at arm’s length

Since my current crafting involves top-secret presents, I'd like to do a quick follow-up post on my vest disaster with some snapshots from my weekend. The snaps are from our trip to the Lincoln Park Conservatory, where we went with my parents and Carolyn. The Conservatory is fun and free and full of fascinating/horrifying/beautiful plants and humorous signage. It's a blast.

So back to the vest - there were a lot of great suggestions in the comments, and they helped me decide on a plan of action.

The most hilarious suggestions were: 1. get enormous breast implants and 2. get enormous shoulder pads. The thought did cross my mind when I was wearing the ill-fitting vest that it is probably the one article of clothing out there that I don't quite fill out. Perhaps some combination of giant boobs and shoulder pads would work. It's the perfect no-sew, no-rip solution!

A few people suggested that I find someone who is basically my size but taller and give the vest to them (Ashley is pretty much the ideal candidate for that). I'll admit this was my first impulse. But god dammit, I started this vest like 9 million years ago and toughed it through this far - I WANT TO WEAR IT. So sorry Ashley, this thing is mine, all mine.

Heather suggested "felting the shit out of it." Normally I would be all for this, but felting this vest would make it way too narrow for my torso! I need quite a bit of, um, width.

My preferred solution is to pin those shoulders down and sew some new seams on a sewing machine. Quite a few people suggested this, and I think it's the way to go. And the worse possible outcome is that I end up having to tear out those seams and do a little re-knitting, but I really doubt that'll happen. I'll check back when I've found time to do this. Now, just two more snaps from my weekend and back to those top-secret gifts...