Tag Archives: KTFOs

Lilac Forever Vest

by
Lilac sleeveless turtleneck sweater, knitted from the Forever Vest pattern


Oh hi there! 👋 Hey look, I made a sweater!

I know it might seem strange that it took so long for me to knit something from my own book, but when Seasonless: Patterns for Life first published I was in the midst of the move from Florida (where I had not knitted, apart from a few of the smaller book samples) to Upstate New York. And at that moment pretty much everything I owned was still in storage, including my needles and what little yarn had survived the culling for 2 interstate moves in 2 years.

As happy as I’ve been to be back in a land where sweaters make sense, I’ve also been aware of how many of them I own — including several of the garments that were the basis for the book. My house is quite small and closet space is limited and finite, so I’m (trying to be) more deliberative than ever about what I add to my wardrobe. (More on that to come?) And that’s how it happened that Seasonless was at the end of its second printing before I finally decided to make myself a Forever Vest — albeit, naturally, with some modifications! I am still me, after all, incapable of sticking to a pattern … even when it’s my own. 

But that’s also the whole point of Seasonless: everything is immensely adaptable.

Page from the book Seasonless showing four variations on the Forever Vest pattern


I finished this sweater the night before Thanksgiving, and I’m thrilled to report that in the meantime it was announced that Seasonless was going back on press for a third printing, and is once again available through Amirisu and at local yarn stores around the globe. So if you don’t already have it, you have another chance! And I want to thank all the people and shop owners especially who apparently lobbied Amirisu to keep the book in print. It’s hugely rewarding that people are finding it so useful.

So about my Forever Vest. As you may know (witness Sloper, etc), I have always loved a sleeveless turtleneck. But I’m especially into it at this point in my midlife, where I like to keep my neck warm but a whole turtleneck sweater is nearly always more than I can bear. Plus I love them for layering both over shirts and under jackets. I’m not sure why we didn’t include a turtleneck variation for the vest, like we did for the Everyday Pullover, but no reason that would stop me from using Forever to make a sleeveless t-neck.


I also wanted it to be super wide and cropped, so I chose to knit the 6th size (47.25″, or about 13″ of positive ease), and I think that was the wrong call. I posted very briefly about this on IG recently and noted that I planned to try to reblock it narrower and see what happens, but haven’t done it yet. Instead of looking cool over a button-down shirt, the proportion just looks … wrong. But I still love it for under a jacket of any kind, whatever might happen with the width. And I am super happy with the length and neck.

Specifically, my mods were:
• knitted the straight body but shortened it to 10.5″ before the armholes.
• wish I had knitted to a smaller-size neck hole (since I started with a larger size) but just picked up fewer stitches than the pattern called for and worked ribbing for 8.5 or 9″

That’s it. I knitted the neck on a flight home for the holiday and only had one needle with me. Normally for a turtleneck, I like to use a needle one size larger for the upper (outer fold) half of the neck, but I just sort of consciously loosened my gauge a bit and it came out just fine. And had I not been on a plane and unprepared, I would also have done a tubular bind-off on the neck so the bottom edge of it would have a little more heft.

The yarn is my old all-purpose fave Germantown sent to me by my friends at Kelbourne Woolens, in Lilac, which is a pretty perfect shade. I’m very happy with that choice — and with the pattern itself. I’m especially pleased with how the armhole shaping came out, and am now eager to make another one.

I no longer own the Aran-Gansey pullover than inspired one of the stitch patterns (it went to England last year with a niece on whom it looks amazing, makes my heart happy) so now I’m thinking of making a Forever with that stitch pattern. I’ll let you know if I do!

Posting this less than a year after the previous post is breaking my once-every-other-year pace, lol, and who knows, I might pick up steam from there. Thanks again to everyone still reading and supporting this old blog. I appreciate you! And if you’ve been knitting from Seasonless, I’d love to hear about it—

Photos of me, the book and my sweater are © me; pattern photos from Seasonless by Masahiro Shimazaki for Amirisu

2019: My sewing year in review

by
My Sewing Year in Review: all the Fen mods

Any year that includes that magical striped dress up there is a good sewing year, in my book. But I think this was easily my most successful — if most myopic — year as a sewer. I sewed 12 things, some of which were never blogged but all of which are pictured here. Every one of them was completed during my Linenpalooza of summer-into-fall, fueled by the actual and neurotic need for suitable clothes for my India trip. (Although not all of them went with me.)

