Is there a type of garment that you haven’t made yet? Perhaps you've never knitted (or worn!) a vest before. Or maybe you’ve already made a few and you’re looking for a pattern that feels fresh—something quick, transitional, and size-inclusive for the season ahead.

I was in the first camp when I tuned into an Instagram Live one afternoon, where two besties talked all about a vest-along they were about to participate in. As they excitedly chatted about silhouettes, textures, and how they’d style a vest, I couldn't think about anything else. Before the live even ended, I’d grabbed the nearest notepad and scribbled a few rough sketches based on another pattern I had in test knitting at the time.

The first sketch was heavily cabled, front and back. “Keep it simple!”, I thought to myself. But it was the third sketch—the last one on that notepad—that stood out as “the one.”

I started a spreadsheet and ordered yarn faster than it took you to read this sentence. One package was coming from another state, the other from a couple hours north of me. Tracking said nearly a week. Torture!

To my relief, the yarn arrived four days sooner than estimated, and just in time for me to work on it while podcasting and watching You’ve Got Mail with my own bestie during her visit from Canada. There’s something special about knitting with someone you love in the room, even if you’re both just doing your own thing.

As I made progress on the pattern and then worked on a second sample, my husband—completely unaware of what (or who!) had inspired me to drop everything else—started calling it the Bestie Vestie. I loved how that name rolled off the tongue. It was cute, memorable, and different from anything I’ve named before.

The icing on the cake: 90 test knitters helped bring this pattern to life, and so many of them said the same thing—this is the best-fitting thing they’ve ever made. If you decide to make one too, whether as your first vest or a new one to add to a growing collection, I hope that it’s your Bestie Vestie yet.

Is there a type of garment that you haven’t made yet? Perhaps you've never knitted (or worn!) a vest before. Or maybe you’ve already made a few and you’re looking for a pattern that feels fresh—something quick, transitional, and size-inclusive for the season ahead.

I was in the first camp when I tuned into an Instagram Live one afternoon, where two besties talked all about a vest-along they were about to participate in. As they excitedly chatted about silhouettes, textures, and how they’d style a vest, I couldn't think about anything else. Before the live even ended, I’d grabbed the nearest notepad and scribbled a few rough sketches based on another pattern I had in test knitting at the time.

The first sketch was heavily cabled, front and back. “Keep it simple!”, I thought to myself. But it was the third sketch—the last one on that notepad—that stood out as “the one.”

I started a spreadsheet and ordered yarn faster than it took you to read this sentence. One package was coming from another state, the other from a couple hours north of me. Tracking said nearly a week. Torture!

To my relief, the yarn arrived four days sooner than estimated, and just in time for me to work on it while podcasting and watching You’ve Got Mail with my own bestie during her visit from Canada. There’s something special about knitting with someone you love in the room, even if you’re both just doing your own thing.

As I made progress on the pattern and then worked on a second sample, my husband—completely unaware of what (or who!) had inspired me to drop everything else—started calling it the Bestie Vestie. I loved how that name rolled off the tongue. It was cute, memorable, and different from anything I’ve named before.

The icing on the cake: 90 test knitters helped bring this pattern to life, and so many of them said the same thing—this is the best-fitting thing they’ve ever made. If you decide to make one too, whether as your first vest or a new one to add to a growing collection, I hope that it’s your Bestie Vestie yet.

In September 2018, I walked out of my local yarn shop with a sweater quantity of yarn and a familiar feeling. You know the one: that on-the-brink of starting something new, creative juices flowing, and endless possibilities feeling that only a maker can know. I didn’t have a pattern in mind, but I knew that this yarn would become something special.

Then something funny happened: I kept unintentionally sketching the same design. A pullover with cabled panels, a rounded neckline, “cold” shoulders, and set-in armholes appeared eight times, to be exact, on different days and in separate sketchbooks. It was almost as if the yarn was telling me, "This is what I want to be."

