Andrea Mowry’s Flock Vest
Andrea Mowry aka dreareneknits, has designed a pattern to celebrate the annual Flock Fiber Festival in Seattle, Washington July 31st through August 2nd! The first year of this festival was 2023 and it has grown tremendously each year since. I saw a couple of people I know from My Sister Knits when I went last year!
This vest is an ideal project for this time of year; it won’t overheat you like a sweater would and it can be worn as soon as you finish it and into winter. It will work up quickly in a worsted weight yarn. Our favorite for this is Rosa Pomar Brusca. Brusca is one of those yarns that can be worked at different gauges. Check out our sample to see how it turned out! We have another sample coming any day now, also out of Brusca. However, if you’d like to use something different, Knitting for Olive Heavy Merino, Blue Sky Fibers Woolstok, or Cascade Woolpaka would be some good possibilities. You want a yarn with some structure for this vest.
The Flock Vest, published just weeks ago in May, already has over 400 projects posted! Andrea has a huge following and when you read one of her patterns, you’ll see why. The directions for this classic vest are so good!
Some of the reasons we like the way this pattern is written:
it comes in 12 sizes
there are yarn amounts listed for both a cropped version and a full length version
there are lots of links to tutorials
the font is large
Andrea has created fabulous Tracking Sheets for various parts of the pattern that show you exactly what you’re doing on each row and what color you’re doing it with
she says, “Right Shoulder (as worn)” and “Left Shoulder (as worn)” so there is no confusion
the striped pattern continues in the bottom ribbing
there are no short rows for those of you who are hesitant about them
Colors from left to right: A579, B571, B570, B, B568
There are so many possibilities for colors with this vest! Take a look at the Ravelry project pages for inspiration. I think that I might make one using neutrals because I have so many different colored tops and it would look ‘elegant-ish’. The contrast in the colors would be subtle and refined. On the other hand, wouldn’t one with Spincycle Dream State as one of the stripe colors be fun? Or you could use school colors; our sample has CSU colors.
Colors left to right: B579 again, B580, C582, A, B577
One thing you might want to do before committing to your stripes is make two swatches, reversing the stripe coloring. This project on Ravelry has extensive notes that are super helpful! This video gives you an excellent in-depth tutorial on picking up stitches for a button band which can also be applied to armholes. If learning the math at the beginning of the video seems unnecessary because Andrea does that for us, skip forward to about the 12 minute mark. I was able to answer some questions I had about the last button band I did and learned some things that I’m definitely going to use!
If you would like a second opinion on your color choices or help choosing, please just ask!
Happy knitting,
