Sunday, July 27, 2008

Vest Vault


Yesterday I was visiting Knitcraft store. It's the charming little shop where I learned to knit in 2003. The shop clerk, Rita, who is an enabler extraordinaire, led me to some new yarn they now have in their store called "Wisdom Yarn/Poems" which is sort of similar to Noro in terms of colorway, but much softer and cheaper. I picked up this lovely yarn for only $5 per skein and bought a package of 10 (has about 100 yards per skein). I bought it in color #473, which has lovely shades of purple, turquoise and rust. In the photo, the rust color run is photographing as red, but it's rust.

Right away, I feel in love with it and decided to knit up a vest that is on the cover of Creative Knitting September 2008 called "Striped Modular Vest."

I've made a decision to change my Ravelempics project from WIP Wrestling to "Vest Vault." You may think I'm crazy to attempt another vest after my previous 2 vest disasters (both way too big) but this is exactly WHY I'm going to do it, I can't let this sweater gauge problem beat me. I'm going to make one more valiant and sincere attempt to make a decent garment that actually fits.

The way the Ravelempics works is that you can swatch for your project ahead of time to get gauge, you just can't actually cast on nor start working until the August 8th start date. I entered this project into the Ravery database and swatched for it yesterday. Me being a loose knitter, I had to go down from the recommended Size 9 needles down to a 7. I am also going to wash and block the swatch to make sure this is the right gauge.


In the meantime, I am trying to pry myself away from the spinning wheel long enough to work on the Shoalwater prayer shawl that I've been working on for weeks. Feels like I'm not making much progress at all on it, but I need to focus to get it done, or at least progressing faster.

Have a great week everyone.

4 comments:

Elysbeth said...

Is that a stand alone lazy kate? With tensioner? Envy, envy.

ChelleC said...

Yeah, it was my Grammy's too.

Jasmine's Mommy said...

I love the color of this yarn. I may have to see if I can get some in the future! Your vest is going to be beautiful!

ColorJoy LynnH said...

If spinning makes you happy, then spin. You fight projects sometimes, so why then do you fight the passion to do something constructive like making yarn?

My opinion only, but hey... y ou can not buy passion. I say go with it.