October Vest - Finished!

I finished this up last weekend, on Saturday, but we were at The Unique Sheep Retreat Sunday through Wednesday so I didn't get a chance to block it until Thursday.  I think my gauge on this one was a little bit looser than the gauge on the December Vest.  This one seems to be a bit more drapey and slightly larger.  It still looks great on me, which is all that matters.  What actually inspired me to knit this was a forum post on Ravelry looking for some Dream in Color Classy in Coolfire.  I had used that colorway back in 2012 on the Briar Rose Bolero, which I think I knit the first year I participated in Camp Loopy.  When I was pulling it from the stash box it was stored in I decided to try and use up the rest of the yarn in the box so I could put more stash away.  My knitting mojo has been a little bit shakey lately.  I have a number of projects on the needles but they aren't really inspiring me right now so I decided I just needed to do something different.  This vest knits up very quickly and is a great accessory.

The needle called for us a US 8 (5.0 mm), with a stitch gauge of 19 stitches in 4 inches.  Unfortunately, no row gauge is given, which makes the stitch gauge not as useful.  To be complete a pattern really should give both.  The gauge I ended up with on this vest is 18 sts and 24 rows in 4 inches, which is not the same as I ended up with on my December Vest (17.5 sts and 27 rows in 4 inches).  The December Vest is also not as drapey.  They are both Dream in Color Classy, but the yarn for the December Vest is Classy with Nylon.  Both are listed as worsted weight yarns.  But the Dream in Color Classy has 250 yards per 113 grams (2.2 yards/g) while the Dream in Color Classy with Nylon has 340 yards in 170 grams (2 yards/g).  So the Classy is just a little thinner than the Classy with Nylon.  I actually started out with a US 6 needle on this vest but it seemed to be coming out too small (just based on the yoke rows compared with the December Vest), so I went up to the US 7.  It just goes to show you what a difference in the finished project a little difference like this can make.

One other thing that you may notice is that the yarn appears to darken as it goes from the top of the vest to the bottom.  That is not an artifact of the picture, it really does darken.  That is one of the challenges of using yarn like this - consistency between skeins.  When I was caking the skeins I noticed that both of the skeins started out lighter and became darker and that one skein was darker than the other.  I caked them so that as I knit from the cake I would start out with the lighter end and work to the darker end, and when I cast on I started with the lighter of the two skeins.

Pattern:  Practically by Kelly Herdrich
Yarn:  Dream in Color Classy 2014 October Dream Club
Needle:  US 7 (4.5 mm)