Sidetracked by a stashbuster

Of course, the last two months of un-blogged-about projects just wouldn't be characteristic of me unless there was a project that deviated from my to-do list. :)

Striped vest for DD1

So I was on Ravelry, searching for patterns (I can't remember now why, though), and I rediscovered Fawn Pea's "Cowgirl Butterfly Astronaut Vest" pattern, which I'd queued or favourited some time ago when I first saw it. It's really lovely. My older daughter was watching me search at the time, and suddenly I found myself saying, "Hey! Want me to make this for you?" :)

I dived into the stash for the Plymouth Encore Worsted I had leftover from the poncho I'd made for her over four years ago. The yarn and pattern for the poncho were a birthday gift from my MIL. She had intended that I get a project for me, but the poncho pattern was so cute and fun, and I chose a bunch of colours for that would look stunning with my daughter's fair "summer" complexion and bright blue eyes. (MIL even bought me the needles for the project so I could start it on the drive back to her house from the yarn store! I absolutely devoured the project and finished it up really quickly, like in about a week.) There was a lot of yarn remaining in each colour, and I figured I could do stripes all the way up the vest to get rid of most of it.

The pattern instructions are not the clearest or error-free in the world, but it was definitely muddle-through-able, and I was going great guns on it until I got all the way to the shaping for the back and noticed that I seemed to have too many stitches. "That's weird," I thought, "what the heck is going on?" I was all confused until I realised that I had missed a (very clearly-stated) instruction way back on row NINE to do a whole bunch of decreases. BRILLIANT.

Riiiiip.

Sigh.

But it is a fast project, and I whipped through the re-making pretty quickly. I'm now at the finishing stage - I have a final bunch of ends to sew in and then I need to find and sew on buttons. It's been on hold for a few weeks now while I've been working on deadline-driven stuff, but I'll pick it up again soon, or I shall face the wrath of my daughter, who asked about it yesterday. :) Here's how it looks so far:



I'm not sure whether I love the stripes, but DD1 thinks it's fabulous, which of course is what really matters. It's a great vest to throw over summer clothes when you need a little extra warmth in the morning or evening.