FO: Flourish Vest

I love this Flourish Vest from Knitscene Fall 2009. The yarn is Cascade Greenland, a superwash merino yarn. I think it's a great pattern and I'm surprised there are so few ravelry knitters interested in it. I knit the smallest size, but my gauge is looser at 17 stitches/4". My row gauge is also bigger, so I eliminated one of the smallest cable patterns (18 rows) to compensate for the extra length. I adjusted the placement of my waist decreases and increases accordingly. I used needles 3 sizes smaller for the front bands to achieve a tight button band and I used 5 instead of 4 buttons. Both of these things were done to prevent the dreaded button band gaposis.

I used 3-needle bind off on the shoulders, as I usually do. I had to do decreases on the last row of the front shoulders because the pattern is written to have more stitches on the front shoulders than on the back.

I really liked knitting with this yarn. 100 grams gets you only 137 yards, so it's not one of these light and lofty yarns. It feels very sturdy and really springy. My vest wears like a garment that contains lycra, which is actually a good thing because it results in a really good fit. The yarn is so springy that the ribbing bounces back to its unstretched state even after lots of steaming.