Friday – Out of Order

Those expecting to see a Finished Object today will be disappointed. No, I am out of sorts and out of sequence in writing this post. Instead, I will start with the above photo and move on to share a little design process for a knitted garment in progress.

During our travels over Thanksgiving week, I visited a new-to-me yarn store. It was little but crammed full of beautiful yarns. I was surprised and delighted to find a yarn from West Yorkshire Spinners. It is their Signature 4-ply fingering yarn spun with 35% Bluefaced Leicester wool. I had read about this British yarn maker in posts by my knitterly on-line friends. To find a source of this well-crafted fiber in the heart of the U S of A was unexpected. Even more so because of the price – only $13 US for a 100g ball. As you can see, I wasted no time in getting a swatch made.

The yarn will be made into a pair of socks for my husband. He highly approves of the color, which corresponds to one of his team’s colors. (He supports Westham United, “the Hammers,” who play in claret and blue.)

The design work I refer to is for the little green vest I started on October 17th.

Notice the stranded colorwork on the shoulders. The chart provided by the designer is perfectly fine, but I was not in the mood for snowflakes. Instead, I wanted something a little bit floral and seized on this opportunity to design my own chart.

The yarns I pulled from my stash were cream, lavender and deep pink. These will show up well against the dark cool green main color. My new design starts with a pattern called Michaelmas, which somewhat resembles a purple coneflower. This motif went into the center of the design. Next I needed a border. Working in the same number of rows as the one in the pattern, I drew a sort-of zig zag, worked in a few more flowers and then added some sprinkled stitches of cream.

Reasonably satisfied with my chart, I proceeded to swatch it. Ultimately there were a few modifications made to the design as I knitted along. Here is what I came up with:

The design was tweaked slightly as I worked it into the left shoulder.

You will see it soon. With that bit of knitting done, finishing the body of the vest won’t take long.