Finished UFOs...

I've been on a UFO kick -- as in finishing up some unfinished objects. I had been feeling ennui on starting anything new, and I was cleaning up some of my knitting and came across some UFOs that I thought, "What the heck? Let me finish these up."

1) I started knitting on a UF shawl object (Age of Brass & Steel) that I started a while ago out of my handspun, Targhee.

I have no idea why I put it down. I was about three inches from finishing. I'm currently working on finishing this project now.

2) I also managed to salvage a cardigan that I thought had to be frogged, but I procrastinated because it is knitted from pure alpaca and that is a royal pain to frog.

This particular sweater (started in '09) was the first cardigan I had attempted to knit, and had put down several times. I was nearly finished -- I had blocked the body pieces, seamed them together, and had added a hood. But the sleeves didn't work with the body, although I had followed the pattern exactly. I finally went back to Ravelry and read the comments --- a lot of people had issues with this pattern, esp. with things 'lining' up (heck, the body pieces didn't line up correctly and I had to do a lot of easing to make things work).

I had given up on the sweater and thrown it into the basket for a 'time out' because I was thoroughly frustrated with it. However, now that I had knitted several sweaters under my belt, I looked at the project with new eyes. I tried on the body and it did fit; it wasn't too badly off. The armscye was a little large, but a sleeve cap would help with that issue.

The sleeves were unusable w/o re-knitting them both. I could have picked up stitches around the armscye and knit 'after-thought' sleeves, but that would have been too much work and something I couldn't face doing considering how long this sweater had languished. So, I thought to myself:

"Self, why not turn this into a vest? You've done several already, and this would save your time".

And myself agreed. :-)

I picked up 87 stitches around each sleeve and knit several rounds of 8 roundseed stitch to form a sleeve cap (decreasing by 4 stitches total). Then I added a button & an i-cord button loop. About 1.5 hours later, I had a finished sweater vest, which pleased me mightily, as I really thought this project was a lost cause.

I still have a few UFOs still lazing about. We'll see if I get any more done after I finish the shawl. Although I have to say, it feels REALLY GOOD to get finish a languishing project.