First Impression Book Review: Vintage Design Workshop by Geraldine Warner

Whenever I go to Half Price Books, the knitting section is always my first stop. Sometimes I have luck and find something of interest other days I don't. During my last trip, when I picked up, Vintage Design Workshop: Knitting Techniques for Modern Style by Geraldine Warner, I knew I had luck on my side that day.

Usually when I find a vintage knitting book, it's a collection of updated vintage patterns, which I love, but this book is different. Vintage Design Workshop is exactly what it says it is. It shows you step by step what you should do while knitting from a vintage pattern. It has everything from how to assess your vintage knitting pattern to how to adapt a modern pattern to give it a vintage look.

My latest vintage knitting project

My favorite section, in the entire book is Chapter 2: Substituting Yarns. This has been one of my biggest stumbling blocks when knitting from a vintage pattern. In vintage knitting patterns, there's very little information on the yarn. Usually, it just has something along the lines of, "12 balls of Patons Confetti Flecks". Not too terribly helpful. In this book, Warner gives you advice on how to figure out what type of yarn was used from analyzing a series of things from the gauge given to the description of the garmet. Then she has a whole section dedicated to learning what you can from the preview picture. I really could have used this section a few months ago when I started my most recent vintage project.

This is all just a first impression, I can only assume I'll love this book more once I have time to actually use it on a real project. But just from skimming through it, I would highly recommend it. And even though I got it at a deep discount, this is a book I would definitely feel good about paying full price for.

Have you guys purchased this book? How do you like it?

To keep up with my next vintage knitting projects follow me on Instagram.

WIP Wednesday: Poison Ivy

After spending almost two weeks without knitting on my most recent WIP, I decided to pick it back up over the weekend.

Initially, I wasn't overly excited about the way this sweater was turning out. It didn't look like the picture in the booklet. I had felt this way after I'd washed and blocked my swatch, too. I still don't think it looks like it does in the booklet, but I'm okay with that now.

I'm currently about to split the front and back, and I've made a promise to myself that when I finish the fronts, then I get to start on my annual Christmas sweater. Things like that always get me going when I've stalled out on a project.

What are some things that kick you into gear when you're less than motivated to finish a project? Let me know in the comment section.

As always follow me on Instagram to keep up to date on all my projects.

WIP Wednesday: Practice swatch

It's been over a week since I've knit on anything. When nothing's going right, it's good to take a step back for a while. I feel like my first project getting back into the swing of things should be one of my favorite things to knit. I love knitting color work, and it's about that time for me to start thinking about my annual Christmas sweater. I've planned out the color pattern and even picked out the yarn. But there are a couple things I plan on doing that I've never done.

I’ve said it before, but I am a big fan of practicing a technique before coming to it in my project. There's nothing more stressful than attempting something I'm not too sure about on a project I've already put a lot of time and effort into. Plus, if I know I'm coming to something I hadn't planned for, I put it off then a year later wonder what happened to that one sweater I was knitting that one time.

For my Christmas sweater there are two things that are semi new to me. Small diameter stranded color work and steeking with superwash yarn.

In the past when I've done small circumference stranded knitting, the areas where the joins were had awful tension issues. Apparently, there's a technique to fix that. And it's so easy, but did take some getting used to.

I've done steeks before, my very first garment I knit had steeks. Cutting my knitting is no big deal to me. BUT I've never secured my steek with a sewing machine and it’s a must when you're using superwash, non-sticky yarn. Can you imagine me cutting into my knitting, probably on Christmas Eve, and having my sweater starting to fall apart? It makes me sick just thinking about it.

What do you guys do when you're unfamiliar with a technique in a project. Do you dive right in and worry about it when you get to it, or do you plan ahead and practice it first?

Don't for get to follow me on  Instagram to keep up with all my swatch knitting.

WIP Wednesday: We were on a break!

This past weekend has been the weekend from knitting hell. If it could go wrong, it did go wrong.

