That title is a bit misleading, since this entry isn’t really about Halloween, but about the vest thing still. I do wish you a Happy Halloween though. Since someone will ask though, I’ll just do it now. Amanda (19) has not shared her costume plan with me this year. She might not be dressing up. Sam (14) is being a ballerina… a plan that was in serious jeopardy last night when we couldn’t make the criss-crossy ribbons on her legs stay up. I was thinking about sewing them to the tights when my brilliant husband came up with the idea of replacing the ribbons with hockey tape. The tape looks like ribbon and really stays up. We don’t know how we’ll get it off… but it really stays up. Meg (17) is doing a pairs costume with her friend Madeleine. Maddy is being the Mad Hatter and Meg is the White Rabbit. There was some consideration last night of Meg’s idea that she should stuff her shirt where her belly is to look pregnant, since the White Rabbit is “Late for a very important date” and she thought it would double the joke. (Get it? Late? The White Rabbit is “late”?) Meg thought this hysterical. I, being her mother, was torn between how actually funny that is (which is quite) and how not funny it would be (which is not at all.)

Moving along. Questions from yesterday.

Bethany H asks:

I’m probably not the first to suggest this, but perhaps did you read it to be 19.75 to the shoulders, and it might have been to the armholes?

Good guess, but no, and I even suggested it to myself, since that would be a reasonable explanation. There are two measurements given. One to the armholes and one to the shoulders. Would have been a pretty sweet catch if that was it though.

Melissa (and a whole bunch of you) inquire:

I hate to ask the stupid question, but I’m going to anyway. Is it possible that this is an American pattern and that the numbers are given in inches? That would make a bit more sense I think.

It is an American pattern, and it is in inches – but so is my knitting. I think it’s pretty hard, especially when you get into several inches or centimetres to confuse them. Check this out.

That’s the vest front (reworked) and next to it is a tape measure at 19.75 inches, and a tape measure at 19.75 centimetres. I like to think (although I have surprised myself more than a few times) that the difference between those is so radical that if I were knitting in cm when it should be inches that I really shouldn’t get too far.

Mel says:

Actually, it looks like it would work well as a cropped vest. Does the pattern not show it on a model to demonstrate the intended look?

Yup. Right here. I didn’t see that as particularly cropped when I first looked at it, but as Andrea pointed out, those look like 3/4 length sleeves, and even they are longer than the vest. I should have looked more carefully. (Or, as I pointed out yesterday, maybe I could have read the pattern where the length was clearly stated. Dumbass.)

Deb says:

Maybe it is supposed to be one of those weird Only Covers To The Bottom Of The Boobs vests that you wear a button down shirt under? And then you have like 14 inches of the shirt hanging out from under it. Like those teeny tiny Jackets That Are Really Shrugs things.

Like this?

Totally possible. Myself, I have a middle aged middle and there is zero chance that I would be caught dead in something that accentuated or highlighted the exact size and location of either my breasts or my middle, but it’s possible that the designer is hotter than me. (Likely – actually.)

Laurie wants to know:

WHERE IS THE PATTERN FOR MAIRI’S SWEATER?

and Diane seconds the motion with:

HOLY HELL WHAT IS THAT SWEATER THAT MAIRI IS WEARING IT’S GORGEOUS AND I MUST KNIT IT NOW.



You can tell from the ALL CAPS REQUEST that they are seriously smitten. Mairi is wearing ‘Kilronan’ from Alice Starmore’s Celtic Collection, which is, as Mairi herself noted in the comments, one of the only Alice Starmore books still in print and available.

In the end, I’ve fixed the problem with the vest being to short for my taste by ripping back to the armholes, working another repeat of the diamonds, and I’m over it. I think it’s going to be the right length now – and if it isn’t it won’t matter, since I shall simply snip it up and eat it out of fury. I don’t mind making mistakes in knitting as long as they are worth something, you know? Like if you’re learning something new and you screw up – or you took a chance trying to figure a way out of a knitting problem, or you’re designing and the learning curve has a couple of bumps on the way to perfection. All of that is fine with me. As long as the error yields something, I can suck it up. It’s the stupid bonehead stuff where you knew better, weren’t paying attention and had to pull back and re-knit something you knew darn well was wrong and are now suffering the consequences of only your own stupidity that just makes me furious to the point of seething purple rage.

Anyway. I started the back of the thing. I’m going to go knit. There’s a bucket of Halloween chocolate here that’s destined to take the edge right off of this.