Finish-Itis

Today was one of those days. I started by looking at my home office desk and moaning. Same manuscript has been sitting front and center for far too long. So I finished editing it. And that sort of inspired me to finish some other stuff that's been laying around for too long.

So I finished the above pile of shit. Don't read this book unless you want your brain to die a slow death. I don't have anything in particular against Russian literature (loved Anna Karenina) or Victorian by-the-pound novels (loved Middlemarch), but this book just flat out sucked. It's basically a murder mystery, except there's no mystery about it. All you have to do is read any random five pages of this pro-patriarchy gibberish, and you know that the bastard son is the murderer. Sins of the father and all that. And then he confesses something like 150 pages before the book ends, but they still convict the wrong brother.

But it's done now. I can cross it off my list, and I'll spare you the rest of my rant about how not one of those brothers was even remotely likeable. Unless you like cult members, drunken libertines, or arrogant snowmen.

Wait. I said I would spare you the rant.




















I also finished these. Skacel Trampoline knit toe-up on size 1.5 needles. You might have heard me bitch about these socks recently. Ahem. I had to go up to a size 6 (!!!) needle to get a decent cast-off. But I love the look and the fit and the feel, so it was worth it in the end. Even if my cast-off edge looks a bit wobbly in this picture. And in reality. But at least it won't cut off the blood flow to my feet anymore.

And then ::drumroll::

















Wall Street is finished!

::confetti::
::tootie horn::

I do have a few ends to weave, and I'd like to re-block it, but that's no big deal. It took me a few tries to get the armholes right. But I think they look okay, the neckband looks okay, and all in all, it turned out about as well as I could have hoped.

The Vitals:
Pattern: Wall Street Vest from Best of Arans and Celtics

Yarn: Filatura di Crosa 501 -- 15 balls. I have roughly 30 grams of yarn leftover. That's about 80 yards, a little over half of one ball. This means the vest actually took about 1975 yards, a dab more than the 1960 called for in the pattern. That's pretty darn close.

Started: December 29, 2006
Finished: May 28, 2007

Trips to Knitting Jail: Three. First when it gave me tendonitis, second when the shoulder decreases didn't work out even remotely well, and third when the armhole absolutely refused to be picked up in pattern. All three of those jail terms were my own fault. I tried to knit it too fast, which gave me the tendonitis for partof January and all of February. I am numerically challenged and miscalculated the shoulder decreases. (Though, in my defense, there were inconsistencies in the pattern that threw me off.) And then, finally, the armhole -- I sewed the side seams before picking up the armhole edges for the ribbing. The pattern instructs you to do the opposite -- ribbing, then sew the seams. I foolishly forgot to decrease two of the picked-up stitches (the selvedge stitches, no longer necessary if the armholes would be knit in the round) and so my 2x2 rib wouldn't come out right. (If my brain hadn't been sent into a stupor by that godawful Dostoevsky book, I might have avoided that error.)

Overall Rating: This was an easy knit and an easy pattern. I'd caution anyone making it to add two stitches, front and back, so that you can center the repeats on the cable charts. (I don't know if that's an issue in all sizes, but it was in the 52" size.) I'd also recommend doing the shoulder shaping with a less sharp downward slope on the neck side, because it puckers a little there from the cables and the neckband ribbing pulling at it. But other than that, I'd give this pattern high marks for quality and results.