Ivy League Vest

I wanted to make a fair isle vest in reds and browns, so I settled on Eunny Jang's Ivy League vest.

It's all nice and tight on the model. Mine came out rather loose:

The colors look unnatural in flash photography, but in real life, they aren't this loud. The yarn is Palette by Knit Picks.

I know I said in an earlier post that I was done with hand knitting, but machine knitting this wasn't going well. I punched a card for it and started knitting, changing colors as needed. The color changes were pretty tedious, and every mistake required ripping out the row and resetting the row counter and punch card. The last straw was when I got yarn wrapped around one of the patterning drums. I was pretty irritated and ripped hard on the yarn, damaging the drum. That's when I resigned myself to hand knitting the project.

The gauges between the hand knit and machine knit products were vastly different:

I can see now that I was knitting much too tightly on the machine. You don't know how well or poorly you're doing until you actually take it off the machine. The swatch I made was nowhere near this tight. Owing to the complex shaping and neckline, I had planned to cut and sew this vest by making rectangles of fabric on the machine and seaming them on the sewing machine. Plus the machine knit sample just looks better because all the stitches are the same size. Mine are all over the place.

My hand knitted gauge wasn't right either and I had to omit rows to get the length right. The stitches per inch were the same as the given gauge, yet the vest is still too loose. It is unfinished in the photo above, but we had one cool day this spring and I knew I wouldn't have another chance to wear it for a long long time. I expect I'll have a go at shrinking it after I've dealt with the strings.

Steeks are pretty neat. This vest was knitted round with steeks placed at the armholes and neck as placeholders to be cut out later. You still shape the armhole and neck as normal, then knit across the steeks to the next section in order to continue knitting round all the way to the shoulder bind offs.