03-25-2023

I’ve gotten to the last row of the back piece and I’m already debating derailing the pattern instructions and going rogue. Is it really necessary to bind off these middle stitches?? Why not keep them live for the back of the hood??

06-23-2023

Those are some pretty decent sleeves for being a “vest” lol.
Main body done! Onto the hood now.

07-11-2023

I’m really so happy with how this turned out! The hood is kind of ridiculously giant, but I’m not actually complaining; it looks great when down, and tbh I wear hoods more for the style down than actually putting them on my head anyway. It’s super snuggly to cuddle up in and I see myself getting a lot of use out of it in the evenings, even in the summer on cooler nights. Another fun thing: I had exactly 5 buttons left over from the ones I made for my Desperate Housewife cardigan, and they were absolutely perfect for this! I’m stoked that I could use them up on another project so quickly.

The pattern itself… well. It’s a magazine pattern, so I guess I shouldn’t have expected much more than what it was. I found a couple errors in the stitch count numbering which I was fortunately able to annotate and deal with without any frogging. The entire construction could honestly stand to be reworked. There’s zero reason that this thing needed to have any seams at all, or even so many picked up stitches. I didn’t even do them all, as I left the neck stitches live to use for the hood instead of binding off and then picking them up again for no purpose. (Whut.) I also didn’t bother blocking it in the middle like they wanted me to, because why? I’m sure they were just aiming for it to be really simple and approachable for newer or more casual knitters though, so I won’t be a snob about it. But seriously, I am tempted to make my own version of a similar garment some time and see what I can come up with!

Total time: 49 hrs, 9 min