FO Friday- Mom's Brithday Vest

Yarn: Lion Brand Wool-Ease, Colorway Forest Green Heather, Approximately 3 skeins
Pattern: Woman's Cabled Vest From Susan Bates Learn To Knit, published 1978
Needle: US 6 (4 mm)
Mods: shortened armhole by sewing a few inches up the sides

Though this vest was simple in design, I ended up having a very humbling learning experience while knitting it! After casting on for the smallest size (a size 8) I was pretty confident that if I dropped the needle size it would fit my mom better. After all I'm a loose knitter and she's a petite woman. No way could she EVER fit into a size 8! That's a 36.5" bust! Halfway through the cabling I flipped though the book only to find that the size 8 is a 31.5" chest. Remember how I said this pattern was published in 1978? Yeah..... A size 8 from the time of this book's publishing ends up being a size 00 according to J Crew. That definitely taught me to read EVERYTHING before starting! But in my defense there was no pattern schematic.
For a while there the vest looked incredibly skinny and I worried it would be far too small, and I hate knitting endless rows of garter stitch and if I had to start all over again I would definitely have shoved it into a closet and bought her something for her birthday instead.

Doesn't the cabling portion look TINY? You can imagine my fright, but I talked myself into continuing: "Garter stitch is a looser stitch! You WANT the cables to pull in! You can wet-block it.... even if it is mostly acrylic! Mom's smaller than you are! Just keep knitting!"
Thank goodness for perseverance: it really turned out well! Unfortunately I'm awful at keeping presents from people, and when the weather continued its cold trend I wrapped the parcel up and gave it to her early.
Three. Weeks. Early.

Oh well. I'm thinking I might knit her some slippers next.
Catch up on more FO's with Tamis Amis!

Happy Knitting!