On the home stretch

Thomas's vest is making good progress. Or rather, I'm making good progress on finishing it, but knitting projects always seem to take on a life of their own so I tend to think of them as accomplishing their own rate of finishing with me just doing the manual labour part. Perhaps it's time to admit that my knitting owns me, not the other way around. As I like knitting a lot, this doesn't bother me as long as I'm still in charge of the yarn purchasing budget. If my knitting starts having it's own ideas about yarns that differ from my preferences might be trouble.

But I'm wandering a bit. The vest is now complete about halfway through the 2nd front; I've got about 20 rows to go to reach the armhole and neck and then things really speed up. Good timing too, as I'm darn close to running out of yarn. I have that little tangle of yarn next to the unfinished side of the front, one intact ball, a very large swatch, and a tiny ball that I think is what is left from one ball after doing the swatch. So if I have what I think I have, two full balls are left to complete the 2nd front plus do some narrow garter stitch bands around the armholes and the front/neck edges. I'm holding off on working on the Hex Coat so that I can really crank on the vest, as the sooner I find out whether or not I have enough yarn the better, especially if I have to reorder another ball or two.

In case anyone is wondering, all of those little markers on the vest are my way of keeping track of what I'm doing when I am making up the pattern on my own. I write down some key details such as gauge, needle size, number of stitches I cast on, etc, and then mostly I use markers to keep track of the number of rows, etc. On this vest I am also working in a series of short rows on the front to make the center fronts a little longer than the side seams in order to accommodateThomas's physique; he's got a bit of a belly and if I make the fronts perfectly flat the hemline ill hike up in front. The short rows are like adding darts for the bust line; just a lot lower down.