Dancing Chicken Fried Steak

As a theatrical costume designer and technician I find myself saying odd things at times. "It'll never read," is a favorite. Whenever there is a tiny spot on a costume, a slight bumble in setting in a zipper, you must ask yourself, "Will it read?" At the distance the audience sits from the action of the play, will they be able to see or "read" it? This isn't to say that our standards are lowered in this practice but rather that it is 2am and tech rehearsal starts at 11am and we are in desparate need of sleep. I say we, but this past week it was really only me in the costume shop at work. In the effort to help save the theatre money I elected to not only design and pattern a costume but to do all the construction myself. Although it took a lot of energy it was great fun to sit down and sew rather than delegating the project to someone else.

The costume in question being for a play called, "I Am My Own Wife." Without going into to much detail - it is a one man show about a transvestite, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survives not only the Nazi regime in Germany but the Communists as well. The one actor plays not only Charlotte but also numerous other characters in the course of two acts. The costume? A "simple" black housedress. The challenge has been to design something that works for the main character but also suggests the other characters as well. Since it was just the one costume I had to luxury of arranging two mockup fittings to perfect the fit of the dress. Today I finished constructing the final garment and saw it on the actor briefly to mark the hem, and I'm very pleased with it. But really when it comes down to it, I made a dress for a man to wear. Fun! And as the title of this blog suggests, I've also made a dancing chicken fried steak costume as well. He got a laugh every single performance!
Now for the knitting! I've made a little progress on the Pearl Buck Swing Jacket. Here you can see that I've gotten into the chart for the back and I'm finding reading it much easier going than I expected. However...Pearl is on US 6 needles. The Longhorn hoodie was on 6's as well, and the Log Cabin blanket I'm knitting is on...you guessed it, size 6 needles. So I just couldn't help it, I caved and cast on another project! I needed something fast and loose on big needles that would just fly right off them.
So I turned to the stash for gratification and this jumped out at me - very yummy Patagonia organic cotton (it begged me to buy it when I saw it, I couldn't leave the store without it) out of which I'm knitting the Waterlily pattern by Katy Ryan from the Spring 2006 IK. I don't have quite the yardage called for so I've adjusted the pattern to make it a smidge shorter. It's a long sleeveless top and as designed it would have hit at the widest part of my hips so the shorter length should be more flattering on me. Although I feel bad about cheating on Pearl I can look at it this way: It should be a FO lickity-split.
The last bit of knitting news is stash related. Remember the lovely Habu Bamboo that I won at the KnitFlix night? I was trying to decide what it might become and ultimately decided that it needed a companion to round it out. After careful perusing at the LYS another Habu came to the rescue and told me that together they could become ein schoenes Schal - a beautiful scarf. In particular, a Scribble scarf a la the MDK knitting book. Gluckliche stricken! (Happy knitting!)
Tschuss!
P.S. Everything is healing up nicely where my wisdom teeth once were, and the best part? No more pain!