I think I mentioned before that this came about because I didn’t own clothing that was appropriate. Essentially all of my hot-weather clothes are sleeveless; my dresses are sleeveless and knee-length. It was going to be in the 90s the whole time and we would be outside for most or all of every day — everything I owned that was sufficiently modest would have been suffocating. Buying a whole travel wardrobe was not an option, so I bought some linen to augment what I already had in my stash, and I pulled out some of my tried-and-true patterns and began cutting.

The six garments above are all made from the same two pattern pieces of the Fen top, just modified in various ways: the striped and blurple dresses, the yellow dress, the black top, toffee top and cyan top. The four pants below are all from the Robbie pants pattern I’ve also made (with my modifications) many times before: pomelo, striped, blurple, toffee. The striped and blurple ones were both made from the scraps of the dresses, and I cut both a top and pants in the toffee color. From the scraps of the pomelo pants, I also scraped together the little pomelo top, below, which is from the Hemlock tee pattern (modified along some of the the same lines as before) with the amount of fabric determining the length of the body and sleeves.

Sewing year in review: Hemlock tee and Robbie pants

I had a lot of fun making the matching tops and pants, which can be worn together like faux jumpsuits but which also mix-and-match with the other pieces. And ultimately 10 of the above got packed for the trip, along with one RTW linen top (so I took 3 dresses, 4 tops and 4 pants) plus an 11th-hour surprise, the jacket below:

Sewing year in review: linen Wiksten Haori with travel pockets

The Sunday before we left, as I was neatly rolling my clothes and laying them into one side of my suitcase, I began to get anxious about the flights. And I convinced myself I needed to sew a jacket. I have no fear of heights or flying, but I am a little claustrophobic and I always told myself I couldn’t be sealed in a plane for 14 hours. So naturally when it came time to do that, I decided it would be fine if only I had a linen Wiksten jacket (lightweight! but fends off a/c! doesn’t take up too much suitcase space while not in use!) with perfectly scaled secret pockets for my passport and kleenex and earbuds and phone … . So that’s what I made for myself. And it worked.

.

PREVIOUSLY: 2019 Knitting year in review

Q for You: What’s your strongest knitting bond?

by
Q for You: What's your strongest knitting bond?

I’ll be honest and tell you I debated whether to post here about this precious little cardigan, but the point of this blog for me has always been a shared connection with you: fellow knitters of the world who’ve stumbled in here, being people who understand what a mysteriously powerful thing it is to knit, and especially to knit for others. We often describe it as a hug, but what this tiny sweater has really driven home for me is that to knit is to form bonds — some of them beyond description.

This sweater is for my great-niece, Matilda, who lived only a few days. Before she was born, I had envisioned a future hand-me-down. I wanted to knit a Gramps cardigan (because the only thing better than a shawl-collar cardigan is a miniature shawl-collar cardigan) and had picked out this sweet, soft green yarn for it.* As with E’s sweater, I would have made it 6-12 mos size so she’d have time to grow into and out of it before it hopefully got passed on to another baby. When she died, I still very much wanted to knit it and didn’t entirely understand why, but thankfully her mother still wanted it and so I got to have this unexpectedly profound experience. Time spent knitting it these past couple of weeks has been time bonding with her in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I didn’t get to meet her, and she became so real to me as this sweater took shape. And once it became a keepsake, the shape of it changed — I wanted it to be very specific to her. Newborn sized and a pure expression of love.

It’s a gift I hope will convey feelings I don’t have any other way to express.

I’m making this post a Q for You because what I would love in response to this is for you to tell me about the strongest bonds you’ve formed through knitting — with a family member, friend or stranger; someone you’ve knitted for or with, or who has knitted for you? If you’re willing to share, I’d love to hear it.

.

*The yarn is Bummull in “grass green,” which is a misnomer — it’s more of a dusty mint color, so pretty — and I’ve knitted the smallest size of Gramps on US5 needles with this yarn to get it to be newborn sized. (It’s less than one ball.) I added the garter ridges above the ribbing and did a garter-stitch button band minus the shawl collar, but otherwise it’s true to the pattern.

.

PREVIOUSLY in Q for You:

Pure wool sunshine

by
baby Anker's cardigan sweater (knitting pattern) with Jen Hewett x Fringe Field Bag

When I asked you all for baby sweater pattern suggestions back in October, reader Dianne inadvertently reminded me that I’ve had Petite Knit’s Anker’s Cardigan on my own wishlist for ages and that there’s a baby version, Anker’s Jacket. My niece had asked for a baby sweater in the same goldenrod Germantown yarn as the mini Sólbein — of which I had plenty left over! — and Anker’s seemed like the absolute perfect use for it, as the two little cardigans would have some design resonance. Perfect tiny sister sweaters.

