Stranded vest
Recipient: Moi
Designer: Moi
Pattern: As yet unnamed
Completed: August 25, 2008
Colours: Black and heathered white/black/variegating rainbow colours
Yarn: Black: "Sock it to Me 4 Ply" from elann.com, 75% superwash wool/25% nylon, sock weight; heather: Schoeller & Stahl "Sockina Colori", 75% wool/25% polyester, sock weight
Completed status: I LOVE IT!!!
Pictures: None
- 2008-Aug-27
- On Monday evening, I finished it.
And I. LOVE. It.
I am thrilled. Seriously, seriously pleased with how it looks. Mind you, it is a bit wide, it comes right
out to the tips of my shoulders, which I think is too much. When I write up the final version of the pattern I will
make the armholes deeper. But I still love it, and wore it yesterday, and felt like a million bucks. DH took some
photos, and now all I have to do is print them off on some photo paper, do up a swatch, write up the proposal, and
shoot it off to a pattern magazine. Whee!
There is just one downer here. The Sockina Colori yarn which I'm using as one of the two colours - the yarn which
is key to achieving the awesome visual effect that makes the whole piece - is now discontinued. Words cannot
express my frustration. I mean, seriously! This is the second time I've started designing something with a
Schoeller & Stahl yarn and had the rug pulled out from under me partway through the process because the yarn got
discontinued. I'm pretty POed, I don't mind saying, and I hereby swear that I shall never use another Schoeller &
Stahl yarn in any of my design prototypes again. I just can't trust them. I'm going to submit the design anyway,
though, because it's too good not to, and anyway, maybe there's an adequate substitute yarn out there...somewhere.
Anyone know of a 3-ply sock yarn where one ply is black, another white, and the third variegating in rainbow
colours? Anyone? Bueller?
- 2008-Aug-4
- So I have a sock pattern to finish testing and writing up; another person I know who's having a baby; a very large sweater and some socks to make for Christmas gifts; and a ridiculously neglected Schedule...and what have I been doing? Working on my stranded vest.
Seriously. I am completely obsessed with it.
It's gone in rather a different direction from my original (admittedly vague) vision, and the new concept plays perfectly off of the colours I'm using. I know this probably makes me sound like the most conceited person ever, but I'm absolutely in love with the idea and the look I've finally managed to achieve (I say finally because there has been much ripping back and starting over), and am so proud of myself for eliciting it from my brain. I love this vest. Love, love, love.
Which is kind of surprising, considering all the frogging it's endured (and will yet endure, since I decided this evening that the last two inches need to become toast because where I started the neckline shaping is just wrong, wrong, wrong). A number of the problems have been because I didn't like the way the design was working out and needed a do-over, but unfortunately, more than one of the froggings have been because I plain old screwed up.
(A knitting truth: There is no pattern too simple, nor a knitter too experienced, to eliminate the possibility of making a truly dumbass mistake.)
On the upside, prior to one of the froggings, I tried it on, and holy flurking schmidt, it fits PERFECTLY. I'm not sure how I managed to swing that, but it's true.
At this point, I think I really know what I'm doing (at least basically) and for a while there I was pushing forward like crazy on it because watching the motif take shape in knitting form was so exciting and thrilling I could hardly stand it. Now, however, I've finished one repeat of the pattern (it looks deliciously swizz), so I've calmed down about the project a little.
Alas, there are no pictures, because I'm now pretty sure I'll be submitting the concept to a magazine when this prototype is done. I hope it does get accepted somewhere fairly quickly (or as quickly as acceptances tend to happen, anyway) because I can't wait to show it to people! Of course, I'm talking about it here in such a built-up way that when you do finally see what the pattern looks like, you might be disappointed. But hopefully not.
- 2008-Jul-20
- I need vests to wear to work. Unfortunately, I have only two...and one of them is really a tank top masquerading as a vest. I have all kinds of grand plans for knitting myself vests, but for a variety of reasons, none of the plans have morphed into actual projects yet.
Lately, however, I've been thinking how neat it would be to use sock yarn for a vest. First off, the superwashness translates into machine washability, which is excellent for something I'd be wearing on a regular basis. Secondly, sock yarn is extremely affordable. For example, I had 100g of solid black Sock it to Me that I'd ordered from elann.com a few months ago that cost all of about $4.80 (plus shipping). (Yes, you read that right, $4.80 for 100g of sock yarn.)
Then I figured, if I used two different colours of sock yarn, especially if the second colour was self-striping, I could do stranded knitting and make it look very fair isle-esque.
My original plan was to snag some Noro sock yarn at my LYS' recent sale, but unfortunately, by the time I got there, it was almost all gone and I didn't care much for any of the colourways that were left. (Poo.) Or, rather, I thought the colourways were certainly very nice generally speaking, but recognized that they'd look pretty crappy on me specifically.
When I started working again with my Sockina Colori, though, I started thinking that I could use that as my second colour. It's not self-striping, but it is heathered with three different colours: black, white, and variegating rainbow hues. Paired with the solid black sock yarn, I thought it would look pretty stunning.
So I grabbed a 3mm circular needle, guessed at gauge, and cast on.
The good news? It looked terrific. I lurved it.
The bad news? My gauge guess sucked. I thought that I'd get 7 sts per inch with the bottom ribbing. In reality, I got 9. Rather a big difference! Oh, also, I underestimated how big my waist is. I keep forgetting that I've had two kids and that the 22" of my high school days is long gone. On the upside, it's still small at 25.5", so it's not like I'm busting out of my clothes or anything. (If there's anyone reading this who is now annoyed at my tinyness, be assured that I am not a stick: my hips are 36".) Plus I hadn't really considered that I'd want a bit of ease on this thing. So, I had to rip it all back (sob) and re-cast on with about 24 more stitches. So far I'm approaching three inches on try #2, I think, and I'm still nervous that it's not big enough. We shall see. It's very fun, though, I still lurve it.
I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with the pattern once I finish it. I'm sort of torn between just writing it up and posting it for free; or doing lots of work to figure out instructions for multiple sizes and either selling it, or submitting it to Interweave or something. Of course, the lazy bum part of me who doesn't want to do all the resizing calculations is yelling, "Just post the damn thing as is!"...but I dunno. We'll see.
Labels: strandedvest
