Stashbusting: the olive crinkle top

Oops, the camera caught me cheating . . .

. . . trying to arrange the folds of the front pleat to hang just so, and maybe if I hold very, very still, I'll be able to get at least one photo in which this doesn't look like a maternity top.

Oh, okay, maybe not.

This is view B of Vogue 1412, a loose-fitting pullover top with some nice details.

It's all right, really, as this was one of my stashbusting exercises. I take a pattern that I think is unlikely to work well for me (no fault with the pattern usually, just not a good match for my body), and I use a fabric that I would like to see disappear from my stash. The pressure is off, and I most often learn something.

What I see here is that I could use a different fabric (I've been disenchanted with crinkle rayon since the first time I used it but already had this in my stash)—something more drapey, with some slip, that won't get hung up on whatever I'm wearing on the bottom. And, crucially, I could remove all that pleat business in the front and just make a center front seam below the buttoned section.




The back has some nice gathers where it meets the collar band.






















Another thing I learned was how to insert a little placket in the sleeve opening. But if you look closely at the first photo of this post you will see that I somehow got it backwards; the cuff should wrap the other way, but I couldn't make it happen because of how I put the placket in. That's okay: I get the idea and will get it right next time.

A couple of ideas on things to watch:

Seeing the movie Boyhood recently (which I liked a lot, by the way) reminded me of a very different but also longitudinally filmed series of documentary pieces that my husband and I watched obsessively some years ago. It made us laugh, it made us tear up, it made us squirm, and I still think about it surprisingly often. If you have not seen the Seven Up series, which follows the lives of a set of British children of various backgrounds over the years, do yourself a favor and take a look.

Also British and also really interesting: Whoa, have you seen Black Mirror? It’s like a Twilight Zone about where technology might take us, with a new story and different characters every episode. We’re watching it on Netflix. It is superbly done and absolutely addictive. But it’s dark, and when I say dark, I mean it. The first episode in particular could be difficult to stomach: I will just say that it goes where TV in the U.S. would never dare to go.

And an update on my mother-in-law’s cave house, for anyone who saw that note in my last post:

Danielle has had exactly one potential buyer show up to take a look at her home. And that was . . . Kat Von D. Not to namedrop, but I couldn’t resist telling about it. Apparently the tattooist liked it a lot, but she is looking at a number of properties in southern Spain, so we’ll see. We think it would be kind of hilarious if she buys it.