Eek! Steek!

You have to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.

-Abraham Lincoln

I took full advantage of a Sunday off yesterday to get some stuff done. I made the cranberry sauce and pie crusts for Thanksgiving, a big pot of chicken stock, and - most importantly as far as this blog is concerned - my first steek.

The parts I was most scared of turned out to be the smallest piece of the whole process. I wanted a sewn steek with my superwash fingering weight wool (Dale Baby Ull), so I used this Knitty tutorial as a guideline. As you may recall, I'm still a little frightened of my sewing machine, and I was nervous about that aspect. Turns out, it was pretty easy. These may not be the straightest lines in the world, but they were close enough.What I hadn't realized was how much work it would be to then sew the sleeve in - twice. Time one went fine. Fingering weight, careful, but what I'm used to. Time two was sewing down the facing (and then fully realizing what happens in a steek - ingenious!). I also learned an important truth: Whipstich is awesome. And as the day turned into night, and I had to start using my flash, I had a gorgeous sewn-in sleeve for my steek. Now I only have to finish that second sleeve up there and cut the other steek. (I've sewn it already - I wanted to use good daytime light on a weekend day.)

. . . And I need to hold myself back from buying oodles and oodles of Dale yarns and patterns. This is fun. And easy. And did I mention fun? Tell me - is it still fun if you make it in a man's size instead of a toddler's?