Quick Therapy

After a couple difficult weeks at work and then the church District-wide conference Friday evening and all day Saturday, I was ready to blow a gasket. First, on the way home from the conference on Saturday, I squeezed in a 4 mile hike to burn off some energy. Then after slacking for dinner by buying a pizza on the way home, I grabbed the yarns I bought in September at the Fiber Fest at Young's Dairy.

Winding it into balls was an interesting endeavor. I whined and complained to my oldest, a knitter, for quite a while. She told me to get over it. But it would have been infinitely easier with her swift and winder. Or at least an extra set of hands. 

I spread newspaper on the floor, laid out 72" of Sulky wash-away stabilizer, sprayed it with Sulky temporary adhesive and started randomly laying out the silk strip yarn. Then I layered the spun sari silk yarn on top. I sprayed it again, and then sandwiched a top layer of the stabilizer on top. (sorry, I hurt too bad crawling on the floor for an hour dorking with it, I didn't think of getting a picture of that!

 I added pins every few inches to keep it together. and started stitching in long rows to hold it together. I also stitched across the ends pretty early on. All in an effort to keep it from shifting too much. It still shifted, but it didn't end up being a big deal - I just re-arranged it while stitching.

Here's a close-up of stitching the sandwich.

I chose an interesting rayon thread I happened to have on hand by Coats & Clark, "Twist Rayon". It had pinks, teals, purples. While the colors faded from one to the other, there were always 2 colors twisted together, so it looks nice on the mixed yarns.

After washing it for 4 minutes in the washer on the super-gentle handwash cycle, I pulled it out, hung it on a hanger in the shower overnight, and it was ready to wear the next morning! It took about 2 hours total, and I felt so much better after completing it! I always feel better when I have time to sew!