When I completed my latest shawl (you can see it in this post), Doug commented that he liked the colours and that they would make a good waistcoat. I immediately thought of Kate Davies pattern, Ursula (Ravelry link):

While the pattern is for a woman’s cardigan, the stitch pattern seemed to lend itself to this colour palette, and I bought some sample shades of Jamieson Shetland Spindrift 4-ply yarn and started fooling around.

Above is my swatch. I initially choose a mossy green for the first stripe (on the bottom) and then realised that it wasn’t the right green to go with the pink and purple shades – it had too much yellow in it. So I tried a green without the yellow tones (Conifer – top stripe). I liked this, which is good because it meant that I could stop swatching and start knitting.

Unfortunately, I then asked Doug his opinion on the ribbing. The Ursula pattern calls for 3×2 ribbing, but did Doug perhaps want 1×1 ribbing since I was turning this into a men’s waistcoat? Doug looked at photos of various projects on Ravelry and concluded that he didn’t like either 1×1 or 3×2 ribbing, but that he would like 2×2 ribbing. I then, very sensibly, decided to knit swatches of each type of ribbing, so that he could see for himself. (I’m nice that way.)

The Ursula cardigan has 4 inches/10 cm of ribbing, but I wanted to use 3 inches/7.5 cm for the waistcoat, so I knitted each ribbing swatch to that length so that Doug could get an accurate idea of what it would look like. Conclusion? He decided that he didn’t like either the 1×1 or the 2×2, but preferred the 3×2 (which, if you recall, is the ribbing that is called for in the pattern). Do I get brownie points for this?

Having decided, I then ordered the yarn for the project which arrived amazingly fast.

Yay! New yarn! New project! And brownie points, too!

I usually try to post on the weekends. I was working last weekend, and I will be working this coming weekend, so I will just have to post when I can for a few weeks. Bear with me. I have a finished project to report on, too, but haven’t been able to get photos yet. It is what it is.