vest for G

it's PUR-PLE.

yes! finally an F.O.. not much of a feat though, since this thing was started back in september of last year. it's been sitting around since march or april, waiting for the pieces to be seamed together which i got to in may. then the ends needed to be woven in, but that didn't happen until sometime in june. why so long? who knows. as you can probably tell i haven't been inspired much lately to knit up anything new. there's been knitting here and there, but on projects that have been lying around for much too long.



project particulars
pattern: Argyle Pullover Vest from knitting with balls by Michael del Vecchio (i made a non-argyle version)
needles: clover bamboo size US 6 24" circulars
yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Merino Worsted; a little less than 3 hanks of #68-violetas and less than a quarter of a hank of #123-rhodesian

i guess i don't need to reiterate how loverly working with malabrigo is. it seriously glides across the needles like buttah. i guess i should get back to my striped raglan that i have put down since last year. i don't know, i am kind of over it and am contemplating frogging the whole thing and making a vest like this one...but still with the same color and stripe combo.

but i digress, i followed the pattern pretty closely, only making a few adjustments along the way...the most obvious is foregoing the argyle portion of the vest. i actually started to knit the center diamond as the pattern calls for, but with this color scheme going, it just stood out way too much...



i figured that with varigation in the color of the yarn itself it was best to keep it simple. that plus a purple vest (albeit his favorite color) having a huge orange argyle in the middle of it wasn't helping his wardrobe any, and i think that the simpler purple field with a bit of orange accent can go a lot further for him.



i wanted to keep the pop of orange as a slight detail because he loves orange, not to mention it goes so perfectly with the besotted scarf i made him a while back.

he absolutely loves it and is quite excited and anxious to wear it, which of course just makes my day.

dilemma

...working on the second of the sea otter socks. i guess it pays to look back at the first sock and figure out what i actually did.



i started the second sock on the trip back to the midwest, and somewhere between the layover in vegas and minneapolis i started to notice that the colors were pooling. luckily, i was smart enough to bring the first sock with me - i pulled it out and sure enough the colors were not coming out the same (not to mention that the brown cuff was not the same length).

hmmm, why? 

first thought...i was knitting on the wrong needle size. i checked the stitch tension on the finished sock, compared it to the one i was working on. nope, same tension. i knew that yarn looked like it was meant for a US2. so, what was the problem? i decided that i needed to count stitches. turns out, i cast on 68 for the first sock, and for the second? 

i was only knitting 64.

problem solved.