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Sideways Garter Stitch Vest

March 28, 2015

this vest is vertically reversible!

If you do not subscribe to Purl Soho’s e-mail newsletter, you really should. This great little shop in New York’s Soho neighborhood puts out an awesome mailing that includes free patterns. That is where I saw this pattern for a vest that is done entirely in garter stitch. It caught my eye right away, so I looked it up on Ravelry to see how many people were knitting it and what their creative spins on it might be. One great feature of this vest is that you can turn it upside down and wear it the other way, with the contrasting color on top. Each way gives you a different size collar.

This was such an easy project to knit – it’s just one big rectangle of garter stitch -but it does require doing afterthought armholes, which I kind of love doing. I’ve done a lot of afterthought thumbs for mittens and afterthought heels for socks, so I know the technique well.

You just knit a length of contrasting waste yarn across the required number of stitches, slip these stitches back to the left needle and knit in your regular yarn. This leaves you with this contrasting yarn embedded into your piece:

To make the armholes, you slip your stitches just under your waste yarn, picking up one leg from each stitch underneath:

Here are the stitches on the needles after they are all picked up, both below and above the waste yarn:

Now you can get rid of the waste yarn by just picking it out and cutting it as you go to remove it:

Now it’s a matter of just binding off those stitches you just picked up:

After they are all bound off, behold – an armhole:

It’s really pretty easy. A lot of people on Ravelry decided not to do Afterthought Armholes and, instead, just bound off the stitches as they knitted the garment but as I understand it, this method does not make as nice an armhole. I guess the tension can vary too much.

I really love this vest. It turned out with a very nice drape – I used a Made in Michigan yarn called Shepherd’s wool that I really love.

Pattern: Sideways Garter Vest
Needles: US # 8 Addi Lace 40″ circulars
Yarn: Shepherd’s Wool in Pewter and Black
Ravelry Page

Posted in Shawls/wraps, sweaters, techniques | 3 Comments »

Old Sweater #1 – The Reindeer Sweater

May 25, 2011

When I started knitting about 22 years ago, I knitted a lot of things for my first son but I also knitted a lot of sweaters for me, something that I don’t do anymore. I don’t knit hardly any garments, just mittens, scarves, hats and socks. When I look back at some of the old sweaters I used to knit, I really still like them. I’m going to do a series of posts documenting some of these old sweaters.

The first one is a Reindeer Sweater that is knitted in wool. The pattern is from an old book I bought 22 years ago called “Picture Knits” by Lory Cosgrove. It’s such a nice book. The patterns have adult size versions and kid versions. There’s a lot of old vintage type patterns.

All these patterns are knitted flat, which I wouldn’t like much now because I pretty much knit everything in the round. In fact, I can’t believe I knitted all these sweaters flat, on straight needles. Egad. All that color stranding purlwise! I wouldn’t do that now, I can tell you.