WIP Wednesday (and also FO Friday)

So, as promised yesterday, a bumper crop of projects, some finished, some still awaiting final tweaking before I allow myself to call them done.

First, I am almost finished with my birthday cowl. Last time you saw it, I showed you the first three motifs joined together. Well, I quickly raced through the remaining 11, and got started on the chain stitch border. I realised I'd made a mistake on one of the motifs, but it was too late to do anything about it. So I sort of fudged it, and now you can't really tell. Yay!

Here it is, crocheting done, fresh off the hook.

Rumpled and crinkly, not at all stunning and beautiful. But ah, the magic of blocking. I pinned it out on the floor upstairs, and gave it a good old spritz of water.

It grew so much! Length went from 36" to 44", and width from 8" to 14" when pinned, but it relaxed to 12" when unpinned.

It's not technically finished, because the pattern says to sew three buttons onto one end, for doing it up. I am undecided if I will do this or not. I may find an interesting pin to hold it in place. It's very versatile.

I haven't fully tested out all of its options, but then the weather is getting too warm for snuggly soft alpaca cowls. I love it though, and I am so very glad that my lovely friend bought both yarn and pattern for me as a present.

Onwards and upwards then, a reveal that has been a long time coming. You remember the Aurora vest? Of course you do. Well, after sitting around for ages and ages doing nothing, I eventually pulled my finger out at the weekend and got to testing blocking methods. I tried wet blocking along, wet blocking with added hairdryer, and finally steam blocking with my hardly-used iron. Steam blocking was a huge success!

The motifs were lumpy and uneven. The motif joining chains seemed overly long for the space they were in. A quick steam with the iron, and they turned into beautiful flat and even motifs.

Look how lovely they are! It was pretty awkward to get it all to fit on my normal sized ironing board! Especially the shoulder bits. But I managed it in the end.

There you go. The finished item. I am surprised at how much it grew in length once I blocked it, it comes down past my knees! I am unsure about the one set of ties, I am tempted to put in a couple more on the motif joins above it, so it ties in three places. What do you think?

Finally, some small quick projects I hooked over the last couple of evenings. Now the end of my exams are in sight, I am looking forward to going to LRP again. With that in mind, I set to finding projects I could make to incorporate into my costumes. I saw on Cris's blog she'd been hooking snoods, and it was like a lightbulb went off in my head. I scoured Ravelry for free snood patterns. I found several.

This is a vintage pattern that I had some difficulty deciphering. In the end, I resorted to drawing out the instructions on a piece of paper! If I get the enthusiasm for it, I may draw up a proper chart so nobody else has to struggle like I did! I made it smaller, by starting with six meshes instead of nine, and only extending till it was 14 meshes wide. Mostly because I don't have enough hair to properly fill a decent sized snood, and I will have even less by the next event as I'm getting my hair cut this week! Full details of yarn/pattern on my project page.

This one is more of a lacy cap than a snood, and I need to experiment with ways to wear my hair under it. Project page here for details.

I'm working on a third, from this pattern, but it's in very early stages so not really worthy of a picture yet. I'm doing it in the same navy cotton as the first snood, which handily will match my fingerless lace gloves!

Phew, quite the project overload today. Hopefully it will make up for no post on Friday. Head on over to the usual places to see what the gang are up to this week.