But really, I couldn’t have imagined how darling this would be. And again, it took barely more than a skein of yarn! (Which means I still have enough for 2.5 more, lol.) Rather than worrying about pattern gauge, I went with the gauge I had gotten on the sister sweater — 4.75 sts and 6.5 rows per inch on US8 needles — and knitted the 3-6 month size, knowing it would come out more like 6-9 months. I never buy newborn sized clothing as they tend to outgrow it way too quickly, and definitely didn’t want to knit anything that would last so briefly. It came out at about a 21.5″ chest circumference so she’ll have some room to grown into it. I just hope she doesn’t grow into and out of it in the middle of Texas summer next year!

baby Anker's cardigan sweater (knitting pattern)

Apart from gauge, I made very few departures from the pattern. I knitted the sleeves flat and did only one set of sleeve decreases along the way, with the rest on the first row of cuff ribbing, so the sleeves are a bit more balloon shaped. And I did garter-stitch bands (on US6) instead of ribbing because I’m still really into garter-stitch bands.

I bought the little felted animals in India, and while I thought I had once put together the cutest baby gift I ever would, this one made my heart impossibly melty. I hope Baby E and her mom both know how much I love them.

(Buttons, Jen Hewett x Fringe Field Bag and Lykke needles from Fringe Supply Co.)

My little black cloud

by
My little black cloud

Not all black clouds are gloomy, it turns out. In fact, this little cloud I’ve made to line my neck with is just the opposite!

Several months ago, as previously mentioned, I cast on an unknown object in the dreamy Woolfolk Luft I had originally acquired for another project. I knew I wanted it around my neck, but not what form it might ultimately take. I simply cast on 3 stitches and began knitting a garter-stitch triangle à la Purl Soho’s Triangle Garter Wrap, but with an undefined end goal. Along the way, I’ve imagined it growing into a giant triangle, a square (with or without some variation in the stitch pattern), a large rectangle on the bias … Basically, I was waiting for it to tell me what it wanted to be. Meanwhile, it’s been handy to have lying around for those nights when you can only manage a row or two of knit stitches … and then may not touch it again for days or weeks.

As it reached a certain mass and I took to wrapping the super-soft WIP around my neck, I was reminded of the little kerchief I knitted for my mom many moons ago when I was a brand-new knitter. I’ve always wanted to repeat it for myself, and given Luft’s extreme lightness and softness, it seemed like it might be just the thing. Rather than leave it at pure garter stitch, I knitted a wide 2×2 ribbed edge, which gives it a little more grip, less slip. And I ceased increasing when I started ribbing, as I am not fond of the pointy ends on triangle shawls/shawlettes. It may block out a bit bigger, but at present it’s 18″ x 36″, and used 140g of Luft.

In the end, it’s a little gem of a thing and I can’t wait for the first day cool enough to leave the house with it draped around my neck.

.

PREVIOUSLY in Finished Objects: A Fen for Faux Fall

A Fen for Faux Fall

by
A Fen for Faux Fall

I’ve been referring to my summer sewing extravaganza as Linenpalooza 2019, but it could also be called Fen Fest for all the Fen mods I’ve sewn. This (last?) one is the most straightforward, and a great transitional piece for Faux Fall dressing given the dried-leaf color (the same as my toffee Robbie pants).

A Fen for Faux Fall

For this one, I cut a size 12 with the same hemline mods as my blue striped one a couple years back, but I also moved the neckline in 1″ at the sides for a less-wide neck opening. I gave it a center-front seam (looks great, saves fabric, win/win), did the prescribed Fen neckband, and added a chest pocket to give it a little more of a t-shirt vibe. It gives me a hint of that Fall feeling for now and will be great for layering if it ever starts to cool off.

.

PREVIOUSLY in Finished Objects: That time I crocheted a hat

That time I crocheted a hat

by
That time I crocheted a hat

I’m totally stunned that this worked. A) I’m not a frequent or experienced crocheter. B) I have never attempted to crochet something that had to fit. C) My gauge was totally different from the Wool and the Gang “Joanne” pattern I bought for this, so I had to wing it. But really the most amazing part isn’t that I crocheted a hat that fits — it’s that I made a hat that actually doesn’t look bad on me! Incredible.

This is the second of my three proposed Summer of Basics pieces, following my toffee Grace sweater. The third was meant to be a dress that I don’t yet have the fabric for. But since I’ve made three other dresses this summer (and pants!), I’m calling it a success.

That time I crocheted a hat

(Field Bag from Fringe Supply Co.)

PREVIOUSLY in FOs: Amazing “Grace” and the perfect pants