The Leaves and Robin's Egg Vest

The project plan for this vest began when I fell in love with a pattern. I'm trying to do much less of that these days, and to make clothing for myself based on need, but I saw this pattern about two years ago and have never been able to talk myself into scratching it off my project list.

The pattern that was the object of such stubborn affection was the beautifully and intricately cabled one pictured above, and is named Kärhö, by Anni Laine. It's a free pattern.

When it came time to decide on a colour for the vest, I reluctantly decided not to do it in green, though green suits the leaf theme so well, because I already had a green knitted vest. I thought I'd do it in a robin's egg blue, which would go with some trousers I had. The yarn I selected was Sandnes Garn's Sisu, in a passably robin's egg blue-like shade.

And here's the finished result. The pattern was a size 37 -- too small for me -- so I sized it up to a size 40 by adding extra ribbing at the sides. The pattern called for the vest to be 21" long, which is too short for me, so I made the vest 23" long. I also knitted a narrow ribbed edging into the neckline, which was supposed to be left as it was, because I thought it looked unfinished without it. I didn't knit the vest in one piece and then steek the armholes, as the designer did that with this original sample in order to keep the colour striping consistent, as there was no need to do so when working with a solid colour yarn. And though I'd planned to wear this vest with trousers and jeans, I did find that one of my skirts went quite well with it when it came time to put it on the dressmaker's form, which as an old-fashioned lady doesn't do trousers.

I used 5 skeins of yarn and finished this project with 30 grams of wool to spare, which as the yarn was purchased specifically for this project, means a stash increase of +30 grams.