Emerald Jacket for Weekend Sports

Winter has finally arrived in Florida and it is cold! It's quite amazing how much I've acclimatized in just one year! Since we had what may end up being the coldest weekend of the winter this past weekend, I've been pulling out all of my cold weather pieces to help stay toasty warm.

One of the bummers about living in such a warm area is that my hand knits don't get much wear. It's really just not cold enough for all of that wool. And I do really like knitting too. :(

This also explains why this lovely knitted jacket has been lingering as a UFO for almost two years.... Fail. I started this piece in January 2014 as a second Knit for Victory project and finished it in March 2014.

And then it started getting warm and I put off sewing it up. Somewhere along the way I put together the bodice and attached the sleeves but never got the collar attached. I was quite nervous about putting a zipper in a knit but I did end up purchasing a separating zipper and even threw it in the pile with this piece.

Since it was going to be chilly, I decided to go ahead and finish this piece up so I could at least get a couple of wears out of it. Now that I'm more experienced with hand picked zippers, putting the the zip was a cinch and now I have a cozy sweater jacket!

I was very inspired by Tasha's green wool bomber jacket so I just had to knit this up in some yummy green tweed wool. My guage ended up being a bit odd so I had to do a lot of work to adjust the pattern to match my guage. (I used two of Tasha's excellent tutorials and a lot of math. Thank's Tasha! 1 & 2) But I just had to have this color jacket so it was worth it. I don't remember what I did now but I did add some notes to my Ravelry project page back when I started.

This jacket is super cozy and not itchy at all which is great because I have almost no long sleeved shirts any more. I'm really quite proud of this piece because I had to rework the pattern so much and also conquered some new construction techniques.

Don't expect any more knitting projects un the near future though. Aside from not really having a winter anymore, on my last few yarn purchases, my guage has been way off (by like an inch or more) and it's been rather discouraging. I don't know if it's bad yard or I'm knitting oddly or what but it's way too much work to rework a pattern than much unless I really love it.

At any rate, my current stash of knits will do me quite well. I do need to dig the rest of them out so they can get some wear. I have a matching hat for this jacket somewhere.....

I also wore my gray corduroy skirt and Wearing History Ruthie blouse to finish off this outfit. While I do enjoy getting to wear my summery pieces 85% of the year, it is refreshing to get to wear some more wintery pieces every once in a while.

 Either way, I'm oh so happy to have this UFO finished instead of languishing in the knitting box.

 What have you been knitting this winter?