Vest Laid Plans

Some knitting has occurred in the past few weeks, but mostly planning for a new major project.

We got out of town for much of last week, visiting relatives in northeast Texas and spending some time in the woods hiking and relaxing -- and enjoying unseasonably cool weather, along with the sound of rain. Rain! I worked on a pair of socks that I'm making using a free pattern from Knitty and yarn I bought in Germany last December.

These Inlay Socks are kinda cool. The effect is a woven fabric, but it's all knitting. You do this weird technique that allows you to do two-stitch cables without a cable needle or slipping stitches off temporarily. It's fiddly and a little weird to get used to, since one stitch in each pair is intentionally twisted. I can't manage to memorize the pattern, but I'm liking how these are turning out. Things should go a bit faster when I'm only doing the complicated pattern over the instep rather than around the whole cuff.

While I was gone, some yarn arrived that I'd ordered from the UK. I tried to find a closer source, but just couldn't. It's Jamieson & Smith Shetland Heritage in beautiful, rich colors. Or, rather, colours. They're all solid, with nary a heathered color in the collection, and they're all based on colors found in traditional garments housed in the Shetland Museum and Archives. Nice.

I'm planning to make a vest using a pattern by Kate Davies called Machrihanish, after a village on the Mull of Kintyre. I love the bold designs, and since some of the vests I've made in the past, like the Hillhead and Vaila slipovers, no longer fit me well, I've got a great excuse to start something new. So my days ahead will be filled with careful swatching, two-handed stranded knitting, and steek cutting. Kate's pattern gives very detailed instructions for swatching, which I don't often see for stranded knitting projects, and I'm very appreciative.

Can't wait to get started.