atwater village vest

Yesterday, an unschooling mom who lives surprisingly and delightfully close to me, took me on a tour of the neighborhood. We went to coffee shops, toy stores, parks, and more. I got a bunch of practical how-to-park-here advice, and a humongous list of places I want to explore further. This awesome neighborhood tour will get more detailed blog posts in the future... but first...

One of the stops we made was at The Little Knittery in Atwater Village, where I spent an agonizingly long time choosing a skein of yarn to buy. I ended up with this - Noro taiyo silk/wool blend. It's a frustrating yarn - catches on my fingers, it's super tightly spun so it knots up, and it fuzzes together with the other pieces easily. However, once I've knit up a few rows, it's really, really pretty and falls really well.

I've never successful knit a garment for myself to wear larger than a pair of socks. I've decided it's time to change that. Find an easy pattern and copy it? That is not the Roya way. Instead, I am making up my own pattern. Let's see if I am the knitter I think I am.

I'm using this blog entry as a way to update the pattern --

Cast on 500 stitches (to figure it out for your size: figure out the widest you want it to be at the bottom [for me, 53 inches wide] knit up a gauge swatch [for me, 25 sts in 3 inches. That turns into 475 stitches, but then I decided I wanted peaked edges, so I added 25 more stitches, and I'll decrease later on]

I forgot to do stockinette stitch, and knit the first 3 rows. Then I remembered, and began purling on the wrong sides, knitting on the right side.

Continue stockinette stitch for the length you want from bottom hem to under armpits.
I decreased to 475 stitches by knitting 2 together on either ends every 10 rows (ish).

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I'm only about an inch into the stockinette right now, haven't even done my first decrease. I'll check back in with edits, and the next steps when I get there!