A few things

1. A few days after my last blog post, DD1 came down with some kind of flu-like thing. I worried it was H1N1, as it included fever, headache, coughing, congestion and gastro ickiness. She was just getting over it when it hit DD2. Fortunately, the little one is now past the scary fever stage and is working through the annoying cough. Needless to say, little was going to be done in the way of blogging through all this. I'm still waiting for DH and I to get it, but at the moment there are no medical crises. It's a pleasant lull.
   
   (I don't think it was H1N1...we ended up taking DD2 to the hospital for the high fever, and they did a swab. We would have gotten a call by now if the results contained anything alarming.)
   
   
2. I'm now on Twitter.
   
   
3. New knitting pictures!

Butterfly Cowboy Astronaut Vest for DD1

Actually managed to find some appropriate buttons in my stash. They're a little tight for the holes, but DD1 says she can manage, so I went ahead and put 'em on yesterday.


completed


back view

Ice Queen for DD1's teacher

This was already completed and given away last month, but I haven't posted the final pictures yet. Here they are:


completed


'in action', front view


'in action', side view

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.