FO: Lace Doily Cocoon Vest

This is the Lace Doily Cocoon Vest, knitted using Bergère de France Ecoton. I normally would not have ever found this pattern because I don't browse through the Tahki Yarns pattern books. My LYS had a knitted sample on display and allowed me to try it on and I liked how it looked. I didn't use the suggested yarn, and I think my yarn is a slightly finer gauge. This is probably a spring and summer type of garment, but I wanted to knit it anyway. It sort of has this 1970s hippie chick vibe which I like.

The pattern was a bit of a pain because I think it had some stitch count errors. Also, the lace pattern is directional so it wasn't easy to make it more or less symmetrical. It is knitted from right to left, and I did not see any instructions on how to terminate the lace pattern on the left side so I had to improvise. It's knit in a rectangle, as seen in the WIP photo. I added a row of single crochet on the underarm edge to bring it in and firm it up. I'm pretty happy with the end result though. I'll have to wait for warmer weather to see how it wears during the course of a day.

It wasn't me

I've done a little bit of yarn bombing myself, as seen here, but I had absolutely nothing to do with this one. It's pretty darn cute.

FO: Orbs Cowl

This is the Orbs Cowl from Knitscene Accessories 2012. My yarn is Debbie Bliss Glen. It's a bigger gauge yarn than what the pattern calls for, so I made one less horizontal repeat of the stitch pattern and I made only 4.5 vertical repeats instead of the six called for in the pattern. It was a quick knit, and it's very warm and fun to wear.

Furniture roulette

A series of events occurred over the last few days that involved used furniture.

1. I found this great curio cabinet at the Los Altos ACS Discovery Shop. (That place has the greatest stuff.) See image above.
2. I moved the cabinet up to SF to be used as a small liquor cabinet. It took the space formerly occupied by a very out-dated 1970's TV stand. The stand got hauled out to the street corner for free-cycling. It was picked up less than 48 hours later.
3. While walking the dog at night, we saw this black chest of drawers set out for free-cycling. I drove over and picked it up and we hauled it up into the spare room. See image below. It's actually an inexpensive piece with flimsy construction, but it's good enough for my purposes. It also had some bits of paint chipped off but a black Magic Marker took care of that.
4. The flimsy chest replaced a small plastic (lavender!) chest of drawers, which got hauled down to the garage.
5. The plastic unit actually replaced something in the garage, which was a sturdy but very ugly small wooden chest of drawers. (Yes, it was uglier than the lavender plastic). No photos provided for either of those units. The sturdy but ugly chest was hauled out to the same street corner for free-cycling. It was also picked up less than 48 hours later.
6. To complete this frenzy of furniture movement, I took an antique rocking chair (see last image) from SF to the Discovery shop as a donation.

So, here are the end results:

-- My furniture count: -1
Woo-hoo! At this point in my life, any decrease in the amount of furniture is good.

-- The number of pieces that have found or will find new homes: 5!

I'm being so green, I could just die.