First of all, my current sweater project just isn't doing it for me right now. I'm not hating it enough to rip it out, but not loving it enough to continue on. So, there it sits in the same spot I left it on Friday night, mocking me. Okay, not THAT bad, right?

If you've been following me on Instagram, you'll know I've been having a lot of feelings about The Flash and have been wanting to knit something inspired by the comic books. Well, after several charts and swatches later… I'll just let my Instagram Story to speak for itself.

Honestly, I applaud all knitwear designers for having the patience and perseverance to actually get just a prototype done. Maybe this is my own fault for taking on something like this after my sweater issue.

After my designing reality check, I decided I needed to cleanse my palate with a simple vanilla sock. How could I go wrong with that? I was knitting along when I decided I should try it on. Even though it’s for my sister, I figured I'd get a good guess if the cuff would be long enough. I put it on and it was too small… My sister has bigger feet than me.

For whatever reason, in my delirium, I started trying on and measuring all the socks I've knit so far. I'm not sure what I was trying to prove, but I stayed up well past two in the morning trying to prove it.

That was pretty much my last straw. And I have to say, I think it's time I take a short break from knitting. Not a long one. Maybe just a couple more days, I think that's best so I don't try to force it and then get myself a case of the yips.

What do you guys do when your knitting just isn't going your way?

If you want to stay up to date on all this knitting drama follow me on Instagram.

Blog relaunch + free printable

Earlier in the summer, I made the decision to revamp my blog. That included, coming up with a precise plan on what I'll be posting, and how often. It also meant getting serious and buying my own domain name. Welcome to thisgalknows.com! I'm super excited!

Here at the new and improved This Gal Knows, I'll be sharing current works in progresses and recent finished objects for both knitting and sewing. You'll even get to follow along on this new baking thing I've gotten myself into. Some of my other craftiness will shine through, too. And don't be surprised if I come at you guys crying over some comic book.

My main goal for This Gal Knows has always been for it to be a place where knitters and sewists can go to get their questions answered. But I feel like the internet is already full of great knitting resources and tutorials. Do we really need yet another site with the same information? BUT what I do think we all need is an index of these resources. That's why I've started creating masterlists of some of my favorite resources. This is going to be an ongoing project for me because, yikes, there are A LOT of great resources out there.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about this new relaunch. To celebrate I'm giving you guys a free notepad printable. I have so many of these things designed, so keep your eyes peeled for more of these over the coming weeks...months...maybe years. You can never have enough notepads, right?

To make the notepad, I printed about 15 full pages on the back side of some scratch paper I had laying around. Then I followed Sea Lemon's How To Make Your Own Notepad tutorial. It's really straight forward, and feels like a great way to ease into bookbinding, if you're into that sort of thing. One thing I do have to say is use just the one coat of glue. I did two coats of glue and it's really difficult to pull the pages off.

I would also recommend using a straight edge to cut the sheets, I used scissors, and as you can see, things got a little wobbly near the edges.

One thing I like to do, is keep a stick of restickable glue on hand, then I can turn these into quick little sticky notes. Just a warning though, the glue leaves a sticky residue behind, so I wouldn't use these homemade sticky notes to put inside any important books.

What's included
[3] 7.5" x 5.5" notepads/sticky notes
[1] 3"x 3" notepads/sticky notes

Printing tips

• Print on high quality for best results
• To print just one page, use the page range functions in the print dialog and choose the page number of the style you want.

If you have any questions please comment here. And as always, to keep up to date with me and my crafts follow me on Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

This Gal Bakes: Donuts

Apparently I’ve been bitten by the baking bug. And up until a couple months ago, I didn’t even know I liked baking. Ever since, I’ve had one major thing on my baking bucket list, donuts. A couple of weeks ago I did make up a batch of cake donuts, which were AMAZING. But I really wanted to try my hand at raised donuts, which involved yeast, and that terrified me. Turns out there was nothing to worry about.

