So now what?

Well, I guess now that I’m done with the OCD, I should move on to something more productive. After my mother told me that my grandmother probably wouldn’t wear a shawl and talking over what she probably would wear, we decided on a hooded zip front vest with pockets. No sleeves because with my sleeve track record, she may not even get it next Christmas.

So now that leaves me with the problem of locating such a pattern. I was pretty lucky… there are patterns for a zip up vest with pockets and a cabled vest on knitty, and to get the hood on, I’m consulting a pattern from Vogue Knitting Fall 2005 that Jillian was nice enough to lend to me last time we went yarn store crawling. Hence, the Hoodie Boogie Rock Vest you see on the sidebar.

Not sure if this counts as an original design so much as a hybrid of about 3. But it’s fun nonetheless and not too taxing just yet. So far, I’ve just got the pocket fronts and about a couple of inches from the bottom band.
Here’s a close up of the cables, which I did without a cable needle and I didn’t even stress one iota of a second about dropping those stitches that were precariously hanging out in mid-air. Thanks to Jillian again for showing me this technique.
But the cool thing so far is the pockets! I’ve never done this before, but you work back and forth for the section that’s going to be the pocket front, and then pick up stitches on the back of that piece to knit behind it. If the pockets were to be square, I’m sure you could probably do this with a double-knitting technique so you don’t have to do the pockets separately from the body, but eh, it works just fine this way. I discovered that if you pick up stitches on the purl side and want to purl with them, this is done differently than picking up and knitting. Since it’s the back of the piece, I don’t care so much, but now I’m dying to know how to pick up and purl. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?