Now with a clear vision in mind, I started swatching. The yarn by itself was beautiful, soft, and airy with fantastic drape, but it lacked the cozy factor I was going for. When I paired it with a mohair/silk blend, the fabric transformed. It had depth and warmth, and it felt like kittens and clouds—exactly what I wanted.

In late 2019, I cast on and quickly realized that top-down construction wasn’t practical for the design I had sketched, so I restarted from the bottom up. When I tried it on for the first time, something was off. I frogged back and reknit the yoke. Still not right. I frogged again. And again. I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong. All I know is that I was feeling pretty deflated. The yarn was practically begging me to stop frogging and reknitting it, and I needed a break.

Apparently, a three-year break.

Over those years, thoughts of “needing to finish that sweater” hung over my head. Would I ever finish? Had I failed? But while the sweater waited, I kept learning—about fit, grading, size inclusivity. I poured that knowledge into other patterns. And each time I released something new, I’d pull this sweater out with renewed determination. Yet I still didn’t have the answer.

It finally hit me in fall 2023. What if I changed everything? V-neck instead of scoop neck. Closed shoulders instead of open. Raglan sleeves instead of set-in. The revisions came together perfectly, and when I finally tried it on again . . . it worked!

This design challenged me more than any other. There was a span of time where I didn’t think I could finish it. But things got easier—things fell into place—when I stopped trying to force an idea and let the design take me where it wanted to go all along. In hindsight, it feels a little like serendipity.

It was, simply, “Meant to Vee.”

Kids change quickly, but the joy of knitting for them never does.

I first designed the Bittie Bestie Vestie for the same tiny human who once toddled around in the Little Nydia Cardigan. She’s not tiny anymore, of course. She’s taller now, a little braver in her choices, and full of Opinions with a capital O.

When she spotted me working on this vest, she reached for the fuzzy ball of mohair like she already knew it belonged to her. I dared to ask if she liked the color, and she gave me this tiny, shy nod that said, Obviously. That was all the approval I needed.

Naturally, once hers was finished, I couldn’t leave her little brother out. But I didn’t want a twin set; I wanted each vest to have its own personality. So the second version came to be: one soft and airy with mohair and lace, the other clean and classic with a smooth wool and a crisp texture, both sharing the same signature cables and “instant favorite” energy as the adult Bestie Vestie.

The vest itself is worked bottom up with seamless construction, smart shaping, and just enough variety to keep the knit engaging. It’s friendly for newer knitters, still fun for the veterans, and supported with step-by-step video tutorials so you always know exactly where you’re headed.

A yarn crawl. A dyer’s trunk show. A generous hand reaching back to pull out a second skein just for me.

That’s how Indira began.

I walked into the first yarn shop of my day looking for something I wasn't even sure existed yet—the perfect yarn for a cable and lace shawl pattern I’d been sketching and swatching in other yarns that weren’t quite right. I grabbed what I thought was the last skein of a striking, plum-colored fingering weight yarn and two coordinating skeins of mohair/silk lace, and I started talking to an indie dyer who was having a trunk show there. She looked at the yarns in my hands and said, “Those are perfect together.”

I told her I thought so too but, sadly, the shop only had one skein of the fingering weight.

She reached back behind her table, pulled out a second skein of the same yarn that she’d set aside for herself, and handed it to me. “You clearly love the color and have a project in mind. Take it.”

That moment made my entire day. I left that shop knowing I’d found the right combination, and I knew exactly what it was for. My dream shawl.

It became my travel project. I worked on it during lunch breaks at work, at my first trunk show as a designer, throughout that memorable trip to Victoria that sparked the Aslyn hat pattern, even by flashlight during a power outage that lasted a few days. It was the project I was making when I hit 1,000 Instagram followers. And it was the pattern I was working on publishing when a season of unexpected grief and loss met my family.

All those moments—the in-between times, the pockets of creativity, the milestones, the memories—they’re woven into this shawl.