Wednesday, June 15, 2011

My Little Free-rAnge Vest: Pt3

This is my favorite part, the adding of bits, modular-style. Up until now, my vest back has been a bit too skinny for moi but now the time has come to begin tailopring it to fit. The next step is to determine how much you need to add to your sides/shoulders to create your perfect fit. I generally do this by visual estimation, something that tends to work better for me than math ever did. So, next steps:

• Pick up stitch for stitch along the entire long edge of your emergining vest and begin knitting straight garter stitch, changing yarns and colors according to whim, until you have a good shoulder width (4.5 inches or 11 cm for me). You are still only working the back, however, not the sides (which we'll do later) so only focus on back width for now. Try other stitches like seed, if you wish. I'm staying with garter because it offers a sturdy flexibility which my piece needs right now, the over all 'hand' of the knitting being rather drapey.
• Repeat for other side

It's a this point in free-rangeing that you realize that you do have options, that you can design and adjust as you go. Back too skinny? Add to the sides! Vest too short? Make it longer (we'll save this until the very end so don't get carried away here)! Find it too dull? Add color! Speaking of which, I'm finding my look kind of muted so I'm scheming in advance towards embellishments.

Okay, knitters, forge ahead and we'll see you back here on Friday when we'll launch our fronts.