Very Varied Vest by Lydia Morrow

Pattern: Very Varied Vest

Yarn: Brooklyn Tweed Arbor in Mesa, Norway, and Dorado

When life gets hard, pick a hard project to knit. But seriously, it wasn’t as challenging as I expected and it was so satisfying to complete a beautiful piece that required a new-to-me construction method and intarsia color technique. Plus, focusing on something new and challenging was a good distraction from more work drama. 

All of the options in the pattern were both exciting and a little daunting to read through. I’m glad the options were there though, because after completing the back panel I decided to do a round neck pull over instead of the button up. I am tempted to make another one that is a button up though, because after this project I’m feeling a little obsessed with vests. The Vacation Vest by Park Knits also seems really cute…   

I am so glad that I have become much better about knitting a gauge swatch before I start a project, because I did not get gauge. My row count was off, I had 27 rows to 4 inches. Knowing this allowed me to account for it being a little longer, which was actually perfect. Thankfully my stitch count was correct so I did not need to change needle size. 

Ok now for the interesting pattern notes and modifications.

The recommended video for intarsia was great and I had no issues with the technique. When I finished the panels, I steam blocked the edges before mattress seam and for picking up stitches for the collar and arm ribbing. This made the process go a lot quicker. I had not successfully done the mattress seam before, but I found this video super helpful and my seam turned out very nicely. 

I picked up several extra stitches for the arm ribbing, since my row gauge was off and I like big arm holes. The pattern doesn’t have a recommended bind off, so I decided that an invisible sewn would look nice. It’s a very stretchy bind off, which was unnecessary but it does look really nice. 

For the collar I made several modifications since I was worried that it would fold out. First, I decreased my needle size to US 2 . However it was still trying to fold out so I added 4 decreases over 2 rows to the front. I decidedly really like the look of ribbing decreases so I might have to find a pattern with them that’s more prominent. To finish I used JSSBO to match the look of the German Twist cast on. Again it probably didn’t need to be that stretchy, but better safe than sorry.