Vest for 3-Year Old Henry!

In what has become an unsurprising opening for most of my blog posts, this latest knitting project has been over a year in the making.  And unfortunately for Henry, it was completed after the DC winter season (its now almost 90 degrees here!), so it may not be put into meaningful use until next fall.  But at least I finally finished it :-)

This children's vest turned out remarkably well -- I found the pattern on Ravelry, and ordered the pattern booklet, Sirdar's 324, online.  At first, I thought I would design the vest myself but I couldn't think of any interesting motifs to help make the vest more distinctive.  I'm glad I purchased this specific pattern booklet because it has a good range of children's patterns, which is where my knitting has been concentrated in recent months.  The yarn I used also turned out to be perfect as it produced a good mid-weight vest that can be used in both fall and winter, and it knit up fairly quickly on the needles.  I did convert the pattern to knit the pattern in the round (I hate seams!), and that was fairly simple.  The bulk of my "focused" time on the vest was spent on the neckband and armhole borders which required a fair amount of work with picking up a LOT of stitches. Details of the project follow the picture of Henry modeling the vest.

 

 Henry's Vest Project Details

Pattern:  Design G, Tank and Beanie, Size 3 -4 years.  Published in Sirdar 324, Vintage Snuggly DK Knits.

Yarn:  1.3 skeins (approx) of Mission Falls 136 Merino Superwash in 004 Charcoal.  0.2 skeins (approx) of Mission Falls Merino Superwash in 003 Oyster as the contrast yarn.

Needle:  2 size 4 circular needles for body of the vest, 2 size 3 circulars for the bottom, neck and armhole ribbing.

Post-Blocking Measurements:  26 inches wide (13 inches per side) by 15 1/4 tall (measured from bottom of vest to top of shoulder).  The armholes were 5 inches long, and the "v" of the neck was 6 inches long.  Although the gauge was slightly smaller than what was called for, the result perfectly measures to what the pattern calls for.