A weft yarn: Progress on the Oregon Vest

October 31, 2011

Progress on the Oregon Vest - Alice Starmore

I have been working on the Alice Starmore, Oregon Vest.

There are 17 colours in total in this pattern. So far, I have used 14 of them. The pattern of changing colour has been interesting. As you know, you work with two colours at a time. One in the right hand, one in the left. The most amount of rows that a colour has been used for is: 7 rows and the shortest is: 2 rows. This results in a lot of colour changes. And interestingly, very rarely do you change both colours at once. What usually happens is that first you swap the pale one and then in the next row you change the brighter one. Also, I'd say that of the 17 colours of wool only about 4 balls of wool would be a single colour. The rest are a mix of colours. So while it is predominantly a beige colour say, it is also flecked with green and red and blue and orange to give it a muted and mottled look. Amazing.

Mostly, I do my knitting at night. At the end of a long day of garden, work, after school activities, dinner, homework, blah de blah, I can sit down with the colours and the sticks and loose myself in the soothing clicky click. But on the weekend, I broke with tradition and sat down for an hour in the afternoon and did some Oregon Vest. I was stunned at how rich the colours were in the natural light. In the spirit of trying to communicate this, I've photographed the vest outside on our new deck. Some photos are probably a bit too bright, but you get the sense of the true daylight colours of the vest.

I was worried last time I worked on this, that it would not be big enough. I feel much more reassured this time around. It should be fine. In both tape measuring it and just holding it up to my waist, it seems fine.

Just so you know where we're going with all this....here's the pattern photo. I'm nearly up to pattern B, which is the pine cone, spiky leaf, stylised pine tree symbol that makes up the main part of the vest.