This vest by Ann E. Smith from the October 1994 edition of McCall’s Crochet had a lot of things I liked. It was the right length, the color would go well with black pants, and the white accents were attractive. I didn’t like the fact that the front was comprised of granny squares (28) but then you can’t have everything.
I used Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride yarn which contains just enough mohair to make it soft and give it a nice sheen. It was also the yarn that the pattern recommended. Right away I noticed that the yarn was not consistently spun. In some places it narrowed down to the size of fingering and in other places it was like bulky weight. In addition, there was all manner of “mystery fiber” caught up in the wool. Some of these fibers were extremely coarse and of various colors. The black yarn was shedding all over my work area and was also attracting lint like a magnet.
Nevertheless, I persevered. I made all the granny squares and wove in countless ends. I sewed them all together and wove in more ends. While making the checkered border I noticed that my white yarn had become extremely thin. I unrolled the entire skein to see if the problem would resolve itself but the whole remainder of the skein was very thin. Forging ahead, I continued the front band even though the row of white checks along the edge looked distorted because of the thin yarn.
Once the vest was finished it became more apparent how bad the checkered portion along the front bands looked. Short of disassembling the entire vest and ordering another skein of white yarn, there is no remedy for this problem.
