where the boys' leftovers become a purty vest for mommy

  

self-styled striped vest in Phildar Legende left over from the boys' giranimals jackets

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check it out!

Yes, I finally finished my leftovers vest. I even made a second one (during my vacation this fall) with some awesome pastel yarn oddballs that I first saw for sale at a local yarn mecca back in January 2003. I had originally talked myself out of buying them and Kerstin ended up picking them up. She hadn't started blogging back then and we'd never met, but she left a comment to my post, because she recognized that the yarn I passed up was the yarn she'd bought. A year later and she was a knitblogging star, was coming to our weekly knitting group, the Knitsmiths, and despite a few well-intentioned attempts, still hadn't gotten that yarn to work for her. So she gave it to me. Yes, Kerstin is that nice. But what am I to do with single skeins in different colors, I asked myself. Hey, I answered myself, don't I have a vest lying around nearly finished with the same m.o.? Well, let's just have another one of those.

While I'm waiting for the next batch of leftovers to fall into my lap, I'm eyeing the lovely colors of elann.com's Peruvian Highland Wool and thinking, it doesn't technically have to be leftovers, right? It is Christmas, after all!

Sometimes help comes from the yarn gods and sometimes from fluffy yarn buddies. Thanks Becky for the Legende leftovers! I used up my last bit of blue on the back and was able to finish the front of the phildar leftovers vest with the handful you sent over.

I decided for a wide v-neck and will be doing the neck and armholes to match the bottom edge. And now for a peek at why I'm giving up stripes for a while. Yikes!! This one is going to be slow to the finish line.

While I was sick, I made lots of headway on the leftovers vest. This was actually a pretty good cold for knitting. I felt alright when sitting on the sofa snuggled up in a blanket. Getting up was a different story though - something about head congestion at a five and a half foot altitude, I guess!

Anyway, after knitting in the round for the bottom (fewer ends to weave in that way), I separated at the armholes, and made up some armhole shaping. Had a few problems there remembering to do the shaping and keep changing the colors. I blame my sinuses! But since I wasn't going anywhere, I was able to rip and reknit a few times. So here's the finished back.

I decided on a few loose rules for the stripes and felt much better then about the level of randomness. I have lots of the orange and pink yarn (thanks, Kerrie!), so those colors repeat more often than the others. And have only a precious little bit of the chartreuse left, so that one serves as a highlight every four inches or so. Now I have to invent some sort of neck for the front while repeating the stripe sequence I made up for the back. I decided to wait on that until my head was all cleared!

Only a little headway was made on my chemo caps though. I left the one I started last week right at the point of beginning the crown decreases, so the beginning knitting students and I can go through that part together in the last class. For this week's class I started another chemo cap. I was showing the students how to join to knit in the round and knit some ribbing for the brim. So, in order to be able to knit along with them, I decided to start a new hat. I'm following a pattern in Monkeysuits for a hat that looks more like a bonnet. S was nice enough to try on what I've knit so far. He's not so good at holding still, though!

Finally, here it is November 12th and beyond buying yarn, I've made absolutely no headway on my Christmas presents: four scarves and two hats. Please tell me there are six weeks left until Christmas!! I'll have to start a 'one-present-a-week' schedule. Ugh!

Hey all you Phildar Fillies, how you doing out there? What are you planning on making? Did I miss any Phildar finishing (Claudia?)? Who else has cast on already?? I'm still conflicted about which Phildar project to start first. Instead of deciding, I picked up a couple more Phildar catalogs while I was on the other side of the Atlantic. I particularly like the Irlandais book with aran designs. One of my favorite designs from that book is being offered as a free pattern (in French) on the Phildar site: check it out! I may just have to add that one to my ever-growing list of phildar fashions to make.

With this much indecision, I should be able to make some serious progress on my other projects though. Like my Phildar leftovers vest. How do you like them stripes?!

Four days back from vacation and we're sleeping well enough that I got some knitting done!

Here's the ribbing on the leftovers vest. I liked the deep ribbing so much on sooty mango that I've decided to do it on this vest as well. I knit the ribbing with two strands held together, so it's nice and bulky. But I'll knit the rest of the body with a single strand, cause I'm not sure if I have enough yarn to do bulky for the whole thing. Plus, it would be blazing hot! For those of you who saw me working on the stripes at Knitsmiths yesterday, yes, I frogged all the stripes that I had finished. Random is hard for me. I think I'm going to have to do a lot of ripping to get the random right!!

And joining the new project parade is my mother's fandango vest. This is the first and largest of my Christmas projects, so I wanted to get it started right away. All I did was cast on, but knowing it's on the needles will help me get motivated to work on it.

Even on 8mm (US 11) needles, this is going to be a big project, as mom likes her clothes long and oversized. She also enjoys color, can you tell? Now we know where I get it!

I am so glad to be home and out of the one project duldrums. I was enjoying working on sooty mango, but since I got back and saw my stash I've been very excited about all the new projects I can start. A one project knitter I am not. And now, without any further ado, I present the new project parade.

First up, the leftovers.

Finishing up the boys' giranimals jackets reminded me that I had collected quite a few leftovers of the wool/alpaca yarn and was planning on making a fall vest for myself out of them. It's fall, so why not. And yes, phildar fillies, it is Phildar yarn! I've got leftovers in about five or six colors ranging from a half a skein to two skeins in each color, which means I'm going to try to put my need to order things aside and make random (gasp!) stripes. This is a big deal for me. And since I'm winging it with the stripes, I figure why not do the whole deal and wing it with the pattern. Instead of following a pattern, I'm going to try to copy the shaping of an old shell I have from a twinset I bought about 10 years ago. The cardigan is full of holes (I think the moths found it one summer) and is now in the garbage. And the poor little shell had an exciting, but miniturizing, dryer adventure a while back. Oops!

Stay tuned tomorrow for another new project and maybe even some actual knitting....

I think I've decided to go with this sequence for my stripes. I'm a little worried about selecting a stripe sequence beforehand, since I'm working with leftovers and if a color runs out, I won't be able to continue the stripes in the same sequence. The other option would be to make random stripes, but I suspect that I would be happier wearing a perfectly ordered and symmetrical sequence of stripes. But then again, I think that the stripes on Matt's High Helen sweater look great! Hmmm, maybe I'm just chicken. I suppose I could try really big stripes - one for each color until it runs out - but I'm not convinced that that big horizontal stripes would be very flattering (e.g.: this).

I want to be sure about what I'm doing before I really begin the vest, because, as we recall from the giranimals pocket incident, this yarn does not like to be ripped back. I can't afford to lose any yarn this time!

All work and no play is no way to knit. I'm trying to quiet the calls for progress coming from my inner knitting taskmaster by giving myself some time off from the knitting grind to enjoy designing some stripes for my leftovers vest. I plan to slow down my knitting pace a bit 'cause I've been stressing a little about all the projects I have on the needles (and in the stash) and how I want to be working on every single one of them right now. I'm hoping that playing around with the leftover colors and doing a bit of leisurely swatching for this project will give me a more carefree attitude towards my knitting.