A Comfort Knit That’s Just for You – Knitting

This might be another one of those posts where all you need to know is in the headline. 

Knit vest. Cats? Sign me up. 

The Darjeeling Vest by Sangmi Lee offers exactly that. 

It’s a stranded knitting pattern worked from the bottom up, with a chart for the sweet little cat faces that are all over the project. It has a round neckline and what the designer calls a “regular fit,” so you can wear it on its own like a tank top or as a vest over a shirt or dress. 

The pattern uses DK weight yarn and comes in six sizes. Actual finished measurements of the garment range from 32 to 46 2/5 inches, or 81 to 118 cm. Positive ease of 2 to 3 1/5 inches, or 5 to 8 cm, is suggested, so your body should be that much smaller than the measurement of the size that you choose. 

Because I have a black cat (and a tuxedo cat) I of course love that all of the cat faces are black, but you could also change it up so that the cats look more like your favorite cat. Or make most of them black and knit just one of them in, say, bright blue or something, just for whimsy. 

No matter the colors you choose, this knit looks like a lot of fun. I peeked at the finished projects on Ravelry and saw that someone also modified it to be a sweater and continued the cat motifs on the sleeves, which is also super cute if you don’t want a vest. 

The pattern is available in English and Korean and you can download a copy from Ravelry. And if you’re a dog person feeling left out by all this pro-feline propaganda, be sure to check out her Hundreds of Dogs sweater, also on Ravelry. It’s cute, too, if you like that sort of thing. 

[Photo: Sangmi Lee]