Maddie Harvey Nettle Earnest Vest

Now that it's autumn I've started knitting again. The starting point for this was the yarn which I bought at the 2024 woozy good gathering and had sitting around. It's Auchen from Black Isle yarns, and the colours (neither of which are available any more) are Barbie (the pink) and Sheperd's delight (the pinky grey, how lovely is it!). I only had two skeins of the grey and one of the pink, which severely limited my options for patterns

I settled on the Maddie Harvey Nettle Earnest, which is a boxy top that is made of one big piece seamed together at the edges with just a bit of shaping round the shoulders/sleeves. I mostly knit this in work calls, apart from the shaped bits, it's so straightforward. 

The yarn was heavier than the pattern called for but I swatched (!) and it worked out ok with me just making the second smallest size. It's so boxy fitting isn't massively essential anyway.

The pattern as drafted is longer at the back and has a vent at the side, but since I had limited yarn I wasn't able to do that, I actually ended up having to make even the front pink band narrower than it said. I started from the front, did the pink band, knitted up one skein of the grey and changed to the pink for the shoulders, and back to the second skein of the grey. I then didn't have quite enough for the back bottom band, so unravelled the front one and divided the yarn into two by weight to make them even. 

I also made a mistake when changing from the grey to the pink yarn and as a result the upper band had ended up the wrong way round with a really bobbly texture instead of the broken rib intended. I kind of like it! It's just as well I had to redo the bottom bands anyway, so I could make them wrong side to match

I'm super happy with this and finally having used up the yarn from all this time ago!