Winter is fast upon us so it's time to get busy. After making the baby blanket, I started thinking about my next new challenge.
I came up with this idea to attempt a school vest for my
DD. I remember myself wearing a polo
neck, woollen tunic and two woollen school jumpers on top of each other in my
childhood years. I could not imagine
how she could possibly be warm enough in the playground with only a polo shirt,
lycra pants and poly-cotton zip jacket.
We had a sudden cold snap in April. I panicked and tried to beat time, thinking
‘if I could just get started over Easter, I might have a vest ready for the new
term at school’. I spent many a
stressful hour searching for easy patterns, comparing wool, buying wool,
returning wool, re-choosing wool. I had to decide about whether to buy a
thicker yarn to make a large needle quickie, or how about a fluffy yarn with a
loose knit … should I get a blend with acrylic for rough ‘n tough daily
wear, or should I stick to pure wool?
I had started my first diagonal square so thought I could
handle a knit pattern with basics of cast on and off, knit and purl, increase,
decrease.
However I still did not feel confident enough with
knit-pattern reading, so went back to my crochet staple. I settled on the Lion Brand Next Generation V-neck Vest pattern and
improvised with a 5.5mm hook and 8 ply pure wool and made a swatch to get started.
Soon enough, I found I didn’t like the low-grade scratchy wool so
started again with a local alternative.
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| Cleckheaton Country |
The stress of it all was driving me crazy. So I returned to the idea that this was just an
experiment for fun: I stripped away the time deadline, fit requirements and all
other expectations. Now I could start!
It was easy to follow the basic pattern and improvise,
measuring on the model as I went. The
pattern had no curved edges which simplified things.
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| The back with straight edges. Easy enough! |
I do dislike counting stitches so took the easier route of
counting the ribbing to match the front with the back.
I set aside some quiet time to work the front shoulders and
neck – no getting distracted in front of the tele! But when I laid it out finished, I thought it
would be warmer to have wider shoulders
So frogged them and did my own version.
Well I paid for that disobedience when I came to do the
edging – now the shoulders would be too wide!
I made the adjustment by doing the full v-neck edging but only one round
of dc on the sleeves.
It was a relief to get my first garment finished. It is far from perfect: there are knots in the middle of rows (I’m
not sure why this is a no-no … maybe it is a bump that interrupts a good
row..? Do you know why?) and one of the
seams doesn’t meet to match straight.
Seeing it
keeping my DD warm ignites a wonderful radiance. That is what is meant by the expression ‘my
heart swells with pride’.
