Handmade Trifecta

In my journey of learning to knit I have found that I apparently knit backwards or something like that and that I am a total dunce when it comes to reading patterns. Sigh. So while I try and figure them out better I decided to wing it and make myself a hat. I'm reading I Capture the Castle, and it popped up in my Netflix queue recently so I watched the movie the other day. Cassandra had this hat that I am now obsessed with. It was this gorgeous knit cap in a dusky rosy cranberry and this grey-ish brown. I love it !(and searched for an hour for a picture of it. I couldn't find a yard in the same rosy red, but found the brown and set about knitting my own. Mine looks nothing like the one in the film. But I still love it. The one I made is my slouchier (like a beret) and I added the tassel to compensate the rather ridiculous point at the top (which I'm not sure what went wrong there), but it will be perfect for when the cooler weather actually decides to show up. And truthfully I was really impressed that I actually finished a knitting project! I'm working on a making scarf using the rest of the skeins from the hat, but it's only got about four or five inches to it right now.

(I'm really not having a bad day... I just look particularly glum for some reason...?)

And then there's this. The dress I refashioned from a horrid (and rather huge) dress I found at a rummage sale earlier this year. I may have payed a dollar for it. I've been wanting a jumper similar to this for a long time and finally began cutting and fixing this two weeks ago. I'm not 100% thrilled with the result, but now I know what to do differently next time. The skirt it too narrow, I hate the back panel thing, It needs to be just a bit shorter, the straps should cross in the back, the front should be more sculpted... But I'm not counting it as a failure because I will wear it, especially for around the house kind of things, and considering the way I worked with the odd shape of the dress (I have a picture somewhere, but can't find it...), I'm happy enough. We'll call this a working prototype.

As for the blouse, this was a shirt I bought at some thrift store a while ago that just looked boring to me. I wanted to add a Peter Pan collar originally, but I really like it this way. All I did was add lace around the neckline, and hand stitch together a bow of black velvet and stitch it to the shirt. Easy as pie, and much cuter now. Everyone who's seen it has really loved the blouse! I was told by one person that I looked like Dorothy Gale, and by another that I looked like grown up Raggedy Ann. Either way, I'm pretty happy.