THIS PATTERN IS PART OF A THREE-DESIGN GUIDE

Woven Woods is a sturdy vestal creation perfect for wearing over a long sweater, tunic or smock in the chilly seasons and a blouse as the days warm. All its color interest keeps the eye moving topside while the length below sweeps clean lines away from bulges and lumps. Add your Bark&Lichen Cowlet to your neck and your texture rocks (along with the lichen and twigs).
The piece’s real raison d’être is to provide scope through which to play with ombre seed, an enticing and addictive way to pile texture onto color. Once you slip into the flow of layering hue upon hue, the urge to try this vest in other color schemes may take hold. Let it.

OVERVIEW

The Woven Woods vest is knit in three pieces – back and two fronts — with the linen stitch collar band and bottom edging picked up and knit afterwards. A shaped front can be fastened with a single button or worn open. Straight, unstructured armhole openings are roomy enough for wearing over even heavy sweaters. Make it any length you want, cropped or long. Extend you bands even wider to change the look or the size.

Materials
1 set of size 6mm/US 10 straight needles
Tapestry needle for weaving in ends
Approximately 350 – 400 yards of mixed yarn

Sizing
Three sizes options are offered --small, medium (shown) and large—but the shaping is simple enough for intermediate knitters to extend or make smaller. Also, if seeking extra room, go up several needle sizes.
Another approach is to work a swatch. Generally I avoid swatching but do admit the scope for creative play it offers, not to mention the more pragmatic ability to accurately assess a size.

Gauge
4 stitches per inch over seed stitch on size 6mm/US 10 needles.

Fronts at widest point without band
S = 8”/20 cm
M = 11”/ 28 m
L = 15”/ 38cm

Back
S = 18”/46 cm
M = 22”/ 58 cm
L = 28”/ 71 cm

This project takes very little of any one color unless you want it to. I selected one yarn of which I had in abundance, a rather mustardy green-gold silk, and then added dollops of earth browns and tweedy greens. As usual, I brought into play several yarn weights including thinner yarns doubled, even tripled, plus chunkier tapes and mohairs. The resulting fabric is warm yet not bulky.
OMBRE WEAR
Ombre means shade and the glory of this kind of coloration is moving from darkness to light, from one shade to another.
In keeping with the shadowed theme, I began at the forest floor, down where twigs and pine needles accumulate in spongy carpets. From there, I climbed slowly upward, up through the tree trunks of toasted umber, past the slim-limbed branches burnished bright by light until, at last, I soared far into a winter’s sky’s golden dawn.
Knit your forest dream. Move from earth to sky or sky to earth. Blend, fuse, meld!

$10 of every sale of this pattern will go to Haitian relief up until February 14th.

THIS DESIGN IS PART OF A 29-PAGE THREE-PATTERN GUIDE ‘The Winter Forest Evocative Guide’ which includes three designs, this vest, a kimono and a cowlet. More information here Thousand Branches Kimono