Finally!

Another FO! Woo hoo!

The title of this post refers to both finally finishing this project (it was a long time in the making) and finally getting around to posting about it. Cross it off the check list.


Pattern: Moebius vest by EZ in Knitting Around
Yarn: Beaverslide Dry Goods Fisherman weight in Wood Violet with Shooting Star trim
Needles: US9
Started: Aug 2007
Finished: Dec 2008
Ravelry link

When I first got Knitting Around and looked through it, I saw the moebius vest and knew that my grandma would love something like that. She is the only person I know so far who really wears vests. And the simplicity of the knit and construction of it lured me in. The perfect easy but big project. Miles and miles of garter stitch--perfect TV knitting. But I didn't work on it straight through. At first it was going to be a birthday present...and then a Christmas present...and then the next birthday present...and you know how the story goes. I had to stop whenever my shoulder would act up. And I was tempted by other smaller, easier projects that offered more immediate gratification. Finally, I got so close to finished that I knew I had to get it done in time for this past Christmas. That and my grandma had some health complications in the last quarter of 2008 that made me not so certain she would be around if I kept putting this off. (She's actually holding steady for now, thankfully.) So, on Christmas Eve eve I finally finished this bad boy. It was a long time coming.

Probably the best thing about this project besides the ease of garter stitch was the yarn. The Beaverslide is a great workhorse of a yarn. And it's one of the least scratchy yarns I've worked with. My only complaint is that the Shooting Star colorway for some reason was not as strong as the Wood Violet. If I gave the Shooting Star a strong tug it would snap. I'm not sure if that has something to do with the dying process, or what; it was a little frustrating though. But since the majority of the vest was knit with the Wood Violet, I didn't have to deal with it too much.

Here's a shot of the garter stitch close up.

Love the tweedy-ness of it. (If you enlarge the shot, you can see cat hair all over it. It can't be helped.)

This was my first attempt at I-cord and I thought it was pretty cool. But since I did it with a second color, the first color showed through on the back of the trim. Ordinarily this wouldn't matter because the back of the trim would be inside the garment, but since this is a moebius vest, for about half of the vest, the inside is switched outside. I read on Ravelry that this is common with I-cord trim and that the way to get around this would have been too knit the I-cord separately and then sew it on. But since I was on a deadline and that would have been a ton of sewing/seaming (which I'm not so good at yet), that wasn't going to happen. It turned out good enough in the end.

I was going to try and get a picture of my grams wearing the vest for this post, but since she's less mobile these days and doesn't really have much say in what she wears, I don't know if that is ever going to happen. Oh well, I guess that's what can happen when you keep putting something off.

That's a wrap for my 2008 knits. I hope to be as equally successful with my 2009 knits, if not more.