FO Friday - Finally Tracery

This week I finished the Tracery vest. I must have been planning the vest for 8 years, when I first saw it in the Unofficial and Unlicensed  Harry Potter Knits, a book that cracks me up by waltzing along the edges of what is copywrite infringement. Here is the picture from the book:

Here's what I knit

A little bit different! Except the shoulders, they are the same. And yes, we had a lot of fun trying the reproduce the photos from the book!

I had some issues taking this from the "I want to knit it stage" to completion, which is why it took so long.

The pattern is written FLAT from the underarms up. I knew I wanted to steek it. To do that I needed to find a non-superwash wool in the right colours.

I couldn't find the right yarn. In 2016 I bought wool to spin it, but somewhere along the way I decided handspun wasn't gong to be the best for this vest. I ended up dying it myself in July last year. I was very specific in my head about what I wanted, and actually got it using my wonderful, self-taught, unscientific dying skills. 

I then had to get together the courage and maths skills to re-write the pattern

In the end I re-wrote it not just to put it in the round, but to turn it into a more traditional vest shape. I put steeks in for the arms, the backneck and the V-neck, lowered the V, and mae it full length, rather than cropped.

I'm really happy with how it came out. I have a few vests, but this fits be better than the rest of them put together. In fact, this has inspired me to got through my vest draw and see if there are any that have outlived their usefulness, because i imagine I'll be wearing this one a lot!