It just so happens, I put my fears aside just in time to celebrate National Donut Day, which apparently has a rich history. The holiday was created in 1938 by the Salvation Army to honor their World War I women volunteers. During the War, volunteers known as the ‘Dough Girls’, would take donuts overseas to boost soldier morale. The tradition was picked up again during the second World War by the Red Cross. Pretty interesting, right?

I also made the chocolate glaze from scratch. It’s surprising how easy it was. Melt some butter and chocolate together, add a bunch of powdered sugar, then slowly add some milk until you get a consistency you’re happy with and that’s it. The exact recipe is from good ol’ Betty Crocker circa 1980. I haven't been able to find a recipe like it online.

I love the look of a sprinkled donut, but I’m not a fan of eating them. So, I sprinkled a couple anyway for photo purposes only to realize the sprinkles I found in the cupboard were a little bit less than fresh... Luckily, I only sprinkled a few.

As for the donuts themselves, they were insanely easy, too. Yeast and all. I don’t know why I decided to do this, but I followed a cinnamon roll recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction for the dough then sort of just winged it from there. After mixing the dough, I just did everything I did for my cake donuts. Rolled out the dough to 3/8 of and inch, cut the donuts. Then I went back to the cinnamon roll recipe for rising times, about 90 minutes. After they had risen, I fried them in a large pot of oil, as per cake donut recipe. And I'm really happy with the results.

The only complaint I have about these are they're a little dense. After a little bit of research I learned, it’s either because I didn’t let them rise enough, or I added too much flour. Probably a combination of the two. Either way, it was a good learning process and the results are still totally edible.

Recipes Used
Dough: Easy Cinnamon Rolls (from scratch) by Sally's Baking Addiction
Glaze: Chocolate Glaze by Betty Crocker (1980)
Frying Instructions: Cake and Raised Donuts by Betty Crocker (1980)

I’m still new to baking, but I’m thinking this new hobby is another one that’s going to stick. Either way, if you want to follow my journey follow me on Instagram and see all the things I’m making that don’t make it to the blog.

This Gal's Top 3 (Free) Sweater Knitting Resources

I'm sure you've heard it before, “if you can knit a tube and do increases and decreases you can knit a sweater. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Once a knitter wants to move onto knitting a sweater that's the first thing seasoned knitters tell them. The thing with that advice is, most things that worry knitters about their first sweaters isn't the actual knitting part. Their thoughts usually are, “I'm about to spend who knows how long on this sweater, what if it doesn't fit.” It's probably the first time most people are working with gauge, multiple measurements and modifying a pattern to work best for them. A lot of times, it's the first time a knitter is even working with gauge. There's a lot of uncharted waters for a new sweater knitter. Luckily, there are tons of free resources around on the Internet to help us along the way. Here are three of my favorites.

Nina’s Design Your Own Sweater Class on KnitPicks.com - I love this resource because each lesson comes with a PDF fill in the blank worksheet. Whenever I plan out a sweater I feel like I'm forgetting something important and I'll run into roadblocks later down the road. With the print outs, there’s less room for error when I’m planning the numbers needed for my sweater. I'm not going to say there's no room for error, because believe me, sometimes I can overlook things that are right in front of me like I'm getting paid to do it. Lets just say, it's harder to overlook a certain measurement or math formula, since everything is right there and there's less things that I have to remember off hand.



Thinking Beyond the Pattern: Knit Smarter not faster on Knitty.com - Thinking Beyond the Pattern by Jenna Wilson, is an entire series on understanding the knitting pattern and grading any given sweater design. Most of the series is geared towards aspiring designers, but it all can be applied for the casual knitter, too. The article I seem to be reading the most is, 'Knit Smarter Not Faster'. I love it because it puts that advice you always get about reading through the pattern into context. It takes you through what to look for when reading a pattern and even talks about how to use schematics to your advantage. And Jenna gives you helpful tips on what to do if your pattern doesn't have a schematic. I do recommend looking at the entire series, it’s incredibly thorough and has tons of information. The only thing is, for me, it can get pretty heavy and after awhile it becomes information overload. So, I suggest to take it in small chunks.

