The Summer Finishes...

Now that they are officially above board, they spend all their time in the back window. Cats. Sigh. I managed to finish 2 projects since I last posted: These booties took me almost 3 years to make. Okay - truth be told, the knitting part took a weekend, crocheting the first 2 button loops took about 5 minutes, and then there was a 30+ month interval between that and me crocheting the last 2 button loops and sewing on the buttons. I am able to rationalize the time out because they were definitely boy colours, and the babies born in the interval form whom I would knit something were either girls, or were unknown genders and thus required gender neutral colours. (I realize that that excuse does not apply to the rest of my long list of UFO's.Oh well. )But now the wife of one of The Gambler's fencing coaches is expecting a boy. So I had the incentive to finish them. I also finished knitting my Honest Tee: In this case, it's just the knitting that is finished. I am still going to have to weave in ends, block it, and sew it up. I had toyed with the idea of knitting it in the round, but since this yarn apparently stretches after washing, I decided the seams might minimize bagging. And even though one of the benefits of knitting in the round is being able to try the garment on as you work it, it's possible to do it with pieced garments: I created temporary seams with T-pins that my Secret Pal so brilliantly gifted to me: The shoulder was "seamed" by alternating front and back stitches on the needle: There were 2 key learning points to doing the temporary seams: 1) Insert the pins with the points facing upward if you are going to pull the garment on over your head. This minimizes the likelihood that the pins will jab into you. 2) It is best to leave a bit of a gap below the underarm join, because if the pin sticks into the armhole proper, your armpit is going to get stuck. Now my goal is to get it to wearable state by Labour Day. Labour Day 2010, that is.