{"id":18031,"date":"2018-01-18T09:10:26","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T14:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/?p=18031"},"modified":"2019-09-18T09:09:02","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T13:09:02","slug":"knit-camel-vest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/knit-camel-vest\/","title":{"rendered":"knit camel vest"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is sweater #12 of my ‘learn to knit by making a dozen self-designed sweaters’ project. (Here are links to #1<\/a>, #2<\/a>, #3<\/a>, #4<\/a>, #5<\/a>, #6<\/a>, #7<\/a> #8<\/a>, #9<\/a>, #10<\/a>, and #11<\/a>, if you’d like to see my progress.)<\/p>\n

What could I do for my 12th sweater project that I haven’t already done?! I started thinking this would have to be a spectacular finale to the project, and that put so much pressure on me, I couldn’t get started! So I decided to step back and just make something I wanted to make, as I did for all the others.<\/p>\n

\"camel<\/p>\n

Now, you could argue that a vest is not really a sweater, but all it’s missing is the sleeves (and I definitely know how to knit sleeves by now) so I don’t think this is cheating – I could have added sleeves if I had more yarn, and I had plenty to learn from designing and knitting this vest, which was really the point of my whole project.<\/p>\n

I had about 500m of deliciously soft baby camel yarn left over from my amigurumi Camel<\/a> (I’d bought 5 hanks to take advantage of a wholesale discount price – it was far too expensive to justify buying 100% baby camel yarn for a toy at retail price). I’d hoped to think of some way to use this extremely warm yarn to make something useful, but the low yardage was going to be a challenge, so I decided it’d have to be a fairly close-fitting vest, and I’d do some calculations on the fly to make sure I could use as much of the yarn as possible without running out.<\/p>\n

To keep it interesting and build my skills, I chose an all-over textured stitch pattern instead of plain stockinette. <\/p>\n

\"camel<\/p>\n

Instead of joining a new ball of yarn at the end of a row, I used the Russian join to minimise wasted yarn (and had to consult my own book<\/a> for the instructions – it’s been a long time since I’ve used this join and I couldn’t quite remember how to do it!)<\/p>\n

And my plan worked, eventually! It took some re-knitting: I started my textured stitch pattern in a way that caused the whole bottom border to flip up (a fact that didn’t reveal itself in my swatch or until I was way past the point of wanting to unravel it all and restart). I kept going and then unravelled from the bottom cast-on edge up until the point where I could fix the problem (and also to recover some yarn to use for a more substantial neckband than I’d budgeted for – I didn’t like the look of the narrow one I tried first), then I reknitted the bottom border and added the neckband.<\/p>\n

\"camel<\/p>\n

I added a new tool to my knitting toolkit: an interchangeable crochet hook<\/a> (size E\/3.5mm) for picking up stitches. Being a left-hander, but a right-handed knitter, I’ve found that picking up stitches along an edge (as a way to start e.g. a button band or armhole edging) with a needle is too challenging for me. Until now, I’d been picking up a few stitches at a time with a normal crochet hook, then dropping them off the hook and picking them up on the needle, but this was slow and fiddly. <\/p>\n

Now, I can just unscrew the needle tip from the cable, screw on the hook, pick up all the stitches with ease and slide them onto the cable as I go, and then switch back to the needle tip to begin knitting! The interchangeable hook has been a brilliant addition to my interchangeable needle<\/a> collection. <\/p>\n

In the end, I used 99% of my yarn (woohoo!) to complete the vest, and I’m happy with the result – it’s extremely soft and very warm without being bulky. It isn’t the sort of thing I’d usually wear – either in style or colour – but this extra-warm layer is turning out to be very useful, and it’s the natural colour of the baby camels who donated their yarn so that I could knit this vest, so that’s pretty cool!<\/p>\n

\"camel<\/p>\n

Skills I learnt in this project: <\/p>\n