So Much For Quick and Easy

It's my own damn fault. Someday I will learn to content myself with knitting a pattern as written. Until that day, however, I will have plenty of stories like this one to tell.

So I cast on this nifty little striped vest, expecting it to be fast and mindless. It sure started off that way. I knit the ribbing without thinking at all. And then it happened. I read the instructions -- "work stripe pattern and at the same time, work waist decreases at side hems."

Hmm, I thought. If the waist decreases hit just above the ribbing, that means the hem on this thing falls ... yep. Just about navel length. That's not exactly an area of my body I want to call attention to.

So I decided to lengthen the vest by about 3" and change the waist shaping a bit. So far, so good. But then I decided I might as well pull out the old notes from last summer's class with The!! Lily!! Chin!! (*faint*), and add some bust darts.

This wasn't an arbitrary decision. I looked very carefully at all the model photos while considering pattern alterations. The model, typically, has bra cups the size of bottle caps, but the vest was pulling a little across her mammary landscape. So I figured for me -- you know, I've got a pair -- I'd better add some bust darts.

So then I had to decide where to put the bust darts. And how to work the intarsia V-shaped striping at the neckline. Should I change their placement, in light of those added darts? Nah, I decided. I'll just knit the darts and then proceed with the neckline shaping for the pattern as written.

Well, that didn't work. Not unless I wanted to hang the halter straps from my ears instead of from my shoulders. So today I ripped back a good four inches of intarsia and short row shaping, and will proceed with "Neckline/ Take Two" tomorrow.

The good news? I got the darts in the right spot, and the right depth. The bad news? I can harldy breathe and think at the same time, so working those darts and the intarsia at the same time might be, shall we say, interesting.