Cephalopod

New Pattern Release: Concord Vest!

I got the pattern for my Concord Vest up for sale yesterday!

It’s my first independent pattern release in months, actually. This is thanks to two secret sweaters for a yarn company, and the hibernating gray sweater. So I’m really pleased to release this pattern out into the wild, just in time for summer knitting. It’s designed in DK weight yarn (Cephalopod Yarns Traveller, to be specific) and is available in bust sizes 27 (30.5, 33.5, 36.25, 39.25 / 42.25, 45, 49.5, 53)”, or 68.5 (77.5, 85, 92, 99.5 / 107.5, 114.5, 125.5, 134.5) cm.

My favorite part about this vest is the interesting construction. Because I wanted a pick-up free sweater–that is, one in which there would be no picking up of stitches–I designed it with the armhole and neck edging knit along with the main piece.

But this created a problem: how would I do the typical underarm shaping without being able to bind off stitches at the beginning of rows? The answer was creative decreasing. By working double and single decreases on both sides of the fabric, I was able to mimic the slope of “traditional” bind-off underarm shaping, while leaving the side pattern intact.

Plus this meant it was really fun to knit. :-)

Concord is available for purchase for $5.00 through Ravelry via this link (you do not have to have a Ravelry account to purchase). I hope you all like it as much as I do!

FO Friday: Concord Grape Vest

Here’s the official FO Friday post for the new vest! I put it up for testing yesterday and have several people signed up already, woohoo!

I’m soooooooo happy with the pictures we got. My husband is learning the ins and outs of our Canon and does amazing things with the 50mm lens.

The specs:

Pattern: my own, tentatively scheduled for release mid-May. Oh, and I decided to go with “Concord Grape Vest” as the name. Concord by itself was making me think of the Concorde–not exactly the vibe I’m going for.

Yarn: Cephalopod Yarns Traveller in Finger Lakes, 2 skeins purchased at Rhinebeck last year and about a tenth of a skein from a nice Raveler who destashed to me when it looked like I would definitely run out.

This yarn is delicious. It’s springy and nice to knit with, and the colors… well, those pictures are unretouched. That’s really what the colors look like in person.

I do highly recommend alternating skeins, however. My three skeins were all completely different, to the point where I know I would have had big blotches of color if I hadn’t alternated every two rows.

Notes: Although I usually try to avoid sewing seams, I wanted to knit something a little more portable than my recent projects (gray sweater, I’m looking at you…). A vest in pieces was perfect. And the seams are short enough that it wasn’t too bad. I’m starting to actually like mattress stitch, can you believe it? It’s fun to see the pieces come together like magic.

Knitting the front and back separately helped me concentrate on the slightly unorthodox shaping, too. Since I wanted the armhole and neck edgings to be knit along with the main piece, I couldn’t do any traditional binding off at the beginning of rows–so the whole thing is shaped with double and single decreases, just inside the twisted rib edging. It was challenging to get the right ratios for the curves I wanted (there are sections with double decreases every row, then double decreases every other row, then single decreases, etc.), but I figured it out!

I really like the way the back decreases pull the fabric up, too. It’s a result of decreasing many stitches quickly over not very many rows–but I think it worked out very serendipitously!

All in all, I’m pretty dang happy with this vest. It came out just like I envisioned it. :-)

Moving on!

Thanks for all the commiseration on my gray sweater debacle! Kirstin asked if Photoshop would be helpful in editing out the pooling spots. I’ve gotten pretty good at editing out the stray hair or tree branch, but I’m afraid making the middle part of the sweater look like the top would be well beyond my abilities. See all the light bits on the top?

Yeah, I wouldn’t even know where to start. Plus, I like to keep my samples in photo-ready condition, since there’s always the possibility of trunk shows, the need for photo reshoots, etc.–and wouldn’t it be a cheat if I managed to fix the photo so it looked good and then showed up with the pooling monstrosity?

Anyway, I’m moving on! Due to a sudden and all-consuming love affair with this purple Cephalopod yarn (and, okay, a desire for some damn color and texture after all that endless gray stockinette!), I have the purple vest blocking already:

Yum. It really looks good enough to eat, doesn’t it? Its working title is the Grape Vest, because it reminds me of the luscious spectrum of purple grapes you get at the beginning of the fall season. I’ll probably change the name, but it’ll always be Grape Vest to me….

Rhinebeck Part 2: The Haul

This is the post where I get to show off my Rhinebeck purchases!

First up, two skeins of luscious Cephalopod Yarns Traveler in the Finger Lakes colorway. This colorway is hard to photograph, but it reminds me of fresh purple grapes:

I think those are going to grow up to be a hat and mitts set (or possibly a scarf).

Next up, two skeins of Blue Moon Fiber Arts BFL sport in colorway “Manly, yes, but I like it too!” (Really, that’s the name of the colorway.)

This yarn is squishy and delicious, but I made a mistake when I bought it. Although the name should have tipped me off that it was a sportweight yarn, an error in labeling printed a worsted gauge instead of a sportweight one. You can see it in this picture if you squint:

So instead of the 1300 yards of light-worsted weight yarn I thought I was getting, I actually have 1300 yards of sport. I really do like the yarn and the colorway, enough to keep it rather than go through the hassle of returning… but I have to psych myself up to tackle a sweater on size 4 needles (what should have been printed on the label, and the size the Blue Moon website recommends).

This next lovely skein wasn’t actually purchased for me. My husband took one look at the wall of Stonehedge Shepherd’s Wool and insisted on buying one so he could knit himself another hat. As you can imagine, I didn’t argue. This is the Berries colorway:

I also got a sachet of moth-repelling herbs and a book of stitch patterns:

Not pictured: the maple candy and half-sour pickles that were eaten before the weekend was over. Yum.

I think I did pretty well for my first Rhinebeck! I purposely didn’t decide I had to have any one type/brand of yarn, since I’d heard too many stories of people sprinting to booths the second the fairgrounds opened, or standing in lines for hours. We were there to see the sights, eat good food, and spend a little (but not too much) on yarny goodness.

I would say mission accomplished :-)