The hand-spun vest

Several folks remarked on my long handspun vest (It's not scandenavian, though. It's basic Roxie.) It's knit in one piece from the top down, and then side to side, all in glorious garter stitch. Cast on 25, place a marker* repeat two more times, end with cast on 25. You have 100 stitches on your needle. Increase first stitch in every row and first stitch after every marker. You will increase 4 stitches every row. You are forming a flat piece of fabric shaped like a square with one corner slit open. That's your front opening.

When the corners of the square are wider than your shoulders, ( say 200 stitches) cast on 50 stitches at the end of a row. knit back 51 stitches, and turn. Continue knitting one stitch off the square with every other row untill you are half way to the first marker( this would be 25 garter stitch ridges.) Uhhh - here's where I need to show you how it goes. It makes perfect sense when you see it, but trying to describe it - - - Ok, you should have 100 stitches on one side of the needle, and 175 stitches on the other side (My god you ARE using those long circulars aren't you?) OK, bind off 50 of those 175 stitches, break off your yarn, and use it to knit back and forth on the 100 stutches for 6 - 10 inches depending on how loosely you want your vest to hang. Then pick up a stitch from the 125 on the other needle , turn, knit 2 tog, knit 101, turn, k 99, k2tog. Continue picking up one stitch from the edge of the square, and knit two together each row so that you are decreasing by one stitch each garter ridge.

Continue until you have 100 stitches on one side of the needle, and one hundred on the other. Now repeat the paragraph above again, and bind off down the other front edge of the garment. Guess I'll have to make another vee-vest to show you how it's done. Think mitered squares, times 4.

Now I get to hammer my head on the keyboard trying to compose a fresh, professional, confident, diffident, not obnoxious, query letter. Arrrrgh!

First week of Weight Watchers - I lost 5 pounds. First week is always impressive. It wasn't too hard, but it's honeymoon times right now. Wait till I've been saying no to steak for a couple months. I'll whine a different story then! Still, I glory in my success and am taking myself out to buy a new eyebrow color.