Collar and Vest and project planning origins.

Does anyone have advice on attaching a collar? I picked up the neck stitches successfully and the collar itself looked OK, but it rolls like a model of a surfer’s paradise. 

I took pictures. (Please wait…. pictures will be a separate post, sorry.)

I hate posting pictures. Posting pictures has gotten easier over the past year, but I still have this attitude problem, like knitters who think purling is hard because someone told them it was a decade ago. Of course blog posts with pictures get more attention, so there is an incentive to suck it up. 

If I could get the collar to lie flat, this would have been a 3 week vest. Making it the fastest knitting project (by volume) that I have ever done. I have all the ends sewn in. I tried adding a rim of 3-loop crochet (I do not know if that is “double crochet” or “half-double” or “triple”.) and that helped, but it was not enough weight to get it to stay down. 

Beautiful seaming job on all the four quadrants.

I did not do a bottom hem, but the tiny bit of stockinette roll looks intentional and I am quite pleased. 

The fitting job I did turned out awesome. Which you cannot see in the current pictures because I need someone else to push the camera’s button. Since the shaping I did was dead easy, I am very very very pleased. 

I made a sweater with 2 shades of purple, starting the planning phase during the first Presidential debate, and finishing before the election. I admit to thinking of this as my election sweater. It says “Fie!” on the red state/blue state nonsense by being all purple.  I am much more politically leaning than that, but I like purple much better than either red or blue. I plan to wear my political sweater to the polls, but no one will notice or care. That is probably how I think political leanings should be visible to the public, as people going to the polls. It would be more awesome if everyone was wearing purple because I think that is pretty.

Playing it close to the vest.

I uploaded a picture of the “rose rot” yarn.

There is a picture of the hat I am making from the first skein of “Fireworks”; the hat is probably 80% complete.

And I actually looked at my Ravelry queue and moved stuff just into favorites. I am never going to make a plain jane vest and give some designer credit for it when it does not come in my size. I suspect I will make myself a pair of Cat Bordhi-designed socks before I do one of the other ones I found. I am not really going to knit a lace shawl. That is some flight of fancy.

There has been a decision. I have 20% of a hat, and one mitten (the first one is done) to do for other people, then I am next on the knitted projects. I am getting a vest or three.

I have some Swish superwash I intended as a quick knit, but the EZ pattern was not easy. (The more I think about Elizabeth Zimmermann’s “patterns”, the more cursing I have to remove before posting.) I have some lovely black Aran-weight yarn that cries to become a cabled vest, like the recent Knitty’s “Abrazo”. And I have several pounds of BFL that wants to become a sweater for me, but I really do not like sweaters with sleeves. I faved Cheryl Oberle’s “Many Buttons” vest from Folk Vests, but I have no idea where my copy of the book is. 

If someone has a really awesome vest pattern (waistcoat style or pullover) that is at least worsted weight yarn and comes in larger sizes (remember that a “medium” is a size 14 woman now, so no fair using those Vogue sizes where a large fits a size 8 woman.) I would most assuredly be interested.