Sigh --

This is the "Good Dame Eve's Cap" from the July/August 2012 Piecework.  Well, it's supposed to be, anyway.  As you can see, the amount of yarn listed in the instructions is not enough, by at least a hand-span, for the stitches on the dpn to dash over and meet the provisional cast-on of the brim.  And it is the recommended yarn.  Very annoying.

The hat is to be part of David's Renaissance Faire costume.  (Mine is finished except for sewing the hooks and eyes on the jacket, but yet to be photographed.)  Was thinking I'd make something along the lines of a contemporary Swedish soldier, and David is game for that, good man,

or something like this Alsatian man's garb, which picture I snagged some time ago from Jen at Festive Attyre, although the description and all but one of the images of her version seem to have disappeared.

I Googled the "Good Dame Eve's" pattern to see if anyone else had this problem, but could not find that anyone has finished one.  (Same with the muffatees!  How is it that I am the only one on the internet to be making these projects?  Is my taste that bizarre? -- actually, don't answer that, please.)

The ironic thing is that I have been working on another Piecework pattern, the Civil-War era sontag, but trying to adapt the pattern to fit myself (since it is written for a size S women's, and I am not -- small, I mean), and to fit the gauge of the wool I've got, and I'm just having an unconscionable amount of trouble.  You'd think I could figure out a simple rate of increase, but it's been wrong twice already, and I was getting frustrated.  I thought, "what about that Tudor hat, then -- I've got the recommended wool, it's bound to be right!"  Gaah.

I have had a recent success, although not in knitting -- Julia is in the 5th-6th grade play this spring, which is "Bye Bye Birdie" and the kids were asked to get saddle shoes.  I had, after my wedding-shoe-shopping ordeal late last summer, ended up with an $86 credit at Zappo's, so I thought, "oh well," and ordered Julia a  pair of Bass saddle shoes.  These proved to be too big, and they didn't have the next size down, so I sent them back and decided to find a pair of cheap canvas sneakers and convert them.  I don't know if this was my own idea or had been floating around in the back of my mind for a while after seeing it somewhere, but there are a number of crafty people on the internet who've done this.  I was planning to go to Michael's and get some fabric paint, but then I thought, "heck, laundry marker!" and did that instead.

These are the Mossimo canvas sneakers from Target, $14.99 the pair.  They also have the Circo brand, but there were no white ones in Julia's size.

I used Sharpie Rub-a-Dub laundry marker, in case we need to wash the shoes.  The marker does stain the grommets, so care should be taken at that spot.  Other than that, it was only a matter of folding the canvas a little at the seams, in order to get the colored part right underneath and look really smooth, and then filling it all in.

I've always liked coloring, so this was rather fun.  I remembered as I was doing this that all of my finished pictures had really dark outlines then lighter in the middle where I colored them in!

I did two "coats" on the shoes as the marker was a bit irregular in strong light, but this took only a few hours altogether.  I think that marker would generally be much easier than paint -- plus no masking necessary! -- although it does depend on the color you choose.  Laura looked at these and said, "I want some ... maybe purple!"

Comments

[wendy]

Keds. period. Nice work.

[=Tamar]

At least two people on Ravelry (found on Google) have tried it, but tried doesn't mean finished. I suppose you've already thought of ripping back the lining a bit, substituting some other yarn (maybe the same color in a different dye lot, if available) for enough rounds, and using the yarn thus freed to complete the edge, which is the part that will be visible in use.