Cream & Green Vest
Completed in 2 months! I am so relieved its done. Now I can give it to a friend after I have washed it. For more on why you might want to wash your projects before you wear them or give them away, please see our post on this.
The pattern is from Knitsimple spring/summer 2006, pattern 19 shown on page 50. I have a collection of knitting magazines and patterns collected over the years. This one just happens to look small enough for the amount of yarn I had and so we made it.
This project required about 280g of yarn, I made the second size with 3.75mm and 4.50mm knitting needles for the respective small and big needles. Its quite a small project because there just wasn’t a lot of yarn. It was either make a scarf or a very small vest. I decided that a small vest would be more useful than a scarf. You can buy a scarf anywhere, but a handknitted vest is far harder to come by.
This project with stripes is not a difficult project if you have have experience. I made it without the stripes with a striated yarn in green and cream and it turned out rather neat. There are some major issues with this pattern. Do they even check their patterns before they are printed? For experienced knitters, it is not a big deal. I have enough experience to extrapolate and deal with any anomalies in the pattern. It is not surprising that beginners have problems with their projects. How are we going to encourage people to pick up their knitting needles and knit things when patterns are not well written? Especially since this magazine is called Knitsimple which is probably targeting beginners who have less experience.
The major problem with this pattern is that it completely left out any instructions the right front of the vest. It should at least give rudimentary instructions for knitting the right front to the beginning of the armhole, shape the armhole same as the back and more importantly how to decrease for the V neckline so that the right side matches the left side – ie the decrease stitch is a mirror images on both sides of the neckline.
Also, I do not understand why the buttonhole band and button band is done in 2 separate pieces – which means you have to join it right in the middle of the back of the neck. Wouldn’t it just be simpler to just make the entire thing in one go with the 60mm circular knitting needle that they required for the project?
I think the vest turned out well. It looks a little big on me compared to what it looks like on the model. I am sure it will sit well on my friend as she is a lot taller than me.
