The Clock Vest is Finished!

The Clock Vest is finally finished. It seemed as though I had been working on it forever, but Ravelry shows a start date of early December -- only three months. Must have been the learning curve that made it feel so slow.

Anyway here it is. First we have a three-quarter view that shows one side and front panel.

And the glorious back.

And the front.

I only made one change to the pattern, and that was the button band. I swatched the suggested approach, which is the same as the bottom band, and did not like the result at all. After considerable dithering, I tried simply changing the stitch pattern every two rows, instead of every four rows. For some reason, this resulted in a much denser, tighter fabric. I made it slightly narrower too – eight rows instead of eleven.

Selecting buttons was easy. The square "Metiscus" buttons didn't work at all. The round "Bronze Shield" buttons were really attractive, and if there had been no other choice, I would have been happy to use them. But the "rough ball" buttons from The Button Drawer were the clear winners. They looked tons better in person than they had in the vendor's picture.

And the neighborhood kitty who drops by for a visit whenever I happen to be eating tuna gave it her seal of approval – both white and black hairs were shed upon the vest.