By Gum By Golly Fit & Knit a 40s Pullover Series - Although this tutorial series is geared towards knitting a specific sweater pattern all the information there can be applied to any sweater pattern, modern or vintage. This is probably my most used online resource when I’m planning to knit a sweater. I'm not sure what it is, but there's something about having someone else walk you through their process that's so helpful. Being able to see an actual sweater in progress as opposed to a schematic helped me grasp some of the concepts that I just couldn't get a handle on. Tasha’s writing is also super easy to follow and isn’t weighed down with too much technical jargon that makes me lose interest.

Those are some of my favorites. What are yours? I'm currently working on a sweater resource masterlist, so let me know in the comments below so we can build a comprehensive list.

If you want to keep up on my sweater progress follow me on Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

Fresh Off the Needles: Cinnamon Muffin Sweater

Of course I'd finish this sweater right when it's warming up outside. Admittedly, I've already worn the hell out it already.  And I'm not going to complain too much about the warm weather. I'm sure temperatures will inevitably drop and it'll make an appearance or two throughout Spring.

I'm proud of myself for two things regarding this sweater. The first, I swatched not once but three times, four times if you count the cable pattern I had originally wanted to do.

And the second thing is that I finished this in exactly a month. My first two sweaters took me well over three months each to knit. I think this has to do with the fact that I took time to swatch, measure a sweatshirt that I wanted to mimic the size of and then planned out every step. That way, when I got to the armhole and shoulder shaping I didn't have to stop and do calculations. Or what happened in the past, I didn't get to the shaping and put off doing the calculations for months. It was just smooth sailing.

Like I said before, I originally wanted a super intense cabled sweater from a vintage pattern, but after swatching the cable pattern, I decided it was just more than I wanted to take on right now. Even though I've knit two other not so simple sweaters, I'm still not overly familiar with sweater construction. And although the cable pattern was fairly easy to follow, I knew I'd abandon the sweater once it came time for the shaping.

Now, I have a sweater that I love, and a ton more confidence in my sweater knitting. For the sweater I followed instructions for the gauge 5, 32 inch bust in The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns by Ann Budd. It's a great book and I made very few changes to the original instructions. Mostly, I just knit the body a bit longer, put some length in the armholes and added a bit more shaping to the sleeves.

Instead of knitting the sleeves flat, then setting them in I followed the tutorial on By Gum By Golly for set in sleeves from the top down. They were super, super easy the only thing I did different was used German Short Rows instead of the Wrap and Turn shown. I do wish I had remembered to go down a needle size when I worked flat, my flat gauge is significantly different from my in the round gauge.

Overall, I'm really happy with the results. I would maybe knit the body a tad bit longer as well as the sleeves. I'd also maybe knit the bottom ribbing a little bit longer closer to two inches instead of the one inch I did. With that said, it's already proven to still be totally wearable as is though.

The yarn I used was Knit Picks City Tweed DK in the Habanero colorway. There's been quite the debate around the house about what the actual color of this yarn is. Some members of my family say it's brown and I had always thought it was orange. I've decided it's an orangey brown, so I dubbed this sweater my Cinnamon Muffin sweater. Whatever color it is I love it, but don't love that I can't figure out how to photograph it correctly or consistently. Any tips?

I'm really super pumped about having an everyday sweater to wear instead of my stranded Christmas themed ones that I wear once a year. I already have so many outfits planned for this sweater and I can't wait to wear them. How do you guys style your favorite handknits?

For more detailed information, check out my Ravelry project page. And as always follow me on Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest for work in progress pics and to see what other non-knitting things I'm working on..