Crosby (Zippered Vest with Cables)

This cabled sleeveless vest with ribbed side panels is fantastic for those “not-too-warm-and-not-too-cold” days. It’s knit in one piece with minimal seaming and features a simple but attractive cable pattern. The 2-way zippered closure makes it a very versatile addition to any wardrobe while waist shaping and short row shaping in the bust make it customizable to any body type.
Note: This is a plus-size pattern.

Sizes

L (1X, 2X, 3X)

Finished Size

Bust: 38” (42”, 46”, 52”)
To fit bust: 42” (46”, 50”, 56”)

Skills Utilised

• Increases; Decreases; Cable; Cable cast on; Attached I-cord; Seaming; Short rows; Basic sewing (for sewing in the zipper)

Yarn

Full Belly Farm Organic Worsted (100% wool; 4 oz. = approx. 250 yards) or other heavy worsted weight wool; Colour: natural: 5 (5, 6, 6) skeins

Needles and Other Supplies

• 40” circular needle in size US 7 (or size required to make gauge)
• 24” circular needle in size US 5
• Cable needle
• Stitch markers
• Waste yarn
• 22” two-way separating zipper
• Thread
• Sewing machine (optional)

Gauge

11 stitches and 12 rows = 2 inches in Crooked Cable stitch

For yarn substitution purposes:

8 stitches and 13 rows = 2 inches in stockinette

$5.00

Julia Rothman is guest-blogging at Design*Sponge this week and one of her first posts was a tutorial on how to make repeat patterns by hand. I couldn’t wait to try this out but, as I’ve been feeling a little tired/brain-dead today, decided to use one of my existing designs…my Fetterangus stationery design!

Using that Pictish-inspired design, I was able to come up with what would make some pretty darn nice paper:

This gives me tons of ideas for more paper designs…if only I knew where to get it printed!

When the Spouse bought his bead blaster, one of the “selling points” in his pitch to me was “you can use it to etch glass for prizes”. I think he may have regretted that yesterday as I had him conscripted into helping me etch 54 pieces of glass as prizes for this weekend’s race meet.

I adapted a 1912 Ludwig Hohlwein design for the vinyl cutter; this meant a fair amount of detail had to be removed and some of the angularity softened. Once the vinyl had been cut, the actual design was weeded, leaving a negative image. The remaining vinyl was applied to the glass, the piece was masked, and off it went to the garage to get blasted!

And the results:

In total, thirty glass plates, sixteen 6″ rectangular vases, four 9″ rectangular vases, and four 7″ large vases were etched. All the glass came from IKEA so this ended up being a pretty cost-effective load of prizes.

More importantly for me, etching these pieces gave me some ideas for other “negative image” pieces I might do in the future. (And I’m sure the Spouse will be glad to hear that they DON’T involve the bead blaster!)

After last week’s brief foray into paper cutting, yesterday saw me finally getting back to stationery and working on another design — this time for thank you cards. A combination of low-tech (you can’t get a whole lot lower tech than Gocco!) and high tech (QR codes rock!) really appealed to my sense of irony.

Not quite so ironic was the nasty folding job done on the cards used. Very disappointing as I thought I’d found a more local source for cards. Around half of the cards were folded all wonky so I decided to shorten the run and put them all on sale.

When I get back from Oregon, I’ll run some more of these lovelies (and this time the fold will be perfect because I won’t be using Strathmore cards again, will I!).