as a teenager.� We won’t be moving back anytime soon, but I certainly have a new appreciation for the state that I’ll always consider to be home.�

I think part of the reason I’m a bit homesick these days is my family.� (whoa - never thought I’d say that either!)� When I moved away to college twelve years ago, my brothers and sisters were really young, and in my mind, a bunch of whiny little troublemakers who always messed up my stuff.� (and, to be fair, I was the mean, bossy older sister who was always ordering them around)� Now, they are all grown up and many of them have families of their own.� And, we get along surprisingly well.� It is very strange.� But nice.

Anyway.� The wedding - it was beautiful!� My little sister, Kim, was a gorgeous bride.� The wedding was in a cute little small town church, with unfortunate astroturf green carpet and poor lighting, so I don’t have any good pictures of the ceremony.�

��The bridal party, L-R (click to make big): Groom’s sister & her husband, my sister, groom’s brother, my sister, my brother, the bride, the groom, groom’s cousin, another sister, another brother, and me.�

Yes, you counted right - there are seven of us.� I wasn’t able to get a family picture with my brothers in it, but here are all the girls.� I love this picture of us.

��And, just because it is too cute not to share, a picture of Kim leading the bunny hop at the reception.� In ND, a wedding reception without the bunny hop just isn’t a wedding reception!

��As I suspected, I got very little lace knitting done on the trip.� Most of my downtime was actually spent working.� Ugh.� Only 5 more repeats of lace got done, with way too many left to go.� I’l post a picture of it tomorrow so you can see evidence of my slooow progress.� Thankfully I’m not knitting on any sort of deadline for this project.�

Knitting has been sparse in these early days of summer. I’m about half done with the “little flowers” section of the Estonian Garden Wrap. No pictures today though, because it looks an awful lot like the last picture I posted, plus just about 50% longer. The repetitiveness of the pattern is driving me crazy. At this point, I think I could probably knit it with my eyes closed, as long as I knew what row I was on. Which is good, I suppose - when I actually sit down to knit, I can really make good progress. But, it is boring, and I don’t do well with boring. I need some excitement. Patterning on both sides, nupps, variations in the pattern! I am really looking forward to finishing the middle section and moving on to the borders.

But, it’s going to be a while. We’re off to ND on Thursday for my sister’s wedding, and I’ve been so busy at work lately that my flight time and any spare time while we’re there is likely to be taken up with work, rather than knitting. I’ll bring the knitting just in case, but don’t anticipate I’ll get much done.

The next few weekends don’t look any more promising - 4th of July will be spent on the lake, then another out of town wedding, and a boating/camping trip. All good and fun, but I think my couch is getting a bit lonely!

This is a repeat of a tutorial I posted over at Sew I Knit back in March. I know a bunch of people who are making the Amy Butler Cabo Halter (including me!), which uses an invisible zipper. Hope this helps any of you who haven’t done it before!
***VERY IMPORTANT: An invisible zipper is inserted before your seam is sewn. Your pattern instructions may tell you to sew the seam up to the point where the zipper will begin. Don’t sew the seam, instead follow the directions below for an invisible zipper.

1. Before You Begin - Supplies & Preparation

To sew an invisible zipper, you will need (l-r): an invisible zipper foot, an invisible zipper, and your cut fabric pattern pieces.

Invisible zippers may not come in as many colors as regular zippers, however, because they are invisible, matching the zipper to the fabric exactly is not critical. When the zipper is closed, you will only see the small zipper pull. Choose the color zipper that has a zipper pull which best coordinates with your fabric. When you remove the zipper from its package and unzip it, the zipper teeth will form a ridge on the back side of the zipper, as shown below.

Before sewing the zipper, it must be ironed so that the back of the zipper is flat, and the ridge of the teeth is on the front side of the zipper. IMPORTANT: When ironing, use a low heat setting. The synthetic setting of your iron is best. When I ironed this zipper, the heat was too high, and the teeth melted together… it’s good thing this zipper was just for my tutorial!� The picture below is the back side of the zipper after it has been ironed. As you can see, it is nice and flat, and you can see the rows of stitching next to the zipper teeth.

Next, you will need to prepare your fabric so you can line up the zipper properly when you sew it. The teeth of the zipper must be exactly lined up with your 5/8″ seam allowance. To mark the seam allowance, you can machine baste along the seam allowance using contrasting thread, as shown below. If you do not want to baste, you can also iron the seam allowance to form a fold, or you can use dressmakers chalk or a fabric pen to mark the seam allowance.

2. The Invisible Zipper Foot

In order to install an invisible zipper, you MUST use an invisible zipper foot. When I purchased my zipper foot for this project, I could only find a cheap (~$3), plastic zipper foot from Coats & Clark. Figuring out the zipper foot caused me more trouble than any other part of the zipper project. The zipper foot came out of the package in four pieces - white, red, yellow, and blue. The white piece is the foot itself, and the other colored pieces are interchangeable parts that allow you to attach the foot to different types of sewing machines.

