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I am thisclose to finishing my sister’s vest:

All that’s left is some seaming under the armholes (approximately 1.5″ under each arm) and ribbing around the neckline and the armholes.  Unfortunately for me, I can’t seem to get the hang of the mattress stitch (which makes an invisible side seam).  This is frustrating because I was easily able to graft the shoulder pieces together on my first attempt:

This seaming nonsense is driving me batty!  I’ll take this opportunity, though, to walk away from the project and clear my head.  Hopefully I’ll be more successful tomorrow.  In the meantime, I’ll continue reading Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing American Cities.  (That book makes me pine something awful for a more bike-friendly Staten Island… and NYC in general.)

Yesterday’s snowstorm in NYC was blown way out of proportion.  Yes, it snowed.  It snowed a lot.  But it was nothing when compared to the blizzard of 1996, where snow accumulation reached 30 inches in some areas.  The snowstorm we experienced yesterday was nowhere near a blizzard — the greatest amount of snow fell in the Great Kills neighborhood of Staten Island, topping the charts at 17 inches.  That’s really not so bad.  Public schools were closed, though, and the city university system shut down at 12 PM (several individual colleges chose to keep their doors closed all day).  As such, I didn’t have work and I couldn’t do much beside knit.  However, there was some excitement around 10 o’clock last night:

I’ve known that I’ve had mice for a few weeks now but, for the life of me, I could not figure out how to get rid of them. I have a cat, after all, so why should I be worrying about ridding of the mice? As it turns out, Dixon is a lousy mouse catcher:

He’s more interested in chasing them and playing with them rather than attacking or killing them. However, precisely because I have Dixon, I didn’t know what commercial techniques I could use to get this problem under control. Glue traps, spring traps, “zap” traps, and rodenticide all seemed extreme and inhumane. So when Alex caught the mouse last night in a jar, I didn’t know what to do. After some time on the Internet, the only advice I found was to drown it. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. This thing was too small (and, admittedly, too cute) to be disposed of in such a manner. So, instead, I braved the elephants and released this little field mouse into the woods behind my house.

This post is for you, little mouse. I hope you survived the 10 or so inches of snow out there… or became dinner for a wet, hungry street cat.

Of course, after bragging about all of my knitting adventures, I went and messed up that vest I mentioned last time.  My first mistake was accidentally throwing off the stitches in half the vest’s circumference.  However, I compensated for that error by adding a stitch (or two) and hoping that my sister wouldn’t notice the error.  However, about an hour later, I dropped several stitches and I couldn’t salvage them.  In the end, I unraveled the whole thing (about 5″ tall and 26″ around) while bawling my eyes out.  Instead of trying again, I just set the yarn and pattern aside and embarked on a different project while I mourned the loss of my vest.  (I ended up knitting a scarf for my boyfriend’s father.  It came out really well, if I do say so myself.)

About a week later, I figured I was ready to tackle the vest again… so I put my needles and yarn to work and, after three days, the vest is already looking like a vest!  (Or, at the very least, the beginning of a vest.)

It’s incredibly rewarding seeing the item take shape and look like what it’s supposed to look like.  At this point, though, all I’m worried about is fit.  The pattern is actually just a set of notes taken by a girl as she knit this sweater for herself.  (I think she’s Thumbelina in disguise.  She looks tiny in the photos!)  I’m hoping that I can recall some 5th grade math as I figure out the new dimensions for this vest, as it is meant to fit a regular-sized person.  It’s looking good so far and I’m quite pleased!

…Now I just need to make sure that I really pay attention while I knit so I stop making time-consuming mistakes.  (Harumph!)