Holiday Recap 2

Another project I worked on during this holiday season was pajama pants for some awesome little girls with late December birthdays. Not technically a holiday craft, but it happened during the holiday season, so it gets lumped in with holiday stuff.


I don't remember the pattern number, but I think it was a Sew Easy or some other name like that. I also made matching drawstring nap sacks. As you can see, the pants came out quite roomy--oh well. This was a fun, easy project. I want to make more other fun easy projects like these.

My biggest holiday craft, by far, was the vest I knit for Raj for Christmas. He picked out the pattern, Alberta by Jared Flood, without any prompting from me.

The pattern appears in Wild Fibers magazine, but it was going to take too long to get the magazine--you can't buy it as an instant download. So I improvised my version. I measured one of Raj's store-bought sweater vests, knit a gauge swatch, did some math, and voila!

I used Rowan Felted Tweed, 1 ball of the dark brown and 2 balls of the light brown, and Noro Silk Garden Lite, about 2.5 balls, I think. The fabric is a bit loose and drapy, but I'm pleased with the result overall.

This was my first foray into steeking, and it wasn't without anxiety, but I'm confident that the result will be stable. I made frequent reference to Eunny Jang's tutorial, and used the crochet method with a 7 stitch bridge. When it was all done, I used mattress stitch to tack down the steek facing. The knitting was finished on December 23, the vest took a quick bath, got spun out in the washer spin cycle, then dried overnight. I stitched down the steeks in the car on the way to Christmas Eve dinner so that Raj could wear it.