Finish all the things and start a game

I finished Dad's vest in time to give it to him on his birthday! and it fits! and he likes it!

My apologies for using so many exclamation points, but this project has been weighing on me for almost three years and now it's done and all is well!  I have to find a new project to promote into the drawer it has been occupying.  Probably this year's Christmas stocking knitting.

Finishing this project, and having been monogamous to it for about three weeks, seems to have inspired me to finish up several other things.

2012 Washcloths May edition:

 Ribbed chevron pattern, April 27 from my pattern-a-day calendar.  This was a hard pattern to "read" - I had to keep the pattern on hand for a long time instead of just being able to follow the knitting.  It used my regular dishcloth yarn of Sugar 'n Cream.
Purse socks:

 Universal toe-up formula with 2x2 ribbed legs.  I started these sometime last fall, which may mean that my purse sock speed is increasing.  My brother gave me the yarn for Christmas a few years ago.  I've already cast on the next pair of purse socks.  These will be top-down and for the husband.  A nice dark green yarn that seems to be a single ply.

Baby socks for the Lil One:

The pattern for these was Toddler Socks from the blog Creating a Family Home.  I used the yarn left over from the pair of socks I knit several years ago to learn the two-at-a-time technique (on dpns).

 I have recently discovered the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup group on Ravelry.  I had heard about it in passing before, but this past month I listened to a description of it on an older episode of The Well-Knitted Life podcast, and checked it out.  It's a game where knitters join in, are sorted into houses as in Hogwarts, and earn points for their houses by knitting or crocheting.  Each term is three months long, and each month there are eight classes offered; each class gives a homework assignment, usually with several options.  You have to knit (or crochet) something within that month and make an argument that it meets the homework requirements.  The idea is that each student turns in at least one class assignment per month to qualify to get sorted and keep playing next term.  There are also Quidditch teams, challenges, WIPs can be turned in to detention, and so on and so on.  After getting sucked in and wandering around all the discussion threads and links for quite some time, I joined the group.  Because I joined after term started, I didn't get sorted into a house and my status is "Not Quite a First-Year" -- points I earn don't count toward any house's total, but they could help me earn priority for sorting next term.

It's all very complex, but also a lot of fun.  If you like the Harry Potter stories and might like to use that world as a framework for some knitting challenges, I encourage you to check out the group.  They do a much better job of explaining things than my little outline, and everyone is happy to answer questions and help newbies get started.

So anyhow, I joined and I'm really enjoying it.  I turned in the squishies for the assignment in Care of Magical Creatures.  May's prompt was about studying thestrals and abraxan (two kinds of flying horses), so one of the options was to knit something using a worsted weight "workhorse" yarn.  The squishes were knit out of worsted weight, and I knit them entirely within the month of May, so they qualified.  The toddler socks met the Mini-sock Challenge for Quidditch -- no more than four inches tall and long, and knit between May 18-28 -- so I turned those in as well.

Hopefully this trend of knitting efficiently and finishing things will continue!

Yarn Along - More diamonds and a dog (and cat)

I'm joining in Ginny's Yarn Along again this week.  Check it out to see lots of great knitting and books.

There hasn't been much to report over here. Just lots and lots of diamonds in this green heathered yarn that I can't seem to photograph accurately.  I've been remarkably monogamous with this vest project.  I made the back in 12 days, at which point it became remotely possible to finish in time for Dad's birthday, so I've spent every knitting opportunity working on it.

I think I may be able to bind off the front and block the pieces today.  Then the plan will be to sew the seams and have him try it on this weekend when we celebrate his birthday (with a trip to the Rollerderby!  I'm excited for my first derby).  That way I'll know if more work needs to be done before I knit up the bands around the neck and armholes.

I've made this iteration quite a bit smaller than the previous one.  Above is the back with the yarn that used to be part of it but wasn't needed this time.  Below is how much of the front I was able to make with that yarn; almost two pattern repeats.

I think I'll have an entire skein of Encore Worsted left over when I'm done.  Hopefully I haven't made it too small and it will block out exactly right.

In the past day or so I inhaled The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon.  I've read this book once before and it went really quickly then, too.  It's one of those that sucks me into the world of the story and the only way to escape is to plow through.  We're reading this in our book club, and I'm looking forward to discussing it this weekend.  Such a different way of seeing the world.

Yarn Along - Bowling Avenue

~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs.  I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. 

I'm joining in Ginny's Yarn Along again this week.

A couple of weeks ago I saw that Ann Shayne of Mason-Dixon Knitting fame was offering free promotional copies of her soon-to-be-released first novel to the first 50 commenters on the post updating the book's progress.  I thought it was way past the 50 mark, but I left a comment anyway, to say that I'm really looking forward to reading her novel.  About a week later in a rare moment of actually reading my e-mail, I was amazed to find an e-mail from Ann with a PDF attachment.  I am so excited to have gotten a freeola copy of Bowling Avenue.  It absolutely made my day.  I didn't have time to read it just then, and am finally getting to  now.  Very intrigued so far.  I'll probably write more about it in another Yarn Along post soon.  And gosh, that Ann Shayne sure is attractive and friendly.

On the knitting front I've been blasting away on the do-over of Dad's vest and am almost done with the first skein.  Thankfully I took some good notes on Ravelry the first time I knitted this, and am not having to repeat some of the fiddling I tried before.

Do-Over

I made my dad a sweater vest for Christmas.  This was back in 2009.  It was a perfectly fine vest, but it came out too big.  It wasn't a gauge error, but mis-estimations and too much rounding on my part.  The project has been in time out for two full years now.  Dad has a major birthday coming up next month, and I've been thinking of fixing his vest in time for his birthday.  Now that I've thought about it long enough that I probably don't have enough time, I've gotten started.

I ripped it all out.  This is the first time I have taken a finished project and frogged it.  It may have been possible to cut the vest and sew it together to the correct size, but I've never done that and didn't have enough confidence that it would come out well.  I do know that if I have the yarn back, I can knit a smaller vest.  So I unraveled the ribbing around the neck and armholes, picked out the seams, and frogged the entire back. 

Now I haven't done this before, but I have the impression that it would be a good idea to wash the yarn to help it relax and undo some of the kinks.  So here it is tied into skeins and ready for its bath, and then soaking in the sink.

When I hung it up to dry I tried using clothes hangers to weight down the skeins.  It worked fairly well, but I think I would have needed more weight to take out all the kinks.  It made for a strange set of wind chimes in our bathroom for a few days.

Yesterday the yarn was finally dry and I wound it into center-pull balls.  Here it is with the yet-to-be-frogged front of the vest, and the first two rows of the second attempt.  This time I have a vest of his that fits him well, so I'll be constantly comparing to that, instead of working from a sticky note of measurements.

I'm hopeful.