This one’s been a long time coming. I am a failure at knit-alongs. Ages ago, a friend and I decided to make handspun striped vests. As with our The Great Adult Tomten Two Person Knit-Along, Jared finished his, and I, uh, did not. (That thing looks awful on me, I just can’t do bulky garter stitch with my bewbs.) Striped vests? Same thing. We stopped planning knit-alongs after that. Ha!

Jared, I’m done! He looks cute in it! I’m super late to this game, obviously, as Jared’s vest is now a pattern and 22 people have knit it/are knitting it, including at least one other in my fiber, the lovely David’s, which is super fun to see. I didn’t use his pattern, but they’re totally the same idea.

The Info:
Pattern: my made-to-measure
Yarn: my handspun Spicery Shetland wool yarn and Shetland yarn from Whitney Acres Farm, which is down the road from the pizza place in the next town over.
Needles: 7 for the body and 5 for the ribbing
Size: 40″ with no ease- the fit reminds me of a schoolboy’s vest

This vest was knit in the round with steeks to preserve the color shifts on both sides of the v-neck. I did crochet steek reinforcements, like for this vest and this vest. It’s so tidy, makes knitting so much simpler, and looks so good that I’d never do it another way.

I left no ease (knit a 40″ vest for a 40″ chest) and Mr. HelloYarn felt it was a big snug for his taste. It looked great to me, but with a second, pinned-out wet block (Mr. HelloYarn helped, perhaps because he does not trust me not to strangle him with a tight vest again), it felt great to him, too. No more zero ease for him!

And for the Pippa fans:

Pippa’s doing well, in case you wondered. She’s learning new things every day and now that our village is getting busy (it’s a popular summer tourist stop), she’s getting a taste of crowds. Other than one incident with a woman and an ice cream cone (no ice cream was damaged, but it was certainly threatened), she’s generally made of awesome. :) We’re getting a picket fence in a couple of weeks (what color to paint it is my obsession at the moment, and along with that comes the question of what color to paint the house) and once she has a secure place to really run her head off, we can really get busy with her “circus dog” training. She loves to jump through hoops!

Stuff I love this week:

-Graham Annable’s Children of the Night & Their Dad prints. They’re not only fantastic illustrations, they’re wonderfully, as well.

-Sherman Alexie’s young adult book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I’d highly recommend this for young people, unlike some other young adult books I’ve read. This one is hilarious, painfully true, and hopeful. If I didn’t already have a crush on Mr. Alexie, I would now!

– True Blood– I can hardly wait for the new season to start on Sunday. I look forward to Eric, Eric, and more Eric and finding out what happened to Lafayette, the skank.

– Those teensy tiny Ravelry symbols alerting you that you’re following a link into Ravelry. Want them for your blog? Here you go– scroll down to the bottom.

Hi, all!

May’s fiber is on its way right now. I hope you all love it!

Want to see it?

This is a fiber I’ve done before for the club, but it came from a new source and it’s quite different from what I usually get. It drafts like a DREAM, so should be a fun spin for everyone. It’s a great middle-of-the-road wool that would be suited for a variety of projects.

I dyed some extra fiber this month and will make it a point to do so in the future. There’s a limited amount, but if you’d like some more of this month’s fiber and are currently in the club, let me know at adrian@helloyarn.com. It’s $15 per 4 oz. bag and I’m happy to ship it with next month’s club to save you shipping.

It’s a sad post without any photos, so would you like to see the baby chipmunk we saw in our yard the other day? I thought so. :)

Thanks!

I’ll be back with photos of Mr. HelloYarn in his handspun striped vest as soon as I can get him to pose, hopefully tomorrow. I’ve been letting finished projects pile up. Whoops!