It took me a long time to figure out which interchangeable colored plastic piece to use for my machine. Finally, I determined that I had to remove the foot from my machine, and measure the distance from the center of the foot screw (at 2″ below) and the center of the needle (at 1.5″). Because this distance is 1/2″, I determined that my sewing machine required the red plastic attachment for the foot.

Hopefully you can tell from the picture below how the foot is attached. Once you have the foot assembled correctly, it works just like any other foot attachment.

Here is a front view of the foot. You can see there are two grooves in the front of the foot. These grooves help to guide the zipper teeth for the right and left side of the zipper. Also note that the bottom part of the foot slides along a horizontal bar. Be sure you have your needle lined up with the hole in the center of the foot before you begin, or you may break your needle.

Your invisible zipper foot may look slightly different from this one, and may be attached to your machine differently. However, it will have the same grooves, and will operate in the same manner.

3. Inserting the Zipper

Open the zipper completely. Pin the right half of the zipper to the right piece of your fabric. The top of the zipper (where the teeth end) should be 3/4″ from the top of the fabric. For the particular zipper that I was using, this meant that the top of the zipper tape exactly matched up with the top of my fabric. Start at the top of the zipper, and with the right side of your zipper (face down) facing the right side of your fabric (face up), pin the zipper tape to the seam allowance, being careful to place the edge of the zipper teeth exactly along the basted or marked seamline. Start sewing at the top of the zipper. Lower the presser foot, placing the ridge of the zipper (the teeth) under the right groove of the foot. Now you are ready to sew!

Sew along the length of the zipper, removing pins as you come to them, and keeping the teeth of the zipper lined up with the seam line. Stop sewing when you get to the zipper pull and cannot sew any further.

Next, you will sew the left half of the zipper to the left side of your fabric. Line up the top of the zipper and top of your fabric, as for the right side, leaving 3/4″ between the top of the zipper and the top of your fabric. Lower the presser foot onto the zipper, with the left groove of the foot over the zipper ridge.

Sew along the zipper, removing pins as you come to them. Be sure to keep the edge of the zipper teeth lined up with your marked seamline.

Stop sewing when you get to the zipper tab.

Voila - your zipper is sewn in! The only step remaining is to finish sewing the seam.

**Note that while I have not done so, you may choose to baste your zipper in place before sewing it.

4. Finishing the Seam

If you are using the Coats & Clark invisible zipper foot, or a similar zipper foot, you will need to reposition the foot in order to finish the seam. Slide the foot all the way to the left, so that the needle is positioned in the small groove on the right side of the foot. You may also choose to use a regular zipper foot for this part of the seam.

Close the zipper. With the right sides of your fabric together, position the foot as close to the zipper as you can. Be sure to pull the bottom tail of the zipper out of the way to the right so it does not get sewn into the seam. You will want to begin sewing the seam several stitches above the point where you stopped sewing the zipper. (Note in the picture below, I began sewing about 1/4″ above where my zipper seam ended. The longer stitches you see that end in the blue thread mess is my seam basting.)

Here is the finished seam. You can see the zipper stitching in brown, and the seam stitching in light blue. The zipper and seam stitching won’t match up exactly, but your goal is to get them as close as possible so as to avoid any gaping or bunching on the right side of your fabric at the bottom of the zipper.

After you’ve sewn the seam, you may also want to stitch the bottom ends of the zipper tape to the seam allowance to keep them laying flat.

5. The End Result

Zipper closed:

And, zipper open:

6. Internet Resources

There are lots of other tips and tricks for sewing invisible zippers - the tutorial above illustrates only the method I used. Here are some other resources you might find helpful when you sew your invisible zipper:

- Sewing.org

- Invisible Zippers

- Threads Magazine - Sewing in a Zipper

- Simplicity - How to sew an invisible zipper

- Needlepointers.org - How to insert an invisible zipper

Does that mean it *is* a fingernail clipper?� Because that is the sound I’m hearing from�the other side of�my cubicle wall right now… eeew.� Wasn’t that a Dilbert comic strip one time?� Ah, I’m living the dream!

There has been some progress on the Estonian Garden Wrap, but very little. I just have not been knitting much lately. Right now, I’m a little over 1/4 done with the center “little flowers” section of the wrap.

Here’s a close-up of the “little flowers”… does anyone see how these look like little flowers? Maybe little diamonds, but I swear I do not see a little flower in the pattern.

I’m just itching to knit the borders, with their P6Tog nupps. Perhaps if I spend more time knitting, I will get to the borders sometime this year.

And, just because, here’s a picture of one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve seen in California. Taken Friday night, as we were heading into the harbor. So pretty!

No posting for nearly two weeks means no knitting has been done in nearly two weeks. And I hate to go on too much about non-knitting, non-sewing stuff on here. But, I’ll at least show you why there has been no craftiness around here lately…

Oh yeah! It’s a boat! OUR boat! A few years old, but with low hours and in great condition.
We took it out for first time yesterday.

I’ve got a lot to learn when it comes to boating. First and foremost, I need to figure out how to go out on the water for a day without getting sunburned (ouch!) - not an easy task, since I’m allergic to most sunscreens. Then, there’s the problem of knitting while boating. Can it be done? Should it be done? I certainly hope so!