Hello World – my 1st post

There is an Africa proverb that says:

If you think you are too small to make a difference

THEN you have never spent a night with a Mosquito

I was thinking of this when I decided that, as a knitter, I may not be able to clean the oceans of the plastic trash/ garbage/rubbish that we have been pouring into it but I CAN decide to never again buy a fleece vest. I would make an Original Fleece, one made from fully biodegradable yarns that, when thrown out, will turn into life giving compost.

So how did I go about this?

First I measured the garment I was going to replace. Having done that I sketched out the measurements on one inch squared flip board paper. [I live in North America now so it’s back to inches for me. I assume one can get metric paper in the rest of the world to do this, too.] Then, using my gauge swatch (a knitters number #1 friend and companion) I calculated how many stitches I needed to cast on for fronts and backs.. Yes, I knitted this in pieces as I have learned that a mistake in a circularly knit garment results in a great deal of re-knitting.

Commercial Yellow Green Fleece vest

Then I chose my yarn. My grandmother Lizzie never had enough of anything, let alone a stash, but another grandmother had donated her stash to our knitting guild when she no longer remembered how to knit, and it was to this that I turned, and there I found a sweater’s worth of green crepe 100% wool, made in Germany, in the 1950’s or 1960’s, perhaps. A swatch told me that it would take me a long time to knit on the appropriate needles, and the crepe yarn felt rather coarse to my fingers.

I also happened to have some mohair yarn in a similar colour. When I knitted the crepe and the mohair together I could use a much bigger size needle, and the feeling of working these yarns together as a unit, was totally different- luscious in the fingers.

I was trying to get a garment that would approximate what I liked about the commercial fleece jacket – one that was soft, warm, and somewhat stretchy so the obvious stitch to use was one with some give – a ribbing I thought.

This turned out to be a good idea except when it came to knitting the pockets. If I had used stocking stitch (St st) It would have been relatively easy to make the pockets using double knitting, and that was my original intention. Once I got to that part of the garment I found that, in reality, it wasn’t so convenient as I couldn’t easily distinguish between the pattern of the front of the pockets, and the plain knitting of the lining, while it was all scrunched up on the needle. So I resorted to knitting them like this: from side seam into lining of pocket, turn and work front of pocket, turn at pocket edge and knit back along the front of the pocket and all the way to the side seam.

Light as this garment is, the seams could be bulky so I decided to sew the shoulder seams using a method learned from Lucy Neatby, and described in June Hemmons Hiatt’s The Principles o f Knitting. I shaped the shoulders with short rows. The back was cast off as usual, but the fronts were not. Instead I knit for about an inch in plain stocking stitch in a contrasting colour. I grafted the shoulders together following the route of the first row of the contrast yarn, then pulled out the contrasting yarn. Why do I love this technique? Because it brings the stability of the cast off edge with half of the bulk.

The garment is completed with a stand up collar which I did in the same broken rib pattern as the body of the garment. I knit this separately, casting on the number of stitches that matched the neckline and worked for 3 inches, in pattern (with the 4 st st stitches to match the false cord at centre fronts on each end). I ended this section with 4 rows of knit stitches (2 rows of bumps of garter stitch) to make a neat turning edge.

The Commercial Fleece Vest has a grey lining to the collar.

so I continued on the same stitches, to make a grey collar lining.. This was done in a lovely soft Merino sock yarn, much thinner than the green patterned sections, so it needed more stitches than the main body pieces. 6 extra stitches seemed about fine, and these were added evenly (after two garter stitch rows) across the 2nd row of stocking stitches. I live in a cold climate and will often zip the garment right up to my chin to keep chilly winds from going down my neck. I did not want the lining to curl inwards as St st characteristically does, meaning I needed a stitch combination that would prevent that from happening. I chose to use 6 sts of Seed stitches along the front lining edges.

About 1-1/2 inches down I again increased stitches in the collar lining, giving it a slight trapezoid shape. This created a narrower top edge and a wider bottom edge. The collar hugs my neck to keep out the cold, and flares to fit over the joining seams at the base of the neck of the garment. I sewed this down using a grafting technique so that it looks like it was all knit together.

Other decisions I made were:

• To leave the first 4 sts in St st and to slip these stitches whenever it seemed the edging was getting longer than the main body of the garment. This turned out to work best when each 4th row was slipped and the others worked. Stocking Stitch always curls to the back along the sides of a piece of knitting so I was taking advantage of this and reinforcing it with slipping some rows that created a neat band similar to I-chord. The plan was to sew in a zip [zipper] to be concealed by the edging.

• I decided that the armholes will probably not get a lot of wear and tear so a simple slipped stitch edging was all that was required there. If a thread ever does wear through, or breaks (which is very unlikely with the strength of the mohair to hold it together) I could add a knitted on ending at that point.

• Because the yarn is strengthened by the addition of the mohair I also decided that a simple Long Tail Cast On was sufficient at the hemline.
• As I am vertically challenged I did constructed the vest 1 inch shorter than the commercial garment.
• The commercial garment has a visible zipper and sometimes when I have worn it the stopper at the top was uncomfortable, scratching my neck. I designed the Original Fleece to completely cover the zipper and the lining of the collar is only attached as far as the seaming so that it covers the zipper on the inside of the collar, too, thus protecting my neck on the inside and the outside.

In every garment I make there is a lot to learn and this vest was no exception. I’ll fess up to my mistakes. When I blocked the back (luckily before I started on the fronts) I found that the ribbing has eased into a more relaxed size than I had in mind. I could have pulled it out and started again (something that is not as easy or rewarding to do when knitting with mohair) or I could make the fronts a little narrower than I had planned. I took the second option. If I hadn’t told you would you have known? I doubt it.

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End result = Happiness. I think Granny Lizzie, who spent many nights with a mosquito, would approve of my economical use of yarn, and the practical nature of the garment.