Pransellknit

Since finishing my green vest a little while ago, I’ve had a couple of questions about how I lengthened the vest (the original pattern is for a cropped vest). With the permission of the designer, Kristen TenDyke, I thought I’d put up some notes about how I went about it. This is my first proper attempt at explaining alterations to a pattern, so please forgive me if it goes into too much detail, or not enough.

Some caveats before I start: the modifications worked well with the yarn I used, the garment size and my body type. You may need to go about things a little differently in order to make it work for you. These notes are meant purely to give an idea of one way the vest can be lengthened to sit at the hip, rather than starting from the ribs. These suggestions should be read in conjunction with the original pattern, which can be found here.

All numbers used will be based on the medium size, which is the size I made. The numbers are there to give a concrete example of how the shaping works, rather than just trying to explain it in abstract terms.

The shaping I used follows a basic hourglass form; the width decreases from the hip to the waist, and then increases from the waist to the armholes. In a nutshell, I did a mirror image of the waist to armhole shaping. Hopefully the photo above shows that shaping clearly enough.

Back

The number of stitches cast on is equal to the number of stitches just before the armhole decreases. So, in the case of the medium size, I cast on 80 stitches rather than 72. The border is worked as instructed in the pattern. The shaping is then worked as follows:

Starting from the first row after the border, I decreased both sides every 10 rows, 4 times. This left me with 72 stitches — the number you would cast on if making the original version. From here I knit 4 rows, then followed the pattern as written. The 4 rows in between the decreases and increases were added to ensure I got the right length for my body.

In some ways, the medium is a bad example because it has the most straightforward shaping. If I were making the small size, I would do the waist shaping as follows:

Starting from the first row after the border, decrease each side every 8 rows once, and then every 10 rows 3 times.

Essentially, you’re reversing the waist to armhole shaping in two ways; instead of increasing, you’re decreasing, and you’re reversing when the decreases are made (rather than every 10 rows x 3 and every 8 rows x 1, it’s every 8 rows x 1 and every 10 rows x 3). The reason I would do it this way is for symmetry. However, I don’t know if it would make that much of a difference.

Front Pieces

For the front you just need to cast on half the back stitches for each front piece. So for a medium, just cast on 40, rather than 80. Follow the same pattern with the decreases (but just for one side), remembering to cast off 5 after the border to account for the button band.

The length of the piece before decreasing for the neck can be calculated as follows:

length before neck shaping = length covered by the hip to waist decreases (do not include the border, but do include any extra rows before the waist to armhole increases) + the length specified in the original pattern.

For me, 14.5cm (5.75 inches) covered the decreases from hip to waist, plus the 4 rows of stockingette. Add that to the length of the piece specified in the pattern before starting the neck shaping (6.25 inches for medium), making the front pieces measure 30 cm (12 inches) before starting the neck shaping.

I followed the pattern after that point. All decreases (waist to arm hole, and neck) were worked as in the pattern.

Buttonband

I winged this bit the most out of all the modifications. I picked up the number of stitches around the neck as specified in the pattern. However, down the fronts, I picked up roughly one stitch for each row, ensuring the same number of stitches were picked up on both front pieces. As I roughly doubled the length of the vest, I put in 8 buttonholes. Because the pattern calls for rather bulky yarn, I recommend putting in more buttonholes rather than less. The bulk can result in pulling between the buttonholes which is a hard look to pull off. Having more buttonholes alleviates this issue.

I’m reluctant to give stitch numbers here, as it’s highly dependent on the length of the vest and how many stitches you pick up around the edges. Ultimately, just take the number of stitches picked up between along the fronts, divide it by the number of buttons you want and move the numbers around so the number of stitches between buttonholes are pretty much the same (e.g the number of stitches between buttonholes alternated between 7 and 8 stitches for me).

So, that’s all the alterations I made to the pattern to come up a vest that sits at the hip rather than the waist. I hope that it’s useful for anyone who’s thinking of making a longer version of the vest, and doesn’t add confusion. If any of my instructions are unclear, please let me know and I’ll try to explain it better.

Dad’s vest was finished in time for his birthday today, but unfortunately he’s not in possession of it at the moment…

Conservative (but pretty!) Vest (rav link) by Julia Trice
9 balls of Lincraft Balmoral Tweed
3.50 and 4.00 mm needles
Start: April 2009
Finish: May 2009
Ravelryed here

It was a rush at the end, but thought two days was plenty of time for it to dry on the blocking mat, to be sent on Thursday. It was dry on Friday, three days after I put it out to block. True, I could sped up the process, but silly me took for granted that it wouldn’t take that long to dry and only realised it was still wet as I went to fold it up and send it off.

