This week I finished up knitting the body of my stranded vest, and prepped to steek. As anxious as I was to slice it open and see if it fit well, there were a few steps I needed to take beforehand to keep it all neat and tidy.
The many many loose ends from the start-of-round color changes I snug up to get the stitches tensioned evenly, loosely tie in pairs and, lay out horizontally. Then I tacked down lightly with a couple strands of waste yarn to keep them out of the way.
Next I gave the whole vest a light steam block from the reverse side.
I did a little bit of needle felting of the steek stitches for good measure, and took to the snips!
And just like that, a wonky tube turns into a vest! The beauty of this method is that all those multicolor ends just come away when the front is opened. No weaving in necessary 🙂
Next step- picking up stitches for the button band (4 stitches every 5 rows)
then the tubular caston for the doubleknit buttonband (15 stitches)-
I’m not quite halfway around now, but took a little break to find some suitable buttons
This week I made quite a bit of progress on my granny stripe stranded vest-
I’ve finished the neck shaping, and am only about an inch away from the top. Just need to decide if I want short rows to angle the shoulders a smidge. Then I’ll do a quick wash and block, and it’ll be steeking time!
I’m planning a double knit button band, and have tentatively settled on a creamy white for that. Need to do a little practicing on the technique to refresh my memory, tho.
In other news, I’m pleased to report that Mighty Red has found a new home
(disassembled you can see how many threaded parts she has. cool, eh?)
I just handed her off this afternoon, and wish her many years of happy spinning.
And I’ll leave you with a short clip of the sheeps out in the pasture earlier today. Beautiful weather for October!
This week I’ve been spinning that fiber I picked up in Port Angeles and getting to know my new wheel, who has identified herself as Marjorie.
She’s a smooth and easy spinner. The only little things I might need to attend to are her two missing flyer hooks, and the front flyer bearing, which is a double thickness of leather that has come apart. I’m finding that if I place the orifice through both layers, it binds a bit, so I might just trim back forward-most piece and just operate with the one thickness, which seems to provide plenty of support on it’s own.
I also finished my little sheep puppet- but a different one than I cast on a coupe weeks ago! The white and taupe one is on hold, because I rethought the project and cast on again in shades of brown-
He’s about 99% done- but I still want to do a little embroidery to define his nose and give him a little smile. Such a cutie- I’m unofficially calling him Chip. My tiny chocolately lamb.
Out in the garden, the rye is coming along nicely, about 4inches tall now
and I came across this cool praying mantis in the hoophouse this morning while I was weeding and doing some fall cleanup-
It looks like she is getting ready to unload a bunch of eggs- so I hope she found a good spot. Would be super cool to have more of them in next year’s garden.