Measuring it against ‘the template’, it looks like a pretty close match. As it’s a firmer fabric, with less give than ‘the template’, I’ll reserve my full judgement on the project until I see Dad in it. If I can nab a photo of him modelling it, I’ll post it here.

Although the length and width of the vest is heavily based on ‘the template’, the pattern I used in conjunction was very helpful in terms of shaping. I owe the designer, Julia of Mind of Winter, a great deal of gratitude for her help and patience when I got myself completely confused and in a knot about the shoulder decreases. Turns out I had them reversed on the back, creating an overhang at the armhole side. Instead of doing the sensible thing and trying to work it out when I wasn’t so tired, I got in contact with her to see if I had made a silly mistake that everyone bar me could see. Turns out, I had, and she was just lovely when I explained what a fool I had been.

The whole vest took around 450 grams of Lincraft Balmoral Tweed. I must admit to having a bit of a mental block about Lincraft branded yarn, but I found this yarn fine to work with. The occasional slub added to the tweediness and it bloomed beautifully with a wet blocking. It is a discontinued yarn, which is a shame as I have a couple of projects in mind that would have been great in Balmoral Tweed.

Based on recent posts, it might seem that knitting has become a long forgotten pastime of mine. Rest assured that I have been knitting, every day in fact, but a strange aversion to taking photos of works in progress prevented any of that knitting seeing the light of day. High time I got over that, I think.

Dad’s vest seems to be well on track to be finished by the end of the month. The back is finished and I’m just about to split for the v neck, so I regard that as being well on the downhill run. The front’s pictured on top of one of his vests, which I’m using as a template along with a pattern. It seems to be a pretty close match to the template vest at this stage, which is quite a relief.

While mindlessly knitting stockinette day in day out, I’ve been thinking about the next project. My cardigan still needs to be seamed up, so that’ll be done first, but I’m really itching to do something else. That’s a post in itself though.

There’s still a long way to go, but I feel a lot better since destashing never-to-be-used yarn and ripping out never-to-be-finished projects. It’s so easy to stop once you get that initial sense of achievement, but I have to make sure I stick with it. To that end, for every new knitting project I start and finish, an old one needs to be finished up. This is to make sure there’s a bit of variety in my knitting diet, but also to make sure I keep clearing out stash and unfinished projects.

My new project is a vest for my Dad’s birthday.

I borrowed one of his vests for measurements and am using this pattern (rav link) as a guide. The pattern uses a 5 ply yarn whereas I’m using a 10 ply (stashed Lincraft Balmoral Tweed). The miles and miles of stocking makes for good tv or conversation knitting, as it requires minimal concentration.

I’m not sure if it’s the right motivation, but being able to chew through stash yarn is really making me want to motor through this project. If this enthusiasm keeps up, it should be finished in plenty of time for Dad’s birthday at the end of next month.

Writing an intro for a finished project is always nice, but my words feel clumsy today so it’s straight to the photo.

Cropped Tryst Vest by Kristen TenDyke
1.75 balls of Bendigo Woollen Mills Rustic 12 ply, Elm
4.50 and 5.00 mm needles
Start: January 2009
Finish: March 2009

I feel funny calling it Tryst Cropped Vest, because out of those three words, only ‘vest’ is still valid. I thought elm would be a nice colour for the vest, so I was going to make Rustic 12 ply work, but hook or by crook. Luckily, I got gauge straight away. Twelve ply is a lot bulkier than what I normally work with, but it’ll be good for the cooler months.

The vest was also lengthened so it ended at the hip rather than at the ribs. There is some shaping in the cropped version, so I mirrored that shaping in the rib to hip section. With the lengthening, there’s now eight buttonholes rather than four.

The only thing I’m a bit funny about is the buttons. The buttons used are the best ones I’ve found so far, and happily are ones I had stashed away after a buttonmania button sale frenzy a few years ago. However, I just don’t know if they look right.

The vest is my most heavily modified knit to date, and I’m pretty happy with the results. It’s entirely wearable, and it’s given me more confidence to modify other patterns. Look out hefty stash of vintage leaflets.